From the nature of their adopted mode, we cannot look for much poetry of a devotional kind from the dramatists. That mode admitting of no utterance personal to the author, and requiring the scope of a play to bring out the intended truth, it is no wonder that, even in the dramas of Shakspere, profound as is the teaching they contain, we should find nothing immediately suitable to our purpose; while neither has he left anything in other form approaching in kind what we seek. Ben Jonson, however, born in 1574, who may be regarded as the sole representative of learning in the class, has left, amongst a large number of small pieces, threePoems of Devotion, whose merit may not indeed be great, but whose feeling is, I think, genuine. Whatever were his faults, and they were not few, hypocrisy was not one of them. His nature was fierce and honest. He might boast, but he could not pretend. His oscillation between the reformed and the Romish church can hardly have had other cause than a vacillating conviction. It could not have served any prudential end that we can see, to turn catholic in the reign of Elizabeth, while in prison for killing in a duel a player who had challenged him.
O holy, blessed, glorious TrinityOf persons, still one God in Unity,The faithful man's believed mystery,Help, help to lift
Myself up to thee, harrowed, torn, and bruisedBy sin and Satan, and my flesh misused.As my heart lies—in pieces, all confused—O take my gift.
All-gracious God, the sinner's sacrifice,A broken heart, thou wert not wont despise,But, 'bove the fat of rams or bulls, to prizeAn offering meet
For thy acceptance: Oh, behold me right,And take compassion on my grievous plight!What odour can be, than a heart contrite,To thee more sweet?
Eternal Father, God, who didst createThis All of nothing, gav'st it form and fate,And breath'st into it life and light, with stateTo worship thee!
Eternal God the Son, who not deniedstTo take our nature, becam'st man, and diedst,To pay our debts, upon thy cross, and criedstAll's done in me!
Eternal Spirit, God from both proceeding,Father and Son—the Comforter, in breedingPure thoughts in man, with fiery zeal them feedingFor acts of grace!
Increase those acts, O glorious TrinityOf persons, still one God in Unity,Till I attain the longed-for mysteryOf seeing your face,
Beholding one in three, and three in one,A Trinity, to shine in Union—The gladdest light, dark man can think upon—O grant it me,
Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, you three,All co-eternal in your majesty,Distinct in persons, yet in unityOne God to see;
My Maker, Saviour, and my Sanctifier,To hear, to mediate,[82] sweeten my desire,With grace, with love, with cherishing entire!O then, how blest
Among thy saints elected to abide,And with thy angels placéd, side by side!But in thy presence truly glorified,Shall I there rest!
Hear me, O God!A broken heartIs my best part:Use still thy rod,That I may proveTherein thy love.
If thou hadst notBeen stern to me,But left me free,I had forgotMyself and thee.
For sin's so sweetAs minds ill bentthat.Rarely repentUntil they meetTheir punishment.
Who more can craveThan thou hast done?Thou gay'st a Son
To free a slave,First made of nought,With all since bought.
Sin, death, and hellHis glorious nameQuite overcame;Yet I rebel,And slight the same.
But I'll come inBefore my lossMe farther toss,As sure to winUnder his cross.
I sing the birth was born to-night,The author both of life and light;The angels so did sound it.And like the ravished shepherds said,Who saw the light, and were afraid,Yet searched, and true they found it.
The Son of God, the eternal King,That did us all salvation bring,And freed the soul from danger;He whom the whole world could not take,The Word which heaven and earth did make,Was now laid in a manger.
The Father's wisdom willed it so;The Son's obedience knew noNo;Both wills were in one stature;And, as that wisdom had decreed,The Word was now made flesh indeed,And took on him our nature.
What comfort by him do we win,Who made himself the price of sin,To make us heirs of glory!To see this babe, all innocence,A martyr born in our defence!—Can man forget this story?
Somewhat formal and artificial, no doubt; rugged at the same time, like him who wrote them. When a man would utter that concerning which he has only felt, not thought, he can express himself only in the forms he has been taught, conventional or traditional. Let his powers be ever so much developed in respect of other things, here, where he has not meditated, he must understand as a child, think as a child, speak as a child. He can as yet generate no sufficing or worthy form natural to himself. But the utterance is not therefore untrue. There was no professional bias to cause the stream of Ben Jonson's verses to flow in that channel. Indeed, feeling without thought, and the consequent combination of impulse to speak with lack of matter, is the cause of much of that common-place utterance concerning things of religion which is so wearisome, but which therefore it is not always fair to despise as cant.
About the same age as Ben Jonson, though the date of his birth is unknown, I now come to mention Thomas Heywood, a most voluminous writer of plays, who wrote also a book, chiefly in verse, calledThe Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, a strange work, in which, amongst much that is far from poetic, occur the following remarkable metaphysico-religious verses. He had strong Platonic tendencies, interesting himself chiefly however in those questions afterwards pursued by Dr. Henry More, concerning witches and such like subjects, which may be called the shadow of Platonism.
I have wandered like a sheep that's lost,To find Thee out in every coast:WithoutI have long seeking bin,been.Whilst thou, the while, abid'stwithin.Through every broad street and strait laneOf this world's city, but in vain,I have enquired. The reason why?I sought thee ill: for how could IFind theeabroad, when thou, mean space,Hadst madewithinthy dwelling-place?
I sent my messengers about,To try if they could find thee out;But all was to no purpose still,Because indeed they sought thee ill:For how could they discover theeThat saw not when thou entered'st me?
Mine eyes could tell me? If he were,Not coloured, sure he came not there.If not by sound, my ears could sayHe doubtless did not pass my way.My nose could nothing of him tell,Because my God he did not smell.None such I relished, said my taste,And therefore me he never passed.My feeling told me that none suchThere entered, for he none did touch.Resolved by them how should I be,Since none of all these are in thee,
In thee, my God? Thou hast no hueThat man's frail optic sense can view;No sound the ear hears; odour noneThe smell attracts; all taste is goneAt thy appearance; where doth failA body, how can touch prevail?What even the brute beasts comprehend—To think thee such, I should offend.
