Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

The son of a Presbyterian minister and biblical scholar, Robinson Jeffers was a Northern Californian poet who died in 1962. At the height of his fame, Time Magazine featured him on their cover. He was invited to read from his works at the Library of Congress, and his image was even made into a U.S. postage stamp.

You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.

His poetry revealed a preference for the natural world over what he saw as the negative influence of civilization. He even coined the phrase “inhumanism,” holding to the thought that mankind is too self-centered and too indifferent to the "astonishing beauty of things."

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

The National Endowment For The Arts claims that Robinson Jeffers questioned the uniqueness of humankind.

“As extraordinary as humans might be, from his perspective they are not qualitatively superior to other beings, they are not essential to the universe, and they are not the special concern of a man-like God.”

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.

How did this play out in his poetry. The poem HURT HAWK includes the controversial line “I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk.”

You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.

In his collection of poems titled A BOOK OF LUMINOUS THINGS, Czeslaw Milosz says that Jeffers felt that the human species was a “destructive plasm on the surface of the globe,” and that in time mankind would exit this planet, when everything would “once again be perfectly beautiful.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! Psalm 8

Whom have I in heaven buy you? And whom have I in heaven but you? Psalm 73:25

From a poem by Sir Henry Wotten (1568-1639) entitled D.O.M. (commonly meaning Deo Optimo Maximo - To God, the best, the greatest)

For what are we but lumps of walking clay?
Why should we swell? whence should our spirit rise?

Living in roughly the first half of the 17th Century, Francis Quarles was a worksmith armed with the Bible as his compass, and wisdom of the highest order, wisdom that the world could not recognize, that had to be a gift from the Father of Lights.

Just one example. In the foreword to his History of Samson, he reflects on three types of friends.

1.  The first is like a Torch, we meet in a dark street:

2.  The second is lke a Candle in a lantern, that we overtake:

3.  The third is like a link, that offers itself to the stumbling passenger:

The met-torch is that sweet-lipped friend, which lends us a flash of complement for the time, but quickly leaves us to our former darkness.

The overtaken lantern is the true friend, which, though it promise but a faint light, yet it goes along with us, as far as it can, towards our journey's end.

The offered link is the mercenary friend, which, though it be ready enough to do us service, yet that service hath a servile relation to our bounty.

Quarles showed a verbal distain for this world that exceeds many or most. His love for all things eternal is reflected in much of his works. The Emblems became a vehicle for him to display to put this world in proper perspective with the one to come.

How my soul would spurn this ball of clay,
And loathe the dainties of earth's painful pleasure!
How I'd laugh to see men night and day
Turmoil to gain that trash, they call their treasure !

How I'd smile to see what plots they lay
To catch a blast, or own a smile from Caesar!
Had I the pinions of a mountain dove,
How I would soar and sing, and hate the love
Of transitory toys, and feed on joys above!

There should I find that everlasting pleasure,
Which change removes not, and which chance pre
vents not ;

There should I find that everlasting treasure,
Which force deprives not, fortune disaugments not;

There should I find that everlasting Caesar,
Whose hand recalls not, and whose heart repents not;

Had I the pinions of a clipping dove,
How I would climb the skies, and hate the love
Of transitory toys, and joy in things above!

No rank-mouth'd slander there shall give offence,
Or blast our blooming names, as here they do ;

No liver-scalding lust shall there incense
Our boiling veins ; there is no Cupid's bow :

LORD, give my soul the milk-white innocence
Of doves, and I shall have their pinions too :

Had I the pinions of a clipping dove,
How I would quit this earth, and soar above,
And Heav'n's bless'd kingdom find, and Heav'n's
bless'd King JEHOVE !