I can come to no other conclusion than that bythe first stock-fatherChaucer means our Lord Jesus.
After the birth of a Chaucer, a Shakspere, or a Milton, it is long before the genial force of a nation can again culminate in such a triumph: time is required for the growth of the conditions. Between the birth of Chaucer and the birth of Shakspere, his sole equal, a period of more than two centuries had to elapse. It is but small compensation for this, that the more original, that is simple, natural, and true to his own nature a man is, the more certain is he to have a crowd of imitators. I do not say that such are of no use in the world. They do not indeed advance art, but they widen the sphere of its operation; for many will talk with the man who know nothing of the master. Too often intending but their own glory, they point the way to the source of it, and are straightway themselves forgotten.
Very little of the poetry of the fifteenth century is worthy of a different fate from that which has befallen it. Possibly the Wars of the Roses may in some measure account for the barrenness of the time; but I do not think they will explain it. In the midst of the commotions of the seventeenth century we find Milton, the only English poet of whom we are yet sure as worthy of being named with Chaucer and Shakspere.
It is in quality, however, and not in quantity that the period is deficient. It had a good many writers of poetry, some of them prolific. John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, a great imitator of Chaucer, was the principal of these, and wrote an enormous quantity of verse. We shall find for our use enough as it were to keep us alive in passing through this desert to the Paradise of the sixteenth century—a land indeed flowing with milk and honey. For even in the desert of the fifteenth are spots luxuriant with the rich grass of language, although they greet the eye with few flowers of individual thought or graphic speech.
Rather than give portions of several of Lydgate's poems, I will give one entire—the best I know. It is entitled,Thonke God of alle.[36]
By a way wandering as I went,Well sore I sorrowed, for sighing sad;Of hard haps that I had hentMourning me made almost mad;[37]
Till a letter all one me lad[38],That well was written on a wall,A blissful word that on I rad[39],That alway said, 'Thank God for[40] all.'
And yet I read furthermore[41]—Full good intent I took there till[42]:Christ may well your state restore;Nought is to strive against his will;it is useless.He may us spare and also spill:Think right well we be his thrall.slaves.What sorrow we suffer, loud or still,Alway thank God for all.
Though thou be both blind and lame,Or any sickness be on thee set,Thou think right well it is no shame—think thou.The grace of God it hath thee gret[43].In sorrow or care though ye be knit,snared.And worldés weal be from thee fall,fallen.I cannot say thou mayst do bet,better.But alway thank God for all.
Though thou wield this world's good,And royally lead thy life in rest,Well shaped of bone and blood,None the like by east nor west;Think God thee sent as him lest;as it pleased him.Riches turneth as a ball;In all manner it is the bestin every condition.Alway to thank God for all.
If thy good beginneth to pass,And thou wax a poor man,Take good comfort and bear good face,And think on him that all good wan;did win.
Christ himself forsooth began—He may renew both bower and hall:No better counsel I ne kanam capable of.But alway thank God for all.
Think on Job that was so rich;He waxed poor from day to day;His beastés died in each ditch;His cattle vanished all away;He was put in poor array,Neither in purple nor in pall,But in simple weed, as clerkes say,clothes: learned men.And alway he thanked God for all.
For Christés love so do we;[44]He may both give and take;In what mischief that we in be,whatever trouble weHe is mighty enough our sorrow to slake. [be in.Full good amends he will us make,And we to him cry or call:if.What grief or woe that do thee thrall,[45]Yet alway thank God for all.
Though thou be in prison cast,Or any distress men do thee bede,offer.For Christés love yet be steadfast,And ever have mind on thy creed;Think he faileth us never at need,The dearworth duke that deem us shall;[46]When thou art sorry, thereof take heed,[47]And alway thank God for all.
Though thy friendes from thee fail,And death by rene hend[48] their life,Why shouldest thou then weep or wail?It is nought against God to strive:it is useless.
Himself maked both man and wife—To his bliss he bring us all:may he bring.However thou thole or thrive,suffer.Alway thank God for all.
What diverse sonde[49] that God thee send,Here or in any other place,Take it with good intent;The sooner God will send his grace.Though thy body be brought full base,low.Let not thy heart adown fall,But think that God is where he was,And alway thank God for all.
Though thy neighbour have world at will,And thou far'st not so well as he,Be not so mad to think him ill,wish.(?)For his wealth envious to be:The king of heaven himself can seeWho takes his sonde,[50] great or small;Thus each man in his degree,I rede thanké God for all.counsel.
For Cristés love, be not so wild,But rule thee by reason within and without;And take in good heart and mindThe sonde that God sent all about;the gospel.(?)Then dare I say withouten doubt,That in heaven is made thy stall.place, seat, room.Rich and poor that low will lowte,bow.Alway thank God for all.
I cannot say there is much poetry in this, but there is much truth and wisdom. There is the finest poetry, however, too, in the line—I give it now letter for letter:—
But think that God ys ther he was.
There is poetry too in the line, if I interpret it rightly as intending the gospel—
The sonde that God sent al abowte.
I shall now make a few extracts from poems of the same century whose authors are unknown.[51] A good many such are extant. With regard to the similarity of those I choose, I would remark, that not only will the poems of the same period necessarily resemble each other, but, where the preservation of any has depended upon the choice and transcription of one person, these will in all probability resemble each other yet more. Here are a few verses from a hymn headedThe Sweetness of Jesus:—
If I for kindness should love my kin,for natural reasons.Then me thinketh in my thought [Kind is nature,By kindly skill I should beginby natural judgment.At him that hath me made of nought;His likeness he set my soul within,And all this world for me hath wrought;As father he fondid my love to win,set about.For to heaven he hath me brought.
Our brother and sister he is by skill,reason.For he so said, and lerid us that lore,taught.That whoso wrought his Father's will,Brethren and sisters to him they wore.were.My kind also he took ther-tille;my nature also he tookFull truly trust I him therefore [for that purpose.That he will never let me spill,perish.But with his mercy salve my sore.
