Lay for the Day 3rd April

1593: the birth of George Herbert, poet and priest, author of The Temple, a book of 160 devotional poems, and A Priest to the Temple, an instructional manual for the country parson.

For the Door of a Vandalised Church

The thousand breakings
of earth
and thousand leafings,
leaf-falls,
the sanctuary remained,
and three times
one hundred thousand times
darkness within
gathered and stars scattered
without looked,
were as one night one woman
kept her lamp
and watched for the groom
to rejoice with the bride,
that he came a long journey
for her.

John Gibbens
from Church of Thorns

The Lay Reader: an archive of the poetic calendar