After Trinity,
by John Meade Falkner

In the Church of England's Calendar, this time of the Christian Year, from Trinity Sunday till the beginning of Advent, is called 'The Sundays after Trinity'.

I don't know where I first read this poem by John Meade Falkner, but it seems to convey something quintessentially Anglican about this time of the year, in which the Sundays seem to follow the course of the natural year, rather than what you might call the 'theological' one.

My thanks to Kenneth Hillier, of the John Meade Falkner Society, for providing this text. You can read what Kenneth wrote about my request for it, in the JMF Society Newsletter 12.

        AFTER TRINITY


        We have done with dogma and divinity,
           Easter and Whitsun past,
        The long, long Sundays after Trinity
           Are with us at last;
        The passionless Sundays after Trinity,
           Neither feast-day nor fast.

        Christmas comes with plenty,
           Lent spreads out its  pall,
        But these are five and twenty,
           The longest Sundays of all;
        The placid Sundays after Trinity,
           Wheat-harvest, fruit-harvest, Fall.

        Spring with its burst is over,
           Summer has had its day,
        The scented grasses and clover
           Are cut, and dried into hay;
        The singing-birds are silent,
           And the swallows flown away.

        Post pugnam pausa fiet;
           Lord, we have made our choice;
        In the stillness of autumn quiet,
           We have heard the still, small voice.
        We have sung Oh where shall Wisdom?
           Thick paper, folio, Boyce.

        Let it not all be sadness,
           Not omnia vanitas,
        Stir up a little gladness
           To lighten the Tibi cras;
        Send us that little summer,
           That comes with Martinmas.

        When still the cloudlet dapples
           The windless cobalt blue,
        And the scent of gathered apples
           Fills all the store-rooms through,
        The gossamer silvers the bramble,
           The lawns are gemmed with dew.

        An end of tombstone Latinity,
           Stir up sober mirth,
        Twenty-fifth after Trinity,
           Kneel with the listening earth,
        Behind the Advent trumpets
           They are singing Emmanuel’s birth.

                                December 1910