21 March 2011

Unintelligible

"I know my blessings by their cost"-W. Berry

What does he mean?


   II

(Old Man Jayber Crow)

Many I loved as man and boy
Are gone beyond all that I know,
Fallen leaves under falling rain,
Except Christ raise them up again.
I know my blessings by their cost,
Thus is the pride of man made low.
To ease the sorrow of my thought
Though I'm too weary now and slow,
I'd need to dance all night for joy.


I do not know what the poet says. It seems an Ecclesiastes thought,
that our blessings
have such costs that cause us to know them.
But perhaps the cost is needed to point us

to the blessing. Hm.

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