|
|
Article: W. H. AUDEN'S "VESPERS": A CHRISTIAN REFUTATION OF UTOPIAN DREAMS OF ULTIMATE FULFILLMENT.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Renascence: Essays on Values in Literature
- Article date:
- March 22, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 Marquette University Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
The past is not to be taken seriously (let the dead bury their dead) nor the future (take no thought for the morrow), only the present instant and that, not for its aesthetic emotional content but for its historic decisiveness. (Now is the appointed time.)
W. H. Auden, "Postscript: The Frivolous & the Earnest"
Horae Canonicae is W. H. Auden's poetic hermeneutic of the Divine Office which was published as a sequence of seven poems in The Shield of Achilles in 1955.(1) As the official prayer of the Roman Catholic Church, the Office strikes its roots deeply down into the Judeo-Christian tradition of prayer and worship. Horae Canonicae derives its shape and ...