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Miracle of the Book

Distance was short, but porters would be needed,
And sacks were packed with small necessities.
I wrapped the Gospel book and then proceeded
Along the rowan-bordered road with ease.
Only when day and its activities
Were done did I seek out the book and find
It missing. A frantic quest raced through my mind.

The queen was troubled; inquiries were made.
Next came three days of scouring route and rim.
The consequence of carelessness outweighed
My wit: I thought Queen Margaret’s eyes might dim
As prospects of recovery grew slim.
She was accustomed every day to see
That volume of celestial cogency.

O what a marvel of God’s beauteous word,
Befitting by its gold and gems the choice
Of oratory from Our Savior heard,
A wealth of wisdom uttered by His voice,
A precious hoard of reasons to rejoice!
How could it be that in terrain we crossed
This pearl entrusted to me I had lost?

“John Porter, happiness be yours this day,”
The queen addressed me unexpectedly.
“Your majesty, may full dawn rise to stay.”
I could not answer unbecomingly,
For she inspires her servants buoyantly.
“Today we shall return to Edinburgh;
Precede us, please, as forefront messenger.”

I went, and wondered if the book might wait
For still another scrutiny to spy
Its hiding place—and asked my angel’s aid,
Since waters of the ford ran muckle high,
But clear enough I could identify,
Beneath, an open book with pages turning,
The very sight for which I had been yearning.

Assuredly, water and mud had smeared
Its gist, obliterating scripture. No!
Protective bits of silk had disappeared,
Removed by force of swirling current’s flow;
All else looked as it had a week ago,
Leaves white and letters perfect in formation,
Though margins showed a rippling undulation.

By duty bound, I sped ahead, and when
The queen arrived, presented her with news,
The message of the miracle, and then
Her Gospel book exquisite to peruse.
She thanked the Lord, who loss with good imbues.
I say (should simpletons ask what I mean),
God did this deed for love of our sweet queen.

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muckle: very, muchly

Poet’s note: The rhyme royal poem expands the prose account by Turgot of Durham, a friend of Saint Margaret of Scotland (1045–1093). He wrote her biography at the request of her daughter Matilda. The book in the poem, a selection of Gospel passages produced in England between 1025 and 1050, is now among the treasures of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

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Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable work in homeschooling for her own family and others. 

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31 Responses

    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Paul, and I hope you will indeed enjoy the treasure more on further readings. I would say it first becomes a “treasure trove” to John Porter when he loses it and realizes in recollection what he has lost. Haven’t we all been in that situation!

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    It is only those endowed with mission and grace who can recognize when miracles take place. Miracles can happen to us any day but given to those who worship and pray. This was such a meaningful poem with a great story. Thank you for sharing your impeccable poetic talents once again.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Roy, for pointing to perception of miracles as a theme. You are right that persons who do not worship God or pray will rarely see them, but will attribute exceptional good fortune to mere chance or to some other cause. That is a reason John Porter in the poem makes a little prayer to his guardian angel. His motive is the immediate need to get across the ford safely, but this prayer opens his heart to see the finding of the book as a miracle, not a piece of good luck that happened because he finally thought to search under water. And at the end of the poem, he gets to the point where he can unselfishly attribute the miracle to the virtues of his saintly queen, whom God must love for her admirable sweetness. Turgot the biographer says Margaret’s life was full of miracles, of which he recounts only this one. Today such a perception of numerous miracles (had he described them) would have him cancelled as an objective historical source.

      Reply
  3. Paul Martin Freeman

    Congratulations on your poem, Margaret. I can well imagine you’ve captured the spirit and period feel of the original prose account, so authentic does it seem. Another masterclass in how to work a rare complex poetic form. Astonishing, really.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Paul, thank you for the compliments. It’s easier to achieve the “period feel” when you work from an account written by a contemporary. And of course I have been learning about Saint Margaret as my patron for a long time! Rhyme royal was formerly a strong tool for English verse narrative, especially to Chaucer, and I am only rediscovering its potential.
      More recently heroic couplets, blank verse, and ballad meter have been more popular. The style must suit the subject and the intended audience, as you know from your admirable work for children.

      Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    This poem is both exciting and troubling, like a tension-filled crime drama.

    When I read the first three stanzas of it I was upset and angst-ridden (as a fanatic bibliophile, I can’t bear even the suggestion of the loss of a valuable book). So I shared in the narrator’s aghast terror, though in his case it was motivated by fear of the queen’s possible anger, and dismay at his own dereliction of duty.

