À mon chevet: Robert Southwell

À mon chevet is a series of posts featuring a quote from whatever book is on my nightstand at the moment.

Benjamin Britten chose poetry by the Elizabethan poet Robert Southwell for two of the movements of his Ceremony of Carols. Heard in a recent performance, Southwell's words have been haunting me for the last few days. His poetry was published posthumously, and he wrote most of it while