Silver Wedding Analysis

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Silver Wedding



The party is over and I sit among

The flotsam that its passing leaves,

The dirty glasses and fag-ends:

Outside, a black wind grieves.



Two decades and a half of marriage;

It does not really seem as long,

Of youth's ebullient song.



David, my son, my loved rival,

And Julia, my tapering daughter,

Now grant me one achievement only;

I turn their wine to water.



And Helen, partner of all these years,

Helen, my spouse, my sack of sighs,

Reproaches me for every hurt

With injured, bovine eyes.



There must have been passion once, I grant,

But neither she nor I could bear

To have its ghost come prowling from

Its dark and frowsy lair.



And we, to keep our nuptials warm,

Still wage sporadic war;

Numb with insult each yet strives

To scratch the other raw.



Twenty-five years we've now survived;

I'm not sure either why or how

As I sit with a wreath of quarrels set

On my tired and balding brow.





Submitted by Andrew Mayers

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"What rather sraeggts me is that Elizabeth bothered to get Parker consecrated at all! She might very well have simply nominated him - as Lutheran princes were doing."Well, I'm not so sure about this, and I fear Dix's knowledge here may have been rather limited. In Denmark, when Lutheranism was introduced by royal fiat in 1537 and the Catholici bishops (most of them unconsecrated electi) imprisioned, great care was taken to get the new Lutheran superintendents "consecrated" by Luther's Wittenberg friend and colleague John Bugenhagen (a man in presbyter's orders only), and in Sweden King Gustav Vasa (a king whose interest in church matters was wholly limited to the economic and political, as he had no theological interests whatsoever) made great efforts to get a duly consecrated bishop from Rome in 1524 and subsequently to force this bishop to consecrate other bishops (without a papal mandate) in 1528 and 1531 -- after 1540 the king seemingly decided to abolish bishops altogether, and there were only one or two left in Sweden whe he died in 1560, and it was on the more doubtful one of these two that the Swedish church depends for the purported preservation of its "apostolic succession" in 1575.Even in the confused circumstances of Germany, where about 9 to 12 Catholic bishops became Lutheran at various points between the 1520s and the 1560s (and one as late as 1583), attempts were made to perpetuate a kind of episcopate: in East Prussia, where both Catholic bishops became Lutheran in 1525, the succession was maintained until both bishops -- one of the original two and the other's consecrated successor -- died in 1550/51, and afterwards a kind of appointed episcopate was maintained there until episcopacy itself was abolished in 1587. In Germany proper as Catholic-turned Lutheran bishops died, neighbouring Lutheran princes got the cathedral chapters to elect them "Administrators" of the dioceses, and as such promptly appointed "General Superintendents" to carry out their spiritual functions. There were not consecrated (although Luther himself personally "consecrated" two "evangelical bishops" in 1543 and 1545, these remained unique occurrences).And, of course, in 1566-2 some 5 or 6 Catholic bishops became Calvinists, and were told that if they expected to function as ministers among the Huguenots they would have to renounce their "popish unChristian orders" and be ordained anew.As to Elizabeth and England, was it an oversight that led to a modified version of the 1552 Prayer Book to be authorizied in 1559 without the Ordinal? Bishop Bonner was able to devastate the attempt to bring charges against him in 1566 by some of Elizabeth's bishops by alleging that in law (English law) they were no bishops, as having been consecrated by an illegal form. The attempt to convict him had to be dropped and a bill rushed through Parliament in that year or 1567 "validating" all episcopal consecrations in England from 1559 onwards. We hear of the principle "Ecclesia supplet" from time to time, but we have not heard of "Senatus Reginaque supplent" and how an Act of Parliament with the Royal Assent could do such a thing -- perhaps a good Anglican precedent for what happened in 1993?

| Posted on 2013-11-16 | by a guest

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Project of the Month: the Irish community Recently at we have dedeicd to give more highlight to our many native-language communities, who are in charge not just of localization, but also QA, users support, documentation translation and marketing. Each month, we will interview teams, blog about it, include it in the newsletter, etc. This month, we start with the Irish native-language project, lead by Kevin Scannell. You can find more about the Irish language here.

| Posted on 2013-11-13 | by a guest

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Well. I have to say that if you are not writing for yosruelf each and every time you write then you will fail. You can have an editor, or people who's opinion you value to be a second pair of eyes for your work, but you can't write to them. There are times when they will be wrong in their opinions and sensibilities about yor work. I'm the only person I write for. I know if something is good or bad, pleasing or not worth the time eading that it took to write it. I have pieces that I have lobored over but only because I wanted them to work for me. In the end I've walked away from pieces but they always bekon to be finished because I want to own them for myself. When something comes out and it sings as either I intended or in some surprising way I take the pleasure in it. If some other reader finds something in it that is even better but it is not a necessary function of the writing itself.

| Posted on 2013-11-12 | by a guest

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The poem talks about the speakers married life the setting is his 25 anniversary which has just finished.There is example of pathetic fallacy in this poem:\"Outside,a black wind grieves.\" The speaker describes David as a \"loved rival\" because his song it at the age where parents feel that their children are working against them and there is a lot of conflict between them. According to tapering means:
3.to make gradually smaller toward one end.
4.to reduce gradually.
So my guess is that he describes Julia as tapering because she is losing a lot of weight. He calls his wife Helen his \"sack of sighs\" which hints to me that she has put on a lot of weight since marriage. His marriage to her has now lost the passion they once had and to keep their marriage alive they verbally abuse each other. The poem ends on a solemn note as the speaker sits and contemplates how his marriage has survived.

| Posted on 2011-05-05 | by a guest