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News and Views

The Book of Common Prayer?

6/27/2018

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It might seem to be a bit of a stretch that I have lifted Elizabeth's poem On Monsieur's Departure (it begins: I grieve and dare not show my discontent; I love, and yet am forced to seem to hate; I do, yet dare not say I ever meant; I seem stark mute, but inwardly do prate.) for my own storytelling purposes. Perhaps crediting some of the Book of Common Prayer to Edward Strelley is battering against the boundaries of historical fact a little too hard, but it fits. 

“You were Elizabeth’s tutor, were you not?”
    Edward Strelley stands in front of Thomas Cranmer’s escritoire. The archbishop, asking the question, sits with his elbows resting on the table. 

    “I worked with Grindal, yes,” Strelley answers.
    “I remember you.” Cranmer’s voice is soft and considered as always, and he seems about to add more, but does not. 
    Strelley looks down at him. “You summoned me.”
    “On Ascham’s recommendation, yes. He says you are gifted with language.”
    “I am flattered.”
    “I had rather hoped to enlist you to help me. I have something for you to read.”
    “Your prayer book?”
    “I have written a little of it, Master Strelley, but it is not my prayer book. It is everyone’s.”
    “What do you wish of me?”
    “I want the benefit of your pen, Sir. Your imagination.”
    “You want me to improve it?”
    “Where you can. I do not glorify myself overmuch when I say that the book contains some beautiful passages, because I do not claim to have written those passages. So I would value the critical eye of one who is himself a master of language.”
    Strelley smiles, rather wryly. “I thank you for your faith in me, Your Grace.”
    “God sometimes moves in a mysterious way, Master Strelley. Sometimes, He is more easy to read.”

Progress on book IV is slow but real. Small people don't seem to appreciate the need for long stretches of uninterrupted concentration...
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    Andy Richardson

    When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
    I summon up remembrance of things past,
    I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,
    And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:
    Then can I drown an eye, unus’d to flow,
    For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,
    And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,
    And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:
    Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,
    And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er
    The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,
    Which I new pay as if not paid before.
    But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
    All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

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