With lovely lore his works to fill,fulfil.Well ought I, wretch, if I were kind—natural.Night and day to work his will,And ever have that Lord in mind.But ghostly foes grieve me ill,spiritual.And my frail flesh maketh me blind;Therefore his mercy I take me till,betake me to.For better bote can I none find.aid.
In my choice of stanzas I have to keep in view some measure of completeness in the result. These poems, however, are mostly very loose in structure. This, while it renders choice easy, renders closeness of unity impossible.
From a poem headed—again from the last line of each stanza—Be my comfort, Christ Jesus,I choose the following four, each possessing some remarkable flavour, tone, or single touch. Note the alliteration in the lovely line, beginning "Bairn y-born." The whole of the stanza in which we find it, sounds so strangely fresh in the midst of its antiquated tones, that we can hardly help asking whether it can be only the quaintness of the expression that makes the feeling appear more real, or whether in very truth men were not in those days nearer in heart, as well as in time, to the marvel of the Nativity.
In the next stanza, how oddly the writer forgets that Jesus himself was a Jew, when, embodying the detestation of Christian centuries in one line, he says,
And tormented with many a Jew!
In the third stanza, I consider the middle quatrain, that is, the four lines beginning "Out of this world," perfectly grand.
The oddness of the last line but one of the fourth stanza is redeemed by the wonderful reality it gives to the faith of the speaker: "See my sorrow, and say Ho!" stopping it as one would call after a man and stop him.
Jesus, thou art wisdom of wit,understanding.Of thy Father full of might!Man's soul—to save it,In poor apparel thou wert pight.pitched, placed,Jesus, thou wert in cradle knit, [dressed.In weed wrapped both day and night; originally,dress ofIn Bethlehem born, as the gospel writ, [any kind.With angels' song, and heaven-light.Bairn y-born of a beerde bright,[52]Full courteous was thy comely cus:kiss.Through virtue of that sweet light,So be my comfort, Christ Jesus.
Jesus, that wert of yearis young,Fair and fresh of hide and hue,When thou wert in thraldom throng,driven.And tormented with many a Jew,When blood and water were out-wrung,For beating was thy body blue;As a clot of clay thou wert for-clong,shrunk.So dead in trough then men thee threw.coffin.But grace from thy grave grew:Thou rose up quick comfort to us.living.For her love that this counsel knew,So be my comfort, Christ Jesus.
Jesus, soothfast God and man,Two kinds knit in one person,The wonder-work that thou beganThou hast fulfilled in flesh and bone.
Out of this world wightly thou wan,thou didst win, or makeLifting up thyself alone; [thy way, powerfully.For mightily thou rose and ranStraight unto thy Father on throne.Now dare man make no more moan—For man it is thou wroughtest thus,And God with man is made at one;So be my comfort, Christ Jesus.
Jesu, my sovereign Saviour,Almighty God, there ben no mo:there are no more—thouChrist, thou be my governor; [art all in all.(?)Thy faith let me not fallen fro.fromJesu, my joy and my succour,In my body and soul also,God, thou be my strongest food, the rhyme fails here.And wisse thou me when me is woe.think on me.Lord, thou makest friend of foe,Let me not live in languor thus,But see my sorrow, and say now "Ho,"And be my comfort, Christ Jesus.
Of fourteen stanzas calledRichard de Castre's Prayer to Jesus, I choose five from the latter half, where the prayer passes from his own spiritual necessities, very tenderly embodied, to those of others. It does our hearts good to see the clouded sun of prayer for oneself break forth in the gladness of blessed entreaty for all men, for them that make Him angry, for saints in trouble, for the country torn by war, for the whole body of Christ and its unity. After the stanza—
Jesus, for the deadly tearsThat thou sheddest for my guilt,Hear and speed my prayérsAnd spare me that I be not spilt;
the best that is in the suppliant shines out thus
Jesu, for them I thee beseechThat wrathen thee in any wise;Withhold from them thy hand of wreche,vengeance.And let them live in thy service.
Jesu, most comfort for to seeOf thy saintis every one,Comfort them that careful be,And help them that be woe-begone.
Jesu, keep them that be good,And amend them that have grieved thee;And send them fruits of earthly food,As each man needeth in his degree.
Jesu, that art, withouten lees,lies.Almighty God in trinity,Cease these wars, and send us peace,With lasting love and charity.
Jesu, that art the ghostly stonespiritual.Of all holy church in middle-erde,the world.Bring thy folds and flocks in one,And rule them rightly with one herd.
We now approach the second revival of literature, preceded in England by the arrival of the art of printing; after which we find ourselves walking in a morning twilight, knowing something of the authors as well as of their work.
I have little more to offer from this century. There are a few religious poems by John Skelton, who was tutor to Henry VIII. But such poetry, though he was a clergyman, was not much in Skelton's manner of mind. We have far better of a similar sort already.
A new sort of dramatic representation had by this time greatly encroached upon the old Miracle Plays. The fresh growth was called Morals or Moral Plays. In them we see the losing victory of invention over the imagination that works with given facts. No doubt in the Moral Plays there is more exercise of intellect as well as of ingenuity; for they consist of metaphysical facts turned into individual existences by personification, and their relations then dramatized by allegory. But their poetry is greatly inferior both in character and execution to that of the Miracles. They have a religious tendency, as everything moral must have, and sometimes they go even farther, as in one, for instance, calledThe Castle of Perseverance, in which we have all the cardinal virtues and all the cardinal sins contending for the possession ofHumanum Genus, theHuman Racebeing presented as a new-born child, who grows old and dies in the course of the play; but it was a great stride in art when human nature and human history began again to be exemplified after a simple human fashion, in the story, that is, of real men and women, instead of by allegorical personifications of the analysed and abstracted constituents of them. Allegory has her place, and a lofty one, in literature; but when her plants cover the garden and run to seed, Allegory herself is ashamed of her children: the loveliest among them are despised for the general obtrusiveness of the family. Imitation not only brings the thing imitated into disrepute, but tends to destroy what original faculty the imitator may have possessed.