    When the narrator saw the open book in a stream, in swirling water and mud, I shivered with horror. “That’s the end of THAT,” I thought. But the miracle of its preservation, as described in stanza 7, came as a profoundly welcome relief. I had forgotten that vellum is a lot sturdier than paper.

    As a footnote to this, the magnificent Book of Kells was once stolen in a Viking raid, but it was found safe (minus its bejeweled covers) a few days later. The illiterate Scandinavians didn’t care about the vellum.

    One question: the last two lines of stanza 4 do not make a rhyming couplet, unlike the other stanzas. Is this deliberate, or just poetic license?

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Joe, thanks for the question about the rhyme at the end of stanza 4. It’s not perfect, but closer than you and others may think. My own pronunciation of “Edinburgh,” learned from a grandmother with Scots blood, and refined by visits to the city, ends with what I have to call a long “BURR.” It’s not like American Pittsburgh with “g” sounded, and there’s a transient cadence following, such that some hear and say “burgh” as “BURR-ah” or “BURR-uh.” But to many Scots, “Edinburgh” is a three-syllable word, and when heard at conversational speed, that’s how it sounds. “Messenger” has a different final sound. “JUR” is schwa-short and closed, never followed by any hint of another syllable. Still, it is close enough to qualify as an imperfect rhyme, similar to “wait” and “aid” in stanza 5.

      Thanks so much as well, for appreciating the narrator’s feelings. He is a creation of my own, as Turgot says only that a careless servant let the book fall out of its wrapping without noticing it. But the horror you feel at the book being found underwater is exactly what Turgot felt himself. But he, like you, knew how sturdy vellum was; he was concerned about the readability of smeared ink.

      As you will appreciate this, I’ll reveal that greetings between Queen Margaret and John Porter come from the Ambrosian morning hymn “Splendor paternae gloriae.” I had to imagine that Margaret would entrust the book to a literate man, one who might have been with her at Lauds that morning to hear “Laetus dies hic transeat” and “Aurora totus prodeat.” The lines rhyme, although the hymn has no rhyme scheme but uses rhyme as an occasional ornament.

      Reply
  5. Paul Freeman

    I enjoyed this, Margaret.

    I loved the idea that the ornamentation around the text was unimportant in comparison to the content of the text. The silk had gone, the pages were rippled and yet the words remained. A message for life.

    Thanks for the read.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Yes, thank you, Paul. The beauty should be most obvious in the content, and I’m glad you enjoyed the story and my way of telling it!

      Reply
  6. Brian A Yapko

    Margaret, what a splendid story this is presented in a form which was previously unknown to me, the rhyme royal. I absolutely love this form because it is complex enough to require jewel-like intricacy (much like the chant royale and ballade) yet it moves along at a good clip which allows for the presentation of a compelling narrative. You work within this form with great skill and everything within it is beautifully and economically presented. In this case there are seven stanzas, which results in a total of 49 lines. Knowing your penchant for numerology can you explain why you chose this form and what significance it may have?

    The story and its theme is wonderful. How often I have misplaced some treasure only to find it again! So there is much here to relate to. But there is also much here to be inspired by! The loss of a ring or favored object is sad, but the loss of the gospels is truly distressing and carries great spiritual anxiety. Indeed, one might well see this as a metaphor for grace lost and grace restored. And once one goes in that direction, we can find all kinds of meaning in the loss by water which has so much Biblical meaning from the parting of the Red Sea to the sacrament of Baptism. Someone with strong scholarship might well be able to unpack the various levels of meaning here. Even the margins with the rippling undulation means something. Water changes and purifies.

    In short, while this could simply be a story of someone who lost something very precious which was then found, in my view the Biblical implications cannot be avoided here. A miracle took place! The text of the gospels was found to be incorruptible even by water! One shares the joy of the speaker and the gratitude to God done “for love of our sweet queen.” Thank you, Margaret, for a truly inspiring read! A lovely offering to your namesake saint!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Brian, thank you for your observant comment. I chose the rhyme royal form mainly because of the royal name and its long use in Scotland as well as England. It allows many options for shaping a stanza, and thus helps provide variety in narrative presentation. For example, stanza 5, where the book is finally found, is a long search-and-discovery sentence. Stanza 6, examining the find, goes back to 2 + 2 + 3 lines as in stanza 1, but with the speaker’s shock expressed early rather than late. Another advantage of rhyme royal is that the final couplet (which could be two concluding couplets!) seems to demand the economy of which you speak. The last couplet in this poem enables the educated speaker to give his explicit interpretation of the miracle in a final line of monosyllabic words that should be clear to the simplest of simpletons.

