Receive our blog posts in your email by filling out the form at the bottom of this page.
In Northern Virginia, just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, T.B. Balch often wrote for Richmond-based periodicals from his manse at Ringwood Cottage. His prose literary productions were often poetical in nature and his knowledge of the poets, contemporary and classical, permeated his writing.
As an example of this, today we highlight his essay titled “The Sabbath in Its Poetical Aspects,” published in the April 1849 issue of The Southern Literary Messenger.
A spring morning had come. It ushered in the day of rest and Ringwood had never looked as quiet or as handsome before. The kirks round about were all closed, a thing which sometimes happens in the country when our pastors are away. As the hours into which day is divided were chasing each other off, the writer got to ruminating upon what the Sabbath had done for poetry and what poetry had done for the Sabbath. The Sabbath presents itself periodically to the poet, and invites his eye on a range among its tints, whilst some of the poets, grateful for the materials it gives, have sung its sweet repose.
Sketch of Ringwood manse.
After ruminating in this way, about twilight, my Ringwood grounds looked very sweet, dressed out in the bloom of apple and peach tree orchards. The sight recalled to mind the descriptive poetry of Mrs. [Felicia] Hemans and the fact that this noble woman always like the Sabbath. Among the bold mountains of Wales she sung the sacred day; and when dying among the shamrocks of the Emerald Isle, she indited to her amanuensis the lines with which we shall conclude —
How many groups this hour are bending
Through England’s primrose meadow-paths their way
Tow’rds spire and tower, midst shadowy elms ascending,
Whence the sweet chimes proclaim the hallowed day.I may not tread
With them those pathways — to the feverish bed
Of sickness bound — yet O my God I bless
Thy mercy that with Sabbath peace hath filled
My chastened heart.
His essay expresses appreciation of the silence of the day as he experienced it in the rural Northern Virginia horse country when labor was reduced to a minimum, deplores the sound of war heard elsewhere around the world on the Lord’s Day, and yet wistfully longs for the sound of the chimes of church bells. It is a poetic rumination that wanders over the countryside and through the human heart with a spiritual gaze as immense as the view of the Virginia piedmont from Hazel Mountain.
If in search of inspiration from some thoughtful Sabbath reading, pause for a moment at Ringwood manse, read over his brief essay, and consider the blessed poetical aspects of the Lord’s Day.