Poets now began to write more smoothly—not a great virtue, but indicative of a growing desire for finish, which, in any art, is a great virtue. No doubt smoothness is often confounded with, and mistaken for finish; but you might have a mirror-like polish on the surface of a statue, for instance, and yet the marble be full of inanity, or vagueness, or even vulgarity of result—irrespective altogether of its idea. The influence of Italian poetry reviving once more in the country, roused such men as Wyat and Surrey to polish the sound of their verses; but smoothness, I repeat, is not melody, and where the attention paid to the outside of the form results in flatness, and, still worse, in obscurity, as is the case with both of these poets, little is gained and much is lost.
Each has paraphrased portions of Scripture, but with results of little value; and there is nothing of a religious nature I care to quote from either, except these five lines from an epistle of Sir Thomas Wyat's:
Thyself content with that is thee assigned,And use it well that is to thee allotted;
Then seek no more out of thyself to findThe thing that thou hast sought so long before,For thou shalt feel it sticking in thy mind.
Students of versification will allow me to remark that Sir Thomas was the first English poet, so far as I know, who used theterza rima, Dante's chief mode of rhyming: the above is too small a fragment to show that it belongs to a poem in that manner. It has never been popular in England, although to my mind it is the finest form of continuous rhyme in any language. Again, we owe his friend Surrey far more for being the first to write English blank verse, whether invented by himself or not, than for any matter he has left us in poetic shape.
This period is somewhat barren of such poetry as we want. Here is a portion of the Fifty-first Psalm, translated amongst others into English verse by John Croke, Master in Chancery, in the reign of Henry VIII.
Open my lips first to confessMy sin conceived inwardly;And my mouth after shall expressThy laud and praises outwardly.
If I should offer for my sin,Or sacrifice do unto theeOf beast or fowl, I should beginTo stir thy wrath more towards me.
Offer we must for sacrificeA troubled mind with sorrow's smart:Canst thou refuse? Nay, nor despiseThe humble and the contrite heart.
To us of Sion that be born,If thou thy favour wilt renew,The broken sowle, the temple torn,threshold.The walls and all shall be made new.
The sacrifice then shall we makeOf justice and of pure intent;And all things else thou wilt well takeThat we shall offer or present.
In the works of George Gascoigne I find one poem fit for quoting here. He is not an interesting writer, and, although his verse is very good, there is little likelihood of its ever being read more than it is now. The date of his birth is unknown, but probably he was in his teens when Surrey was beheaded in the year 1547. He is the only poet whose style reminds me of his, although thewhereforewill hardly be evident from my quotation. It is equally flat, but more articulate. I need not detain my reader with remarks upon him. The fact is, I am glad to have something, if not "a cart-load of wholesome instructions," to cast into this Slough of Despond, should it be only to see it vanish. The poem is called
You that have spent the silent nightIn sleep and quiet rest,And joy to see the cheerful lightThat riseth in the east;Now clear your voice, now cheer your heart;Come help me now to sing;Each willing wight come bear a part,To praise the heavenly King.
And you whom care in prison keeps,Or sickness doth suppress,Or secret sorrow breaks your sleeps,Or dolours do distress;Yet bear a part in doleful wise;Yea, think it good accord,And acceptable sacrifice,Each sprite to praise the Lord.
The dreadful night with darksomenessHad overspread the light,And sluggish sleep with drowsinessHad overpressed our might:A glass wherein you may beholdEach storm that stops our breath,Our bed the grave, our clothes like mould,And sleep like dreadful death.
Yet as this deadly night did lastBut for a little space,And heavenly day, now night is past,Doth shew his pleasant face;So must we hope to see God's faceAt last in heaven on high,When we have changed this mortal placeFor immortality.
This is not so bad, but it is enough. There are six stanzas more of it. I transcribe yet another, that my reader may enjoy a smile in passing. He is "moralizing" the aspects of morning:
The carrion crow, that loathsome beast,Which cries against the rain,Both for his hue and for the rest,The Devil resembleth plain;And as with guns we kill the crow,For spoiling our relief,The Devil so must we overthrow,With gunshot of belief.
So fares the wit, when it walks abroad to do its business without the heart that should inspire it.
Here is one good stanza from hisDe Profundis:
But thou art good, and hast of mercy store;Thou not delight'st to see a sinner fall;Thou hearkenest first, before we come to call;Thine ears are set wide open evermore;Before we knock thou comest to the door.Thou art more prest to hear a sinner cry,ready.Than he is quick to climb to thee on high.Thy mighty name be praised then alway:Let faith and fearTrue witness bearHow fast they stand which on thy mercy stay.
Here follow two of unknown authorship, belonging apparently to the same period.
Why fearest thou the outward foe,When thou thyself thy harm dost feed?Of grief or hurt, of pain or woe,Within each thing is sown the seed.So fine was never yet the cloth,No smith so hard his iron did beat,But th' one consuméd was with moth,Th' other with canker all to-freate.fretted away.
The knotty oak and wainscot oldWithin doth eat the silly worm;[53]Even so a mind in envy rolledAlways within it self doth burn.Thus every thing that nature wrought,Within itself his hurt doth bear!No outward harm need to be sought,Where enemies be within so near.
Lest this poem should appear to any one hardly religious enough for the purpose of this book, I would remark that it reminds me of what our Lord says about the true source of defilement: it is what is bred in the man that denies him. Our Lord himself taught a divine morality, which is as it were the body of love, and is as different from mere morality as«the living body is from the dead.
TOTUS MUNDUS IN MALIGNO POSITUS.The whole world lieth in the Evil One.
Complain we may; much is amiss;Hope is nigh gone to have redress;These days are ill, nothing sure is;Kind heart is wrapt in heaviness.
The stern is broke, the sail is rent,helm or rudder—theThe ship is given to wind and wave; [thing to steer with.All help is gone, the rock present,That will be lost, what man can save?that which will be lost.
When power lacks care and forceth not,careth.When care is feeble and may not,is not able.When might is slothful and will not,Weeds may grow where good herbs cannot.
Wily is witty, brainsick is wise;wiliness is countedTruth is folly, and might is right; [prudence.Words are reason, and reason is lies;The bad is good, darkness is light.
