Saint John Baptist
The last and greatest Herald of Heaven's King
Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild,
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he more harmless found than man, and mild.
His food was locusts, and what there doth spring,
With honey that from virgin hives distilled;
Parched body, hollow eyes, some uncouth thing
Made him appear, long since from earth exiled.
There burst he forth: All ye whose hopes rely
On God, with me amidst these deserts mourn,
Repent, repent, and from old errors turn!
—Who listened to his voice, obeyed his cry?
Only the echoes, which he made relent,
Rung from their flinty caves, Repent! Repent!
Something of an uninvited guest to the Christmas story, with its cozy images of the baby Jesus nestling in the manger and adored by the shepherds and the three kings, John the Baptist remains a wild, unnerving and mysterious figure in the New Testament.
Drummond's sonnet begins with a stark contrast of the divine and the apparently bestial: The greatest "Herald of Heaven's King," preaching the arrival of the long anticipated Messiah, stands like a caveman, "girt with rough skins." Pausing between the first and second lines helps to bring out the dramatic shock of this. Drummond makes the point that wisdom may be found where we least expect it, among the mad, the mocked, and the dispossessed.
Ironically, John, who "hies" or hurries to the wilderness, discovers that "the savage brood" of animals that dwell in the woods are more harmless than those he's left behind. Civilized man, with his biting tongue and perverse attraction to cruelty, can be harsher than the wolf.
The second stanza further establishes our image of John as an outcast. Drummond really makes us see John's "parched body" and "hollow eyes." He is scrawny and scary, like the ranting homeless man we would find easy to brush past in the street, clutching our Christmas shopping. Perceived snobbishly as "some uncouth thing," he seems barely human.
Of course, the desert describes the geography of ancient Israel, near the banks of the river Jordan, but can also be read in a more universal way as a landscape of emotional and psychological aridity. As a symbol it is later taken up, for instance, by T. S. Eliot in his pageant play "The Rock:": "You neglect and belittle the desert./The desert is not remote in southern tropics/ The desert is not only around the corner,/ The desert is squeezed in the tube-train next to you,/ The desert is in the heart of your brother." Here the desert is the place of pain and suffering where the self must confront the nature of reality. Free of numbing distractions, we may find to our surprise what is truly nurturing to the spirit.
At this point in the sonnet comes the volta, or turn, where our understanding of the scene suddenly shifts. The beggar becomes something of a bully. Far from being a pathetic victim he is something of a knowing victor. He bursts forth, warning the people to repent of their ways.
No one, it appears, will listen to him, or obey his call. Yet surely we pity them, not him, for we know that within the Christian narrative, they are destined for punishment. In the concluding couplet, the caves on the mountainside are like mouths, echoing out his cry of repentance, but with no answer. This final image is uncanny, discomforting, even frightening—capturing the kind of holy terror that prophetic figures provoke in both their devotees and their enemies.
The poem, with its implied contrast of John the lone pariah and the vast Christian civilization of Drummond's audience, reminds us that all strong and healthy societies, of whatever creed, are built on conviction. They are built on one, two, perhaps three ideas, passionately held and defended. "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," for example. The certainty of one man will, over time, overturn the doubt, the doziness, and the relativism of a thousand.
How long can a tiring civilization, believing itself to be built on "old errors," struggle on until it is supplanted by something new?
William Drummond (1585-1649) was a Scottish poet born at Hawthornden, near Edinburgh.
Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
Feeds