Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Wednesday, September 4th, 2024.

And we have another of John Dunn's Holy Sonnets today, Divine Meditation, Number 7,

at the round earth's imagined corners blow.

I'll read the poem once, offer a few comments and read it one more time.

At the round earth's imagined corners, glow your trumpet's angels and arise, arise from death, you numberless infinities of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,

all whom the flood did, and fire shall overthrow, all whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies, despair,

law, chance hath slain, and you whose eyes shall behold God and never taste death's woe.

But let them sleep, Lord, and me more in a space.

For if above all these my sins abound, tis late to ask abundance of thy grace when we are there.

Here on this lowly ground, teach me how to repent, for that's as good as if thou

had sealed my pardon with thy blood.

This is a poem of indecision.

Indecision is revealed suddenly in the turn that comes after the eighth line in this Petrarchan or Italian

sonnet so that the last six lines are of another spirit or tone. The indecision is about when

the speaker would like this event to come to pass.

There is an invocation of the angels of the apocalypse to blow the trumpet and signal the

general resurrection from the dead that all should come back to life and see God and live

eternally and taste death no more.

But he says, well, hold on a second.

Let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space.

Give me some more time.

...