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ROBERT PINSKY: The end of the Camp David talks, without any immediate
agreement, recalls what a powerful word peace can be, and also how worn
out the word can seem. Everyone wants peace for the world-- from Miss
America to Saddam Hussein-- but invoking it is easier than attaining
it.
The exhausting necessities of compromise and negotiation can make us
forget that peace is not just a political phrase, but an ideal. One
of the most touching uses I know of the word "peace" is in a poem by
Fulke Greville, written in the 16th century. Greville elevates the idea
of peace to a kind of platonic perfection, an ideal, and though he comes
at it through Christianity, an ideal that's virtually Buddhist, putting
peace at the center of all things. Here is Greville's poem, which gives
a fitting passion and grandeur to peace by defining it as divine love.
Loue is the Peace, whereto all thoughts doe striue,
Done and begun with all our powers in one:
The first and last in vs that is aliue,
End of the good, and therewith pleas'd alone.
Perfections spirit, Goddesse of the minde,
Passed through hope, desire, griefe and feare,
A simple Goodnesse in the flesh refin'd,
Which of the ioyes to come doth witnesse beare.
Constant, because it sees no cause to varie,
A Quintessence of Passions ouerthrowne,
Rais'd aboue all that change of obiects carry,
A Nature by no other nature knowne:
For Glorie's of eternitie a frame,
That by all bodies else obscures her name.
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