Awake! awake! Hark how the wood ringsWinds whisper, and the busy springsA concert make:Awake! awake!Man is their high-priest, and should riseTo offer up the sacrifice.
I would I were some bird or star,Fluttering in woods, or lifted farAbove this innAnd road of sin!Then either star or bird should beShining or singing still to thee.
I would I had in my best partFit rooms for thee! or that my heartWere so clean asThy manger was!But I am all filth, and obscene;Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.
Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no moreThis leper haunt and soil thy door.Cure him, ease him;O release him!And let once more, by mystic birth,The Lord of life be born in earth.
The fitting companion to this is his
Death and darkness, get you packing:Nothing now to man is lacking.All your triumphs now are ended,And what Adam marred is mended.Graves are beds now for the weary;Death a nap, to wake more merry;Youth now, full of pious duty,Seeks in thee for perfect beauty;The weak and aged, tired with lengthOf days, from thee look for new strength;And infants with thy pangs contest,As pleasant as if with the breast.
Then unto him who thus hath thrownEven to contempt thy kingdom down,And by his blood did us advanceUnto his own inheritance—To him be glory, power, praise,From this unto the last of days!
We must now descend from this height of true utterance into the Valley ofHumiliation, and cannot do better than console ourselves by listening tothe boy in mean clothes, of the fresh and well-favoured countenance, whomChristiana and her fellow-pilgrims hear singing in that valley.
He that is down, needs fear no fall;He that is low, no pride;He that is humble ever shallHave God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,Little be it or much;And, Lord, contentment still I crave,Because thou savest[155] such.
Fulness to such a burden isThat go on pilgrimage;Here little, and hereafter bliss,Is best from age to age.
I could not have my book without one word in it of John Bunyan, the tinker, probably the gipsy, who although born only and not made a poet, like his great brother, John Milton, has uttered in prose a wealth of poetic thought. He was born in 1628, twenty years after Milton. I must not, however, remark on this noble Bohemian of literature and prophecy; but leaving at length these flowery hills and meadows behind me, step on my way across the desert.—England had now fallen under the influence of France instead of Italy, and that influence has never been for good to our literature, at least. Thence its chief aim grew to be a desirable trimness of speech and logical arrangement of matter—good external qualities purchased at a fearful price with the loss of all that makes poetry precious. The poets of England, with John Dryden at their head, ceased almost for a time to deal with the truths of humanity, and gave themselves to the facts and relations of society. The nation which could recall the family of the Stuarts must necessarily fall into such a decay of spiritual life as should render its literature only respectable at the best, and its religious utterances essentially vulgar. But the decay is gradual.
Bishop Ken, born in 1637, is known chiefly by his hymns for the morning and evening, deservedly popular. He has, however, written a great many besides—too many, indeed, for variety or excellence. He seems to have set himself to write them as acts of worship. They present many signs of a perversion of taste which, though not in them so remarkable, rose to a height before long. He annoys us besides by the constant recurrence of certain phrases, one or two of which are not admirable, and by using, in the midst of a simple style, odd Latin words. Here are portions of, I think, one of his best, and good it is.
* * * * *
Lord, 'tis thyself who hast impressedIn native light on human breast,That their Creator allMankind should Father call:A father's love all mortals know,And the love filial which they owe.
Our Father gives us heavenly light,And to be happy, ghostly sight;He blesses, guides, sustains;He eases us in pains;Abatements for our weakness makes,And never a true child forsakes.
He waits till the hard heart relents;Our self-damnation he laments;He sweetly them invitesTo share in heaven's delights;His arms he opens to receiveAll who for past transgressions grieve.
My Father! O that name is sweetTo sinners mourning in retreat.God's heart paternal yearnsWhen he a change discerns;He to his favour them restores;He heals their most inveterate sores.
* * * * *
Religious honour, humble awe;Obedience to our Father's law;A lively grateful senseOf tenderness immense;Full trust on God's paternal cares;Submission which chastisement bears;
Grief, when his goodness we offend;Zeal, to his likeness to ascend;Will, from the world refined,To his sole will resigned:These graces in God's children shine,Reflections of the love divine.
* * * * *
God's Son co-equal taught us allIn prayer his Father ours to call:With confidence in need,We to our Father speed:Of his own Son the language dearIntenerates the Father's ear.makes tender.
Thou Father art, though to my shame,I often forfeit that dear name;But since for sin I grieve,Me father-like receive;O melt me into filial tears,To pay of love my vast arrears.