Yet when I seek my God, I enquireFor light than sun and moon much higher,More clear and splendrous, 'bove all lightWhich the eye receives not, 'tis so bright.I seek a voice beyond degreeOf all melodious harmony:The ear conceives it not; a smellWhich doth all other scents excel:No flower so sweet, no myrrh, no nard,Or aloës, with it compared;Of which the brain not sensible is.I seek a sweetness—such a blissAs hath all other sweets surpassed,And never palate yet could taste.I seek that to contain and holdNo touch can feel, no embrace enfold.
So far this light the rays extends,As that no place it comprehends.So deep this sound, that though it speakIt cannot by a sense so weakBe entertained. A redolent graceThe air blows not from place to place.A pleasant taste, of that delightIt doth confound all appetite.A strict embrace, not felt, yet leavesThat virtue, where it takes it cleaves.This light, this sound, this savouring grace,This tasteful sweet, this strict embrace,No place contains, no eye can see,My God is, and there's none but he.
Very remarkable verses from a dramatist! They indicate substratum enough for any art if only the art be there. Even those who cannot enter into the philosophy of them, which ranks him among the mystics of whom I have yet to speak, will understand a good deal of it symbolically: for how could he be expected to keep his poetry and his philosophy distinct when of themselves they were so ready to run into one; or in verse to define carefully betwixt degree and kind, when kinds themselves may rise by degrees? To distinguish without separating; to be able to see that what in their effects upon us are quite different, may yet be a grand flight of ascending steps, "to stop—no record hath told where," belongs to the philosopher who is not born mutilated, but is a poet as well.
John Fletcher, likewise a dramatist, the author of the following poem, was two years younger than Ben Jonson. It is, so far as I am aware, the sole non-dramatic voice he has left behind him. Its opening is an indignant apostrophe to certain men of pretended science, who in his time were much consulted—the Astrologers.
You that can look through heaven, and tell the stars;Observe their kind conjunctions, and their wars;Find out new lights, and give them where you please—To those men honours, pleasures, to those ease;You that are God's surveyors, and can showHow far, and when, and why the wind doth blow;Know all the charges of the dreadful thunder,And when it will shoot over, or fall under;Tell me—by all your art I conjure ye—Yes, and by truth—what shall become of me.Find out my star, if each one, as you say,Have his peculiar angel, and his way;Observe my fate; next fall into your dreams;Sweep clean your houses, and new-line your schemes;[83]Then say your worst. Or have I none at all?Or is it burnt out lately? or did fall?Or am I poor? not able? no full flame?My star, like me, unworthy of a name?Is it your art can only work on thoseThat deal with dangers, dignities, and clothes,With love, or new opinions? You all lie:A fishwife hath a fate, and so have I—But far above your finding. He that gives,Out of his providence, to all that lives—And no man knows his treasure, no, not you;—
* * * * *
He that made all the stars you daily read,And from them filch a knowledge how to feed,Hath hid this from you. Your conjectures allAre drunken things, not how, but when they fall:Man is his own star, and the soul that canRender an honest, and a perfect man,Commands all light, all influence, all fate;Nothing to him falls early, or too late.Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;And when the stars are labouring, we believeIt is not that they govern, but they grieveFor stubborn ignorance. All things that areMade for our general uses, are at war—Even we among ourselves; and from the strifeYour first unlike opinions got a life.Oh man! thou image of thy Maker's good,What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy bloodHis spirit is that built thee? What dull senseMakes thee suspect, in need, that Providence?Who made the morning, and who placed the lightGuide to thy labours? Who called up the night,And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showersIn hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers?Who gave thee knowledge? Who so trusted thee,To let thee grow so near himself, the Tree?[84]Must he then be distrusted? Shall his frameDiscourse with him why thus and thus I am?He made the angels thine, thy fellows all;Nay, even thy servants, when devotions call.Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim,To seek a saving influence, and lose him?Can stars protect thee? Or can poverty,Which is the light to heaven, put out his eye?He is my star; in him all truth I find,All influence, all fate; and when my mindIs furnished with his fulness, my poor storyShall outlive all their age, and all their glory.The hand of danger cannot fall amissWhen I know what, and in whose power it is;Nor want, the cause[85] of man, shall make me groan:A holy hermit is a mind alone.[86]Doth not experience teach us, all we can,To work ourselves into a glorious man?
* * * * *
My mistress then be knowledge and fair truth;So I enjoy all beauty and all youth!
* * * * *
Affliction, when I know it, is but this—A deep alloy, whereby man tougher isTo bear the hammer; and the deeper still,We still arise more image of his will;Sickness, an humorous cloud 'twixt us and light;And death, at longest, but another night,Man is his own star, and that soul that canBe honest, is the only perfect man.
There is a tone of contempt in the verses which is not religious; but they express a true philosophy and a triumph of faith in God. The wordhonestis here equivalent totrue.
I am not certain whether I may not now be calling up a singer whose song will appear hardly to justify his presence in the choir. But its teaching is of high import, namely, of content and cheerfulness and courage, and being both worthy and melodious, it gravitates heavenward. The singer is yet another dramatist: I presume him to be Thomas Dekker. I cannot be certain, because others were concerned with him in the writing of the drama from which I take it. He it is who, in an often-quoted passage, styles our Lord "The first true gentleman that ever breathed;" just as Chaucer, in a poem I have given, calls him "The first stock-father of gentleness."
