Books Do Furnish A Room: Collect for Trinity Sunday

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Tuesday, 13 April 2010

Collect for Trinity Sunday

This week’s piece of prose is short, but strong. It is a collect from the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, published in 1549. Although completely unreligious myself, I cannot but admire the power of the prose, and marvel at the way religious writing - notably the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible - have shaped our language. This is earlier than both, but greatness is burgeoning. This is the Collect for Trinity Sunday from the first Prayer Book of Edward VI:

ALMIGHTYE and euerlastyng God, whiche haste geuen unto us thy seruauntes grace by the confession of a true fayth to acknowlege the glorye of the eternall trinitie, and in the power of the diuyne maiestie to wurshippe the unitye : we beseche thee that through the stedfastnes of thys fayth, we may euermore be defended from all aduersitie, whiche liueste and reignest, one God, worlde without ende.

Posted at 02:42 PM in Prose | Permalink

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Quotidian

Nothing is of greater consolation to the author of a novel than the disovery of readings he had not conceived but which are then prompted by his readers. (Umberto Eco, Reflections on The Name of the Rose)
... relatively few persons in London ... can afford the luxury of one or more servants. No fewer than 3,700,000 have no servants at all, and of the half million that have servants 227,000 have only one. (The Times, 6 June 1895)
Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations. There is a French widow in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects. (Tyrolean inn brochure, according to Gerard Hoffnung)
(A doctor is at an elderly relative's deathbed) "The old sawbones, eh?" he bellowed ... "Just in the nick, perhaps. Haul the old girl back by the short hairs, if you ask me. Devilish smart at his work ... Always take a fence with more confidence when I know he's out with us."
Too often, when a man of Monty Godkin's mental powers is plunged in thought, nothing happens at all. The machinery just whirs for a while, and that is the end of it. (P G Wodehouse, Heavy Weather)
...the breed that take their pleasures as Saint Laurence took his grid (Kipling, The Five nations)