Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Divorce
    Divorce
    Divorce
    Ebook131 pages50 minutes

    Divorce

    By Charles Williams

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Charles Williams was one of the finest -- not to mention one of the most unusual -- theologians of the twentieth century. His mysticism is palpable -- the unseen world interpenetrates ours at every point, and spiritual exchange occurs all the time, unseen and largely unlooked for. His novels are legend, his poetry profound, and as a member of the Inklings, he contributed to the mythopoetic revival in contemporary culture.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJohn R. Mabry
    Release dateMar 30, 2016
    ISBN9781940671192
    Divorce
    Author

    Charles Williams

    Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886 1945) was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian and literary critic. Most of his life was spent in London, where he was born, but in 1939 he moved to Oxford with the university press for which he worked and was buried there following his early death.Charles Williams was born in London in 1886, the only son of (Richard) Walter Stansby Williams (18481929) and Mary (née Wall). His father Walter was a journalist and foreign business correspondent for an importing firm, writing in French and German, who was a 'regular and valued' contributor of verse, stories and articles to many popular magazines. His mother Mary, the sister of the ecclesiologist and historian J. Charles Wall, was a former milliner (hatmaker),[4] of Islington. He had one sister, Edith, born in 1889. The Williams family lived in 'shabby-genteel' circumstances, owing to Walter's increasing blindness and the decline of the firm by which he was employed, in Holloway. In 1894 the family moved to St Albans in Hertfordshire, where Williams lived until his marriage in 1917.

    Read more from Charles Williams

    Related to Divorce

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related categories

    Reviews for Divorce

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Divorce - Charles Williams

      Contents

      Divorce

      In Time of War

      I. Praise of Death

      II. Lovers to Lovers

      III. On the Way to Somerset

      IV. In Absence

      V. Reunion

      VI. For a Pietà

      Ballade of a Country Day

      Ballade of Travellers

      Ghosts

      To Michal: After a Vigil

      House-hunting

      Celestial Cities

      Ballad of Material Things

      Dialogue between the Republic and the Apostasy

      At the Gates

      On the German Emperor

      To Michal: On Forgiveness

      Politics

      First Love

      Love is Lost

      Incidents

      Return

      Her Dark Eyes Sparkle

      Four Sonnets

      After Marriage

      Loving and Loved

      To Michal: On Brushing her Hair

      Experiments

      I. Traffic

      II. Anarchy

      III Impossibility

      On Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’

      Briseis

      Helen in the Chamber of Deiphobus

      To Michal: Meditating a New Costume

      For a Cathedral Door

      To Michal: On Disputing Outside Church

      Invitation to Early Communion

      At the ‘Ye that do truly’

      On Leaving Church

      Commentaries — I

      Commentaries — II

      Commentaries — III

      Commentaries — IV

      Commentaries — V

      Love’s Adolescence

      Outland Travel

      Advent

      Christmas

      The Fourth Dimension

      Birds

      Sleep

      In an Ecclesiastical Procession

      Office Hymn

      Chant Royal of Feet

      In a Motor-bus

      In a London Office

      Three Friends

      ‘Thy Will be done’

      Prayer

      Go not, my Lord

      Envoy

      Divorce

      (TO MY FATHER)

      WHEN Love, born first of thought and will,

      Ponders what dooms it shall fulfil,

      And knows itself and names,

      Sole son of man to meet and dare

      All lusts couched in the body’s lair

      Till he their fury tames:

      From whom his duty shall he learn,

      To whom for admonition turn,

      That his young heart may know

      What infinite fatality

      Life shall wreak on him, nor shall he

      Refuse to undergo?

      Whom but such souls as, torn with pain,

      Have proved all things and proved them vain

      And have no joy thereof,

      Yet lifting their pale heads august

      Declare the frame of things is just,

      Nor shall the balance move?

      Each to his teachers, — nor of mine,

      Though long and lofty be the line,

      Shall any, sir, be set

      More high in this poor heart than you

      Who taught me all the good I knew

      Ere Love and I were met:

      Great good and small, — the terms of fate,

      The nature of the gods, the strait

      Path of the climbing mind,

      The freedom of the commonwealth,

      The laws of soul’s and body’s health,

      The commerce of mankind.

      The charges launched on Christendom

      You showed me, ere the years had come

      When I endured the strain,

      Yet warned me, unfair tales to balk,

      What slanders still the pious talk

      Of Voltaire and Tom Paine.

      What early verse of mine you chid,

      Rebuked the use of doth and did,

      Measuring the rhythm’s beat;

      Or read with me how Caesar passed,

      On the March Ides, to hold his last

      Senate at Pompey’s feet!

      What words of grace, not understood

      Until the years had proved them good,

      Your wisdom set in me, —

      Until the asps of blindness lay

      Upon your brows and sucked away

      Joy, sweetness, memory.

      Now all the pages of the wise,

      Whereon for happiness your eyes

      Were wisely apt to pore,

      Upon another’s mouth depend,

      And friend by step is known from friend,

      And faces seen no more.

      Now, now the work all men must do

      Is mightily begun in you;

      And the sure-cutting days

      Leave you, disfurnished, dispossessed

      Of earth, to seek your spirit’s rest

      Beyond our mortal ways.

      Now, now in you the great divorce

      Begins, whose everlasting source

      Sprang up before the sun,

      Whose chill dividing waters roll

      ’Twixt flesh and spirit, mind and soul, —

      Than death more deeply run:

      Divorce, sole healer of divorce;

      For our deep sickness of remorse

      Sole draught medicinal,

      Which Grief from bitter herbage brews

      Where Babylonish waters ooze

      O’er Mansoul’s shattered wall;

      Divorce, who cries all mortal banns;

      Chief foreman of the artisans

      Who quarry from Time’s pit

      New stuff for souls, hewn stone on stone

      Piercer of hearts, by whom is shown

      Death in death implicit;

      Divorce, itself for God and Lord

      By the profounder creeds adored:

      Who in eternity,

      A bright proceeding ardour, parts

      The filial and paternal hearts,

      And knits the riven Three.

      O if in holier hours I meet

      Your happier head in Sarras’ street,

      When our blind years are done,

      What song remains shall run to pay

      Its duty, sir, from me that

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1