We may call the little lyric
Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?Oh, sweet content!Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?Oh, punishment!Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexedTo add to golden numbers, golden numbers?Oh, sweet content!Chorus.—Work apace, apace, apace, apace;Honest labour bears a lovely face.
Canst drink the waters of the crispéd spring?Oh, sweet content!Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears?Oh, punishment!Then he that patiently want's burden bears,No burden bears, but is a king, a king!Oh, sweet content!Chorus.—Work apace, apace, apace, apace;Honest labour bears a lovely face.
It is a song of the poor in spirit, whose is the kingdom of heaven. But if my co-listeners prefer, we will call it the voice, not of one who sings in the choir, but of one who "tunes his instrument at the door."
Sir John Beaumont, born in 1582, elder brother to the dramatist who wrote along with Fletcher, has left amongst his poems a few fine religious ones. From them I choose the following:
Fair eastern star, that art ordained to runBefore the sages, to the rising sun,Here cease thy course, and wonder that the cloudOf this poor stable can thy Maker shroud:Ye, heavenly bodies, glory to be bright,And are esteemed as ye are rich in light;But here on earth is taught a different way,Since under this low roof the highest lay.Jerusalem erects her stately towers,Displays her windows, and adorns her bowers;Yet there thou must not cast a trembling spark:Let Herod's palace still continue dark;Each school and synagogue thy force repels,There Pride, enthroned in misty errors, dwells;The temple, where the priests maintain their choir,Shall taste no beam of thy celestial fire,While this weak cottage all thy splendour takes:A joyful gate of every chink it makes.Here shines no golden roof, no ivory stair,No king exalted in a stately chair,Girt with attendants, or by heralds styled,But straw and hay enwrap a speechless child;Yet Sabae's lords before this babe unfoldTheir treasures, offering incense, myrrh, and gold.The crib becomes an altar: therefore diesNo ox nor sheep; for in their fodder liesThe Prince of Peace, who, thankful for his bed,Destroys those rites in which their blood was shed:The quintessence of earth he takes and[87] fees,And precious gums distilled from weeping trees;Rich metals and sweet odours now declareThe glorious blessings which his laws prepare,To clear us from the base and loathsome floodOf sense, and make us fit for angels' food,Who lift to God for us the holy smokeOf fervent prayers with which we him invoke,And try our actions in that searching fire,By which the seraphims our lips inspire:No muddy dross pure minerals shall infect,We shall exhale our vapours up direct:No storms shall cross, nor glittering lights defacePerpetual sighs which seek a happy place.
The creatures, no longer offered on his altar, standing around the Prince of Life, to whom they have given a bed, is a lovely idea. The end is hardly worthy of the rest, though there is fine thought involved in it.
The following contains an utterance of personal experience, the truth of which will be recognized by all to whom heavenly aspiration and needful disappointment are not unknown.
O thou who sweetly bend'st my stubborn will,Who send'st thy stripes to teach and not to kill!Thy cheerful face from me no longer hide;Withdraw these clouds, the scourges of my pride;I sink to hell, if I be lower thrown:I see what man is, being left alone.My substance, which from nothing did begin,Is worse than nothing by the weight of sin:I see myself in such a wretched stateAs neither thoughts conceive, nor words relate.How great a distance parts us! for in theeIs endless good, and boundless ill in me.All creatures prove me abject, but how lowThou only know'st, and teachest me to know.To paint this baseness, nature is too base;This darkness yields not but to beams of grace.Where shall I then this piercing splendour find?Or found, how shall it guide me, being blind?Grace is a taste of bliss, a glorious gift,Which can the soul to heavenly comforts lift:It will not shine to me, whose mind is drownedIn sorrows, and with worldly troubles bound;It will not deign within that house to dwell,Where dryness reigns, and proud distractions swell.Perhaps it sought me in those lightsome daysOf my first fervour, when few winds did raiseThe waves, and ere they could full strength obtain,Some whispering gale straight charmed them down again;When all seemed calm, and yet the Virgin's childOn my devotions in his manger smiled;While then I simply walked, nor heed could takeOf complacence, that sly, deceitful snake;When yet I had not dangerously refusedSo many calls to virtue, nor abusedThe spring of life, which I so oft enjoyed,Nor made so many good intentions void,Deserving thus that grace should quite depart,And dreadful hardness should possess my heart:Yet in that state this only good I found,That fewer spots did then my conscience wound;Though who can censure whether, in those times,judgThe want of feeling seemed the want of crimes?If solid virtues dwell not but in pain,I will not wish that golden age againBecause it flowed with sensible delightsOf heavenly things: God hath created nightsAs well as days, to deck the varied globe;Grace comes as oft clad in the dusky robeOf desolation, as in white attire,Which better fits the bright celestial choir.Some in foul seasons perish through despair,But more through boldness when the days are fair.This then must be the medicine for my woes—To yield to what my Saviour shall dispose;To glory in my baseness; to rejoiceIn mine afflictions; to obey his voice,As well when threatenings my defects reprove,As when I cherished am with words of love;To say to him, in every time and place,"Withdraw thy comforts, so thou leave thy grace."
Surely this is as genuine an utterance, whatever its merits as a poem—and those I judge not small—as ever flowed from Christian heart!
Chiefly for the sake of its beauty, I give the last passage of a poem written upon occasion of the feasts of the Annunciation and the Resurrection falling on the same day.
Let faithful souls this double feast attendIn two processions. Let the first descendThe temple's stairs, and with a downcast eyeUpon the lowest pavement prostrate lie:In creeping violets, white lilies, shineTheir humble thoughts and every pure design.The other troop shall climb, with sacred heat,The rich degrees of Solomon's bright seat:steps
In glowing roses fervent zeal they bear,And in the azure flower-de-lis appearCelestial contemplations, which aspireAbove the sky, up to the immortal choir.
