On this 39th celebration of Earth Day, it doesn’t hurt to go back a few hundred years for some perspective.  (Thank you, Melanie!)

Awake, Thou Wintry Earth
J. S. Bach  (from Cantata 129)
(1685-1750)

O earth, break forth and sing,
Renew thy bright array,
With fairest blooms of spring
Bestrew the Savior’s way.

(Thomas Blackburn)

A good friend, who doesn’t think himself an intellectual but who in fact is one of the best-read people in my life, sent me two different pieces over the last couple of months, both of which qualify as being old, if not ancient.  But which both speak volumes to our present environmental predicament:

Today, a poem that is at least 150 years old:

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;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge |&| shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

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