Woodward: Palm Sunday Poetry

What element in the story of Christ's entry into Jerusalem would most attract the attention of a poet? Why, that donkey, of course. The image of the King of the Universe riding the humblest (and most unglamorous) of beasts is surefire material for any writer with even a smidgen of irony in his soul.

Last year on Palm Sunday I posted G. K. Chesterton's "The Donkey." Nobody does paradox better than Chesterton, although the seventeenth-century Metaphysical poet Richard Crashaw comes pretty close. Much of Crashaw's religious poetry was written in Latin (which is a problem for modern readers) or Greek (which is an even bigger problem). And many of the English poems are built on images and figurative language that, frankly, a lot of people nowadays will find overly graphic and repulsive. (Try Crashaw's epigram "Upon the Infant Martyrs" if you want a poem with a high "yuk" factor.)

Crashaw wrote two "donkey" poems about Palm Sunday. Or it might be more accurate to say that he wrote the same poem twice -- once in English, once in Latin. Here they are (with Crashaw's own spelling). If you don't read Latin, no problem. The English poem is just a slightly more elaborate working out of exactly the same ironic point -- that if there's going to be a talking donkey in the Bible, then Christ's deserved the gift of speech more than Balaam's.


In Asinum Christi vectorem.

Ille suum didicit quondam obiurgare magistrum:
Et quid ni discas tu celebrare tuum?
Mirum non minus est, te iam potuisse tacere,
Illum quam fuerat tum potuisse loqui.




Upon the Asse that bore our Saviour.

Hath onely Anger an Omnipotence
In Eloquence?
Within the lips of Love and Joy doth Dwell
No miracle?
Why else had Baalams Asse a tongue to chide
His Masters pride?
And thou (Heaven-burthen'd Beast) hast ne're a word
To praise thy Lord?
That he should find a Tongue and vocall Thunder,
Was a great wonder.
But o me thinkes 'tis a farre greater one
That thou find'st none.