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Posted by Jimmy Brown on 11-03-2022 at10:53:

Sudden Heaven

I was reading in Walter Hooper's collection of poems by C.S. Lewis while waiting for my wife's tea to steep, as one does, when I came across this line"

"... I doubt if the angel himself
Is free to choose when sudden heaven in man begins or ends."

Since I know that Terry Scott Taylor sourced practically every line of the album Fearful Symmetry from Walter de la Mare's anthology Behold This Dreamer!, I wondered if the Lewis poem was in there. Before retrieving the 700-page tome from the stacks in the library where I work, I decided to try the internet, and I came upon a pretty good write-up that discusses Lewis, de la Mare, and Taylor's use of the phrase, as well as the person who likely invented it, Ruth Pitter. It also reproduces all the poems so you can read them there. Have a look, and tell me what you think:

https://scriptoriumdaily.com/sudden-heaven/

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Posted by wayneb on 11-03-2022 at14:05:

 

Wow. This Fred Sanders knows his stuff! His list of personal publications is impressive, as are his academic qualifications and experience...

Does (did) he lurk here on the DAMB? I suspect so. In any case, this gives me a whole new insight into Terry's work and demonstrates further how he can, indeed, be counted among the greatest Christian artists/writers out there.

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Posted by Ron E on 11-03-2022 at21:15:

 

He was on here all the time back in the earliest years. I dont know about lately. I cant remember his user name. Might have just been fred .

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Posted by Jimmy Brown on 11-04-2022 at07:45:

 

It looks like he was FredFredFred. It seems he was active on the Daniel Amos Discussion List, but he only has 5 posts here.

https://www.danielamos.com/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=11476

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Posted by Ron E on 11-04-2022 at12:48:

 

Were any of you around before this forum emerged from the old list one? Before the site got upgraded about 15-18 years ago
..?

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Posted by Ron E on 11-04-2022 at12:50:

 

Ok...just checked my registration date and it was in fact 20 years ago! I was the first person to sign up for this board except for the Townsend Brothers and the band members that they assigned names for. I was pretty new to the other board but just happened to be the first one who signed up here. I remember Fred from the other board for sure.

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Posted by Jimmy Brown on 11-04-2022 at15:43:

 

My previous account was registered January 31, 2003. My sister had given me MBD for Christmas, and I realized I had lost track of the band after Motorcycle. So unfortunately I was never on the DADL.

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Posted by Ron E on 11-04-2022 at19:53:

 

The DADL was even different from what I'm referring to...I just am talking about the original edition of this forum. If you didn't join til 2003 you missed that too though...

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Posted by wayneb on 11-06-2022 at00:27:

 

I joined at the end of April 2002 but was never a member of the DADL. I can't really remember what this forum was like at the start. I read a lot of posts but seldom posted back then - making up for it now!

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Posted by Jimmy Brown on 11-08-2022 at10:32:

 

I think I joined just before the upgrade to this board because the first several posts I made are gone. I could be mistaken though; it's been a while.

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Posted by Jimmy Brown on 11-09-2022 at08:40:

 

One thing I appreciate in comparing these poems is how flexible it seems Terry's mind is. The Variable lines of the second chorus (Bliss to great...) are all from the third stanza of Pitter's poem. Somehow he looked at that and thought, "If I snip a few words and rearrange all the lines, and it will work perfectly in my song."