* * * * *
O Spirit of Adoption! spreadThy wings enamouring o'er my head;O Filial love immense!Raise me to love intense;O Father, source of love divine,My powers to love and hymn incline!
While God my Father I revere,Nor all hell powers, nor death I fear;I am my Father's care;His succours present are.All comes from my loved Father's will,And that sweet name intends no ill.
God's Son his soul, when life he closed,In his dear Father's hands reposed:I'll, when my last I breathe,My soul to God bequeath;And panting for the joys on high,Invoking Love Paternal, die.
Born in 1657, one of the later English Platonists, John Norris, who, with how many incumbents between I do not know, succeeded George Herbert in the cure of Bemerton, has left a few poems, which would have been better if he had not been possessed with the common admiration for the rough-shod rhythms of Abraham Cowley.
Here is one in which the peculiarities of his theories show themselves very prominently. There is a constant tendency in such to wander into the region half-spiritual, half-material.
How long, great God, how long must IImmured in this dark prison lie;My soul must watch to have intelligence;Where at the grates and avenues of senseWhere but faint gleams of thee salute my sight,Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night?When shall I leave this magic sphere,And be all mind, all eye, all ear?
How cold this clime! And yet my sensePerceives even here thy influence.Even here thy strong magnetic charms I feel,And pant and tremble like the amorous steel.To lower good, and beauties less divine,Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline,But yet, so strong the sympathy,It turns, and points again to thee.
I long to see this excellenceWhich at such distance strikes my sense.My impatient soul struggles to disengageHer wings from the confinement of her cage.Wouldst thou, great Love, this prisoner once set free,How would she hasten to be linked to thee!She'd for no angels' conduct stay,But fly, and love on all the way.
Dear Contemplation! my divinest joy!When I thy sacred mount ascend,What heavenly sweets my soul employ!Why can't I there my days for ever spend?When I have conquered thy steep heights with pain,What pity 'tis that I must down again!
And yet I must: my passions would rebelShould I too long continue here:No, here I must not think to dwell,But mind the duties of my proper sphere.So angels, though they heaven's glories know,Forget not to attend their charge below.
The old hermits thought to overcome their impulses by retiring from the world: our Platonist has discovered for himself that the world of duty is the only sphere in which they can be combated. Never perhaps is a saint more in danger of giving way to impulse, let it be anger or what it may, than in the moment when he has just descended from this mount of contemplation.
We find ourselves now in the zone ofhymn-writing. From this period, that is, from towards the close of the seventeenth century, a large amount of the fervour of the country finds vent in hymns: they are innumerable. With them the scope of my book would not permit me to deal, even had I inclination thitherward, and knowledge enough to undertake their history. But I am not therefore precluded from presenting any hymn whose literary excellence makes it worthy.
It is with especial pleasure that I refer to a little book which was once a household treasure in a multitude of families,[156] theSpiritual Songsof John Mason, a clergyman in the county of Buckingham. The date of his birth does not appear to be known, but the first edition of these songs[157] was published in 1683. Dr. Watts was very fond of them: would that he had written with similar modesty of style! A few of them are still popular in congregational singing. Here is the first in the book:
How shall I sing that MajestyWhich angels do admire?Let dust in dust and silence lie;Sing, sing, ye heavenly choir.Thousands of thousands stand aroundThy throne, O God most high;Ten thousand times ten thousand soundThy praise; but who am I?
Thy brightness unto them appears,Whilst I thy footsteps trace;A sound of God comes to my ears;But they behold thy face.They sing because thou art their sun:Lord, send a beam on me;For where heaven is but once begun,There hallelujahs be.
Enlighten with faith's light my heart;Enflame it with love's fire;Then shall I sing and bear a partWith that celestial choir.I shall, I fear, be dark and cold,With all my fire and light;Yet when thou dost accept their gold,Lord, treasure up my mite.
How great a being, Lord, is thine.Which doth all beings keep!Thy knowledge is the only lineTo sound so vast a deep.Thou art a sea without a shore,A sun without a sphere;Thy time is now and evermore,Thy place is everywhere.
How good art thou, whose goodness isOur parent, nurse, and guide!Whose streams do water Paradise,And all the earth beside!Thine upper and thy nether springsMake both thy worlds to thrive;Under thy warm and sheltering wingsThou keep'st two broods alive.
