The poem is likewise very diffuse—again a common fault with women of power; for indeed the faculty of compressing thought into crystalline form is one of the rarest gifts of artistic genius. It consists of a hundred and ten stanzas, from which I shall gather and arrange a few.
He placed all rest, and had no resting place;He healed each pain, yet lived in sore distress;Deserved all good, yet lived in great disgrace;Gave all hearts joy, himself in heaviness;Suffered them live, by whom himself was slain:Lord, who can live to see such love again?
Whose mansion heaven, yet lay within a manger;Who gave all food, yet sucked a virgin's breast;Who could have killed, yet fled a threatening danger;Who sought all quiet by his own unrest;Who died for them that highly did offend him,And lives for them that cannot comprehend him.
Who came no further than his Father sent him,And did fulfil but what he did command him;Who prayed for them that proudly did torment himFor telling truly of what they did demand him;Who did all good that humbly did intreat him,And bare their blows, that did unkindly beat him.
Had I but seen him as his servants did,At sea, at land, in city, or in field,Though in himself he had his glory hid,That in his grace the light of glory held,Then might my sorrow somewhat be appeaséd,That once my soul had in his sight been pleaséd.
No! I have run the way of wickedness,Forgetting what my faith should follow most;I did not think upon thy holiness,Nor by my sins what sweetness I have lost.Oh sin! for sin hath compassed me about,That, Lord, I know not where to find thee out.
Where he that sits on the supernal throne,In majesty most glorious to behold,And holds the sceptre of the world alone,Hath not his garments of imbroidered gold,But he is clothed with truth and righteousness,Where angels all do sing with joyfulness,
Where heavenly love is cause of holy life,And holy life increaseth heavenly love;Where peace established without fear or strife,Doth prove the blessing of the soul's behove;[67]Where thirst nor hunger, grief nor sorrow dwelleth,But peace in joy, and joy in peace excelleth.
Had all the poem been like these stanzas, I should not have spoken so strongly concerning its faults. There are a few more such in it. It closes with a very fantastic use of musical terms, following upon a curious category of the works of nature as praising God, to which I refer for the sake of one stanza, or rather of one line in the stanza:
To see the greyhound course, the hound in chase,Whilst little dormouse sleepeth out her eyne;The lambs and rabbits sweetly run at base,[68]Whilst highest trees the little squirrels climb,The crawling worms out creeping in the showers,And how the snails do climb the lofty towers.
What a love of animated nature there is in the lovely lady! I am all but confident, however, that second line came to her from watching her children asleep. She had one child at least: that William Herbert, who is generally, and with weight, believed the W.H. of Shakspere's Sonnets, a grander honour than the earldom of Pembroke, or even the having Philip Sidney to his uncle: I will not say grander than having Mary Sidney to hismother.
Let me now turn to Sidney's friend, Sir Fulk Grevill, Lord Brooke, who afterwards wrote his life, "as an intended preface" to all his "Monuments to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney," the saidmonumentsbeing Lord Brooke's own poems.
My extract is fromA Treatise of Religion, in which, if the reader do not find much of poetic form, he will find at least some grand spiritual philosophy, the stuff whereof all highest poetry is fashioned. It is one of the first poems in which the philosophy of religion, and not either its doctrine, feeling, or history, predominates. It is, as a whole, poor, chiefly from its being so loosely written. There are men, and men whose thoughts are of great worth, to whom it never seems to occur that they may utter very largely and convey very little; that what is clear to themselves is in their speech obscure as a late twilight. Their utterance is rarely articulate: their spiritual mouth talks with but half-movements of its lips; it does not model their thoughts into clear-cut shapes, such as the spiritual ear can distinguish as they enter it. Of such is Lord Brooke. These few stanzas, however, my readers will be glad to have:
What is the chain which draws us back again,And lifts man up unto his first creation?Nothing in him his own heart can restrain;His reason lives a captive to temptation;Example is corrupt; precepts are mixed;All fleshly knowledge frail, and never fixed.
It is a light, a gift, a grace inspired;A spark of power, a goodness of the Good;Desire in him, that never is desired;An unity, where desolation stood;In us, not of us, a Spirit not of earth,Fashioning the mortal to immortal birth.
* * * * *
Sense of this God, by fear, the sensual have,Distresséd Nature crying unto Grace;For sovereign reason then becomes a slave,And yields to servile sense her sovereign place,When more or other she affects to beThan seat or shrine of this Eternity.
Yea, Prince of Earth let Man assume to be,Nay more—of Man let Man himself be God,Yet without God, a slave of slaves is he;To others, wonder; to himself, a rod;Restless despair, desire, and desolation;The more secure, the more abomination.
Then by affecting power, we cannot know him.By knowing all things else, we know him less.Nature contains him not. Art cannot show him.Opinions idols, and not God, express.Without, in power, we see him everywhere;Within, we rest not, till we find him there.
Then seek we must; that course is natural—For ownéd souls to find their owner out.Our free remorses when our natures fall—When we do well, our hearts made free from doubt—Prove service due to one Omnipotence,And Nature of religion to have sense.
Questions again, which in our hearts arise—Since loving knowledge, not humility—Though they be curious, godless, and unwise,Yet prove our nature feels a Deity;For if these strifes rose out of other grounds,Man were to God as deafness is to sounds.
* * * * *
Yet in this strife, this natural remorse,If we could bend the force of power and witTo work upon the heart, and make divorceThere from the evil which preventeth it,In judgment of the truth we should not doubtGood life would find a good religion out.
If a fair proportion of it were equal to this, the poem would be a fine one, not for its poetry, but for its spiritual metaphysics. I think the fourth and fifth of the stanzas I have given, profound in truth, and excellent in utterance. They are worth pondering.