Order is broke in things of weight:Measure and mean who doth nor flee?who does not avoidTwo things prevail, money and sleight; [moderation?To seem is better than to be.
Folly and falsehood prate apace;Truth under bushel is fain to creep;Flattery is treble, pride sings the bass,The mean, the best part, scant doth peep.
With floods and storms thus be we tost:Awake, good Lord, to thee we cry;Our ship is almost sunk and lost;Thy mercy help our misery.
Man's strength is weak; man's wit is dull;Man's reason is blind these things t'amend:Thy hand, O Lord, of might is full—Awake betimes, and help us send.
In thee we trust, and in no wight;Save us, as chickens under the hen;Our crookedness thou canst make right—Glory to thee for aye. Amen.
The apprehensions of the wiser part of the nation have generally been ahead of its hopes. Every age is born with an ideal; but instead of beholding that ideal in the future where it lies, it throws it into the past. Hence the lapse of the nation must appear tremendous, even when she is making her best progress.
We have now arrived at the period of English history in every way fullest of marvel—the period of Elizabeth. As in a northern summer the whole region bursts into blossom at once, so with the thought and feeling of England in this glorious era.
The special development of the national mind with which we are now concerned, however, did not by any means arrive at its largest and clearest result until the following century. Still its progress is sufficiently remarkable. For, while everything that bore upon the mental development of the nation must bear upon its poetry, the fresh vigour given by the doctrines of the Reformation to the sense of personal responsibility, and of immediate relation to God, with the grand influences, both literary and spiritual, of the translated, printed, and studied Bible, operated more immediately upon its devotional utterance.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century, we begin to find such verse as I shall now present to my readers. Only I must first make a few remarks upon the great poem of the period: I mean, of course,The Faerie Queen.
I dare not begin to set forth after any fashion the profound religious truth contained in this poem; for it would require a volume larger than this to set forth even that of the first book adequately. In this case it is well to remember that the beginning of comment, as well as of strife, is like the letting out of water.
The direction in which the wonderful allegory of the latter moves may be gathered from the following stanza, the first of the eighth canto:
Ay me! how many perils do enfoldThe righteous man to make him daily fail;Were not that heavenly grace doth him uphold,itunderstood.And steadfast Truth acquit him out of all!Her love is firm, her care continual,So oft as he, through his own foolish prideOr weakness, is to sinful bands made thrall:Else should this Redcross Knight in bands have died,For whose deliverance she this Prince doth thither guide.
Nor do I judge it good to spend much of my space upon remarks personal to those who have not been especially writers of sacred verse. When we come to the masters of such song, we cannot speak of their words without speaking of themselves; but when in the midst of many words those of the kind we seek are few, the life of the writer does not justify more than a passing notice here.
We know but little of Spenser's history: if we might know all, I do not fear that we should find anything to destroy the impression made by his verse—that he was a Christian gentleman, a noble and pure-minded man, of highest purposes and aims.
His style is injured by the artistic falsehood of producing antique effects in the midst of modern feeling.[54] It was scarcely more justifiable, for instance, in Spenser's time than it would be in ours to useglitterandforglittering; or to return to a large use of alliteration, three, four, sometimes even five words in the same line beginning with the same consonant sound. Everything should look like what it is: prose or verse should be written in the language of its own era. No doubt the wide-spreading roots of poetry gather to it more variety of expression than prose can employ; and the very nature of verse will make it free of times and seasons, harmonizing many opposites. Hence, through its mediation, without discord, many fine old words, by the loss of which the language has grown poorer and feebler, might be honourably enticed to return even into our prose. But nothing ought to be brought backbecauseit is old. That it is out of use is a presumptive argument that it ought to remain out of use: good reasons must be at hand to support its reappearance. I must not, however, enlarge upon this wide-reaching question; for of the two portions of Spenser's verse which I shall quote, one of them is not at all, the other not so much as his great poem, affected with this whim.
The first I give is a sonnet, one of eighty-eight which he wrote to his wife before their marriage. Apparently disappointed in early youth, he did not fall in love again,—at least there is no sign of it that I know,—till he was middle-aged. But then—woman was never more grandly wooed than was his Elizabeth. I know of no marriage-present worthy to be compared with the Epithalamion which he gave her "in lieu of many ornaments,"—one of the most stately, melodious, and tender poems in the world, I fully believe.
But now for the sonnet—the sixty-eighth of theAmoretti:
Most glorious Lord of Life! that, on this day,Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,And having harrowed hell, didst bring awayCaptivity thence captive, us to win:This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin;And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die,Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,May live for ever in felicity!And that thy love we weighing worthily,May likewise love thee for the same again;And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,With love may one another entertain.So let us love, dear love, like as we ought:Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
Those who have never felt the need of the divine, entering by the channel of will and choice and prayer, for the upholding, purifying, and glorifying of that which itself first created human, will consider this poem untrue, having its origin in religious affectation. Others will think otherwise.
The greater part of what I shall next quote is tolerably known even to those who have made little study of our earlier literature, yet it may not be omitted here. It is fromAn Hymne of Heavenly Love, consisting of forty-one stanzas, written in what was calledRime Royal—a favourite with Milton, and, next to the Spenserian, in my opinion the finest of stanzas. Its construction will reveal itself. I take two stanzas from the beginning of the hymn, then one from the heart of it, and the rest from the close. It gives no feeling of an outburst of song, but rather of a brooding chant, most quiet in virtue of the depth of its thoughtfulness. Indeed, all his rhythm is like the melodies of water, and I could quote at least three passages in which he speaks of rhythmic movements and watery progressions together. His thoughts, and hence his words, flow like a full, peaceful stream, diffuse, with plenteousness unrestrained.
Before this world's great frame, in which all thingsAre now contained, found any being place,Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas[55] wingsAbout that mighty bound which doth embraceThe rolling spheres, and parts their hours by space,That high eternal power, which now doth moveIn all these things, moved in itself by love.
