Make Stable All the Lands of Earth

In this issue of Credo Magazine we give you a taste for the poetry of Boethius which is sprinkled throughout his masterpiece, The Consolation of Philosophy.

In book 1 of The Consolation, Boethius is suffering the pangs of grief over his misfortune and utters a lament he calls a “long and noisy display of grief.” As in Psalm 73, when Asaph admits, “I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked,” (vs 3, ESV), Boethius looks upon the world and sees the wicked prospering and the righteous suffering. The creation seems well-ruled and subject to God’s reign, but humanity seems subject instead to the fickleness of Fortune. Boethius is a long way from experiencing consolation at this point, but it is his plight and grief that draw us in. Where may consolation be found for those suffering “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (Hamlet III.i)? Boethius invites us to come and see.

Book I, Met. V,  Consolation of Philosophy

Creator of the starry heavens, Lord on thy everlasting throne,

Thy power turns the moving sky and makes the stars obey fixed laws.

Thou makest lesser stars grow dim, before the Moon’s reflected rays

When opposite her kinsman bright: then closer to the Sun she moves

And loses all her borrowed light. Thou the Evening Star dost make

Rise cold and clear in early night, and change, as Morning Star, his reins

To pale before the new sun’s light. When Winter’s cold has stripped the trees

Thou holdest day in confines tight: when Summer comes with torrid heat

Thou givest swifter hours to night. They power rules the changing year:

The tender leaves the North wind stole, the Spring West wind makes reappear;

The seeds that Winter saw new sown, the Summer burns as crops full-grown.

All things obey their ancient law and all perform their proper tasks;

All things thou holdest in strict bounds, – to human acts alone denied

Thy fit control as Lord of all. Why else does slippery Fortune change

So much, and punishment more fit, for crime oppress the innocent?

Corrupted men sit throned on high; By strange reversal wickedness

Downtreads the necks of holy men. Bright virtue lies in dark eclipse

By clouds obscured, and unjust men heap condemnation on the just;

No punishment for perjury or lies adorned with speciousness.

They use their power when whimsy bids, and love to subjugate great kings

Whose sway holds countless men in fear. O Thou who bindest bonds of things

Look down on all earth’s wretchedness; Of this great work is man so mean

A part, by Fortune to be tossed? Lord, hold the rushing waves in check,

And with the bond thou rul’st the stars, make stable all the lands of earth.

Photo credit: Bill Badzo