Thy arm of might, most mighty kingBoth rocks and hearts doth break:My God, thou canst do everythingBut what should show thee weak.Thou canst not cross thyself, or beLess than thyself, or poor;But whatsoever pleaseth thee,That canst thou do, and more.
Who would not fear thy searching eye,Witness to all that's true!Dark Hell, and deep HypocrisyLie plain before its view.Motions and thoughts before they grow,Thy knowledge doth espy;What unborn ages are to do,Is done before thine eye.
Thy wisdom which both makes and mends,We ever much admire:Creation all our wit transcends;Redemption rises higher.Thy wisdom guides strayed sinners home,'Twill make the dead world rise,And bring those prisoners to their doom:Its paths are mysteries.
Great is thy truth, and shall prevailTo unbelievers' shame:Thy truth and years do never fail;Thou ever art the same.Unbelief is a raging waveDashing against a rock:If God doth not his Israel save,Then let Egyptians mock.
Most pure and holy are thine eyes,Most holy is thy name;Thy saints, and laws, and penalties,Thy holiness proclaim.This is the devil's scourge and sting,This is the angels' song,Whoholy, holy, holysing,In heavenly Canaan's tongue.
Mercy, that shining attribute,The sinner's hope and plea!Huge hosts of sins in their pursuit,Are drowned in thy Red Sea.Mercy is God's memorial,And in all ages praised:My God, thine only Son did fall,That Mercy might be raised.
Thy bright back-parts, O God of grace,I humbly here adore:Show me thy glory and thy face,That I may praise thee more.Since none can see thy face and live,For me to die is best:Through Jordan's streams who would not dive,To land at Canaan's rest?
To theseSongs of Praiseis appended another series calledPenitential Cries, by the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, who, for a short time a clergyman in Buckinghamshire, became the minister of the Congregational church at Northampton, afterwards under the care of Doddridge. Although he was an imitator of Mason, some of his hymns are admirable. The following I think one of the best:—
Alas, my God, that we should beSuch strangers to each other!O that as friends we might agree,And walk and talk together!
Thou know'st my soul does dearly loveThe place of thine abode;No music drops so sweet a soundAs these two words,My God.
* * * * *
May I taste that communion, Lord,Thy people have with thee?Thy spirit daily talks with them,O let it talk with me!Like Enoch, let me walk with God,And thus walk out my day,Attended with the heavenly guards,Upon the king's highway.
When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?O come, my Lord most dear!Come near, come nearer, nearer still:I'm well when thou art near.
* * * * *
When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?For, till thou dost appear,I count each moment for a day,Each minute for a year.
* * * * *
There's no such thing as pleasure here;My Jesus is my all:As thou dost shine or disappear,My pleasures rise and fall.Come, spread thy savour on my frame—No sweetness is so sweet;Till I get up to sing thy nameWhere all thy singers meet.
In the writings of both we recognize a straight-forwardness of expression equal to that of Wither, and a quaint simplicity of thought and form like that of Herrick; while the very charm of some of the best lines is their spontaneity. The men have just enough mysticism to afford them homeliest figures for deepest feelings.
I turn to the accomplished Joseph Addison.
He was born in 1672. His religious poems are so well known, and are for the greater part so ordinary in everything but their simplicity of composition, that I should hardly have cared to choose one, had it not been that we owe him much gratitude for what he did, in the reigns of Anne and George I., to purify the moral taste of the English people at a time when the influence of the clergy was not for elevation, and to teach the love of a higher literature when Milton was little known and less esteemed. Especially are we indebted to him for his modest and admirable criticism of theParadise Lostin theSpectator.
Of those few poems to which I have referred, I choose the best known, because it is the best. It has to me a charm for which I can hardly account.
Yet I imagine I see in it a sign of the poetic times: a flatness of spirit, arising from the evanishment of the mystical element, begins to result in a worship of power. Neither power nor wisdom, though infinite both, could constitute a God worthy of the worship of a human soul; and the worship of such a God must sink to the level of that fancied divinity. Small wonder is it then that the lyric should now droop its wings and moult the feathers of its praise. I do not say that God's more glorious attributes are already forgotten, but that the tendency of the Christian lyric is now to laudation of power—and knowledge, a form of the same—astheessential of Godhead. This indicates no recalling of metaphysical questions, such as we have met in foregoing verse, but a decline towards system; a rising passion—if anything so cold may be calleda passion—for the reduction of all things to the forms of the understanding, a declension which has prepared the way for the present worship of science, and its refusal, if not denial, of all that cannot be proved in forms of the intellect.
