Literature

“Slane Hill Graves”

I stood atop Slane Hill Where Patrick’s fire burned And chapel floors now fill With cold rain.  Each cracked grave About has risen with The dead.  And tourists, turned On knotted, brazen lists Of all the “weak or brave,” In any case, those lost Beneath the winning...

T.S. Eliot’s “The Fire Sermon”: Of Memory & Salvation

T.S. Eliot reminds us that the answers to our soul’s depravity are all around us, in our collective culture—the books we read, the places we inhabit, the music we listen to—but also that culture can only survive if we remember it and keep it alive... Today’s offering in...

The Classics and Christianity

Christians invented the classical curriculum; it is as much part of the broader Western inheritance as it is specifically part of the Christian inheritance... Why study old books? How do dusty old books written by dead men...

The Humanity of Huck Finn

Huckleberry Finn is no hero, though he does symbolize the American conscience at the time Mark Twain wrote, or at least the conscience Twain hoped for. Yes, Huckleberry Finn is a coming-of-age tale and a social criticism and satire, but it also asks crucial questions: Who actually...

The Best Books I Read This Past Year

Every year, reading becomes a new and fresh experience. Each new volume offers us the opportunity to grow in knowledge, enjoyment, and (hopefully) empathy. As we age, different sorts of books offer different remedies for what ails us:...

“On a Sculpture by Herbert Adams”

American Beauty Exhibition, National Gallery, Dublin I The wounded anger in your eyes, last night, Seemed for the first time and, perhaps, the last, To cut through every screen of charm, and sight In me the innards of a sordid past. “For too long...

History on Proper Principles: The Legacy of Forrest McDonald

Forrest McDonald demonstrated that the historian above all must be a pragmatist who looks at the reality of the past as it was, who gets his hands dirty by putting in long hours of research, who makes sense of vast quantities of data, and who then communicates...

T.S. Eliot’s Magical Journey

Through T.S. Eliot’s use of symbolism in "The Journey of the Magi" there is a call to a world beyond words—just as the mystics of historic Christianity beckoned to Eliot from the beginning of his journey... 

“To Helen”

Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought...

The Fall and Degeneration of Man in “Gulliver’s Travels”

Gulliver’s Travels is a work that defends beauty, passion, and the sacred; it is an indictment against the prevailing spirit of Enlightenment philosophy and utopianism, an esoteric defense of Christianity against its Enlightenment critics, and a prophetic vision into the future degeneration of humanity...

“Youth II”

Just as the year is being born so it Will too grow up and die when these harsh months Of darkness and despair have passed and we Let hope with gentle spring come in again. The remedy for lack of hope is hope, Whether worldly...

The Eve of the Eve: A Christmas Story

It was still dark outside when the boy awakened and his thoughts immediately turned to the gifts that would be awaiting him under the tree downstairs. This year,...

The Underground Shakespeare

Despite their obscurity, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis were Shakespeare's best-sellers. But why were these poems so wildly popular? In Shadowplay—her first book about the secret messages in Shakespeare’s plays—Clare Asquith...

Poetry? What Is It Good For?

Poetry is a paradox. It is the most complex and inimitable expression of thought and consciousness, but it is also the most natural and ancient. Although a form of oral and written tradition that has persisted throughout the years, poetry is dismissed as unnecessary and impractical in...