It loved itself, because itself was fair,For fair is loved; and of itself begotLike to itself his eldest son and heir,Eternal, pure, and void of sinful blot,
The firstling of his joy, in whom no jotOf love's dislike or pride was to be found,Whom he therefore with equal honour crowned.
* * * * *
Out of the bosom of eternal bliss,In which he reignéd with his glorious Sire,He down descended, like a most demissehumble.And abject thrall, in flesh's frail attire,That he for him might pay sin's deadly hire,And him restore unto that happy stateIn which he stood before his hapless fate.
* * * * *
O blessed well of love! O flower of grace!O glorious Morning-Star! O Lamp of Light!Most lively image of thy Father's face!Eternal King of Glory, Lord of might!Meek Lamb of God, before all worlds behight!promised.How can we thee requite for all this good?Or what can prize that thy most precious blood?equal in value.
Yet nought thou ask'st in lieu of all this loveBut love of us for guerdon of thy pain:Ay me! what can us less than that behove?[56]Had he required life of[57] us again,Had it been wrong to ask his own with gain?He gave us life, he it restored lost;Then life were least, that us so little cost.
But he our life hath left unto us free—Free that was thrall, and blessed that was banned;enslaved; cursed.Nor aught demands but that we loving be,As he himself hath loved us aforehand,And bound thereto with an eternal band—Him first to love that us[58] so dearly bought,And next our brethren, to his image wrought.
Him first to love great right and reason is,Who first to us our life and being gave,And after, when we faréd had amiss,Us wretches from the second death did save;And last, the food of life, which now we have,Even he himself, in his dear sacrament,To feed our hungry souls, unto us lent.
Then next, to love our brethren that were madeOf that self mould, and that self Maker's hand,That[59] we, and to the same again shall fade,Where they shall have like heritage of land,the same grave-room.However here on higher steps we stand;Which also were with selfsame price redeemed,That we, however, of us light esteemed.as.
And were they not, yet since that loving LordCommanded us to love them for his sake,Even for his sake, and for his sacred word,Which in his last bequest he to us spake,We should them love, and with their needs partake;share theirKnowing that, whatsoe'er to them we give, [needs.We give to him by whom we all do live.
Such mercy he by his most holy redeinstruction.Unto us taught, and to approve it true,Ensampled it by his most righteous deed,Shewing us mercy, miserable crew!That we the like should to the wretches[60] shew,And love our brethren; thereby to approveHow much himself that loved us we love.
Then rouse thyself, O earth! out of thy soil,In which thou wallowest like to filthy swine,And dost thy mind in dirty pleasures moyle,defile.Unmindful of that dearest Lord of thine;Lift up to him thy heavy clouded eyne,That thou this sovereign bounty mayst behold,And read through love his mercies manifold.
Begin from first, where he encradled wasIn simple cratch, wrapt in a wad of hay,a rack or crib.Between the toilful ox and humble ass;And in what rags, and in what base arrayThe glory of our heavenly riches lay,When him the silly[61] shepherds came to see,Whom greatest princes sought on lowest knee.
From thence read on the story of his life,His humble carriage, his unfaulty ways,His cankered foes, his fights, his toil, his strife,His pains, his poverty, his sharp assays,temptationsortrials.Through which he passed his miserable days,Offending none, and doing good to all,Yet being maliced both by great and small.
And look at last, how of most wretched wightsHe taken was, betrayed, and false accused;How with most scornful taunts and fell despitesHe was reviled, disgraced, and foul abused;How scourged, how crowned, how buffeted, how bruised;And, lastly, how 'twixt robbers crucified,With bitter wounds through hands, through feet, and side!
* * * * *
With sense whereof whilst so thy softened spiritIs inly touched, and humbled with meek zealThrough meditation of his endless merit,Lift up thy mind to th' author of thy weal,And to his sovereign mercy do appeal;Learn him to love that lovéd thee so dear,And in thy breast his blessed image bear.
With all thy heart, with all thy soul and mind,Thou must him love, and his behests embrace;commands.All other loves with which the world doth blindWeak fancies, and stir up affections base,Thou must renounce and utterly displace,And give thyself unto him full and free,That full and freely gave himself to thee.
* * * * *
Thenceforth all world's desire will in thee die,And all earth's glory, on which men do gaze,Seem dust and dross in thy pure-sighted eye,Compared to that celestial beauty's blaze,Whose glorious beams all fleshly sense do dazeWith admiration of their passing light,Blinding the eyes and lumining the sprite.
Then shalt thy ravished soul inspiréd beWith heavenly thoughts far above human skill,reason.And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainly seeThe Idea of his pure glory present stillBefore thy face, that all thy spirits shall fillWith sweet enragement of celestial love,Kindled through sight of those fair things above.
There is a companion to the poem of which these verses are a portion, calledAn Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, filled like this, and like two others on Beauty and Love, with Platonic forms both of thought and expression; but I have preferred quoting a longer part of the former to giving portions of both. My reader will recognize in the extract a fuller force of intellect brought to bear on duty; although it would be unwise to take a mind like Spenser's for a type of more than the highest class of the age. Doubtless the division in the country with regard to many of the Church's doctrines had its part in bringing out and strengthening this tendency to reasoning which is so essential to progress. Where religion itself is not the most important thing with the individual, all reasoning upon it must indeed degenerate into strifes of words,vermiculatequestions, as Lord Bacon calls them—such, namely, as like the hoarded manna reveal the character of the owner by breeding of worms—yet on no questions may the light of the candle of the Lord, that is, the human understanding, be cast with greater hope of discovery than on those of religion, those, namely, that bear upon man's relation to God and to his fellow. The most partial illumination of this region, the very cause of whose mystery is the height and depth of itstruth, is of more awful value to the human being than perfect knowledge, if such were possible, concerning everything else in the universe; while, in fact, in this very region, discovery may bring with it a higher kind of conviction than can accompany the results of investigation in any other direction. In these grandest of all thinkings, the great men of this time showed a grandeur of thought worthy of their surpassing excellence in other noblest fields of human labour. They thought greatly because they aspired greatly.
