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queenlucythevaliant · 2 years

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"City of Men" is even better than "Jerusalem" in terms of its sheer power to compel me to get out the brick and mortar and start physically building the Holy City here on earth until God relents and brings it about properly and more people ought to know it. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

"City of Men," Charles Williams

How shall we build the city of men,

Love and our mays and we,

Who are not sons of the bondwomen

It shall be free as our mothers are,

But children of the free ?

Who seem as Sinai,

Moving their heads in that covenant

Though they be broken of men to-day,

So anciently and high.

Bruised with toil and pain,

Liberty that is the soul of them

They by whom we were brought to be,

Shall surely stand again.

Born to the ways of men.

Walk in our midst, of that free city

Thus to build up the city of men.

Each a free citizen.

Love and our mays and we,

Being not sons of the bondwomen

It shall be free as our lovers are,

But children of the free!

Holily loved and trod,

They by whom we were brought to be.

Little, O little, upon our hearts

Born to the ways of God.

Seemed they within our love, —

O but the mightiness in them hid,

Queens, and they rendered themselves to us

We were afraid thereof!

O but we knew them then.

Republican in Jerusalem,

Thus will we toil at the city of men.

City and citizen.

Whose name is liberty,

Jerusalem, the mother of all.

Stand fast, stand fast for Jerusalem,

That is above and free.

Stand fast in liberty:

We are not sons of the bondwomen

But children of the free!

#i mean Jerusalem is lovely don't get me wrong #but there's a strong humanistic element that's absent in City of Men #which is so much about the way that our liberation in Christ is what enables us to build the Holy City here on earth #we are free! stand fast in that freedom and /build something/!#the new Jerusalem will be a city of freedom but we are children of liberty #why should we not live as citizens of a free city?#our liberty cannot be taken from us #'it shall be free as our mothers are' the great cloud of witnesses that came before were free and they began the city we are building #in that freedom #there's a fearlessness to the poem just as there is in Jerusalem but there's also this fierce gratitude and a sense of continuity #with the whole church #(Jerusalem is very British)#we walk in a manner worthy of citizenship in the holy city #'the mightiness in them hid we are afraid thereof'-- a holy fear. a fearless fear. awe at that which is truly awesome #the church is a glorious thing #these are very jumbled thoughts but ughhhh i adore this poem #and Charles William was an Inkling sooooo #pontifications and creations #how can i keep from singing #the last thing I will say is that someone needs to set City of Man as lovely as the melody that Jerusalem has #someone needs to get on that right away #oh also also! do please read it out loud it really helps to feel the rhythm of it #literature makes us more human

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