We now descend a decade of the century, to find another group of names within the immediate threshold of the sixties.
Except it be Milton's, there is not any prose fuller of grand poetic embodiments than Lord Bacon's. Yet he always writes contemptuously of poetry, having in his eye no doubt the commonplace kinds of it, which will always occupy more bulk, and hence be more obtrusive, than that which is true in its nature and rare in its workmanship. Towards the latter end of his life, however, being in ill health at the time, he translated seven of the Psalms of David into verse, dedicating them to George Herbert. The best of them is Psalm civ.—just the one upon which we might suppose, from his love to the laws of Nature, he would dwell with the greatest sympathy. Partly from the wish to hear his voice amongst the rest of our singers, partly for the merits of the version itself, which has some remarkable lines, I have resolved to include it here. It is the first specimen I have given in the heroic couplet.
Father and King of Powers both high and low,Whose sounding fame all creatures serve to blow;My soul shall with the rest strike up thy praise,And carol of thy works, and wondrous ways.But who can blaze thy beauties, Lord, aright?They turn the brittle beams of mortal sight.Upon thy head thou wear'st a glorious crown,All set with virtues, polished with renown:Thence round about a silver veil doth fallOf crystal light, mother of colours all.The compass, heaven, smooth without grain or fold,All set with spangs of glittering stars untold,And striped with golden beams of power unpent,Is raiséd up for a removing tentVaulted and archéd are his chamber beamsUpon the seas, the waters, and the streams;The clouds as chariots swift do scour the sky;The stormy winds upon their wings do flyHis angels spirits are, that wait his will;As flames of fire his anger they fulfil.In the beginning, with a mighty hand,He made the earth by counterpoise to stand,Never to move, but to be fixed still;Yet hath no pillars but his sacred will.This earth, as with a veil, once covered was;The waters overflowéd all the mass;But upon his rebuke away they fled,And then the hills began to show their head;The vales their hollow bosoms opened plain,The streams ran trembling down the vales again;And that the earth no more might drowned be,He set the sea his bounds of liberty;And though his waves resound and beat the shore,Yet it is bridled by his holy lore.Then did the rivers seek their proper places,And found their heads, their issues, and their races;The springs do feed the rivers all the way,And so the tribute to the sea repay:Running along through many a pleasant field,Much fruitfulness unto the earth they yield;That know the beasts and cattle feeding by,Which for to slake their thirst do thither hie.Nay, desert grounds the streams do not forsake,But through the unknown ways their journey take;The asses wild that hide in wilderness,Do thither come, their thirst for to refresh.The shady trees along their banks do spring,In which the birds do build, and sit, and sing,Stroking the gentle air with pleasant notes,Plaining or chirping through their warbling throats.The higher grounds, where waters cannot rise,By rain and dews are watered from the skies,Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts,And garden-herbs, served at the greatest feasts,And bread that is all viands' firmament,And gives a firm and solid nourishment;And wine man's spirits for to recreate,And oil his face for to exhilarate.The sappy cedars, tall like stately towers,High flying birds do harbour in their bowers;The holy storks that are the travellers,Choose for to dwell and build within the firs;The climbing goats hang on steep mountains' side;The digging conies in the rocks do bide.The moon, so constant in inconstancy,Doth rule the monthly seasons orderly;The sun, eye of the world, doth know his race,And when to show, and when to hide his face.Thou makest darkness, that it may be night,Whenas the savage beasts that fly the light,As conscious of man's hatred, leave their den,And range abroad, secured from sight of men.Then do the forests ring of lions roaring,That ask their meat of God, their strength restoring;But when the day appears, they back do fly,And in their dens again do lurking lie;Then man goes forth to labour in the field,Whereby his grounds more rich increase may yield.O Lord, thy providence sufficeth all;Thy goodness not restrained but generalOver thy creatures, the whole earth doth flowWith thy great largeness poured forth here below.Nor is it earth alone exalts thy name,But seas and streams likewise do spread the same.The rolling seas unto the lot do fallOf beasts innumerable, great and small;There do the stately ships plough up the floods;The greater navies look like walking woods;The fishes there far voyages do make,To divers shores their journey they do take;There hast thou set the great leviathan,That makes the seas to seethe like boiling pan:All these do ask of thee their meat to live,Which in due season thou to them dost give:Ope thou thy hand, and then they have good fare;Shut thou thy hand, and then they troubled are.All life and spirit from thy breath proceed,Thy word doth all things generate and feed:If thou withdraw'st it, then they cease to be,And straight return to dust and vanity;But when thy breath thou dost send forth again,Then all things do renew, and spring amain,So that the earth but lately desolateDoth now return unto the former state.The glorious majesty of God aboveShall ever reign, in mercy and in love;God shall rejoice all his fair works to see,For, as they come from him, all perfect be.The earth shall quake, if aught his wrath provoke;Let him but touch the mountains, they shall smoke.As long as life doth last, I hymns will sing,With cheerful voice, to the Eternal King;As long as I have being, I will praiseThe works of God, and all his wondrous ways.I know that he my words will not despise:Thanksgiving is to him a sacrifice.But as for sinners, they shall be destroyedFrom off the earth—their places shall be void.Let all his works praise him with one accord!Oh praise the Lord, my soul! Praise ye the Lord!
His Hundred and Forty-ninth Psalm is likewise good; but I have given enough of Lord Bacon's verse, and proceed to call up one who was a poet indeed, although little known as such, being a Roman Catholic, a Jesuit even, and therefore, in Elizabeth's reign, a traitor, and subject to the penalties according. Robert Southwell, "thirteen times most cruelly tortured," could "not be induced to confess anything, not even the colour of the horse whereon on a certain day he rode, lest from such indication his adversaries might conjecture in what house, or in company of what Catholics, he that day was." I quote these words of Lord Burleigh, lest any of my readers, discovering weakness in his verse, should attribute weakness to the man himself.
