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Driving yesterday through the hills of central Pennsylvania, through hills enchanted with Fall beauty, I recalled the following Ode composed to honor the death of Pope Pius XII, who passed out of this life 48 years ago this October 9th.
Ode on the Death of Pius the Twelfth
To every season its proper act of joy,
To every age its natural mode of grace,
Each vision its hour, each talent we employ
Its destined time and place.
I was at Amherst when this great pope died;
The northern year was wearing towards the cold;
The ancient trees were in their autumn pride
Of russet, flame, and gold.
Amherst in Massachusetts in the Fall:
I ranged the college campus to admire
Maple and beech, poplar and ash in all
Their panoply of fire;
Something that since a child I longed to see,
This miracle of the other hemisphere:
Whole forests in their annual ecstasy
Waked by the dying year.
Not budding Spring, not Summer’s green parade
Clothed in such glory these resplendent trees;
The lilies of the field were not arrayed
In riches such as these.
Nature evolves their colors as a call,
A lure which serves to fertilize the seed;
How strange, then, that the splendour of the Fall
Should serve no natural need
And, having no end in nature, yet can yield
Such exquisite natural pleasure to the eye!
Who could have guessed in summer’s green concealed
The leaf’s resolve to die?
Yet from the first spring shoots through all the year
Masked in the chlorophyll’s intenser green,
The feast of crimson was already there,
These yellows blazed unseen.
Now, in the bright October sun the clear
Translucent colors trembled overhead
And as I walked, a voice I chanced to hear
Announced: The Pope is dead!
A human voice, yet there the place became
Bethel; each bough with pentecost was crowned;
The great trunks rapt in unconsuming flame
Stood as on holy ground.
I thought of this old man whose life was past,
Who in himself and his great office stood
Against the secular tempest as a vast
Oak spans the underwood;
Who in the age of Armageddon found
A voice that caused all men to hear it plain,
The blood of Abel crying from the ground
To stay the hand of Cain;
Who found from that great task small time to spare:
– For him, and for mankind, the hour was late –
So much to snatch, to save, so much to bear
That Mary’s part must wait;
Until in his last years the change began:
A strange illumination of the heart,
Voices and visions such as mark the man
Chosen and set apart.
His death, they said, was slow, grotesque and hard,
Yet in that gross decay, until the end
Untroubled in his joy he saw the Word
Made spirit and ascend.
Those glorious woods and that triumphant death
Prompted me there to join their mysteries:
This Brother Albert, this great oak of faith,
Those fire-enchanted trees!
Seven years have passed, and still, at times, I ask
Whether in man, as in those plants, may be
A splendour, which his human virtues mask
Not given to us to see?
If to some lives at least there comes a stage
When, all the active man now left behind,
They enter on the treasure of old age,
This autumn of the mind?
Then while the heart stands still, beyond desire
The dying animal knows a strange serene:
Emerging in its ecstasy of fire
The burning soul is seen.
Who sees it? Since old age appears to men
Senility, decrepitude, disease,
What Spirit walks among us, past our ken,
As we among these trees,
Whose unknown nature blessed with keener sense
Catches its break in wonder at the sight
And feels its being flood with that immense
Epiphany of light?
— A. D. Hope
Ambrosius, this is a beautiful poem. Of course, I recall that you have shared it with me before, on at least another occasion, but perhaps I read with too much haste then. The parallel of the observer and trees with the dying man and one “beyond our ken” is wondeful.
Hopefully, Benedict’s papacy will see at least the beatification of the former Eugenio Cardinal Pacelli.
Where in central PA were you driving? I’m from Lancaster in the heart of amish country.
Stephen S, have you ever visited this antiquarian book dealer? This fall, I bought a wonderful book from him, the Regia Parnassi. It’s an old Latin/Italian book which is basically a Latin thesaurus for poets. I’m not Latin poet, but it’s great for expanding vocabulary while trying to do Latin composition. Anyway, it looks like it would be a very cool shop to browse–there’s a picture on his website, if you follow the link to the old barn.
We’re often in Scranton, PA for Mass, but that’s obviously just as far from you as it is for us from Ithaca.
I was driving, at that time, near Altoona, but I was merely passing through.
Ah, qua poetry, this really doesn’t suck
ambrosius, thank you for the poem. the head of my dept., Richard Pring, who studied at the Gregorian University in Rome in 1950’s, received a medal from Pope Piux XII after he proudly defended the tradition of the Church by writing his 160 page thesis all in Latin. I am going to pass this poem onto him.
Inspired by the poem, post, and comments I would like to share this oddity of nature which I have just witnessed. In hurricane ravished southern Louisiana, all the trees, prematurely stripped of their leaves (by wind)have burst into new foliage, as though it is spring! They were fooled into thinking their leaves had fallen, and amid all the mayhem and tradedy and downed trees, the remaining trees are bright green — as though they’ve been resurrected. I’m sure there is a lesson here. “Margaret are you grieving, over Golden-grove unleaving?”