The phrase, “And Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,” from John Milton’s elegy “Lycidas” lingers in my mind as only a sorrowing beauty-filled thought can. Daffadillies, daffadillies—what lovely sounds to have roll off the tongue. Such beauty, and yet, yes, with such beauty, tears. Whole cups of tears, tears to overflowing.
When I read this poem with my students in the dark days of last November, this phrase stood out to me as one that I needed to contemplate. Milton wrote this elegy, considered the greatest of English elegies, on the occasion of the death by drowning of a fellow student and poet at Cambridge, Edward King, at age 25, referred to by the classical name Lycidas. So young, so much talent, so much life lost to the world. And for me, in November gloom, and now in the grey days of early spring, this line, “Daffadillies fill their cups with tears,” so very gently speaks of the deep pain that comes to this beautiful world. I think in particular of the acute sufferings brought on through war and terrorism, and so this blog is dedicated to all who have suffered significant trauma in the past year, whether through war or terrorism, or through other forms of acute grief.
We properly speak of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but what of the ongoing traumatic-stress-disorder? Whether over past or ongoing stress, words can fail. . . . And sometimes words ought to fail. Sometimes words that come too easily to the lips should lose themselves in silence. Silence is surely needed as people live out terrible events, moment by moment, in memory and in real time. And those of us who are once or several times removed from PTSD, surely need deep silence for reflection, for prayer. The quick-and-easy at-a-distance armchair comments, as if we had full understanding and even greater intelligence, should stop. And then perhaps we can better enter into the empathy needed in order to mourn with those who mourn, as the Good Book says.
For me in these past months, the phrase “Daffadillies fill their cups with tears” has served as a starting point, a pause in the torrent of terrible events that have deepened grief in me. Milton’s phrase invites me to enter into a quieter place. Here I can a little bit better embrace the beauty of this world in deep pain. As these daffadillies whisper to me of beauteous spring, their cups filling with tears, they point me to the Lenten hope. Trauma does not have the final word.
As we travel through these Lenten lands, we might consider the epitaph that C. S. Lewis wrote for the tombstone of his wife Joy Davidman:
“Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hopes that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.”
With this poem he captures the ashes of our earthly pilgrimage—the sorrows of our brief days ultimately leading to death. We might think of the ashes on the first day of the Lenten season—the custom on Ash Wednesday of making the sign of the cross with ashes on our foreheads—how these ashes speak to us of our mortality, of our need for repentance and for affirmation of faith. With ashes, too, we are better reminded of Christ’s suffering unto death for our sakes: the Beautiful One, the Man of Sorrows. Through these Lenten lands that we travel—and how closely the word “travel” is to the word “travail”—we labour, we journey, in what Lewis called “holy poverty.”
Holy poverty? What a phrase. How might poverty be holy?
I guess poverty can only become holy through the One who took on human poverty, the whole load of it, and in His body let it be nailed to the cross. So that we, after Him, will take up full life, life eternal, on our Easter Day.
This season, as daffadillies whisper to me of spring, and their fragile blossom-cups fill with rain, they haunt me with the beauty-filled melancholy of Lent. It is a good haunting, I think. I hope it is a holy haunting as I, in my own way, meditate on the traumas of others. And in this, in my own way, and with others, I look to the one true Hope of the world: the Christ.
Milton’s poem “Lycidas” ends with some of these closing lines:
“Weep no more . . . weep no more,
For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the wat’ry floor,
So sinks the day-star in the Ocean bed,
And yet anon repairs his drooping head . . .
So Lycidas, sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walk’d the waves . . .
. . . hears the unexpressive nuptial Song,
In the blest Kingdoms meek of joy and love,
There entertain him all the Saints above . . .
And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes.”
Here Milton echoes the ultimate hope that whose who sow in tears will reap in everlasting joy. I wish you a blessed Lenten season and joyous Easter!
Thanks for reading, for listening.
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Watch for my summer blog in June: “Joy is the serious business of Heaven.”