Poetry and Philosophy

A NEW ORPHEUS

Poetry was always meant to be an instrument of immense power with a scarcely foreseeable but wholly positive future. Is it due to this ‘scarcely foreseeable future’ of poetry that Sewell alludes to, that seems to limit the role of poetry in modern philosophy -Elizabeth Sewell, The Orphic Voice: Poetry and Natural History, Yale UP, New Haven, 1960, p.51.

A new Orpheus has come with golden touch
to soften steel and find the mystic bone,
to tame the tiger, uncover mysterious stone,
create new leviathan, to dance on sand,
to draw all things to Him, especially man.

This new Orpheus Who sings for all
to science, philosophy and poetry,
He has come and issued His clear call,
having been raised up by some
Most Great Spirit descended,
personated by a Maiden and I
have heard this Orpheus’ call.

It is this call that makes me yearn
toward a philosophic song and
cherish those times when time is reborn,
when a certain luminosity, deep coolness,
takes me back to myself, turning the visible
into the invisible and some inner breath.

This wondrous Orpheus of this new age
urges a harmony of science and poetry.
Dear Wordsworth did in his The Prelude
strike this harmonic chord and describe
an organic growth, its unity, timelessness
and ours in the exquisite chamber,
the deep recesses of my heart,
the seat of the revelation of
the inner mysteries of Vision,
of God, of Mystery.
It is here that we must free ourselves
of the shadowy and ephemeral attachments,
to hear the piercing sweetness of music
unloosed when we free ourselves
of love and hate, detach and renounce
and free our tongues from excess or idle speech
and imbue ourselves with such a spirit of search
that Orpheus, like some Mystic Herald
from the City of God, will endow us
with a new heart , a new mind, a new eye
and a new ear and we will gaze
with the eye of God.

Ron Price
24 September 1995