Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE TRUE PREACHER, by AMOS RUSSEL WELLS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE TRUE PREACHER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: He sees one thing, the preacher, king of souls
Last Line: And hear to endless death or endless life.
Subject(s): Clergy; Priests; Rabbis; Ministers; Bishops


He sees one thing, the preacher, king of souls;
Sees with a single vision, undistraught
By policies or pleasures: sees his God
Longing in pity forth to wretched men;
Sees it in trembling, for he knows himself;
Sees it in courage, for he knows his God;
Sees it in agony of brother-love,
And seeing, speaks. With hush of soul he speaks,
So sure he knows his weakness grasped by god.
Not as the braggart, with a smirking feint
Of worthlessness, looks sideling for applause;
Nor as the canting bully, bludgeon-voiced,
Doubles his fisty words; nor flabbily,
A feeble thought limping on flaccid phrase;
Nor like those errant, busybody tongues,
Now chattering heavy politics, and now
Flipping tip-deep in science, now agape
With poets for the moonshine, and now big
With tumid half-quotations half-absorbed;
Not thus will he, the preacher, king of souls,
Win his large-worthy kingdom. He will speak
Forthright and plainly, with a human sense,
Of comradeship, yet will his thought be drawn
From ample spaces where men's feet are few.
He will speak sunnily, yet all aflame.
He will know doctrine but as moving life,
And life as stayed on doctrine. In the streets
He will pick up his sermons; by the plough,
In kitchens and in factories; at school,
Beside the puzzled schoolboy; in the shop,
Where men are stripped for trade's unending race,
And by the solemn couch where all must end.
And as he walks, in single, hushed discourse,
Or where men gather voluble, or where
The pulpit grants a primacy of speech,
He has one word; beneath his lightest chat
Or boldly on the surface, burning still
Through all he says -- one word: "Eternity!"
"Live not for shreds and patches," is his cry;
"Live not for hours and days, but for the whole,
For that vast reach, time-dwarfing, infinite,
Beyond the blackened boundary-thread of death.
Yours are those royal spaces, yours by grace
Of Christ the Forerunner. Oh, purge your sin!
Oh, strip your life of hindering heavy weights!
Oh, set your faces thither! There are goods,
There only. Joy and only joy is there,
And there alone, or on the blessed way.
Be done with brute desires that gnaw themselves!
Be done with lies that do not cheat themselves!
Be done with life that only tinsels death!
O the far visions, O the foodful wealth
Where Christ is, and where Christ would have you come.
Follow me, follow, friends, with shining eyes,
Heads high, and hearts heroic!"
Thus the call
Rings from his pulpit or in byways pleads,
Changing as fountains infinitely change,
Yet still the same. And men must hear the word,
As always words authentic. Men must hear,
And hear to endless death or endless life.





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