W. H. Auden’s epic poem of the Incarnation,
For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio
, begins in an Advent world: lost and tarnished, wandering in search of a salvation that lies beyond all human remedy. The “dreadful wood of conscious evil”––the opposite of Eden’s sheltering, affectionate trees––rhymes the frightful “dark wood” of Dante’s prelude to the
Inferno
. The long and winding road to our true home in God begins the moment we recognize ourselves to be in a condition of exile.
Alone, alone about a dreadful wood
Of conscious evil runs a lost humankind,
Dreading to find its Father lest it find
The Goodness it has dreaded is not good:
Alone, alone, about our dreadful wood. . .
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
Was it to meet such grinning evidence
We left our richly odored ignorance?
Was the triumphant answer to be this?
The Pilgrim Way has led to the Abyss.
We who must die demand a miracle.
How could the Eternal do a temporal act,
The Infinite become a finite fact?
Nothing can save us that is possible:
We who must die demand a miracle.