William Drummond of Hawthornden, a Scotchman, born in 1585, may almost be looked upon as the harbinger of a fresh outburst of word-music. No doubt all the great poets have now and then broken forth in lyrical jubilation. Ponderous Ben Jonson himself, when he takes to song, will sing in the joy of the very sound; but great men have always so much graver work to do, that they comparatively seldom indulge in this kind of melody. Drummond excels in madrigals, or canzonets—baby-odes or songs—which have more of wing and less of thought than sonnets. Through the greater part of his verse we hear a certain muffled tone of the sweetest, like the music that ever threatens to break out clear from the brook, from the pines, from the rain-shower,—never does break out clear, but remains a suggested, etherially vanishing tone. His is avoix voilée, or veiled voice of song. It is true that in the time we are now approaching far more attention was paid not merely to the smoothness but to the melody of verse than any except the great masters had paid before; but some are at the door, who, not being great masters, yet do their inferior part nearly as well as they their higher, uttering a music of marvellous and individual sweetness, which no mere musical care could secure, but which springs essentially from music in the thought gathering to itself musical words in melodious division, and thus fashioning for itself a fitting body. The melody of their verse is all their own—as original as the greatest art-forms of the masters. Of Drummond, then, here are two sonnets on the Nativity; the first spoken by the angels, the second by the shepherds.
The Angels.
Run, shepherds, run where Bethlehem blest appears.We bring the best of news; be not dismayed:A Saviour there is born more old than years,Amidst heaven's rolling height this earth who stayed.In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maidA weakling did him bear, who all upbears;There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid,To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres:Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth.This is that night—no, day, grown great with bliss,In which the power of Satan broken is:In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth!Thus singing, through the air the angels swam,And cope of stars re-echoëd the same.
The Shepherds.
O than the fairest day, thrice fairer night!Night to best days, in which a sun doth riseOf which that golden eye which clears the skiesIs but a sparkling ray, a shadow-light!And blessed ye, in silly pastors' sight,simple.Mild creatures, in whose warm[88] crib now liesThat heaven-sent youngling, holy-maid-born wight,Midst, end, beginning of our prophecies!Blest cottage that hath flowers in winter spread!Though withered—blessed grass, that hath the graceTo deck and be a carpet to that place!Thus sang, unto the sounds of oaten reed,Before the babe, the shepherds bowed on knees;And springs ran nectar, honey dropped from trees.
No doubt there is a touch of the conventional in these. Especially in the close of the last there is an attempt to glorify the true by the homage of the false. But verses which make us feel the marvel afresh—the marvel visible and credible by the depth of its heart of glory—make us at the same time easily forget the discord in themselves.
The following, not a sonnet, although it looks like one, measuring the lawful fourteen lines, is the closing paragraph of a poem he callsA Hymn to the Fairest Fair.
O king, whose greatness none can comprehend,Whose boundless goodness doth to all extend!Light of all beauty! ocean without ground,That standing flowest, giving dost abound!Rich palace, and indweller ever blest,Never not working, ever yet in rest!What wit cannot conceive, words say of thee,Here, where, as in a mirror, we but seeShadows of shadows, atoms of thy might,Still owly-eyed while staring on thy light,Grant that, released from this earthly jail,And freed of clouds which here our knowledge veil,In heaven's high temples, where thy praises ring,I may in sweeter notes hear angels sing.
That is, "May I in heaven hear angels sing what wit cannot conceive here."
Drummond excels in nobility of speech, and especially in the fine line and phrase, so justly but disproportionately prized in the present day. I give an instance of each:
Here do seraphimBurn with immortal love; there cherubimWith other noble people of the light,As eaglets in the sun, delight their sight.
* * * * *
Like to a lightning through the welkin hurled,That scores with flames the way, and every eyeWith terror dazzles as it swimmeth by.
Here are six fine verses, in the heroic couplet, fromAn Hymn of theResurrection.
So a small seed that in the earth lies hidAnd dies—reviving bursts her cloddy side;Adorned with yellow locks, of new is born,And doth become a mother great with corn;Of grains bring hundreds with it, which when oldEnrich the furrows with a sea of gold.
But I must content myself now with a little madrigal, the only one fit for my purpose. Those which would best support what I have said of his music are not of the kind we want. Unfortunately, the end of this one is not equal to the beginning.
New doth the sun appear;The mountains' snows decay;Crowned with frail flowers comes forth the baby year.My soul, time posts away;And thou yet in that frost,Which flower and fruit hath lost,As if all here immortal were, dost stay!For shame! thy powers awake;Look to that heaven which never night makes black;And there, at that immortal sun's bright rays,Deck thee with flowers which fear not rage of days.
I now come to make mention of two gifted brothers, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, both clergymen, the sons of a clergyman and nephews to the Bishop of Bristol, therefore the cousins of Fletcher the dramatist, a poem by whom I have already given Giles, the eldest, is supposed to have been born in 1588. From his poemChrist's Victory and Triumph, I select three passages.
To understand the first, it is necessary to explain that while Christ is on earth a dispute between Justice and Mercy, such as is often represented by the theologians, takes place in heaven. We must allow the unsuitable fiction attributing distraction to the divine Unity, for the sake of the words in which Mercy overthrows the arguments of Justice. For the poet unintentionally nullifies the symbolism of the theologian, representing Justice as defeated. He forgets that the grandest exercise of justice is mercy. The confusion comes from the fancy that justice meansvengeance upon sin, and notthe doing of what is right. Justice can be at no strife with mercy, for not to do what is just would be most unmerciful.
Mercy first sums up the arguments Justice has been employing against her, in the following stanza:
He was but dust; why feared he not to fall?And being fallen how can he hope to live?Cannot the hand destroy him that made all?Could he not take away as well as give?Should man deprave, and should not God deprive?Was it not all the world's deceiving spirit(That, bladdered up with pride of his own merit,Fell in his rise) that him of heaven did disinherit?
