The Childish Pleasure
Author: Luiken, Jan, 1649-1712
Image Title: The Childish Pleasure
Scripture Reference:
- Hebrews 13 (further images / scripture text)
Description: A number of individuals who have gathered around the World attempt to scrape or cut a piece from it for themselves. The Dutch artist and poet Jan Luiken (1649-1712), whose initials are at the lower right, was responsible for drawing and etching this emblem and for the poem that accompanies it (below). The attendant scripture text is Hebrews 13:5.
Poem:
Each picks and scratches at the Earth,
(In his Whole, of little value)
But for a little piece and a Share,
For no one gets him Whole:
And what would it profit him who won her?
Since he, ere long, would again have to leave her!
And be parted from those riches,
Shoved aside under sand and dust,
Like others, who before him,
Were praised for such riches,
Though it was only an illusion
And what it was, has long since gone.
And through this fruitless sweating,
The Enemy keeps her neglected,
So that they, in return for the small Earthly Share,
Neglect the Heavenly, Whole.
Because he who doesn’t seek, how should he find,
For he allows his eyes to be covered,
With a gilded and silken cloth,
And gropes in a wrong corner,
Like the blind man without eyes,
And was cheated at the very highest of all.
(Translation by Josephine V. Brown, with editorial assistance from William G. Stryker)
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