It was no doubt on political grounds that these tortures, and the death that followed them, were inflicted. But it was for the truthas he saw it, that is, for the sake of duty, that Southwell thus endured. We must not impute all the evils of a system to every individual who holds by it. It may be found that a man has, for the sole sake of self-abnegation, yielded homage, where, if his object had been personal aggrandizement, he might have wielded authority. Southwell, if that which comes from within a man may be taken as the test of his character, was a devout and humble Christian. In the choir of our singers we only ask: "Dost thou lift up thine heart?" Southwell's song answers for him: "I lift it up unto the Lord."
His chief poem is calledSt. Peter's Complaint. It is of considerable length—a hundred and thirty-two stanzas. It reminds us of the Countess of Pembroke's poem, but is far more articulate and far superior in versification. Perhaps its chief fault is that the pauses are so measured with the lines as to make every line almost a sentence, the effect of which is a considerable degree of monotony. Like all writers of the time, he is, of course, fond of antithesis, and abounds in conceits and fancies; whence he attributes a multitude of expressions to St. Peter of which never possibly could the substantial ideas have entered the Apostle's mind, or probably any other than Southwell's own. There is also a good deal of sentimentalism in the poem, a fault from which I fear modern Catholic verse is rarely free. Probably the Italian poetry with which he must have been familiar in his youth, during his residence in Rome, accustomed him to such irreverences of expression as this sentimentalism gives occasion to, and which are very far from indicating a correspondent state of feeling. Sentiment is a poor ape of love; but the love is true notwithstanding. Here are a few stanzas fromSt. Peter's Complaint:
Titles I make untruths: am I a rock,That with so soft a gale was overthrown?Am I fit pastor for the faithful flockTo guide their souls that murdered thus mine own?A rock of ruin, not a rest to stay;A pastor,—not to feed, but to betray.
Parting from Christ my fainting force declined;With lingering foot I followed him aloof;Base fear out of my heart his love unshrined,Huge in high words, but impotent in proof.My vaunts did seem hatched under Samson's locks,Yet woman's words did give me murdering knocks
* * * * *
At Sorrow's door I knocked: they craved my nameI answered, "One unworthy to be known.""What one?" say they. "One worthiest of blame.""But who?" "A wretch not God's, nor yet his own.""A man?" "Oh, no!" "A beast?" "Much worse." "What creature?""A rock." "How called?" "The rock of scandal, Peter."
* * * * *
Christ! health of fevered soul, heaven of the mind,Force of the feeble, nurse of infant loves,Guide to the wandering foot, light to the blind,Whom weeping wins, repentant sorrow moves!Father in care, mother in tender heart,Revive and save me, slain with sinful dart!
If King Manasseh, sunk in depth of sin,With plaints and tears recovered grace and crown,A worthless worm some mild regard may win,And lowly creep where flying threw it down.A poor desire I have to mend my ill;I should, I would, I dare not say I will.
I dare not say I will, but wish I may;My pride is checked: high words the speaker spilt.My good, O Lord, thy gift—thy strength, my stay—Give what thou bidst, and then bid what thou wilt.Work with me what of me thou dost request;Then will I dare the worst and love the best.
Here, from another poem, are two little stanzas worth preserving:
Yet God's must I remain,By death, by wrong, by shame;I cannot blot out of my heartThat grace wrought in his name.
I cannot set at nought,Whom I have held so dear;I cannot make Him seem afarThat is indeed so near.
The following poem, in style almost as simple as a ballad, is at once of the quaintest and truest. Common minds, which must always associate a certain conventional respectability with the forms of religion, will think it irreverent. I judge its reverence profound, and such none the less that it is pervaded by a sweet and delicate tone of holy humour. The very title has a glimmer of the glowing heart of Christianity:
Behold a silly,[69] tender babe,In freezing winter night,In homely manger trembling lies;Alas! a piteous sight.
The inns are full; no man will yieldThis little pilgrim bed;But forced he is with silly beastsIn crib to shroud his head.
Despise him not for lying there;First what he is inquire:An orient pearl is often foundIn depth of dirty mire.
Weigh not his crib, his wooden dish,Nor beasts that by him feed;Weigh not his mother's poor attire,Nor Joseph's simple weed.
This stable is a prince's court,The crib his chair of state;The beasts are parcel of his pomp,The wooden dish his plate.
The persons in that poor attireHis royal liveries wear;The Prince himself is come from heaven:This pomp is praised there.
With joy approach, O Christian wight;Do homage to thy King;And highly praise this humble pomp,Which he from heaven doth bring.
Another, on the same subject, he callsNew Heaven, New War. It is fantastic to a degree. One stanza, however, I like much:
This little babe, so few days old,Is come to rifle Satan's fold;All hell doth at his presence quake,Though he himself for cold do shake;For in this weak, unarmed wise,The gates of hell he will surprise.
There is profoundest truth in the symbolism of this. Here is the latter half of a poem calledSt. Peters Remorse:
Did mercy spin the threadTo weave injustice' loom?Wert then a father to concludeWith dreadful judge's doom?
It is a small reliefTo say I was thy child,If, as an ill-deserving foe,From grace I am exiled.
I was, I had, I could—All words importing want;They are but dust of dead supplies,Where needful helps are scant.
Once to have been in blissThat hardly can return,Doth but bewray from whence I fell,And wherefore now I mourn.
All thoughts of passed hopesIncrease my present cross;Like ruins of decayed joys,They still upbraid my loss.
O mild and mighty Lord!Amend that is amiss;My sin my sore, thy love my salve,Thy cure my comfort is.
Confirm thy former deed;Reform that is defiled;I was, I am, I will remainThy charge, thy choice, thy child.
