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Coleridge at Midnightย 

Sally Thomas

He has been one acquainted with the darkAnd cold, the walks in rain across the hills,The vagaries of friends. Now, foxes bark Beneath the pallid moon. The little owls Cry...

Spring Twilight After Penanceย 

Sally Thomas

Letโ€™s say youโ€™ve just comeFrom confession. Late sunPours through the budding treesThat mark the brown creek washingย Itself beyond the field.ย Two men who had been mowingThe first greening grassHave stopped...

The End of Marchย 

Sally Thomas

Stands of bearded iris, purple in mourningSpring up, early, among their cool green speartips,Pale and pointed, palmlike, though no oneโ€™s picked them,Criss-crossed the fronds, blessed, behind a crucifix.Still two...

Children’s Books and the Christian Story

Sally Thomas

It is one thing to talk about the Resurrection. It is quite another to see the Easter fire struck in the night, the candle lit, the light of Christ...

Tomie dePaolaโ€™s Icons

Sally Thomas

Real artists donโ€™t copy.โ€ Tomie dePaola, the childrenโ€™s author and illustrator who died last week at age eighty-five, once recalled this counsel given him as a child of four...

Epiphany

Sally Thomas

He tells himself a tale his grandmother told:Babuschka sleeps by the fire. Outside new snowLaps the window. Camels look in from the cold.Wise-crowned kings—they know her name—say, GoWith us,...

First Sunday

Sally Thomas

In Advent, the hermit lights a candle-end,Drips wax onto a saucer, stands it there.The early nightfall forms itself aroundThis little shivering flame. He says his prayer:Stir up Thy power,...

Not Duffers, Won’t Drown

Sally Thomas

These stories are all about unsupervised children,โ€ my oldest daughter observed years ago, when we were reading Arthur Ransomeโ€™s Swallows and Amazons books aloud, one after another, books in...

Signs and Wonders

Sally Thomas

My morning reading has settled into some habitual grooves, and for a reliably thoughtfulย one or two articles a day, I go to FTโ€™s โ€ On the Square ,โ€ to...

Newmanโ€™s Unusual Feast Day

Sally Thomas

Fr. James Martin notesย  Newman’s unusual feast day, the anniversary not of Newman’s “entrance into Heaven,” but of his entrance into, as Newman himself put it, “the Church of...

The Close of the Day

Sally Thomas

View the Westminster Hall Speech via the Telegraph ’s live blog. From the same blog, a last glimpse of the Pope as night falls on Britain: “Eagle-eyed Pope fans...

Terror Plot Against the Pope?

Sally Thomas

Early this morning, London’s Metropolitan Police arrested five men in connection with a possible terror plot aimed at Pope Benedict XVI. The arrests were made at 0545 BST at...

Who Are These People?

Sally Thomas

There are some who now seek to exclude religious belief from public discourse, to privatize it or even to paint it as a threat to equality and liberty. Yet...

The Social Commentary of Ice Cream Ads

Sally Thomas

In defiance of a ruling by the British Advertising Standards Authority—doesn’t that ring quaintly on the ear: Advertising Standards Authority —an ice cream company has announced its intent to...