Sir Walter Raleigh was a personal friend of Edmund Spenser. They were almost of the same age, the former born in 1552, the latter in the following year. A writer of magnificent prose, itself full of religion and poetry both in thought and expression, he has not distinguished himself greatly in verse. There is, however, one remarkable poem fit for my purpose, which I can hardly doubt to be his. It is calledSir Walter Raleigh's Pilgrimage. The probability is that it was written just after his condemnation in 1603—although many years passed before his sentence was carried into execution.
Give me my scallop-shell[62] of Quiet;My staff of Faith to walk upon;My scrip of Joy, immortal diet;My bottle of Salvation;My gown of Glory, hope's true gage;And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.Blood must be my body's balmer,—No other balm will there be given—Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,Travelleth towards the land of Heaven;Over the silver mountains,Where spring the nectar fountains—There will I kissThe bowl of Bliss,And drink mine everlasting fillUpon every milken hill:My soul will be a-dry before,But after, it will thirst no more.Then by that happy blissful day,More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,That have cast off their rags of clay,And walk apparelled fresh like me:I'll take them first,To quench their thirst,And taste of nectar's suckets,sweet things—things to suck.At those clear wellsWhere sweetness dwells,Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.And when our bottles and all weAre filled with immortality,Then the blessed paths we'll travel,Strowed with rubies thick as gravel.Ceilings of diamonds! sapphire floors!High walls of coral, and pearly bowers!—From thence to Heaven's bribeless hall,Where no corrupted voices brawl;No conscience molten into gold;No forged accuser bought or sold;No cause deferred; no vain-spent journey;For there Christ is the King's Attorney,Who pleads for all without degrees,irrespective of rank.And he hath angels, but no fees.And when the grand twelve million juryOf our sins, with direful fury,'Gainst our souls black verdicts give,Christ pleads his death, and then we live.Be thou my speaker, taintless Pleader,Unblotted Lawyer, true Proceeder!Thou giv'st salvation even for alms,—Not with a bribéd lawyer's palms.And this is my eternal pleaTo him that made heaven, earth, and sea,That, since my flesh must die so soon,And want a head to dine next noon,—Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread,Set on my soul an everlasting head:Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,To tread those blest paths which before I writ.Of death and judgment, heaven and hellWho oft doth think, must needs die well.
This poem is a somewhat strange medley, with a confusion of figure, and a repeated failure in dignity, which is very far indeed from being worthy of Raleigh's prose. But it is very remarkable how wretchedly some men will show, who, doing their own work well, attempt that for which practice has not—to use a word of the time—enabledthem. There is real power in the poem, however, and the confusion is far more indicative of the pleased success of an unaccustomed hand than of incapacity for harmonious work. Some of the imagery, especially the "crystal buckets," will suggest those grotesque drawings calledEmblems, which were much in use before and after this period, and, indeed, were only a putting into visible shape of such metaphors and similes as some of the most popular poets of the time, especially Doctor Donne, indulged in; while the profusion of earthly riches attributed to the heavenly paths and the places of repose on the journey, may well recall Raleigh's own descriptions of South American glories. Englishmen of that era believed in an earthly Paradise beyond the Atlantic, the wonderful reports of whose magnificence had no doubt a share in lifting the imaginations and hopes of the people to the height at which they now stood.
There may be an appearance of irreverence in the way in which he contrasts the bribeless Hall of Heaven with the proceedings at his own trial, where he was browbeaten, abused, and, from the very commencement, treated as a guilty man by Sir Edward Coke, the king's attorney. He even puns with the wordsangelsandfees. Burning from a sense of injustice, however, and with the solemnity of death before him, he could not be guilty ofconsciousirreverence, at least. But there is another remark I have to make with regard to the matter, which will bear upon much of the literature of the time: even the great writers of that period had such a delight in words, and such a command over them, that like their skilful horsemen, who enjoyed making their steeds show off the fantastic paces they had taught them, they played with the words as they passed through their hands, tossing them about as a juggler might his balls. But even herein the true master of speech showed his masterdom: his play must not be by-play; it must contribute to the truth of the idea which was taking form in those words. We shall see this more plainly when we come to transcribe some of Sir Philip Sidney's work. There is no irreverence in it. Nor can I take it as any sign of hardness that Raleigh should treat the visual image of his own anticipated death with so much coolness, if the writer of a little elegy on his execution, when Raleigh was fourteen years older than at the presumed date of the foregoing verses, describes him truly when he says:
I saw in every stander-byPale death, life only in thy eye.
The following hymn is also attributed to Raleigh. If it has less brilliance of fancy, it has none of the faults of the preceding, and is far more artistic in construction and finish, notwithstanding a degree of irregularity.
Rise, oh my soul, with thy desires to heaven;And with divinest contemplation useThy time, where time's eternity is given;And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse,But down in darkness let them lie:So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die!
And thou, my soul, inspired with holy flame,View and review, with most regardful eye,That holy cross, whence thy salvation came,On which thy Saviour and thy sin did die!For in that sacred object is much pleasure,And in that Saviour is my life, my treasure.
To thee, O Jesus, I direct my eyes;To thee my hands, to thee my humble knees,To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice;To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees—To thee myself,—myself and all I give;To thee I die; to thee I only live!
See what an effect of stately composure quiet artistic care produces, and how it leaves the ear of the mind in a satisfied peace!
There are a few fine lines in the poem. The last two lines of the first stanza are admirable; the last two of the second very weak. The last stanza is good throughout.
But it would be very unfair to judge Sir Walter by his verse. His prose is infinitely better, and equally displays the devout tendency of his mind—a tendency common to all the great men of that age. The worst I know of him is the selfishly prudent advice he left behind for his son. No doubt he had his faults, but we must not judge a man even by what he says in an over-anxiety for the prosperity of his child.
