Finding New Friends in Elizabeth Goudge’s “A Book of Comfort”

In school my mom had me keep a copybook—a notebook filled with favorite or classic quotations, poems, and excerpts from books, all copied out in my best handwriting. Even though she reads this blog and it might go badly for me, I must admit that I didn’t enjoy this, at least not until halfway through high school. In college, though, I found myself still keeping a copybook of sorts, as I would jot down powerful or poignant lines from the literature I was reading in class.

In reading Elizabeth Goudge’s A Book of Comfort I got the distinct impression that this was her copybook. It’s the first of her collections that I’ve tried, and although it’s not technically her writing, the experience of reading it was similar. One has to approach a Goudge novel (and collection, apparently) with patience, allowing it to unfold until one can appreciate its meaning.

April Rise by Laurie Lee

If ever I saw blessing in the air

I see it now in this still early day
Where lemon-green the vaporous morning drips
Wet sunlight on the powder of my eye.

Blown bubble-film of blue, the sky wraps round
Weeds of warm light whose every root and rod
Splutters with soapy green, and all the world
Sweats with the bead of summer in its bud.

If ever I heard blessing it is there
Where birds in trees that shoals and shadows are
Splash with their hidden wings and drops of sound
Break on my ears their crests of throbbing air.

Pure in the haze the emerald sun dilates,
The lips of sparrows milk the mossy stones,
While white as water by the lake a girl
Swims her green hand among the gathered swans.

Now, as the almond burns its smoking wick,
Dropping small flames to light the candled grass;
Now, as my low blood scales its second chance,
If ever world were blessed, now it is.

I felt bored reading through the first section of this book, which was all poetry and prose about natural things like rainbows and the moon. However, toward the middle of the book are sections titled The Comfort of Faith and Comfort in Tribulation that were much more relatable.

Sometimes it’s not so much what you read as when you read it. For me, where I am in my life right now, those sections resonated the most. To have comforting passages that respond to fear, isolation, loss, and futility really touched me.

Another wonderful thing that happened when reading this book was that I was introduced to a few “new” poets. I was not previously familiar with the work of Laurence "Laurie" Lee, for instance, and I had all but forgotten the bit of George Herbert I had read (and, I think, put in my own copy-book) in college, but I’m thinking I’ll look into whether there are any collections of their works for further reading.

The Flower by George Herbert

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;

         To which, besides their own demean,

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.

                      Grief melts away

                      Like snow in May,

         As if there were no such cold thing.

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone

         Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown,

                      Where they together

                      All the hard weather,

         Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

         These are thy wonders, Lord of power,

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell

         And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

                      We say amiss

                      This or that is:

         Thy word is all, if we could spell.

         Oh that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!

         Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;

                      Nor doth my flower

                      Want a spring shower,

         My sins and I joining together.

         But while I grow in a straight line,

Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,

         Thy anger comes, and I decline:

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone

                      Where all things burn,

                      When thou dost turn,

         And the least frown of thine is shown?

         And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

         I once more smell the dew and rain,

And relish versing. Oh, my only light,

                      It cannot be

                      That I am he

         On whom thy tempests fell all night.

         These are thy wonders, Lord of love,

To make us see we are but flowers that glide;

         Which when we once can find and prove,

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;

                      Who would be more,

                      Swelling through store,

         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.