Friday's Child: Poems of Suffering and Redemption

By Brian Mountford

Brian Mountford has chosen thirty five poems which explore the human experience of suffering and redemption, accompanied by his own thoughtful and witty commentary. The collection contains secular and sacred pieces in equal measure and came into being as part of a programme to bring a sense of seriousness, in a non prescriptive, open-ended way to the Easter holiday crowds in the University Church, Oxford, where the poems were read on Good Friday with dignity and panache by senior school children. The selection has not been augmented in any kind of attempt to provide a fully representative anthology, but kept exactly as it evolved in response to this specific need.

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
• Release date: Feb 23, 2018
• ISBN: 9781785357428

Brian Mountford

Interested in the clash between traditional religious faith and the challenge of secularism, Brian Mountford is a Fellow of St Hilda's College and an established speaker on contemporary religious issues, leadership and literature. He is Publisher-at-Large for John Hunt Publishing's 'Christian Alternative' imprint and writer of the best-selling 'Christian Atheist - belonging without believing' and the anthology, 'Friday's Child - poems of suffering and redemption.' He lives in Islip, UK.

Book preview

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The Tyger by William Blake (1757-1827)

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,

Could twist the sinews of thy heart?

And when thy heart began to beat,

What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?

In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? what dread grasp

Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,

And watered heaven with their tears,

Did he smile his work to see?

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye

Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Most famous now for his poem, ‘And did those feet in ancient time’, in its musical setting by Parry sung at cricket matches and weddings, William Blake was a poet, mystic, and painter. ‘Tyger, Tyger’ is from Songs of Innocence and Experience and falls heavily on the experience side of the scales, with ‘The Lamb’ as its counterbalance on the side of innocence.

‘Little Lamb who made thee

Dost thou know who made thee?’

Why would this poem be chosen for Good Friday? Because the creation of a streamlined killing machine tiger symbolises the problem of evil. How can a loving, powerful, creator God allow suffering in the world?

The rhythm of the poem has the clank of a blacksmith’s hammer hitting the anvil. But what I like most is that it consists entirely of unanswered questions. This is no sceptical modernist writing, though. It is a visionary Christian poet of 225 years ago.

The fact of these questions is not a declaration of doubt, but a positive readiness to challenge God with an essential paradox of religion (and also of life) that violence and passivity are part of the human condition and part of the physical creation itself. For example, the force of gravity enables life, yet it is a major threat to life. God is in the heat and hazard of the forge as well as in the still small voice of calm.

To question faith is not to deny Christ, but to look for different perspectives. It’s like those wonderful moments in Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys when the maverick teacher, Hector, makes his scholarship class think for themselves, defend their assertions, and see history in a much wider, interdisciplinary context.

It’s no accident that William Blake asks whether he who made the Tiger also made the Lamb, and in the text written in Blake’s own hand Lamb has a capital letter, referring to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Did he who made the rapier thrust also make self-giving love? Did he who made self-giving love also let the soldiers drive nails through his own hands?

How does a loving father look on his son’s crucifixion? Answer: it is God himself who suffers. Are you convinced?

Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy (born 1955)

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer

utters itself. So a woman will lift

her head from the sieve of her hands and stare

at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift.

Some nights, although we are faithless, the truth

enters our hearts, that small familiar pain;

then a man will stand stock-still, hearing his youth

in the distant Latin chanting of a train.

Pray for us now. Grade 1 piano scales

console the lodger looking out across

a Midlands town. Then dusk, and someone calls

a child’s name as though they named their