Between The Cherubim Poem by Peter J White

You give new life my Gracious God
In a world radiant, splendid, free,
Where bud, blossom and bursting seed pod
Sing hosanna. Fern, frond and perfect flower agree
With honeysuckle’s fragant doxology; cobalt, yellows and reds
Of dainty bluebell, primose and poppy nod, nodding their heads.


Yearling and mellowed man,
I sought you deep in Whippendel’s
Primeval heartwood; year by year began
To call on your prodigious name my God Immanuel.
Redemption in your mind I saw the blind, lustral seedling’s birth
In death’s mildew; how the chortling river ran where chestnuts best grew.


I saw you on that day
When larks hung high, high
Over the sweet green grass in which I lay,
Praising God with madrigals never more sublime,
In Christendom’s chequered course of time since music of such skill
Can’t be, by pomp or circumstance or sway of human strategy, composed at will.


Lord how I lament
Exile by Eden’s flaming sword.
Ceded to a pillaged earth, ever torn
Asunder; imprisoned by a counterfeit euphoria
And bitter stanzas of the world men wait in quiet desperation yearning
That earth be filled with the Glory of God, triumphant dayspring of your returning.