Here are some neat stanzas from a poem he calls
My conscience is my crown,Contented thoughts my rest;My heart is happy in itself,My bliss is in my breast.
My wishes are but few,All easy to fulfil;I make the limits of my powerThe bounds unto my will.
Sith sails of largest sizeThe storm doth soonest tear,I bear so small and low a sailAs freeth me from fear.
And taught with often proof,A tempered calm I findTo be most solace to itself,Best cure for angry mind.
No chance of Fortune's calmsCan cast my comforts down;When Fortune smiles I smile to thinkHow quickly she will frown.
And when in froward moodShe proves an angry foe:Small gain I found to let her come,Less loss to let her go.
There is just one stanza in a poem of Daniel, who belongs by birth to this group, which I should like to print by itself, if it were only for the love Coleridge had to the last two lines of it. It needs little stretch of scheme to let it show itself amongst religious poems. It occurs in a fine epistle to the Countess of Cumberland. Daniel's writing is full of the practical wisdom of the inner life, and the stanza which I quote has a certain Wordsworthian flavour about it. It will not make a complete sentence, but must yet stand by itself:
Knowing the heart of man is set to beThe centre of this world, about the whichThese revolutions of disturbancesStill roll; where all th' aspects of miseryPredominate; whose strong effects are suchAs he must bear, being powerless to redress;And that unless above himself he canErect himself, how poor a thing is man!
Later in the decade, comes Sir Henry Wotton. It will be seen that I have arranged my singers with reference to their birth, not to the point of time at which this or that poem was written or published. The poetic influences which work on the shaping fantasy are chiefly felt in youth, and hence the predominant mode of a poet's utterance will be determined by what and where and amongst whom he was during that season. The kinds of the various poems will therefore probably fall into natural sequence rather after the dates of the youth of the writers than after the years in which they were written.
Wotton was better known in his day as a politician than as a poet, and chiefly in ours as the subject of one of Izaak Walton's biographies. Something of artistic instinct, rather than finish, is evident in his verses. Here is the best and the best-known of the few poems recognized as his:
How happy is he born and taught,That serveth not another's will;Whose armour is his honest thought,And silly truth his highest skill;
Whose passions not his masters are;Whose soul is still prepared for death,Untiéd to the world with careOf prince's grace or vulgar breath;
Who hath his life from humours freed;Whose conscience is his strong retreat;Whose state can neither flatterers feed,Nor ruin make accusers great;
Who envieth none whom chance doth raiseOr vice; who never understoodHow swords give slighter wounds than praise.Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who God doth late and early prayMore of his grace than gifts to lend;And entertains the harmless dayWith a well-chosen book or friend.
This man is free from servile bandsOf hope to rise, or fear to fall:Lord of himself, though not of landsAnd having nothing, yet hath all.
Some of my readers will observe that in many places I have given a reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem. I have followed a manuscript in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but in every case I find his reading the best.
Sir John Davies must have been about fifteen years younger than Sir Fulk Grevill. He was born in 1570, was bred a barrister, and rose to high position through the favour of James I.—gained, it is said, by the poem which the author calledNosce Teipsum,[71] but which is generally entitledOn the Immortality of the Soul, intending byimmortalitythe spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence. It is a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means of imagination or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well it may comport itself when there naturalized; and consequently, although there are most poetic no less than profound passages in the treatise, a light scruple arises whether its constituent matter can properly be called poetry. At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions: power shades off into feeling; and the driest logic may find the heroic couplet render it good service.
Sir John Davies's treatise is not only far more poetic in image and utterance than that of Lord Brooke, but is far more clear in argument and firm in expression as well. Here is a fine invocation:
O Light, which mak'st the light which makes the day!Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within;Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray,Which now to view itself doth first begin.
* * * * *
Thou, like the sun, dost, with an equal ray,Into the palace and the cottage shine;And show'st the soul both to the clerk and lay,learned andBy the clear lamp of th' oracle divine. [unlearned
He is puzzled enough to get the theology of his time into harmony with his philosophy, and I cannot say that he is always triumphant in the attempt; but here at least is good argument in justification of the freedom of man to sin.
If by His word he had the current stayedOf Adam's will, which was by nature free,It had been one as if his word had said,"I will henceforth that Man no Man shall be."
* * * * *
For what is Man without a moving mind,Which hath a judging wit, and choosing will?Now, if God's pow'r should her election bind,Her motions then would cease, and stand all still.
* * * * *
So that if Man would be unvariable,He must be God, or like a rock or tree;For ev'n the perfect angels were not stable,But had a fall more desperate than we.
The poem contains much excellent argument in mental science as well as in religion and metaphysics; but with that department I have nothing to do.
I shall now give an outlook from the highest peak of the poem—to any who are willing to take the trouble necessary for seeing what another would show them.
The section from which I have gathered the following stanzas is devoted to the more immediate proof of the soul's immortality.
Her only end is never-ending bliss,Which is the eternal face of God to see,Who last of ends and first of causes is;And to do this, she must eternal be.
Again, how can she but immortal be,When with the motions of both will and wit,She still aspireth to eternity,And never rests till she attains to it?
Water in conduit-pipes can rise no higherThan the well-head from whence it first doth spring;Then since to eternal God she doth aspire,She cannot but be an eternal thing.
At first her mother-earth she holdeth dear,And doth embrace the world and worldly things;She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,And mounts not up with her celestial wings.
Yet under heaven she cannot light on oughtThat with her heavenly nature doth agreeShe cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,She cannot in this world contented be.
For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth,Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?Whoever ceased to wish, when he had healthOr having wisdom, was not vexed in mind
Then as a bee, which among weeds doth fall,Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay—She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,But, pleased with none, doth rise, and soar away;
So, when the soul finds here no true content,And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take,She doth return from whence she first was sent,And flies to him that first her wings did make.
