1 Corinthians 13
Love
1If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not
love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the
gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and
if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am
nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to
the flames,[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not
boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not selfseeking, it is
not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6Love does not
delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7It always protects,
always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease;
where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is
knowledge, it will pass away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in
part, 10but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. 11When I
was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned
like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see
face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I
am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the
greatest of these is love.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). Poems. 1918.
God’s Grandeur
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod; 5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things; 10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917.
“To the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever.” 1 Timothy 1:17