The hymn which has led to these remarks is still good, although, like the loveliness of the red and lowering west, it gives sign of a gray and cheerless dawn, under whose dreariness the child will first doubt if his father loves him, and next doubt if he has a father at all, and is not a mere foundling that Nature has lifted from her path.
The spacious firmament on high,With all the blue etherial sky,And spangled heavens, a shining frame,Their great Original proclaim.The unwearied sun from day to dayDoes his Creator's power display;And publishes to every landThe work of an almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,The moon takes up the wondrous tale;And nightly to the listening earthRepeats the story of her birth;Whilst all the stars that round her burn,And all the planets, in their turn,Confirm the tidings as they roll,And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence allMove round the dark terrestrial ball?What though no real voice nor soundAmidst their radiant orbs be found?In reason's ear they all rejoice,And utter forth a glorious voice,For ever singing as they shine:"The hand that made us is divine."
The very use of the wordsspangledandframeseems—to my fancy only, it may be—to indicate a tendency towards the unworthy and theatrical. Yet the second stanza is lovely beyond a doubt; and the whole is most artistic, although after a tame fashion. Whether indeed the heavenly bodiesteachwhat he says, or whether we should read divinity worthy of the name in them at all, without the human revelation which healed men, I doubt much. That divinity is there—Yes; that we could read it there without having seen the face of the Son of Man first, I think—No. I do not therefore dare imagine that no revelation dimly leading towards such result glimmered in the hearts of God's chosen amongst Jews and Gentiles before he came. What I say is, that power and order, although of God, and preparing the way for him, are not his revealers unto men. No doubt King David compares the perfection of God's law to the glory of the heavens, but he did not learn that perfection from the heavens, but from the law itself, revealed in his own heart through the life-teaching of God. When he had learned it he saw that the heavens were like it.
To unveil God, only manhood like our own will serve. And he has taken the form of man that he might reveal the manhood in him from awful eternity.
But Addison's tameness is wonderfully lovely beside the fervours of a man of honoured name,—Dr. Isaac Watts, born in 1674. The result must be dreadful where fervour will poetize without the aidful restraints of art and modesty. If any man would look upon absurdity in the garb of sobriety, let him search Dryden'sAnnus Mirabilis: Dr. Watts'sLyricsare as bad; they are fantastic to utter folly. An admiration of "the incomparable Mr. Cowley" did the sense of them more injury than the imitation of his rough-cantering ode could do their rhythm. The sentimentalities of Roman Catholic writers towards our Lord and his mother, are not half so offensive as the courtier-like flatteries Dr. Watts offers to the Most High. To say nothing of the irreverence, the vulgarity is offensive. He affords another instance amongst thousands how little the form in which feeling is expressed has to do with the feeling itself. In him the thought is true, the form of its utterance false; the feeling lovely, the word, often to a degree, repulsive. The ugly web is crossed now and then by a fine line, and even damasked with an occasional good poem: I have found two, and only two, in the whole of his seventy-fiveLyrics sacred to Devotion. His objectivity and boldness of thought, and his freedom of utterance, cause us ever and anon to lament that he had not the humility and faith of an artist as well as of a Christian.
Almost all his symbols indicate a worship of power and of outward show.
I give the best of the two good poems I have mentioned, and very good it is.
"How meanly dwells the immortal mind!How vile these bodies are!Why was a clod of earth designedTo enclose a heavenly star?
"Weak cottage where our souls reside!This flesh a tottering wall!With frightful breaches gaping wide,The building bends to fall.
"All round it storms of trouble blow,And waves of sorrow roll;Cold waves and winter storms beat through,And pain the tenant-soul.
"Alas, how frail our state!" said I,And thus went mourning on;Till sudden from the cleaving skyA gleam of glory shone.
My soul all felt the glory come,And breathed her native air;Then she remembered heaven her home,And she a prisoner here.
Straight she began to change her key;And, joyful in her pains,She sang the frailty of her clayIn pleasurable strains.
"How weak the prison is where I dwell!Flesh but a tottering wall!The breaches cheerfully foretellThe house must shortly fall.
"No more, my friends, shall I complain,Though all my heart-strings ache;Welcome disease, and every painThat makes the cottage shake!
"Now let the tempest blow all round,Now swell the surges high,And beat this house of bondage downTo let the stranger fly!
