Fierce Raged the Tempest

Word & Song by Anthony Esolen

The scene for our Hymn of the Week is one of the most memorable in the Gospels. It is the Sea of Galilee, the lowest freshwater lake in the world, near the head of the Jordan River, in the “rift valley” that you can see as the top right-hand side of the upside down triangle that is the Sinai Peninsula. It’s like a long crease in the land, and at the Sea of Galilee, bounded by mountains to the north before the land suddenly sinks, the formation makes for unpredictable and often violent weather. But it was a grand place for fishermen — we should think of Peter, Andrew, James, and John as all involved in fishing concerns, providing food for the city people at Tiberias and Capernaum. And of course it was a lot faster to sail between those cities than to take the road walking. So it was natural enough that, after a day of preaching, Jesus might want some peace from the crowds, as he often did, and that when evening fell he would suggest getting into the boat and sailing to the other side. Then, says Mark, “a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.” The disciples were in great fear, and I can imagine that they were bailing out the boat even as the water poured in. That’s when they woke Jesus up. He’d been sleeping in the stern of the boat, with his head on a cushion. They woke him up and cried, “Teacher, do you not care if we perish?”
That’s a common kind of scene in the gospels, and in human life, isn’t it? The storms come, and we become frantic, as well we may, but we never see Jesus in that state, and it wasn’t because he was some kind of stoic who fought down his feelings by force. He felt deeply; I might say, boundlessly. But he never encouraged fright or panic, nor did he use such feelings to sway anybody. So, says Mark, “he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace, be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.” I wish I knew what words in Aramaic Jesus used. The Greek is what you’d use if you were telling someone to shut his mouth. Then Jesus turned to the disciples to ask them why they were afraid. “Have you no faith?” he said. But they were astonished, and said among themselves, “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea hear him?”

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The author of our hymn, Godfrey Thring, published several collections of hymns; we’ve featured him here as one of the authors of the mighty Crown Him With Many Crowns. He was an Anglican minister, and like many men of the cloth in those days, that meant he was highly educated in arts and letters; his poetry is crisp and intelligent, and his taste in architecture can be gathered, I think, from the church he commissioned to be built by one of England’s finest architects at the time, his friend Thomas Graham Jackson. That is, he sought to combine elements of the Gothic, not overdone, with decorative features peculiar to his time, such as the sgraffito lettering and designs on the walls — that’s what you have when you overlay one or more foundations of colors and then scratch away the covering surface to reveal what is underneath. Below is an image of the interior of this small jewel of a church. But I think it’s also a good metaphor for what Mr. Thring did in his poetry. You have small, succinct stanzas, in a form that English lends itself to, if you know what you’re doing: a rhyming triplet, in tetrameter — the typical 8-syllable line so common in English ballads; and each stanza ends with a line of a mere three syllables, rhyming with each other. Actually, with one important exception, they do more than rhyme: they repeat. It is “Calm and still,” describing what Jesus was like as he slept; then “Peace, be still,” as he bids the wind and the waves to do; then “At thy will,” the only line that does not end with the key word, and then finally the words of the Lord once more, “Peace, be still.” That sort of playing with the possibilities of meter and stanzaic structure was typical of the Victorians, as was also their echoing the past, reverently.

Interior of Saint Peter’s Church, Hornblottom. Note the sgraffito inscription on the right hand wall: “THEY THAT WORSHIP HIM MUST WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH.”

What Thring did in poetry, the excellent Ralph Vaughn Williams did in composing the melody I prefer for this hymn, “White Gates.” Vaughn Williams was humble enough to be taught not only by the composers who came before him, but by the people of the British Isles and their folk melodies. White Gates is reminiscent of many a minor-key British folk tune from the Renaissance, with its four-note runs of lilting eighth-notes, and that sudden plunge from the dominant to the tonic at the end. But more than that, it’s perfect for the meaning of the poem: the flurries end in calm and silence.

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It is a prayer we all will have cause to pray, at some time; and the old poets knew that human life was like that Sea of Galilee, so beautiful, and yet the storms will come. When they do, we can hear the words of Jesus, addressed to our hearts: “Peace, be still.”

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Listen to this hymn sung beautifully by the Cardiff Festival Choir.

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Fierce raged the tempest o'er the deep, Watch did thine anxious servants keep, But thou wast wrapped in guiltless sleep, Calm and still. "Save, Lord, we perish!" was their cry, "O save us in our agony!" Thy word above the storm rose high, "Peace, be still." The wild winds hushed; the angry deep Sank, like a little child, to sleep; The sullen billows ceased to leap, At thy will. So, when our life is clouded o'er, And storm-winds drift us from the shore, Say, lest we sink to rise no more, "Peace, be still."

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