God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)
Just a couple of weeks ago, a poetry group I've been going to read the 17th century wilderness poem below. It's hard to know what to make of it. It's by a Scottish High Church Episcopalian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Drummond_of_Hawthornden . The poem sounds like it's about John the Baptist being crazy and useless in the wilderness (the Puritans, for Drummond?), but anybody who read it would think of John's success and how many people went to the wilderness to listen to him and repent, so maybe the message is that persistence obtains success.
It makes me think of this wilderness of an Internet we're posting in.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a poetry group I've been going to read the 17th century wilderness poem below. It's hard to know what to make of it. It's by a Scottish High Church Episcopalian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Drummond_of_Hawthornden . The poem sounds like it's about John the Baptist being crazy and useless in the wilderness (the Puritans, for Drummond?), but anybody who read it would think of John's success and how many people went to the wilderness to listen to him and repent, so maybe the message is that persistence obtains success.
It makes me think of this wilderness of an Internet we're posting in.
Saint John Baptist
William Drummond (1585-1649)
The last and greatest Herald of Heaven’s King
Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he more harmless found than man, and mild.
His food was locusts, and what there doth spring,
With honey that from virgin hives distill’d;
Parch’d body, hollow eyes, some uncouth thing
Made him appear, long since from earth exiled.
There burst he forth: All ye whose hopes rely
On God, with me amidst these deserts mourn,
Repent, repent, and from old errors turn!
— Who listen’d to his voice, obey’d his cry?
Only the echoes, which he made relent,
Rung from their flinty caves, Repent! Repent!
Love it