Precautionary Tales for Grandparents by James Muirden

Author:James Muirden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Summersdale Publishers Ltd
Published: 2012-01-24T00:00:00+00:00

LORD CALVIN

Lord Calvin thought the Bishops should not sit

On working groups that re-wrote Holy Writ.

The Bible sanctioned by the first King James

Sublimely justified its noble aims,

Giving the Word in words that thrilled the ears.

It had done so for some three hundred years!

How gross, to pander to the modern fashion

For so-called clarity instead of passion!

How can we clarify the Most Divine?

Is He revealed in the Written Line?

No, no! To seek him, tread the Lakeland hills –

Observe him in a clump of daffodils

Or in the sunrise breaking through the mist

(Lord Calvin was, you’ll guess, a pantheist).

When a committee struggles to convey

What they suppose the Scribe had meant to say,

Out of the window goes the hallowed verse,

And we are left with gibberish – or worse!

Before this licensed meddling occurred,

John wrote ‘In the beginning was the Word’,

Which they improved to ‘When all things began,

The Word already was.’ Laugh if you can,

Howl if you must, at such a travesty;

But that’s how John starts in the NEB

(New English Bible, 1961).

On reading this and other things they’d done,

Lord Calvin to his Library retired,

Drafted his Epitaph, and then expired.

‘Dear Lord,’ it ran, ‘what I had hoped to do

Was come to Thee; now I must come to You.’

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