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

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024.

And we are in the midst of a week of John Dunn's Holy Sonnets.

Today's sonnet comes from the Holy Sonnet cycle, La Corona, the Crown, and it is sonnet number four from that collection.

Temple. I'll read the poem once, say a few things, and then read it one more time.

With his kind mother who partakes thy woe, Joseph turn back. See where your child

does sit, blowing, yea, blowing out those sparks of wit, which himself on the doctors did

bestow. The word but lately could not speak, and lo, it suddenly speaks wonders, whence comes it that all which was, and all which

should be writ, a shallow seeming child should deeply know.

His godhead was not sole to his manhood, nor had time mellowed him to this ripeness,

but as for one which hath a long task, tis good with the sun to begin his business.

He in his age's mourning thus began by miracles exceeding power of man.

There's a lot here in this little poem.

The corona cycle is made up of sonnets narrating or commenting on different parts of the life of

Jesus.

And this is the episode in which Mary and Joseph take a young

Jesus to Jerusalem for the high feast. And they head home with a large company of travelers,

thinking that their son is somewhere in

the company and discovering to their dismay that he is not.

And when they finally do find him, he is back in the city at the temple, sitting and discoursing

with the most learned men of the city.

And Dunn, who is both a poet and a minister, whose vocations then require all manner of

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