Another remarkable fact in the history of those great men is that they were all men of affairs. Raleigh was a soldier, a sailor, a discoverer, a politician, as well as an author. His friend Spenser was first secretary to Lord Grey when he was Governor of Ireland, and afterwards Sheriff of Cork. He has written a large treatise on the state of Ireland. But of all the men of the age no one was more variously gifted, or exercised those gifts in more differing directions, than the man who of them all was most in favour with queen, court, and people—Philip Sidney. I could write much to set forth the greatness, culture, balance, and scope of this wonderful man. Renowned over Europe for his person, for his dress, for his carriage, for his speech, for his skill in arms, for his horsemanship, for his soldiership, for his statesmanship, for his learning, he was beloved for his friendship, his generosity, his steadfastness, his simplicity, his conscientiousness, his religion. Amongst the lamentations over his death printed in Spenser's works, there is one poem by Matthew Roydon, a few verses of which I shall quote, being no vain eulogy. Describing his personal appearance, he says:
A sweet, attractive kind of grace,A full assurance given by looks,Continual comfort in a face,The lineaments of Gospel books!—I trow, that countenance cannot lieWhose thoughts are legible in the eye.
Was ever eye did see that face,Was ever ear did hear that tongue,Was ever mind did mind his graceThat ever thought the travel long?But eyes and ears, and every thought,Were with his sweet perfections caught.
HisArcadiais a book full of wisdom and beauty. None of his writings were printed in his lifetime; but theArcadiawas for many years after his death one of the most popular books in the country. His prose, as prose, is not equal to his friend Raleigh's, being less condensed and stately. It is too full of fancy in thought and freak in rhetoric to find now-a-days more than a very limited number of readers; and a good deal of the verse that is set in it, is obscure and uninteresting, partly from some false notions of poetic composition which he and his friend Spenser entertained when young; but there is often an exquisite art in his other poems.
The first I shall transcribe is a sonnet, to which the Latin words printed below it might be prefixed as a title:Splendidis longum valedico nugis.
Leave me, O love, which reachest but to dust;And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:What ever fades but fading pleasure brings.Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy mightTo that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the lightThat doth both shine and give us sight to see.Oh take fast hold; let that light be thy guide,In this small course which birth draws out to death;And think how evil[63] becometh him to slideWho seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see:Eternal love, maintain thy life in me.
Before turning to the treasury of his noblest verse, I shall give six lines from a poem in theArcadia—chiefly for the sake of instancing what great questions those mighty men delighted in:
What essence destiny hath; if fortune be or no;Whence our immortal souls to mortal earth do stow[64]:
What life it is, and how that all these lives do gather,With outward maker's force, or like an inward father.Such thoughts, me thought, I thought, and strained my single mind,Then void of nearer cares, the depth of things to find.
Lord Bacon was not the only one, in such an age, to think upon the mighty relations of physics and metaphysics, or, as Sidney would say, "of naturall and supernaturall philosophic." For a man to do his best, he must be upheld, even in his speculations, by those around him.
In the specimen just given, we find that our religious poetry has gone down into the deeps. There are indications of such a tendency in the older times, but neither then were the questions so articulate, nor were the questioners so troubled for an answer. The alternative expressed in the middle couplet seems to me the most imperative of all questions—both for the individual and for the church: Is man fashioned by the hands of God, as a potter fashioneth his vessel; or do we indeed come forth from his heart? Is power or love the making might of the universe? He who answers this question aright possesses the key to all righteous questions.
Sir Philip and his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, made between them a metrical translation of the Psalms of David. It cannot be determined which are hers and which are his; but if I may conclude anything from a poem by the sister, to which I shall by and by refer, I take those I now give for the brother's work.
The souls of the following psalms have, in the version I present, transmigrated into fairer forms than I have found them occupy elsewhere. Here is a grand hymn for the whole world:Sing unto the Lord.
Sing, and let your song be new,Unto him that never endeth;Sing all earth, and all in you—Sing to God, and bless his name.Of the help, the health he sendeth,Day by day new ditties frame.
Make each country know his worth:Of his acts the wondered storyPaint unto each people forth.For Jehovah great alone,All the gods, for awe and glory,Far above doth hold his throne.
For but idols, what are theyWhom besides mad earth adoreth?He the skies in frame did lay.Grace and honour are his guides;Majesty his temple storeth;Might in guard about him bides.
Kindreds come! Jehovah give—O give Jehovah all together,Force and fame whereso you live.Give his name the glory fit:Take your off'rings, get you thither,Where he doth enshrined sit.
Go, adore him in the placeWhere his pomp is most displayed.Earth, O go with quaking pace,Go proclaim Jehovah king:Stayless world shall now be stayed;Righteous doom his rule shall bring.
Starry roof and earthy floor,Sea, and all thy wideness yieldeth,Now rejoice, and leap, and roar.Leafy infants of the wood,Fields, and all that on you feedeth,Dance, O dance, at such a good!
For Jehovah cometh, lo!Lo to reign Jehovah cometh!Under whom you all shall go.He the world shall rightly guide—Truly, as a king becometh,For the people's weal provide.
Attempting to give an ascending scale of excellence—I do not mean in subject but in execution—I now turn to the national hymn,God is our Refuge.
God gives us strength, and keeps us sound—A present help when dangers call;Then fear not we, let quake the ground,And into seas let mountains fall;Yea so let seas withalIn watery hills arise,As may the earthly hills appalWith dread and dashing cries.
For lo, a river, streaming joy,With purling murmur safely slides,That city washing from annoy,In holy shrine where God resides.God in her centre bides:What can this city shake?God early aids and ever guides:Who can this city take?
When nations go against her bent,And kings with siege her walls enround;The void of air his voice doth rent,Earth fails their feet with melting ground.To strength and keep us sound,The God of armies arms;Our rock on Jacob's God we found,Above the reach of harms.
O come with me, O come, and viewThe trophies of Jehovah's hand!What wrecks from him our foes pursue!How clearly he hath purged our land!By him wars silent stand:He brake the archer's bow,Made chariot's wheel a fiery brand,And spear to shivers go.
Be still, saith he; know, God am I;Know I will be with conquest crownedAbove all nations—raiséd high,High raised above this earthly round.To strength and keep us sound,The God of armies arms;Our rock on Jacob's God we found,Above the reach of harms.
"The God of armies arms" is a grand line.
Now let us have a hymn of Nature—a far finer, I think, than either of the preceding:Praise waiteth for thee.