To these she then proceeds to make reply:
He was but dust: how could he stand before him?And being fallen, why should he fear to die?Cannot the hand that made him first, restore him?Depraved of sin, should he deprivéd lieOf grace? Can he not find infirmityThat gave him strength?—Unworthy the forsakingHe is, whoever weighs (without mistaking)Or maker of the man or manner of his making.[89]
Who shall thy temple incense any more,Or to thy altar crown the sacrifice,Or strew with idle flowers the hallowed floor?Or what should prayer deck with herbs and spice,why.Her vials breathing orisons of price,If all must pay that which all cannot pay?O first begin with me, and Mercy slay,And thy thrice honoured Son, that now beneath doth stray.
But if or he or I may live and speak,And heaven can joy to see a sinner weep,Oh! let not Justice' iron sceptre breakA heart already broke, that low doth creep,And with prone humbless her feet's dust doth sweep.Must all go by desert? Is nothing free?Ah! if but those that only worthy be,None should thee ever see! none should thee ever see!
What hath man done that man shall not undoSince God to him is grown so near akin?Did his foe slay him? He shall slay his foe.Hath he lost all? He all again shall win.Is sin his master? He shall master sin.Too hardy soul, with sin the field to try!The only way to conquer was to fly;But thus long death hath lived, and now death's self shall die.
He is a path, if any be misled;He is a robe, if any naked be;If any chance to hunger, he is bread;If any be a bondman, he is free;If any be but weak, how strong is he!To dead men life he is, to sick men health,To blind men sight, and to the needy wealth;A pleasure without loss, a treasure without stealth.
Who can forget—never to be forgot—The time that all the world in slumber lies,When like the stars the singing angels shotTo earth, and heaven awakéd all his eyesTo see another sun at midnight rise?On earth was never sight of peril fame;pareil: equal.For God before man like himself did frame,But God himself now like a mortal man became.
* * * * *
The angels carolled loud their song of peace;The cursed oracles were stricken dumb;To see their Shepherd the poor shepherds press;To see their King, the kingly Sophies come;And them to guide unto his master's home,A star comes dancing up the orient,That springs for joy over the strawy tent,Where gold, to make their prince a crown, they all present.
No doubt there are here touches of execrable taste, such as the punning trick withmanandmanners, suggesting a false antithesis; or the opposition of the wordsdepraveanddeprive; but we have in them only an instance of how the meretricious may co-exist with the lovely. The passage is fine and powerful, notwithstanding its faults and obscurities.
Here is another yet more beautiful:
So down the silver streams of Eridan,[90]On either side banked with a lily wall,Whiter than both, rides the triumphant swan,And sings his dirge, and prophesies his fall,Diving into his watery funeral!But Eridan to Cedron must submitHis flowery shore; nor can he envy it,If, when Apollo sings, his swans do silent sit.[91]
That heavenly voice I more delight to hearThan gentle airs to breathe; or swelling wavesAgainst the sounding rocks their bosoms tear;[92]Or whistling reeds that rutty[93] Jordan laves,And with their verdure his white head embraves;adorns.To chide the winds; or hiving bees that flyAbout the laughing blossoms[94] of sallowy,[95]Rocking asleep the idle grooms[96] that lazy lie.
And yet how can I hear thee singing go,When men, incensed with hate, thy death foreset?Or else, why do I hear thee sighing so,When thou, inflamed with love, their life dost get,[97]That love and hate, and sighs and songs are met?But thus, and only thus, thy love did craveTo send thee singing for us to thy grave,While we sought thee to kill, and thou sought'st us to save.
When I remember Christ our burden bears,I look for glory, but find misery;I look for joy, but find a sea of tears;I look that we should live, and find him die;I look for angels' songs, and hear him cry:Thus what I look, I cannot find so well;Or rather, what I find I cannot tell,These banks so narrow are, those streams so highly swell.
We would gladly eliminate the few common-place allusions; but we must take them with the rest of the passage. Besides far higher merits, it is to my ear most melodious.
One more passage of two stanzas from Giles Fletcher, concerning the glories of heaven: I quote them for the sake of earth, not of heaven.
Gaze but upon the house where man embowers:With flowers and rushes pavéd is his way;Where all the creatures are his servitours:The winds do sweep his chambers every day,And clouds do wash his rooms; the ceiling gay,Starréd aloft, the gilded knobs embrave:If such a house God to another gave,How shine those glittering courts he for himself will have!
And if a sullen cloud, as sad as night,In which the sun may seem embodiéd,Depured of all his dross, we see so white,Burning in melted gold his watery head,Or round with ivory edges silvered;What lustre super-excellent will heLighten on those that shall his sunshine seeIn that all-glorious court in which all glories be!
These brothers were intense admirers of Spenser. To be like him Phineas must write an allegory; and such an allegory! Of all the strange poems in existence, surely this is the strangest. ThePurple Islandis man, whose body is anatomically described after the allegory of a city, which is then peopled with all the human faculties personified, each set in motion by itself. They say the anatomy is correct: the metaphysics are certainly good. The action of the poem is just another form of theHoly Warof John Bunyan—all the good and bad powers fighting for the possession of the Purple Island. What renders the conception yet more amazing is the fact that the whole ponderous mass of anatomy and metaphysics, nearly as long as theParadise Lost, is put as a song, in a succession of twelve cantos, in the mouth of a shepherd, who begins a canto every morning to the shepherds and shepherdesses of the neighbourhood, and finishes it by folding-time in the evening. And yet the poem is full of poetry. He triumphs over his difficulties partly by audacity, partly by seriousness, partly by the enchantment of song. But the poem will never be read through except by students of English literature. It is a whole; its members are well-fitted; it is full of beauties—in parts they swarm like fire-flies; andyetit is not a good poem. It is like a well-shaped house, built of mud, and stuck full of precious stones. I do not care, in my limited space, to quote from it. Never was there a more incongruous dragon of allegory.
