Kohelet 5: Second person

Higher Ground:

Divine Justice Amiable

Cowper

Thou hast no lightnings, O thou Just!
Or I their force should know;
And, if thou strike me into dust,
My soul approves the blow.

The heart, that values less its ease
Than it adores thy ways,
In thine avenging anger sees
A subject of its praise.

Pleased I could lie, concealed and lost,
In shades of central night;
Not to avoid thy wrath, thou know'st,
But lest I grieve thy sight.

Smite me, O thou, whom I provoke!
And I will love thee still:
The well deserved and righteous stroke
Shall please me, though it kill.

Am I not worthy to sustain
The worst thou canst devise;
And dare I seek thy throne again,
And meet thy sacred eyes?

Far from afflicting, thou art kind;
And, in my saddest hours,
An unction of thy grace I find,
Pervading all my powers.

Alas! thou sparest me yet again;
And, when thy wrath should move,
Too gentle to endure my pain,
Thou soothest me with thy love.

I have no punishment to fear;
But, ah! that smile from thee
Imparts a pang far more severe
Than woe itself would be.

New Heaven and Earth

DH Lawrence

I was so weary of the world, I was so sick of it,

Everything was tainted with myself

Skies, trees, flowers, birds, water

People, houses, streets, vehicles, machines

Nations, armies, war, peace making

Work, recreation, governing, anarchy.

It was all tainted with myself.

I knew it all to start with because it was all myself

When I gathered flowers, I knew it was myself plucking my own flowering

When I went in a train, I knew it was myself traveling by my own invention

When I heard the cannon of war, I listened with my own ears to my own destruction

When I saw the torn dead, I knew it was my own torn dead body. It was all me. I had done it all in my own flesh. I shall never forge the maniacal horror of it all in the end

When everything was me, I knew it all already. I anticipated it all in my soul

Because I was the author and the result I was the God and the creation at once Creator, I looked at my creation

Created, I looked at myself, the creator

It was a maniacal horror in the end.

I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,
and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.
I was a father and a begetter of children,
and oh, oh horror, I was begetting and conceiving in my own body.

At last came death, sufficiency of death.

And that at least relieved me. I died

I buried my beloved. It was good. I buried myself and was gone

War came, and every hand raised to murder;
very good, very good, every hand raised to murder!
Very good, very good, I am a murderer!
It is good, I can murder and murder, and see them fall
the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude
one on another, and then in clusters together
smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps
going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them
the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps
and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps
till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;
thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul dead
that are youths and men and me
being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt thick smoke, that rolls
and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is dark, dark as night, or death, or hell
and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the smoke-sodden tomb;
dead and trodden to nought in the sour black earth
of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden to nought.

God but it was good to have died and been trodden quite out, quite out, quite out

Every vestige gone. Then I am here

Risen and setting my foot in another world

Risen, accomplishing a resurrection

Risen, not born again but risen, body the same as before

New beyond knowledge of newness. Alive beyond life

Living where life was never yet dreamed of, not hinted at

Here, in the other world, still terrestrial

Myself the same as before, yet unaccountably new

I, in the sour black tomb, trodden to absolute death

I put my hand out in the night, one night, and my hand

Touched that which was verily was not me,

Verily it was not me

Where I had been was a sudden blaze

A sudden flaring blaze. So I put my hand out further, a little further

And I felt that which was not I. It verily was not I

It was the Unknown

Ha! I was a blaze leaping up

I was a tiger bursting into sunlight

I was greedy. I was mad for the unknown

I was risen, resurrected, starved from the tomb

Starved from a life of devouring always myself

Now here was I, new awakened with my hand stretching out

And touching the unknown, the real unknown

The unknown unknown!