Wit, seeking truth, from cause to cause ascends,And never rests till it the first attain;Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends,But never stays till it the last do gain.
Now God the truth, and first of causes is;God is the last good end, which lasteth still;Being Alpha and Omega named for this:Alpha to wit, Omega to the will.
Since then her heavenly kind she doth displayIn that to God she doth directly move,And on no mortal thing can make her stay,She cannot be from hence, but from above.
One passage more, the conclusion and practical summing up of the whole:
O ignorant poor man! what dost thou bear,Locked up within the casket of thy breast?What jewels and what riches hast thou there!What heavenly treasure in so weak a chest!
Think of her worth, and think that God did meanThis worthy mind should worthy things embrace:Blot not her beauties with thy thoughts unclean,Nor her dishonour with thy passion base.
Kill not her quickening power with surfeitings;Mar not her sense with sensuality;Cast not her serious wit on idle things;Make not her free-will slave to vanity.
And when thou think'st of her eternity,Think not that death against our nature is;Think it a birth; and when thou go'st to die,Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to bliss.
And if thou, like a child, didst fear before,Being in the dark where thou didst nothing see;Now I have brought thee torch-light, fear no more;Now when thou diest thou canst not hood-wink'd be.
And thou, my soul, which turn'st with curious eyeTo view the beams of thine own form divine,Know, that thou canst know nothing perfectly,While thou art clouded with this flesh of mine.
Take heed of over-weening, and compareThy peacock's feet with thy gay peacock's train:Study the best and highest things that are,But of thyself an humble thought retain.
Cast down thyself, and only strive to raiseThe story of thy Maker's sacred name:Use all thy powers that blessed Power to praise,Which gives the power to be, and use the same.
In looking back over our path from the point we have now reached, the first thought that suggests itself is—How much the reflective has supplanted the emotional! I do not mean for a moment that the earliest poems were without thought, or that the latest are without emotion; but in the former there is more of the skin, as it were—in the latter, more of the bones of worship; not that in the one the worship is but skin-deep, or that in the other the bones are dry.
To look at the change a little more closely: we find in the earliest time, feeling working on historic fact and on what was received as such, and the result simple aspiration after goodness. The next stage is gooddoctrine—I use the word, as St. Paul uses it, for instruction in righteousness—chiefly by means of allegory, all attempts at analysis being made through personification of qualities. Here the general form is frequently more poetic than the matter. After this we have a period principally of imitation, sometimes good, sometimes indifferent. Next, with the Reformation and the revival of literature together, come more of art and more of philosophy, to the detriment of the lyrical expression. People cannot think and sing: they can only feel and sing. But the philosophy goes farther in this direction, even to the putting in abeyance of that from which song takes its rise,—namely, feeling itself. As to the former, amongst the verse of the period I have given, there is hardly anything to be called song but Sir Philip Sidney's Psalms, and for them we are more indebted to King David than to Sir Philip. As to the latter, even in the case of that most mournful poem of the Countess of Pembroke, it is, to quite an unhealthy degree, occupied with the attempt to work upon her own feelings by the contemplation of them, instead of with the utterance of those aroused by the contemplation of truth. In her case the metaphysics have begun to prey upon and consume the emotions. Besides, that age was essentially a dramatic age, as even its command of language, especially as shown in the pranks it plays with it, would almost indicate; and the dramatic impulse is less favourable, though not at all opposed, to lyrical utterance. In the cases of Sir Fulk Grevill and Sir John Davies, the feeling is assuredly profound; but in form and expression the philosophy has quite the upper hand.
We must not therefore suppose, however, that the cause of religious poetry has been a losing one. The last wave must sink that the next may rise, and the whole tide flow shorewards. The man must awake through all his soul, all his strength, all his mind, that he may worship God in unity, in the one harmonious utterance of his being: his heart must be united to fear his name. And for this final perfection of the individual the race must awake. At this season and that season, this power or that power must be chiefly developed in her elect; and for its sake the growth of others must for a season be delayed. But the next generation will inherit all that has gone before; and its elect, if they be themselves pure in heart, and individual, that is original, in mind, will, more or less thoroughly, embody the result, in subservience to some new development, essential in its turn to further progress. Even the fallow times, which we are so ready to call barren, must have their share in working the one needful work. They may be to the nation that which sickness so often is to the man—a time of refreshing from the Lord. A nation's life does not lie in its utterance any more than in the things which it possesses: it lies in its action. The utterance is a result, and therefore a sign, of life; but there may be life without anysuchsign. To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God, is the highest life of a nation as of an individual; and when the time for speech comes, it will be such life alone that causes the speech to be strong at once and harmonious. When at last there are not ten righteous men in Sodom, Sodom can neither think, act, nor say, and her destruction is at hand.
While the wave of the dramatic was sinking, the wave of the lyric was growing in force and rising in height. Especially as regards religious poetry we are as yet only approaching the lyrical jubilee. Fact and faith, self-consciousness and metaphysics, all are needful to the lyric of love. Modesty and art find their grandest, simplest labour in rightly subordinating each of those to the others. How could we have a George Herbert without metaphysics? In those poems I have just given, the way of metaphysics was prepared for him. That which overcolours one age to the injury of its harmony, will, in the next or the next, fall into its own place in the seven-chorded rainbow of truth.
We now come to Dr. John Donne, a man of justly great respect and authority, who, born in the year 1573, the fifteenth of Queen Elizabeth, died Dean of St. Paul's in the year 1636. But, although even Ben Jonson addresses him as "the delight of Phoebus and each Muse," we are too far beyond the power of his social presence and the influence of his public utterances to feel that admiration of his poems which was so largely expressed during his lifetime. Of many of those that were written in his youth, Izaak Walton says Dr. Donne "wished that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals." Faulty as they are, however, they are not the less the work of a great and earnest man.