Sion it is where thou art praiséd,Sion, O God, where vows they pay thee:There all men's prayers to thee raiséd,Return possessed of what they pray thee.There thou my sins, prevailing to my shame,Dost turn to smoke of sacrificing flame.
Oh! he of bliss is not deceivéd,disappointed.Whom chosen thou unto thee takest;And whom into thy court receivéd,Thou of thy checkrole[65] number makest:The dainty viands of thy sacred storeShall feed him so he shall not hunger more.
From thence it is thy threat'ning thunder—Lest we by wrong should be disgracéd—Doth strike our foes with fear and wonder,O thou on whom their hopes are placéd,Whom either earth doth stedfastly sustain,Or cradle rocks the restless wavy plain.
Thy virtue stays the mighty mountains,power.Girded with power, with strength abounding.The roaring dam of watery fountainsthe "dam of fountains"Thy beck doth make surcease her sounding. [is the ocean.When stormy uproars toss the people's brain,That civil sea to calm thou bring'st again.political, as opposed[to natural.
Where earth doth end with endless ending,All such as dwell, thy signs affright them;And in thy praise their voices spending,Both houses of the sun delight them—-Both whence he comes, when early he awakes,And where he goes, when evening rest he takes.
Thy eye from heaven this land beholdeth,Such fruitful dews down on it raining,That storehouse-like her lap enfoldethAssuréd hope of ploughman's gaining:Thy flowing streams her drought doth temper so,That buried seed through yielding grave doth grow.
Drunk is each ridge of thy cup drinking;Each clod relenteth at thy dressing;groweth soft.Thy cloud-borne waters inly sinking,Fair spring sprouts forth, blest with thy blessing.The fertile year is with thy bounty crowned;And where thou go'st, thy goings fat the ground.
Plenty bedews the desert places;A hedge of mirth the hills encloseth;The fields with flocks have hid their faces;A robe of corn the valleys clotheth.Deserts, and hills, and fields, and valleys all,Rejoice, shout, sing, and on thy name do call.
The first stanza seems to me very fine, especially the verse, "Return possessed of what they pray thee." The third stanza might have been written after the Spanish Philip's Armada, but both King David and Sir Philip Sidney were dead before God brake that archer's bow.[66] The fourth line of the next stanza is a noteworthy instance of the sense gathering to itself the sound, and is in lovely contrast with the closing line of the same stanza.
One of the most remarkable specimens I know of the play with words of which I have already spoken as common even in the serious writings of this century, is to be found in the next line: "Where earth doth end with endless ending." David, regarding the world as a flat disc, speaks of theendsof the earth: Sidney, knowing it to be a globe, uses the word of the Psalmist, but re-moulds and changes the form of it, with a power fantastic, almost capricious in its wilfulness, yet causing it to express the fact with a marvel of precision. Weseethat the earth ends; we cannot reach the end we see; therefore the "earth doth end with endless ending." It is a case of that contradiction in the form of the words used, which brings out a truth in another plane as it were;—a paradox in words, not in meaning, for the words can bear no meaning but the one which reveals its own reality.
The following little psalm,The Lord reigneth, is a thunderous organ-blast of praise. The repetition of words in the beginning of the second stanza produces a remarkably fine effect.
Clothed with state, and girt with might,Monarch-like Jehovah reigns;He who earth's foundation pight—pitched.Pight at first, and yet sustains;He whose stable throne disdainsMotion's shock and age's flight;He who endless one remainsOne, the same, in changeless plight.
Rivers—yea, though rivers roar,Roaring though sea-billows rise,Vex the deep, and break the shore—Stronger art thou, Lord of skies!Firm and true thy promise liesNow and still as heretofore:Holy worship never diesIn thy house where we adore.
I close my selections from Sidney with one which I consider the best of all: it is the first half ofLord, thou hast searched me.
O Lord, in me there lieth noughtBut to thy search revealed lies;For when I sitThou markest it;No less thou notest when I rise:Yea, closest closet of my thoughtHath open windows to thine eyes.
Thou walkest with me when I walkWhen to my bed for rest I go,I find thee there,And every where:Not youngest thought in me doth grow,No, not one word I cast to talkBut, yet unuttered, thou dost know.
If forth I march, thou goest before;If back I turn, thou com'st behind:So forth nor backThy guard I lack;Nay, on me too thy hand I find.Well I thy wisdom may adore,But never reach with earthy mind.
To shun thy notice, leave thine eye,O whither might I take my way?To starry sphere?Thy throne is there.To dead men's undelightsome stay?There is thy walk, and there to lieUnknown, in vain I should assay.
O sun, whom light nor flight can match!Suppose thy lightful flightful wingsThou lend to me,And I could fleeAs far as thee the evening brings:Ev'n led to west he would me catch,Nor should I lurk with western things.
Do thou thy best, O secret night,In sable veil to cover me:Thy sable veilShall vainly fail:With day unmasked my night shall be;For night is day, and darkness light,O father of all lights, to thee.
Note the most musical play with the wordslightandflightin the fifth stanza. There is hardly a line that is not delightful.
They were a wonderful family those Sidneys. Mary, for whom Philip wrote his chief work, thence called "The Countess of Pembroke'sArcadia," was a woman of rare gifts. The chief poem known to be hers is calledOur Saviour's Passion. It is full of the faults of the age. Sir Philip's sport with words is so graceful and ordered as to subserve the utterance of the thought: his sister's fanciful convolutions appear to be there for their own sake—certainly are there to the obscuration of the sense. The difficulty of the poem arises in part, I believe, from corruption, but chiefly from a certain fantastic way of dealing with thought as well as word of which I shall have occasion to say more when we descend a little further. It is, in the main, a lamentation over our Saviour's sufferings, in which the countess is largely guilty of the very feminine fault of seeking to convey the intensity of her emotions by forcing words, accumulating forms, and exaggerating descriptions. This may indeed convince as to the presence of feeling, but cannot communicate the feeling itself.Theright word will at once generate a sympathy of which all agonies of utterance will only render the willing mind more and more incapable.