Arthur Henry King
ARTHUR HENRY KING, a native of England, was a much-admired professor of English at Brigham Young University from 1970 until his retirement in 1994. He died in 2000. King wrote more than fifteen hundred poems but published only several dozen. These poems appeared in Conversion: Poems of the Religious Life 1963-1994, edited by Fred C. Pinnegar (Orem, Utah: Sharpspear Press, 2001).
Latter Days
Articles/Essays – Volume 06, No. 3
(Monday, Aug. 4, 1969.)
The trees are still in mist this August morning:
chestnut and beech first scorched by sense of Autumn,
and the rest just dull vert between vague seasons.
The swirl of Ceres disciplined to stubble
reduces the whole seasonal cycle’s plumed
The Right Size
Articles/Essays – Volume 04, No. 3
A landscape lies under the open sky . . .
(Open? The sky’s the limit,
the daylight veil over the illimitable,
withdrawn for revelation from the darkness
beyond of Adam’s first—and longest—nightmare
trying to count quastars telstars from pulstars.
Nth grandson Blaise, a rodent of nocturnal
Visit to a Cathedral After a Trip Round the World
Articles/Essays – Volume 04, No. 3
In the west door for kings alone swung wide,
the leather-padded wicket, left behind me
stifling a gasp, expired.
No more fresh air:
I had entered the dim, mouldy, hollow hush
of a dead church—the silence of the ‘grave
and reverend’ sirs ghosting it in their gowns—
Hot Weather in Tucson
Articles/Essays – Volume 04, No. 3
Glimpsed askance through leaves, the sky
looks lapis and ivory;
confronted, blinds and is blinded by
the sun’s incandescence.
Through the thick shadow of a mulberry
a white-wing dove may flute a cool blue call
continuo; and Christ,
Winter Solstice
Articles/Essays – Volume 06, No. 1
The messages come early in the morning,
by means of a dream
(but young men have their visions),
or struggle towards decision through a stream of indecisions,
or real — or imagined — pain
I Will Make Thee a Terror To Thyself (Jer. XX:4)
Articles/Essays – Volume 07, No. 3
I have made endeavour to serve thee, Lord,
and yet thy servant—
this thy child—
is apprehensive at thy majesty.
A Prophet Is Dead: A Prophet Lives
Articles/Essays – Volume 08, No. 3
A man of men to
thee, a seer of thine to men
lived here; lives; shall live.
September the First, 1969
Articles/Essays – Volume 09, No. 1
Man grows old at any time, not simply in the Autumn.
In the tropics, we do not recognize seasons:
death is hardly a growth, but accident, catastrophe,
sudden disease, or mere insufficiency;
Epithalamion
Articles/Essays – Volume 11, No. 3
(Marriage Song for DJ. and N.J.)
I. Before Sunrise
Artemis,
too faint for shadows,
wanes over the western sands.