Both brothers were injured, not by their worship of Spenser, but by the form that worship took—imitation. They seem more pleased to produce a line or stanza that shall recall a line or stanza of Spenser, than to produce a fine original of their own. They even copy lines almost word for word from their great master. This is pure homage: it was their delight that such adaptations should be recognized—just as it was Spenser's hope, when he inserted translated stanzas from Tasso'sJerusalem DeliveredinThe Fairy Queen, to gain the honour of a true reproduction. Yet, strange fate for imitators! both, but Giles especially, were imitated by a greater than their worship—even by Milton. They make Spenser's worse; Milton makes theirs better. They imitate Spenser, faults and all; Milton glorifies their beauties.
From the smaller poems of Phineas, I choose the following version of
From the deeps of grief and fear,O Lord, to thee my soul repairs:From thy heaven bow down thine ear;Let thy mercy meet my prayers.Oh! if thou mark'st what's done amiss,What soul so pure can see thy bliss?
But with thee sweet Mercy stands,Sealing pardons, working fear.Wait, my soul, wait on his hands;Wait, mine eye; oh! wait, mine ear:If he his eye or tongue affords,Watch all his looks, catch all his words.
As a watchman waits for day,And looks for light, and looks again:When the night grows old and gray,To be relieved he calls amain:So look, so wait, so long, mine eyes,To see my Lord, my sun, arise.
Wait, ye saints, wait on our Lord,For from his tongue sweet mercy flows;Wait on his cross, wait on his word;Upon that tree redemption grows:He will redeem his IsraelFrom sin and wrath, from death and hell.
I shall now give two stanzas of his version of the 127th Psalm.
If God build not the house, and layThe groundwork sure—whoever build,It cannot stand one stormy day.If God be not the city's shield,If he be not their bars and wall,In vain is watch-tower, men, and all.
Though then thou wak'st when others rest,Though rising thou prevent'st the sun,Though with lean care thou daily feast,Thy labour's lost, and thou undone;But God his child will feed and keep,And draw the curtains to his sleep.
Compare this with a version of the same portion by Dr. Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, who, no great poet, has written some good verse. He was about the same age as Phineas Fletcher.
Except the Lord the house sustain,The builder's labour is in vain;Except the city he defend,And to the dwellers safety send,In vain are sentinels prepared,Or arméd watchmen for the guard.
You vainly with the early lightArise, or sit up late at nightTo find support, and daily eatYour bread with sorrow earned and sweat;When God, who his beloved keeps,This plenty gives with quiet sleeps.
What difference do we find? That the former has the more poetic touch, the latter the greater truth. The former has just lost the one precious thing in the psalm; the latter has kept it: that care is as useless as painful, for God gives us while we sleep, and not while we labour.
George Wither, born in 1588, therefore about the same age as Giles Fletcher, was a very different sort of writer indeed. There could hardly be a greater contrast. Fancy, and all her motley train, were scarcely known to Wither, save by the hearing of the ears.
He became an eager Puritan towards the close of his life, but his poetry chiefly belongs to the earlier part of it. Throughout it is distinguished by a certain straightforward simplicity of good English thought and English word. His hymns remind me, in the form of their speech, of Gascoigne. I shall quote but little; for, although there is a sweet calm and a great justice of reflection and feeling, there is hardly anything of that warming glow, that rousing force, that impressive weight in his verse, which is the chief virtue of the lofty rhyme.
The best in a volume of ninetyHymns and Songs of the Church, is, I think,The Author's Hymnat the close, of which I give three stanzas. They manifest the simplicity and truth of the man, reflecting in their very tone his faithful, contented, trustful nature.
By thy grace, those passions, troubles,And those wants that me opprest,Have appeared as water-bubbles,Or as dreams, and things in jest:For, thy leisure still attending,I with pleasure saw their ending.
Those afflictions and those terrors,Which to others grim appear,Did but show me where my errorsAnd my imperfections were;But distrustful could not make meOf thy love, nor fright nor shake me.
Those base hopes that would possess me,And those thoughts of vain reputeWhich do now and then oppress me,Do not, Lord, to me impute;And though part they will not from me,Let them never overcome me.
He has written another similar volume, but much larger, and of a somewhat extraordinary character. It consists of no fewer than two hundred and thirty-three hymns, mostly long, upon an incredible variety of subjects, comprehending one for every season of nature and of the church, and one for every occurrence in life of which the author could think as likely to confront man or woman. Of these subjects I quote a few of the more remarkable, but even from them my reader can have little conception of the variety in the book:A Hymn whilst we are washing;In a clear starry Night;A Hymn for a House-warming;After a great Frost or Snow;For one whose Beauty is much praised;For one upbraided with Deformity;For a Widower or a Widow delivered from a troublesome Yokefellow;For a Cripple;For a Jailor;For a Poet.
Here is a portion of one which I hope may be helpful to some of my readers.
What ails my heart, that in my breastIt thus unquiet lies;And that it now of needful restDeprives my tiréd eyes?
Let not vain hopes, griefs, doubts, or fears,Distemper so my mind;But cast on God thy thoughtful cares,And comfort thou shalt find.
In vain that soul attempteth ought,And spends her thoughts in vain,Who by or in herself hath soughtDesiréd peace to gain.
On thee, O Lord, on thee therefore,My musings now I place;Thy free remission I implore,And thy refreshing grace.
Forgive thou me, that when my mindOppressed began to be,I sought elsewhere my peace to find,Before I came to thee.