      For numerology, seven is perfection, and 7 stanzas of 7 lines each is like perfection squared, appropriate for the story of a miracle centering on the Gospels and involving water, which is symbolic of both destruction and cleansing renewal. As you say, the loss of the book in this story might warn of a possible loss of faith, and we see how that can begin through mere carelessness. John Porter does not keep faith with Queen Margaret when he loses her Gospel book, but as I imagine him, he contritely takes the loss to heart, expressing faith in God and veneration for God’s word. Ultimately God enables him to do his duty by the queen. Notice how after finding the book, he shows he has learned a lesson by doing everything in proper order, first going ahead to the destination, then delivering a message in his capacity as messenger, before happily restoring the book to the queen.

      My Scottish ancestry comes through a line of Porters in clan Campbell, and in family lists, there was a John and a Jean in every generation. In this poem I take John the Porter as my way of offering tribute to my namesake patroness. In the most economical statement of the poem, she says God imbues loss with good. That’s a paraphrase of her dying words. I imagine she saw numerous occasions of smaller and larger conversions influenced by the good she tried to do all her life.

      Reply
  7. Monika Cooper

    My favorite part was when John the Porter sees the pages turning under the water: what a delicious image.

    You know, I don’t think I’ve heard about this miracle before. But that image of the beautiful illuminated pages submerged in flowing water but pristinely undamaged comes to me with the force of something recollected. So maybe I have come across the story in the past somewhere. Or maybe something like ancestral memory is at work here. Either way, I love the poem.

    Reply
    • Monika Cooper

      Sorry, I should have typed John Porter. And I just saw your comment above where you mention the Ambrosian hymn hidden in the exchange of greetings: sweet.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Monika! The part you like best was not made up by me, but comes from the biography, where the author says the book was found, “lying open, so that its leaves were kept in constant motion by the action of the water.” Certainly it would attract attention more easily that way, but it would also run the risk of greater damage. You may very well have heard the story in a book of saints’ lives, or if you have visited England or Scotland, you may have seen the book on exhibit, as I have. This 1000-year-old volume is especially renowned because of the above story being put down in writing so soon after the event of its loss and recovery.

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      The Ambrosian hymn shows how daily reading can contribute to writing. I read Gueranger’s Liturgical Year in the morning, where the seasonal hymn is part of suggested prayer. Going over it day by day as I wrote “Miracle of the Book” revealed the call-and-response qualities of those two lines, even though the second does not immediately follow the first in the hymn.

      Reply
  8. Yael

    Thank you Margaret, I love these exquisitely rhymed little history lessons which are infused with spiritual significance. It’s such an enjoyable way to learn about the past, as well as the future, considering there’s nothing new under the sun.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      You are right, Yael. In the future, we can hope to find treasures from the past that are presently lost, if we only look and pray. Thank you for appreciating how I rhymed this old story.

      Reply
  9. Shaun C. Duncan

    This is another wonderful narrative piece, thematically quite different from your last but no less exciting. I love the choice of rhyme royal – it’s one of my favourite stanza forms and it has a strong connection to Scotland via King James I and Scottish Chaucerians like Dunbar and Douglas. As one who grew up in a Scots family and is very familiar with both accent and pronunciation, I can confirm that the rhyme which closes stanza 4 works well enough. The narrative is so strong that you hardly notice the rhymes anyway.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      So glad you like the story, Shaun. Speaking for characters of far different time periods offers a challenge of distinguishing language and developing themes to make the discourse real in our own time, yet true to the situation–as you know from your own work. I like to write in other lyric genres between the short narratives for a refreshing break. You must be thinking of “Remorseless” as my last narrative, and after it came the meditative “Moselle.” The care in the work is no less, of course. And you are right that choice of form is important. This is my first original piece in rhyme royal. And thanks for supporting that Scots rhyme concluding stanza 4.

      Reply
  10. Tom Rimer

    A delightful poem. I learned a number of things as I re-read it. First of all, my Episcopal tradition, compared to the Catholic one, seems to have a paucity of saints and this was my first encounter with St. Margaret of Scotland, about whom, Google informed me, there are so many good things to be said; I was particularly touched by her providing free boats so that visitors could visit a nearby cathedral across the water. And the rowan tree, which its healing properties, was another happy discovery.