"I have a mansion built aboveBy the eternal hand;And should the earth's old basis move,My heavenly house must stand.
"Yes, for 'tis there my Saviour reigns—I long to see the God—And his immortal strength sustainsThe courts that cost him blood.
"Hark! from on high my Saviour calls:I come, my Lord, my Love!Devotion breaks the prison-walls,And speeds my last remove."
His psalms and hymns are immeasurably better than his lyrics. Dreadful some of them are; and I doubt if there is one from which we would not wish stanzas, lines, and words absent. But some are very fine. The man who could write such verses as these ought not to have written as he has written:—
Had I a glance of thee, my God,Kingdoms and men would vanish soon;Vanish as though I saw them not,As a dim candle dies at noon.
Then they might fight and rage and rave:I should perceive the noise no moreThan we can hear a shaking leafWhile rattling thunders round us roar.
Some of his hymns will be sung, I fancy, so long as men praise God together; for most heartily do I grant that of all hymns I know he has produced the best for public use; but these bear a very small proportion indeed to the mass of his labour. We cannot help wishing that he had written about the twentieth part. We could not have too much of his best, such as this:
Be earth with all her scenes withdrawn;Let noise and vanity begone:In secret silence of the mindMy heaven, and there my God, I find;
but there is no occasion for the best to be so plentiful: a little of it will go a great way. And as our best moments are so few, how could any man write six hundred religious poems, and produce quality in proportion to quantity save in an inverse ratio?
Dr. Thomas Parnell, the well-known poet, a clergyman, born in Dublin in 1679, has written a few religious verses. The following have a certain touch of imagination and consequent grace, which distinguishes them above the swampy level of the time.
The beam-repelling mists arise,And evening spreads obscurer skies;The twilight will the night forerun,And night itself be soon begun.Upon thy knees devoutly bow,And pray the Lord of glory nowTo fill thy breast, or deadly sinMay cause a blinder night within.And whether pleasing vapours rise,Which gently dim the closing eyes,Which make the weary members blestWith sweet refreshment in their rest;Or whether spirits[158] in the brainDispel their soft embrace again,And on my watchful bed I stay,Forsook by sleep, and waiting day;Be God for ever in my view,And never he forsake me too;But still as day concludes in night,To break again with new-born light,His wondrous bounty let me findWith still a more enlightened mind.
* * * * *
Thou that hast thy palace farAbove the moon and every star;Thou that sittest on a throneTo which the night was never known,Regard my voice, and make me blestBy kindly granting its request.If thoughts on thee my soul employ,My darkness will afford me joy,Till thou shalt call and I shall soar,And part with darkness evermore.
Many long and elaborate religious poems I have not even mentioned, because I cannot favour extracts, especially in heroic couplets or blank verse. They would only make my book heavy, and destroy the song-idea. I must here pass by one of the best of such poems,The Complaint, or Night Thoughtsof Dr. Young; nor is there anything else of his I care to quote.
I must give just one poem of Pope, born in 1688, the year of the Revolution. The flamboyant style of hisMessiahis to me detestable: nothing can be more unlike the simplicity of Christianity. All such, equally with those by whatever hand that would be religious by being miserable, I reject at once, along with all that are merely commonplace religious exercises. But this at least is very unlike the rest of Pope's compositions: it is as simple in utterance as it is large in scope and practical in bearing. The nameJovemay be unpleasant to some ears: it is to mine—not because it is the name given to their deity by men who had had little outward revelation, but because of the associations which the wanton poets, not the good philosophers, have gathered about it. Here let it stand, as Pope meant it, for one of the names of the Unknown God.
Father of all! in every age,In every clime adored,By saint, by savage, and by sage,Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou great First Cause, least understood!Who all my sense confinedTo know but this, that thou art good,And that myself am blind
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,To see the good from ill;And, binding Nature fast in Fate,Left free the human will:
What Conscience dictates to be done,Or warns me not to do—This, teach me more than hell to shun,That, more than heaven pursue.
What blessings thy free bounty gives,Let me not cast away;For God is paid when man receives:To enjoy is to obey.
Yet not to earth's contracted spanThy goodness let me bound,Or think thee Lord alone of man,When thousand worlds are round.
Let not this weak, unknowing handPresume thy bolts to throw,And deal damnation round the landOn each I judge thy foe.
If I am right, thy grace impartStill in the right to stay;If I am wrong, O teach my heartTo find that better way.
