Envy Redeemed

 

An Allegorical Poem in Three Movements

THE ARGUMENT

The Poet, musing on the torment of envy, conceives it as a fallen spirit, self-consumed and wandering through the wastes of the soul. Envy laments its curse before the bright Spirit of Charity, who rebukes and then redeems it. In the end, the fires of malice are turned to light, and the two ascend together toward the dawn of Grace.

i. THE VOICE OF ENVY

Lo, I arise from caverns of the mind,
Where never dawn hath shone, nor quiet dwelt.
I am the worm that feedeth on the root,
When yet the fruit is green upon the bough;
The canker hid, that drinketh of the sap,
And turneth sweetness into dust and gall.

ii. THE DIALOGUE OF ENVY AND CHARITY

ENVY
I wander as a shadow ’mid the blest,
A spirit self-consuming, bound in spite.

CHARITY
O child unblest, thou hast not known thy thirst.
It is not others’ plenty that condemns,
But thine own emptiness that maketh pain.

ENVY
I walk among them, yet I cannot rest,
Each joy I see doth wound my heart with fire.

CHARITY
Then yield thy stings; lay down thy fires to rest.
Their heat shall serve the altar, not the pit.

ENVY
Can such as I be turned to light and peace?

CHARITY
Yea, by contrition, by love’s gentle might.
Thy thousand serpents change to threads of light,
And every coil is loosed into a star.

ENVY
What grace is this? I feel the chains unbind,
The weight of many ages melt away.

iii. THE REDEMPTION OF ENVY

So shall it be for all who envy’s snare
Have felt, and by contrition are made clean.
For love is stronger than the serpent’s guile,
And mercy keepeth watch where pride is tamed.

A Miltonic riff, produced with assistance of Co-Pilot AI

Oct 2025

Dragonfly Sonnet

It is the cave of me, its emptiness,
Which hollows your own imperfections free.
The echo shapes a shadowed tenderness,
Where absence learns the art of memory.

Yet in the damp, where silence clings like stone,
A fragile nymph stirs restlessly unseen;
It dreams of wings it cannot call its own,
A shimmer waiting where the dark has been.

And so it breaks — the thin skin of the past,
Shedding the weight of oldness in the night;
The cave dissolves, its hold undone at last,
A body glimmers, born of hidden flight.

Innocent now, it hovers, fierce and small,
A dragonfly that knows no cave at all.

• Produced with assistance of Co-Pilot AI

The original Poem

The Cave of Me

 
It’s the cave of me, its emptiness
That hollows your own imperfections free.
As if in the darkness of the internal soul
The streams of pure beauty flow like
Glistening rivulets procreant in unfathomed
Grottoes. 

The dragonfly was once
A grub in that darkness. We never
See his emergence. We see him skate and skim
And fly free, and have never seen the painful
Miracle of the shedding of oldness in darkness;
Thus, we were not given to that vision, the
Knowledge of which is too much to bear.
We were given to be like the dragonfly
Innocent and flying free.

 
Oxwich, Gower
October 1972

A Kelling Memory

 

Autumn and winter days at our cottage in Kelling were marked occasionally by the arrival of guests of the Kelling estate. These guests - paying guests - came for the entertainment offered by the regular pheasant shoots. Here is a reflection, written as the spent pellets rained upon our cottage conservatory. It was completed in Oxfordshire sunshine a few days ago.

The Reluctant Sportsman

The guns speak a fate. Keep 
Brave as the birds break cover.
Squeeze the trigger. The flock in disarray
Hovers then darts loose over the fields.
Shame hinges on a miss. This
Is what we expected. The land over stiles
Marks an escape. I am reptile.

The guns settle. Held, not fired.
Brave as the birds break cover.
Finger stays curled. The flock in disarray
Hovers then darts loose over the fields.
No one sees the stillness. This
Is not what was expected. The land over stiles
Marks a passage. I stay human.

The grass parts. A rustle speaks.
Brave as the sky calls danger.
Muscle recalls the flint of air
As bodies scatter, low and rising.
A crack behind. Not struck. This
Time, still breathing. The land over stiles
Means a distance. I am creature.

Kelling October 2015/Oxon July 2025

• Stanzas 2 and 3 developed with assistance of Co-Pilot AI

Treescape in Watercolour 2022