    Then too, your other readers cleared up my initial confusion; I thought from the text (which is in the first person) that it was John Porter who was the author but I understand now that the poem bas by Turgot of Durham. (And by the way, do we know anything of significance about him?) Is this passage used here from the biography he wrote?

    And I certainly agree with several of your readers: it is a shock to find the book under the water, and a miracle indeed that it survived intact! I too gasped when I read those lines.

    And the flow of the rhyme scheme yo chose seems altogether appropriate to the movements within the poem.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Tom. I’m glad you enjoyed the poem and made several discoveries from it. To answer your question about Turgot of Durham, he is important enough to have a Wikipedia article of his own where you can find out much about him. He ultimately became Bishop of Saint Andrews in the north of Scotland, and thus may be referred to as “Bishop Turgot.” That was probably after he wrote Saint Margaret’s biography at the request of her daughter Matilda. The writing could not have happened before Matilda became Queen of England by marrying King Henry I in 1100.

      My poem is based on Turgot’s story of the loss and recovery of the Gospel book, which is written in prose. The story is about 250 words at the end of chapter 3 in the biography. Much of it deals with the beauty of the book and Margaret’s love for it above her other books. Turgot says nothing about anyone else involved, except that the loss was due to carelessness of a servant. The poem’s speaker John Porter is my own creation. You could indeed think he was the writer of the poem because he represents an imaginary Scottish ancestor of mine. I have a great-grandfather named John Porter Mace, but of course our family records don’t go back to the time of Margaret.

      Thanks in particular for saying I used rhyme royal well to show the movement in the poem. That needs advance planning, since rhyme royal stanzas come to strong stops!

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Tom, I neglected earlier to give you my theory of why Turgot chose the miracle of the book as the single miracle story he tells about Margaret. I think the biographer chose a special miracle for Matilda who had requested him to write an account of her mother’s life. Matilda had been sent to England for education at Romsey Abbey, and she may have been the greatest reader among Margaret’s children. If the book were not given to her earlier, it would have been a great wedding gift. Her husband Henry I was far better educated than most kings at the time, and had the nickname “Beauclerc,” meaning excellent scholar. And we know the book somehow got back to England where it had been made. When making the request of Turgot, Matilda regretted that she had not known her mother well, and she would certainly be pleased to know that she was the one of eight children to inherit Margaret’s most precious possession, itself an apparent proof of her mother’s sanctity.

      Reply
  11. R M Moore

    Dear Margaret,
    Thank you for this poem.
    Sincerely ,
    RMMoore

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Dear Mrs. Moore,

      I very much appreciate your reading it and taking the time and making the effort to comment.

      Best wishes to you and your family!

      Reply
  12. Laura Deagon

    Margaret, I enjoyed this poem’s journey through the panic of losing and finding something entrusted to care and how sometimes, miracles are the only explanation. Yes, much easier to follow the flow than the other one we chatted about.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Laura. This miracle story is easy for readers and lovers of books to appreciate!

      Reply
  13. Loretta Garcia

    I loved this poem. I found it delightful and easy to enjoy!
    St. Margaret of Scotland, pray for us
    Thank you Margaret!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Loretta, and yes indeed, may Saint Margaret of Scotland pray for us!

      Reply
  14. Sally Cook

    Dear Margaret –

    I have experienced many small miracles of loss and recovert. Some people sneer at my experiences, which include
    a ring which disappears every three years; then returns
    a recipe which went missing (all copies) only ro be pushed throught the ceiling on a fresh card in my mother’s handwriting

    a beer bottle slammed down on my mother’s dresser (she hated beer and with good reason)
    the remaining beer in the bottle levitated out in the room, then poured out and the bottle thrown on the floor Funny thing, after that I lost my taste for beer.
    Steps down from the attic, three knocks on the hall door, and a cold blast of air when the door was opened
    Many instances of cats returning, both aurally and visually, to say goodbye..
    A third earring added to a pair

    So many of such things have come to me over the years, I now consider them normal!
    What are they? What should I be reading about these

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Dear Sally,

      Since I missed your comment on the day you made it, I sent you an e-mail to give my thoughts on your unusual happenings. They may be little miracles just made for you, and I don’t discount that kind of thing. If a ray of sunshine cheers you on a gloomy day, or if something draws your attention away from routine distractions, that’s good. And it’s good to pay attention, even if you have to wonder what God may be asking you to consider. He made our minds to know Him and our faces, in the end, to behold Him. His calls may come in many different ways, and they do require us to use intelligence and maybe ask counsel. As I said in the e-mail, I’ll see if I can find something easy to read.

      Reply

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