And, gracious God, vouchsafe to grant,Unworthy though I am,The needful rest which now I want,That I may praise thy name.
Before examining the volume, one would say that no man could write so many hymns without frequent and signal failure. But the marvel here is, that the hymns are all so very far from bad. He can never have written in other than a gentle mood. There must have been a fine harmony in his nature, thatkepthim, as it were. This peacefulness makes him interesting in spite of his comparative flatness. I must restrain remark, however, and give five out of twelve stanzas of another of his hymns.
Sweet baby, sleep; what ails my dear?What ails my darling thus to cry?Be still, my child, and lend thine earTo hear me sing thy lullaby.My pretty lamb, forbear to weep;Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep.
Whilst thus thy lullaby I sing,For thee great blessings ripening be;Thine eldest brother is a king,And hath a kingdom bought for thee.Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
A little infant once was he,And strength in weakness then was laidUpon his virgin mother's knee,That power to thee might be conveyed.Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Within a manger lodged thy Lord,Where oxen lay, and asses fed;Warm rooms we do to thee afford,An easy cradle or a bed.Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Thou hast, yet more to perfect this,A promise and an earnest got,Of gaining everlasting bliss,Though thou, my babe, perceiv'st it not.Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
I think George Wither's verses will grow upon the reader of them, tame as they are sure to appear at first. HisHallelujah, or Britain's Second Remembrancer, from which I have been quoting, is well worth possessing, and can be procured without difficulty.
We now come to a new sort, both of man and poet—still a clergyman. It is an especial pleasure to write the name of Robert Herrick amongst the poets of religion, for the very act records that the jolly, careless Anacreon of the church, with his head and heart crowded with pleasures, threw down at length his wine-cup, tore the roses from his head, and knelt in the dust.
Nothing bears Herrick's name so unrefined as the things Dr. Donne wrote in his youth; but the impression made by his earlier poems is of a man of far shallower nature, and greatly more absorbed in the delights of the passing hour. In the year 1648, when he was fifty-seven years of age, being prominent as a Royalist, he was ejected from his living by the dominant Puritans; and in that same year he published his poems, of which the latter part and later written is hisNoble Numbers, or religious poems. We may wonder at his publishing theHesperidesalong with them, but we must not forget that, while the manners of a time are never to be taken as a justification of what is wrong, the judgment of men concerning what is wrong will be greatly influenced by those manners—not necessarily on the side of laxity. It is but fair to receive his own testimony concerning himself, offered in these two lines printed at the close of hisHesperides:
To his book's end this last line he'd have placed:Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste.
We find the same artist in theNoble Numbersas in theHesperides, but hardly the same man. However far he may have been from the model of a clergyman in the earlier period of his history, partly no doubt from the society to which his power of song made him acceptable, I cannot believe that these later poems are the results of mood, still less the results of mere professional bias, or even sense of professional duty.
In a good many of his poems he touches the heart of truth; in others, even those of epigrammatic form, he must be allowed to fail in point as well as in meaning. As to his art-forms, he is guilty of great offences, the result of the same passion for lawless figures and similitudes which Dr. Donne so freely indulged. But his verses are brightened by a certain almost childishly quaint and innocent humour; while the tenderness of some of them rises on the reader like the aurora of the coming sun of George Herbert. I do not forget that, even if some of his poems were printed in 1639, years before that George Herbert had done his work and gone home: my figure stands in relation to the order I have adopted.
Some of his verse is homelier than even George Herbert's homeliest. One of its most remarkable traits is a quaint thanksgiving for the commonest things by name—not the less real that it is sometimes even queer. For instance:
God gives not only corn for need,But likewise superabundant seed;Bread for our service, bread for show;Meat for our meals, and fragments too:He gives not poorly, taking someBetween the finger and the thumb,But for our glut, and for our store,Fine flour pressed down, and running o'er.
Here is another, delightful in its oddity. We can fancy the merry yet gracious poet chuckling over the vision of the child and the fancy of his words.
Here a little child I stand,Heaving up my either hand;Cold as paddocks though they be,frogs.Here I lift them up to thee,For a benison to fallOn our meat, and on us all.Amen.
I shall now give two or three of his longer poems, which are not long, and then a few of his short ones. The best known is the following, but it is not so well known that I must therefore omit it.
In the hour of my distress,When temptations me oppress,And when I my sins confess,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When I lie within my bed,Sick in heart, and sick in head,And with doubts discomforted,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the house doth sigh and weep,And the world is drowned in sleep,Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the artless doctor seeswithout skill.No one hope, but of his fees,And his skill runs on the lees,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When his potion and his pill,His or none or little skill,Meet for nothing but to kill,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the passing-bell doth toll,And the furies in a shoalCome to fright a parting soul,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the tapers now burn blue,And the comforters are few,And that number more than true,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the priest his last hath prayed,And I nod to what is said,'Cause my speech is now decayed,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When God knows I'm tossed about,Either with despair or doubt,Yet, before the glass be out,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the tempter me pursu'thWith the sins of all my youth,And half damns me with untruth,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the flames and hellish criesFright mine ears and fright mine eyes,And all terrors me surprise,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the judgment is revealed,And that opened which was sealed;When to thee I have appealed,Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
In this world, the Isle of Dreams,While we sit by sorrow's streams,Tears and terrors are our themes,Reciting;
But when once from hence we fly,More and more approaching nighUnto young eternity,Uniting;
In that whiter island, whereThings are evermore sincere;Candour here and lustre there,Delighting:
There no monstrous fancies shallOut of hell an horror call,To create, or cause at all,Affrighting.
There, in calm and cooling sleepWe our eyes shall never steep,But eternal watch shall keep,Attending
Pleasures such as shall pursueMe immortalized and you;And fresh joys, as never tooHave ending.
