The Whiteness Of Straight Ways

      Considering the current trends toward Puritanism, it seems to me worth recalling this poem from Anna Wickham.

Self-Analysis The tumult of my fretted mind Gives me expression of a kind; But it is faulty, harsh, not plain -- My work has the incompetence of pain. I am consumed with a slow fire, For righteousness is my desire; Towards that good goal I cannot whip my will, I am a tired horse that jibs upon a hill. I desire Virtue, though I love her not -- I have no faith in her when she is got: I fear that she will bind and make me slave And send me songless to the sullen grave. I am like a man who fears to take a wife, And frets his soul with wantons all his life. With rich, unholy foods I stuff my maw; When I am sick, then I believe in law. I fear the whiteness of straight ways-- I think there is no colour in unsullied days. My silly sins I take for my heart's ease, And know my beauty in the end's disease. Of old there were great heroes, strong in fight, Who, tense and sinless, kept a fire alight: God of our hope, in their great name, Give me the straight and ordered flame! --- Anna Wickham

I think the desire for the straight and ordered flame is natural, but I think I prefer the colous of my (our?) sullied days. It's hard to believe in sinless heroes anymore, but this blog suspects that if there were truly such people (forgiving, of course, those nasty notions of "Original Sin" and the like) they would have to be tense, very tense indeed. It's one thing to desire righteousness: it's another thing entirely to to be slobbering at its feet.