Who Would True Valor See
Who would true valor see
Let him come hither;
One here will constant be,
Come wind, come weather.
There's no discouragement,
Shall make him once relent,
His first avowed intent,
To be a pilgrim.
Who so beset him round,
With dismal stories,
Do but themselves confound;
His strength the more is.
No lion can him fright,
He'll with a giant fight,
But he will have a right,
To be a pilgrim.
Hobgoblin, nor foul fiend,
Can daunt his spirit:
He knows, he at the end,
Shall life inherit.
Then fancies fly away,
He'll fear not what men say,
He'll labor night and day,
To be a pilgrim.
To the small, cynical mind that longs to belittle all it touches, there is no heroism to be found anywhere. I think of Yeats's poem "1919," which depicts the relentless debunking of the great, the good, and the wise by the merely clever. "Come let us mock" the critics cry as they regard the monuments that the dead toiled so hard to leave behind—but there is soon no one left for them to sneer at except themselves, now left defenseless at the "foul storm" brewing at their door.
There is little hope in Yeats's vision, but Bunyan's poem from the earlier Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress dares to correct our suspicion that the hero has gone the way of the leprechaun. Just look here, he says. Look. "True valor" is found in the "one" who will "constant be." Valor and constancy—they may sound something of an antiquated note to today's ear, but courage and determination are hardly virtues that date.
"Come wind, come weather," nothing will dissuade this intrepid man from fulfilling his "first avowed intent" to be a pilgrim. But where has he come from and where is he going?
In "The Pilgrim's Progress," the Christian soul makes the journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City, passing through many trials and tribulations such as the Slough of Despond, the Valley of Humiliation, and the Doubting Castle.
Yet as readers we are free to relate the poem to other kinds of pilgrimage—journeys on other religious paths toward God and personal transcendence, whether Hindu, Sikh, Jewish or Muslim—or intellectual journeys from the darkness of ignorance to the light of knowledge in philosophy and science. "They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round," as the song goes. When the fool pursues his folly, he is apt to be proved wise.
In the second stanza, the pilgrim fights off the strange mixture of competition and conformity in society. Life is a muddle of different stories—never more so than today. A Buddhist yesterday, a Cosmic Ordering fanatic today, and maybe a vegan pacifist anarchist tomorrow, are we spiritually or emotionally maturing?
Yet the "strength" of the pilgrim, the one who sticks to one thing and sees it through, simply grows. Those who weave "dismal" doomsday scenarios to frighten and control him only "confound" and depress themselves. As in the Biblical stories of Daniel in the lion's den and David confronted by the giant Goliath, sanctity and bravery win out.
He has "a right" to be a pilgrim. How this phrase speaks to our time of global religious conflict, which includes the increasing persecution of Christians. For instance, barely three weeks ago Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni was gunned down in Iraq after refusing to bow to pressure from a local gang and stop administering the Catholic mass. True valor, indeed. Due to such intimidation, the Arab Christian community is dwindling throughout the Middle East, except in Israel.
In the third stanza, we move from social and political pressures to the supernatural threats of the "hobgoblin" and "foul fiend." These can be understood as negative psychological states, our "inner demons" that gnaw away at our self-belief and guffaw as our ambitions come to nothing. The pilgrim's spirit remains undaunted: the goal of his travails, paradoxically, is life itself. This refers to the Christian promise of the hereafter; yet life is won by anyone committed to truth, for we see the world more fully, more roundly, more directly.
This poem is a masterpiece of the Protestant sensibility, written while Bunyan was in prison for preaching without a license. The language is simple, lucid, concrete—language that cuts through theological jabberwocky. Each stanza begins with an a-b-a-b rhyme typical of the ballad—a form we associate with narrative and thus perfect to evoke the pilgrim's quest.
But then with triple rhyme, the tempo speeds up and the tone takes on a fist shaking, rallying certainty. Each stanza's refrain, "To be a pilgrim" rings out, unrhymed, with stark clearness. Each repetition returns us to the "first avowed intent" to labor "night and day" to wrest creation from destruction.
John Bunyan (1628–1688) was a Christian writer and preacher. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London. Contact him at christophernield@hotmail.com .
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