Bred to the law, but never having practised it, he lost his secretaryship to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere through the revenge of Sir George More, whose daughter Donne had married in secret because of her father's opposition. Dependent thereafter for years on the generous kindness of unrelated friends, he yet for conscience' sake refused to take orders when a good living was offered him; and it was only after prolonged thought that he yielded to the importunity of King James, who was so convinced of his surpassing fitness for the church that he would speed him towards no other goal. When at length he dared hope that God might have called him to the high office, never man gave himself to its duties with more of whole-heartedness and devotion, and none have proved themselves more clean of the sacrilege of serving at the altar for the sake of the things offered thereon.
He is represented by Dr. Johnson as one of the chief examples of that school of poets called by himself themetaphysical, an epithet which, as a definition, is almost false. True it is that Donne and his followers were always ready to deal with metaphysical subjects, but it was from their mode, and not their subjects, that Dr. Johnson classed them. What this mode was we shall see presently, for I shall be justified in setting forth its strangeness, even absurdity, by the fact that Dr. Donne was the dear friend of George Herbert, and had much to do with the formation of his poetic habits. Just twenty years older than Herbert, and the valued and intimate friend of his mother, Donne was in precisely that relation of age and circumstance to influence the other in the highest degree.
The central thought of Dr. Donne is nearly sure to be just: the subordinate thoughts by means of which he unfolds it are often grotesque, and so wildly associated as to remind one of the lawlessness of a dream, wherein mere suggestion without choice or fitness rules the sequence. As some of the writers of whom I have last spoken would play with words, Dr. Donne would sport with ideas, and with the visual images or embodiments of them. Certainly in his case much knowledge reveals itself in the association of his ideas, and great facility in the management and utterance of them. True likewise, he says nothing unrelated to the main idea of the poem; but not the less certainly does the whole resemble the speech of a child of active imagination, to whom judgment as to the character of his suggestions is impossible, his taste being equally gratified with a lovely image and a brilliant absurdity: a butterfly and a shining potsherd are to him similarly desirable. Whatever wild thing starts from the thicket of thought, all is worthy game to the hunting intellect of Dr. Donne, and is followed without question of tone, keeping, or harmony. In his play with words, Sir Philip Sidney kept good heed that even that should serve the end in view; in his play with ideas, Dr. John Donne, so far from serving the end, sometimes obscures it almost hopelessly: the hart escapes while he follows the squirrels and weasels and bats. It is not surprising that, their author being so inartistic with regard to their object, his verses themselves should be harsh and unmusical beyond the worst that one would imagine fit to be called verse. He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having no rival in ruggedness of metric movement and associated sounds. This is clearly the result of indifference; an indifference, however, which grows very strange to us when we find that hecanwrite a lovely verse and even an exquisite stanza.
Greatly for its own sake, partly for the sake of illustration, I quote a poem containing at once his best and his worst, the result being such an incongruity that we wonder whether it might not be called his bestandhis worst, because we cannot determine which. He calls itHymn to God, my God, in my Sickness. The first stanza is worthy of George Herbert in his best mood.
Since I am coming to that holy room,Where with the choir of saints for evermoreI shall be made thy music, as I comeI tune the instrument here at the door,And what I must do then, think here before.
To recognize its beauty, leaving aside the depth and truth of the phrase, "Where I shall be made thy music," we must recall the custom of those days to send out for "a noise of musicians." Hence he imagines that he has been summoned as one of a band already gone in to play before the king of "The High Countries:" he is now at the door, where he is listening to catch the tone, that he may have his instrument tuned and ready before he enters. But with what a jar the next stanza breaks on heart, mind, and ear!
Whilst my physicians by their love are grownCosmographers, and I[72] their map, who lieFlat on this bed, that by them may be shownThat this is my south-west discovery,Per fretum febris—by these straits to die;—
Here, in the midst of comparing himself to a map, and his physicians to cosmographers consulting the map, he changes without warning into a navigator whom they are trying to follow upon the map as he passes through certain straits—namely, those of the fever—towards his south-west discovery, Death. Grotesque as this is, the absurdity deepens in the end of the next stanza by a return to the former idea. He is alternately a map and a man sailing on the map of himself. But the first half of the stanza is lovely: my reader must remember that the region of the West was at that time the Land of Promise to England.
I joy that in these straits I see my West;For though those currents yield return to none,What shall my West hurt me? As west and eastIn all flat maps (and I am one) are one,So death doth touch the resurrection.
It is hardly worth while, except for the strangeness of the phenomenon, to spend any time in elucidating this. Once more a map, he is that of the two hemispheres, in which the east of the one touches the west of the other. Could anything be much more unmusical than the line, "In all flat maps (and I am one) are one"? But the next stanza is worse.
Is the Pacific sea my home? Or areThe eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?Anvan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar?All straits, and none but straits are ways to them,Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Sem.
The meaning of the stanza is this: there is no earthly home: all these places are only straits that lead home, just as they themselves cannot be reached but through straits.
Let my reader now forget all but the first stanza, and take it along with the following, the last two:
We think that Paradise and Calvary,Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place:Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.
So, in his purple wrapped, receive me, Lord;By these his thorns give me his other crown;And as to others' souls I preached thy word,Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:Therefore, that he may raise, the Lord throws down.
Surely these are very fine, especially the middle verse of the former and the first verse of the latter stanza. The three stanzas together make us lovingly regret that Dr. Donne should have ridden his Pegasus over quarry and housetop, instead of teaching him his paces.
