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To mark the Feast of Holy Cross Day next Monday we’ll be holding our annual service of Evening Prayer this Sunday 13th at St Cross Church, next door to Holywell Manor, at 5pm. St Cross is a chapel of ease within our parish. It’s now home to the Historic Collections Centre of Balliol College but the chancel has been preserved for occasional services. Do join us if you can. Refreshments will be served in the Praefectus’s Study afterwards.
And this Saturday 12th, as part of Open Doors, we’ll be running hourly tours of our Old Library led by our knowledgeable volunteers. There will also be a free poetry workshop from 3pm until 4pm. Access to the Old Library is from 10am until 4pm with family crafts throughout the day.
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| | Services this Week
Tuesdays & Thursdays
12.15pm Lunchtime Eucharist
Sunday 13th September Trinity 15
10.30am Sung Eucharist
Address: Revd Judith Maltby |
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Forthcoming Events
Saturday 12th September, Open Doors: This year we're running hourly tours led by our knowledgeable volunteers, and a free poetry workshop, 3-4, on The Library. Access to the Old Library 10-4; family crafts. Wednesday 16th September, "Moot from the archives", Oriel College SCR, 7.45pm Sarah Mortimer has kindly agreed to lead us in a discussion on "The real meaning of contemporary life?", based on the first ever meeting of The Moot. All are welcome and tea and coffee will be provided. |
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Forthcoming Concerts
Saturday, 26th September, Oxford Sinfonia, 8pm Myslivecek Overture Mozart Sinfonia Concertante for winds K297b
Bach double violin concerto
Haydn Symphony 44 ‘Trauer’ |
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| | | A Sense of Place Thursday 24th September, 5-8.30pm.
This exciting new initiative runs concurrent workshops for poets and artists producing responses to the University Church. Through exercises, discussion and exploration of this unique space, the workshop aims to prompt fresh and creative site-specific art.
The workshop costs £15 per person, to include tuition, materials, and a light supper. Bring your own notebooks/sketchbooks and materials if desired. Numbers are strictly limited to 8 writers and 8 artists. To apply, and to find out more, send an email to penny.boxall@universitychurch.ox.ac.uk (or, during the week of 14th-19th September, call the Church Office on 01865 279111).
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| | | Poetry Corner
Vlamertinghe: Passing the Chateau
'And all her silken flanks with garlands drest' -
But we are coming to the sacrifice.
Must those flowers who are not yet gone West?
May those flowers who live with death and lice?
This must be the floweriest place
That earth allows; the queenly face
Of the proud mansion borrows grace for grace
Spite of those brute guns lowing at the skies.
Bold great daisies' golden lights,
Bubbling roses' pinks and whites -
Such a gay carpet! poppies by the million;
Such damask! such vermilion!
But if you ask me, mate, the choice of colour
Is scarcely right; this red should have been duller.
- Edmund Blunden (1 November 1896 – 20 January 1974)
Blunden is grouped among the great War Poets; his name is included in the commemorative stone in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, headed by Wilfred Owen’s famous remark, “My subject is War and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.” He fought at the Somme and Ypres. This poem was written in July 1917, and takes as its first line a quotation from Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’:
“To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?”
But here the sacrificial offerings are the men of the trenches, who ‘live with death and lice’; the poem is full of restrained bitterness. The Vlamertinghe Chateau was the Heavy Artillery Officers’ mess; in this version these officers become those leading the men to sacrifice.
In 1966 Blunden became Professor of Poetry, though resigned after two years when the pressure of lecturing became too great. Despite his experiences, he is said to have had a great sense of humour.
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