E Tenebris
E Tenebris - meaning Summary
Prayer Amid Spiritual Storm
The poem is a desperate, direct prayer asking Christ for rescue amid spiritual ruin. The speaker likens their state to drowning and a famine-blighted land, acknowledging guilt and fearing judgment. Biblical references—Simon on Galilee, Baal, Carmel—frame the crisis as both personal and theological. After an initial darkness and doubt, the poem ends with an affirmed vision: the expectant arrival of Christ with wounded hands and a weary human face.
Read Complete AnalysesCOME down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand, For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee: The wine of life is spilt upon the sand, My heart is as some famine-murdered land, Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in Hell must lie If I this night before God's throne should stand. "He sleeps perchance, or rideth to the chase, Like Baal, when his prophets howled that name. From morn to noon on Carmel's smitten height." Nay, peace, I shall behold before the night, The feet of brass, the robe more white than flame, The wounded hands, the weary human face.
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