The next I quote is artistic throughout. Perhaps the fact, of which we are informed by Izaak Walton, "that he caused it to be set to a grave and solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ by the choristers of St. Paul's church in his own hearing, especially at the evening service," may have something to do with its degree of perfection. There is no sign of his usual haste about it. It is even elaborately rhymed after Norman fashion, the rhymes in each stanza being consonant with the rhymes in every stanza.
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,Which was my sin, though it were done before?[73]Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,[74]And do run still, though still I do deplore?—When thou hast done, thou hast not done;For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have wonOthers to sin, and made my sins their door?[75]Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shunA year or two, but wallowed in a score?—When thou hast done, thou hast not done;For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I've spunMy last thread, I shall perish on the shore;But swear by thyself, that at my death thy SonShall shine, as he shines now and heretofore;And having done that, thou hast done:I fear no more.
In those days even a pun might be a serious thing: witness the play in the last stanza on the wordssonandsun—not a mere pun, for the Son of the Father is the Sun of Righteousness: he is LifeandLight.
What the Doctor himself says concerning the hymn, appears to me not only interesting but of practical value. He "did occasionally say to a friend, 'The words of this hymn have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that possessed my soul in my sickness, when I composed it.'" What a help it would be to many, if in their more gloomy times they would but recall the visions of truth they had, and were assured of, in better moments!
Here is a somewhat strange hymn, which yet possesses, rightly understood, a real grandeur:
At the Author's last going into Germany.[76]
In what torn ship soever I embark,That ship shall be my emblem of thy ark;What sea soever swallow me, that floodShall be to me an emblem of thy blood.Though thou with clouds of anger do disguiseThy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,Which, though they turn away sometimes—They never will despise.
I sacrifice this island unto thee,And all whom I love here and who love me:When I have put this flood 'twixt them and me,Put thou thy blood betwixt my sins and thee.As the tree's sap doth seek the root belowIn winter, in my winter[77] now I goWhere none but thee, the eternal rootOf true love, I may know.
Nor thou, nor thy religion, dost controlThe amorousness of an harmonious soul;But thou wouldst have that love thyself: as thouArt jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now.Thou lov'st not, till from loving more thou freeMy soul: who ever gives, takes liberty:Oh, if thou car'st not whom I love,Alas, thou lov'st not me!
Seal then this bill of my divorce to allOn whom those fainter beams of love did fall;Marry those loves, which in youth scattered beOn face, wit, hopes, (false mistresses), to thee.Churches are best for prayer that have least light:To see God only, I go out of sight;And, to 'scape stormy days, I chooseAn everlasting night
To do justice to this poem, the reader must take some trouble to enter into the poet's mood.
It is in a measure distressing that, while I grant with all my heart the claim of his "Muse's white sincerity," the taste in—I do not sayof—some of his best poems should be such that I will not present them.
Out of twenty-threeHoly Sonnets, every one of which, I should almost say, possesses something remarkable, I choose three. Rhymed after the true Petrarchian fashion, their rhythm is often as bad as it can be to be called rhythm at all. Yet these are very fine.
Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;I run to death, and death meets me as fast,And all my pleasures are like yesterday.I dare not move my dim eyes any way,Despair behind, and death before doth castSuch terror; and my feeble flesh doth wasteBy sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.Only them art above, and when towards theeBy thy leave I can look, I rise again;But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,That not one hour myself I can sustain:Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.
If faithful souls be alike glorifiedAs angels, then my father's soul doth see,And adds this even to full felicity,That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride:But if our minds to these souls be descriedBy circumstances and by signs that beApparent in us—not immediately[78]—How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried?They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn,And, style blasphemous, conjurors to callOn Jesu's name, and pharisaicalDissemblers feign devotiön. Then turn,O pensive soul, to God; for he knows bestThy grief, for he put it into my breast.
Death, be not proud, though some have calléd theeMighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;And soonest[79] our best men with thee do go,Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery!Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st[80] thou then?One short sleep past, we wake eternally,And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.
In a poem calledThe Cross, full of fantastic conceits, we find the following remarkable lines, embodying the profoundest truth.
As perchance carvers do not faces make,But that away, which hid them there, do take:Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,And be his image, or not his, but he.
One more, and we shall take our leave of Dr. Donne. It is called a fragment; but it seems to me complete. It will serve as a specimen of his best and at the same time of his most characteristic mode of presenting fine thoughts grotesquely attired.
Sleep, sleep, old sun; thou canst not have re-past[81]As yet the wound thou took'st on Friday last.Sleep then, and rest: the world may bear thy stay;A better sun rose before thee to-day;Who, not content to enlighten all that dwellOn the earth's face as thou, enlightened hell,And made the dark fires languish in that vale,As at thy presence here our fires grow pale;Whose body, having walked on earth and nowHastening to heaven, would, that he might allowHimself unto all stations and fill all,For these three days become a mineral.He was all gold when he lay down, but roseAll tincture; and doth not alone disposeLeaden and iron wills to good, but isOf power to make even sinful flesh like his.Had one of those, whose credulous pietyThought that a soul one might discern and seeGo from a body, at this sepulchre been,And issuing from the sheet this body seen,He would have justly thought this body a soul,If not of any man, yet of the whole.
What a strange mode of saying that he is our head, the captain of our salvation, the perfect humanity in which our life is hid! Yet it has its dignity. When one has got over the oddity of these last six lines, the figure contained in them shows itself almost grand.
As an individual specimen of the grotesque form holding a fine sense, regard for a moment the words,
He was all gold when he lay down, but roseAll tincture;
which means, that, entirely good when he died, he was something yet greater when he rose, for he had gained the power of making others good: thetinctureintended here was a substance whose touch would turn the basest metal into gold.
Through his poems are scattered many fine passages; but not even his large influence on the better poets who followed is sufficient to justify our listening to him longer now.
