I’ve enjoyed posting poetry series themed around the Christian year recently (see “Poetry for Lent,” “Poetry for Easter,“ and “Poetry for Ordinary Time“). As a follow-up to the “Poetry for Advent” and “Poetry for Christmas” series, I am continuing that theme with a series called “Poetry for Epiphany.” The season of Epiphany, runs from the end of Christmastide up to the beginning of Lent. Epiphany focuses on the revelation of Jesus and His early life, beginning with the revelation of Jesus as King to the Magi.
I continue this series of Epiphany poetry with Malcolm Guite’s “The Baptism of Christ.” This sonnet is taken from Guite’s book Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year. Malcolm Guite is an Anglican priest, poet, and songwriter, who served as a Life Fellow and chaplain of Girton College, Cambridge.
Beginning here we glimpse the Three-in-one;
The river runs, the clouds are torn apart,
The Father speaks, the Sprit and the Son
Reveal to us the single loving heart
That beats behind the being of all things
And calls and keeps and kindles us to light.
The dove descends, the spirit soars and sings
‘You are belovèd, you are my delight!’
In that quick light and life, as water spills
And streams around the Man like quickening rain,
The voice that made the universe reveals
The God in Man who makes it new again.
He calls us too, to step into that river
To die and rise and live and love forever.
Source: Sounding the Seasons: Seventy Sonnets for the Christian Year, © 2012 Malcolm Guite
Other poems in this series:
T. S. Eliot, “Journey of the Magi”
R. S. Thomas, “The Coming”
Image credit: Imgur.
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