Thou bid'st me come away;And I'll no longer stayThan for to shed some tearsFor faults of former years;And to repent some crimesDone in the present times;And next, to take a bitOf bread, and wine with it;To don my robes of love,Fit for the place above;To gird my loins aboutWith charity throughout,And so to travel henceWith feet of innocence:These done, I'll only cry,"God, mercy!" and so die.
O years and age, farewell!Behold I goWhere I do knowInfinity to dwell.
And these mine eyes shall seeAll times, how theyAre lost i' th' seaOf vast eternity,
Where never moon shall swayThe stars; but sheAnd night shall beDrowned in one endless day.
When winds and seas do rage,And threaten to undo me,Thou dost their wrath assuage,If I but call unto thee.
A mighty storm last nightDid seek my soul to swallow;But by the peep of lightA gentle calm did follow.
What need I then despairThough ills stand round about me;Since mischiefs neither dareTo bark or bite without thee?
Lord, I am like to mistletoe,Which has no root, and cannot growOr prosper, but by that same treeIt clings about: so I by thee.What need I then to fear at allSo long as I about thee crawl?But if that tree should fall and die,Tumble shall heaven, and down will I.
Here are now a few chosen from many that—to borrow a term fromCrashaw—might be called
God, when he's angry here with any one,His wrath is free from perturbation;And when we think his looks are sour and grim,The alteration is in us, not him.
* * * * *
God can't be wrathful; but we may concludeWrathful he may be by similitude:God's wrathful said to be when he doth doThat without wrath, which wrath doth force us to.
* * * * *
'Tis hard to find God; but to comprehendHim as he is, is labour without end.
* * * * *
God's rod doth watch while men do sleep, and thenThe rod doth sleep while vigilant are men.
* * * * *
A man's trangression God does then remit,When man he makes a penitent for it.
* * * * *
God, when he takes my goods and chattels hence,Gives me a portion, giving patience:What is in God is God: if so it beHe patience gives, he gives himself to me.
* * * * *
Humble we must be, if to heaven we go;High is the roof there, but the gate is low.
* * * * *
God who's in heaven, will hear from thence,If not to the sound, yet to the sense.
* * * * *
The same who crowns the conqueror, will beA coadjutor in the agony.
* * * * *
God is so potent, as his power canthat.Draw out of bad a sovereign good to man.
* * * * *
Paradise is, as from the learn'd I gather,A choir of blest souls circling in the Father.
* * * * *
Heaven is not given for our good works here;Yet it is given to the labourer.
* * * * *
One more for the sake of Martha, smiled at by so many because they are incapable either of her blame or her sister's praise.
The repetition of the name, made knownNo other than Christ's full affection.
And so farewell to the very lovable Robert Herrick.
Francis Quarles was born in 1592. I have not much to say about him, popular as he was in his own day, for a large portion of his writing takes the shape of satire, which I consider only an active form of negation. I doubt much if mere opposition to the false is of any benefit. Convince a man by argument that the thing he has been taught is false, and you leave his house empty, swept, and garnished; but the expulsion of the falsehood is no protection against its re-entrance in another mask, with seven worse than itself in its company. The right effort of the teacher is to give the positive—to present, as he may, the vision of reality, for the perception of which, and not for the discovery of falsehood, is man created. This will not only cast out the demon, but so people the house that he will not dare return. If a man might disprove all the untruths in creation, he would hardly be a hair's breadth nearer the end of his own making. It is better to hold honestly one fragment of truth in the midst of immeasurable error, than to sit alone, if that were possible, in the midst of an absolute vision, clear as the hyaline, but only repellent of falsehood, not receptive of truth. It is the positive by which a man shall live. Truth is his life. The refusal of the false is not the reception of the true. A man may deny himself into a spiritual lethargy, without denying one truth, simply by spending his strength for that which is not bread, until he has none left wherewith to search for the truth, which alone can feed him. Only when subjected to the positive does the negative find its true vocation.
I am jealous of the living force cast into the slough of satire. No doubt, either indignant or loving rebuke has its end and does its work, but I fear that wit, while rousing the admiration of the spiteful or the like witty, comes in only to destroy its dignity. At the same time, I am not sure whether there might not be such a judicious combination of the elements as to render my remarks inapplicable.
At all events, poetry favours the positive, and from theEmblemsnamed of Quarles I shall choose one in which it fully predominates. There is something in it remarkably fine.
Will't ne'er be morning? Will that promised lightNe'er break, and clear those clouds of night?Sweet Phosphor, bring the day,Whose conquering rayMay chase these fogs: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
How long, how long shall these benighted eyesLanguish in shades, like feeble fliesExpecting spring? How long shall darkness soilThe face of earth, and thus beguileOur souls of sprightful action? When, when will dayBegin to dawn, whose new-born rayMay gild the weathercocks of our devotion,And give our unsouled souls new motion?Sweet Phosphor, bring the day:The light will frayThese horrid mists: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
* * * * *
Let those whose eyes, like owls, abhor the light—Let those have night that love the night:Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.How sad delayAfflicts dull hopes! Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
Alas! my light-in-vain-expecting eyesCan find no objects but what riseFrom this poor mortal blaze, a dying sparkOf Vulcan's forge, whose flames are dark,—A dangerous, dull, blue-burning light,As melancholy as the night:Here's all the suns that glister in the sphereOf earth: Ah me! what comfort's here!Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.Haste, haste awayHeaven's loitering lamp: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
Blow, Ignorance. O thou, whose idle kneeRocks earth into a lethargy,And with thy sooty fingers hast benightThe world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite;Since thou hast puffed our greater taper, doPuff on, and out the lesser too.If e'er that breath-exiled flame return,Thou hast not blown as it will burn.Sweet Phosphor, bring the day:Light will repayThe wrongs of night: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.