Joseph Hall, born in 1574, a year after Dr. Donne, bishop, first of Exeter, next of Norwich, is best known by his satires. It is not for such that I can mention him: the most honest satire can claim no place amongst religious poems. It is doubtful if satire ever did any good. Its very language is that of the half-brute from which it is well named.
Here are three poems, however, which the bishop wrote for his choir.
Lord, what am I? A worm, dust, vapour, nothing!What is my life? A dream, a daily dying!What is my flesh? My soul's uneasy clothing!What is my time? A minute ever flying:My time, my flesh, my life, and I,What are we, Lord, but vanity?
Where am I, Lord? Down in a vale of death.What is my trade? Sin, my dear God offending;My sport sin too, my stay a puff of breath.What end of sin? Hell's horror never ending:My way, my trade, sport, stay, and place,Help to make up my doleful case.
Lord, what art thou? Pure life, power, beauty, bliss.Where dwell'st thou? Up above in perfect light.What is thy time? Eternity it is.What state? Attendance of each glorious sprite:Thyself, thy place, thy days, thy statePass all the thoughts of powers create.
How shall I reach thee, Lord? Oh, soar above,Ambitious soul. But which way should I fly?Thou, Lord, art way and end. What wings have I?Aspiring thoughts—of faith, of hope, of love:Oh, let these wings, that way alonePresent me to thy blissful throne.
Immortal babe, who this dear dayDidst change thine heaven for our clay,And didst with flesh thy Godhead veil,Eternal Son of God, all hail!
Shine, happy star! Ye angels, singGlory on high to heaven's king!Run, shepherds, leave your nightly watch!See heaven come down to Bethlehem's cratch!manger.
Worship, ye sages of the east,The king of gods in meanness drest!O blessed maid, smile, and adoreThe God thy womb and arms have bore!
Star, angels, shepherds, and wise sages!Thou virgin-glory of all ages!Restored frame of heaven and earth!Joy in your dear Redeemer's birth.
* * * * *
Leave, O my soul, this baser world below;O leave this doleful dungeön of woe;And soar aloft to that supernal restThat maketh all the saints and angels blest:Lo, there the Godhead's radiant throne,Like to ten thousand suns in one!
Lo, there thy Saviour dear, in glory dight,dressed.Adored of all the powers of heavens bright!Lo, where that head that bled with thorny wound,Shines ever with celestíal honour crowned!That hand that held the scornful reedMakes all the fiends infernal dread.
That back and side that ran with bloody streamsDaunt angels' eyes with their majestic beams;Those feet, once fastened to the cursed tree,Trample on Death and Hell, in glorious glee.Those lips, once drenched with gall, do makeWith their dread doom the world to quake.
Behold those joys thou never canst behold;Those precious gates of pearl, those streets of gold,Those streams of life, those trees of ParadiseThat never can be seen by mortal eyes!And when thou seest this state divine,Think that it is or shall be thine.
See there the happy troops of purest spritesThat live above in endless true delights!And see where once thyself shalt rangéd be,And look and long for immortality!And now beforehand help to singHallelujahs to heaven's king.
Polished as these are in comparison to those of Dr. Donne, and fine, too, as they are intrinsically, there are single phrases in his that are worth them all—except, indeed, that one splendid line,
Trample on Death and Hell in glorious glee.
George Sandys, the son of an archbishop of York, and born in 1577, is better known by his travels in the east than by his poetry. But his version of the Psalms is in good and various verse, not unfrequently graceful, sometimes fine. The following is not only in a popular rhythm, but is neat and melodious as well.
Thou who art enthroned above,Thou by whom we live and move,O how sweet, how excellentIs't with tongue and heart's consent,Thankful hearts and joyful tongues,To renown thy name in songs!When the morning paints the skies,When the sparkling stars arise,Thy high favours to rehearse,Thy firm faith, in grateful verse!Take the lute and violin,Let the solemn harp begin,Instruments strung with ten strings,While the silver cymbal rings.From thy works my joy proceeds;How I triumph in thy deeds!Who thy wonders can express?All thy thoughts are fathomless—Hid from men in knowledge blind,Hid from fools to vice inclined.Who that tyrant sin obey,Though they spring like flowers in May—Parched with heat, and nipt with frost,Soon shall fade, for ever lost.Lord, thou art most great, most high;Such from all eternity.Perish shall thy enemies,Rebels that against thee rise.All who in their sins delight,Shall be scattered by thy mightBut thou shall exalt my hornLike a youthful unicorn,Fresh and fragrant odours shedOn thy crowned prophet's head.I shall see my foes' defeat,Shortly hear of their retreat;But the just like palms shall flourishWhich the plains of Judah nourish,Like tall cedars mounted onCloud-ascending Lebanon.Plants set in thy court, belowSpread their roots, and upwards grow;Fruit in their old age shall bring,Ever fat and flourishing.This God's justice celebrates:He, my rock, injustice hates.
Thou mover of the rolling spheres,I, through the glasses of my tears,To thee my eyes erect.As servants mark their master's hands,As maids their mistress's commands,And liberty expect,
So we, depressed by enemiesAnd growing troubles, fix our eyesOn God, who sits on high;Till he in mercy shall descend,To give our miseries an end,And turn our tears to joy.
O save us, Lord, by all forlorn,The subject of contempt and scorn:Defend us from their prideWho live in fluency and ease,Who with our woes their malice please,And miseries deride.
Here is a part of the 66th Psalm, which makes a complete little song of itself:
Bless the Lord. His praise be sungWhile an ear can hear a tongue.He our feet establisheth;He our souls redeems from death.Lord, as silver purified,Thou hast with affliction tried,Thou hast driven into the net,Burdens on our shoulders set.Trod on by their horses' hooves,Theirs whom pity never moves,We through fire, with flames embraced,We through raging floods have passed,Yet by thy conducting hand,Brought into a wealthy land.