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O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
who hast set thy glory above the heavens.
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemies,
that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger.
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers,
the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels,
and hast crowned him with glory and honour.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
thou hast put all things under his feet:
All sheep and oxen,
yea, and the beasts of the field;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea,
and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the seas.
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
~Psalm 8
Anticipating a sermon on psalm 110 I posted that one for today's poetry.
ReplyDeleteWhat prompted you to chose psalm 8?
It was part of a train of thought.
ReplyDeleteThursday, when I was flipping though a notebook of my favorite poems looking for one to post on Friday, I came across "Unstooping." Because I'm reading that essay on the arts from I'll Take my Stand concurrently with the Poetic Knowledge book club (which was unplanned, by the way) a lot of things I'm reading in those two are reminding me of Josef Pieper's Leisure. So when I saw the title, "Unstooping," I thought immediately of that passage of Plato's that Pieper quoted at the beginning of the book:
"But the Gods, taking pity on mankind, born to work, laid down the succession of recurring Feasts to restore them from their fatigue, and gave them the Muses, and Apollo their leader, and Dionysus, as companions in their Feasts, so that nourishing themselves in festive companionship with the Gods, they should again stand upright and erect."
Unstooping.
So, I chose the poem "Leisure" to come after it, and I wanted a Psalm for Sunday -- the kids and I are memorizing Psalm 8 right now (again, an unplanned, on my part, occurrence) but I love that bit -- "when I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars... What is man that though art mindful of him?... For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour."
... and then it talks about dominion over the animals.
Worship, leisure, standing upright crowned with glory, having dominion... It all came together in that Psalm.
:-)
Got it ;-)
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to explain your train of thought.