Save me alike from foolish prideOr impious discontent,At aught thy wisdom has denied,Or aught thy goodness lent.
Teach me to feel another's woe,To hide the fault I see:That mercy I to others show,That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am—not wholly so,Since quickened by thy breath:—O lead me wheresoe'er I go,Through this day's life or death.
This day, be bread and peace my lot:All else beneath the sunThou know'st if best bestowed or not,And let thy will be done.
To thee, whose temple is all space,Whose altar, earth, sea, skies,One chorus let all being raise!All Nature's incense rise!
And now we come upon a strange little well in the desert. Few flowers indeed shine upon its brink, and it flows with a somewhat unmusical ripple: it is a well of the water of life notwithstanding, for its song tells of the love and truth which are the grand power of God.
John Byrom, born in Manchester in the year 1691, a man whose strength of thought and perception of truth greatly surpassed his poetic gifts, yet delighted so entirely in the poetic form that he wrote much and chiefly in it. After leaving Cambridge, he gained his livelihood for some time by teaching a shorthand of his own invention, but was so distinguished as a man of learning generally that he was chosen an F.R.S. in 1723. Coming under the influence, probably through William Law, of the writings of Jacob Böhme, the marvellous shoemaker of Görlitz in Silesia, who lived in the time of our Shakspere, and heartily adopting many of his views, he has left us a number of religious poems, which are seldom so sweet in music as they are profound in the metaphysics of religion. Here we have yet again a mystical thread running radiant athwart both warp and woof of our poetic web: the mystical thinker will ever be found the reviver of religious poetry; and although some of the seed had come from afar both in time and space, Byrom's verse is of indigenous growth. Much of the thought of the present day will be found in his verses. Here is a specimen of his metrical argumentation. It is taken from a series ofMeditations for every Day in Passion Week.
Christ satisfieth the justice of God by fulfilling all righteousness.
Justice demandeth satisfaction—yes;And ought to have it where injustice is:But there is none in God—it cannot meanDemand of justice where it has full reign:To dwell in man it rightfully demands,Such as he came from his Creator's hands.
Man had departed from a righteous state,Which he at first must have, if God create:'Tis therefore called God's righteousness, and mustBe satisfied by man's becoming just;Must exercise good vengeance upon men,Till it regain its rights in them again.
This was the justice for which Christ becameA man to satisfy its righteous claim;Became Redeemer of the human race,That sin in them to justice might give place:To satisfy a just and righteous will,Is neither more nor less than to fulfil.
* * * * *
Here are two stanzas of one of more mystical reflection:
What though no objects strike upon the sight!Thy sacred presence is an inward light.What though no sounds shall penetrate the ear!To listening thought the voice of truth is clear.Sincere devotion needs no outward shrine;The centre of an humble soul is thine.There may I worship! and there mayst thou placeThy seat of mercy, and thy throne of grace!Yea, fix, if Christ my advocate appear,The dread tribunal of thy justice there!Let each vain thought, let each impure desireMeet in thy wrath with a consuming fire.
And here are two of more lyrical favour.
Stones towards the earth descend;Rivers to the ocean roll;Every motion has some end:What is thine, beloved soul?
"Mine is, where my Saviour is;There with him I hope to dwell:Jesu is the central bliss;Love the force that doth impel."
Truly thou hast answered right:Now may heaven's attractive graceTowards the source of thy delightSpeed along thy quickening pace!
"Thank thee for thy generous care:Heaven, that did the wish inspire,Through thy instrumental prayer,Plumes the wings of my desire.
"Now, methinks, aloft I fly;Now with angels bear a part:Glory be to God on high!Peace to every Christian heart!"
Cheer up, desponding soul;Thy longing pleased I see:'Tis part of that great wholeWherewith I longed for thee.
Wherewith I longed for thee,And left my Father's throne,From death to set thee free,To claim thee for my own.
To claim thee for my own,I suffered on the cross:O! were my love but known,No soul could fear its loss.
No soul could fear its loss,But, filled with love divine,Would die on its own cross,And rise for ever mine.
Surely there is poetry as well as truth in this. But, certainly in general, his thought is far in excess of his poetry.
Here are a few verses which I shall once more entitle
With peaceful mind thy race of duty runGod nothing does, or suffers to be done,But what thou wouldst thyself, if thou couldst seeThrough all events of things as well as he.
* * * * *
Think, and be careful what thou art within,For there is sin in the desire of sin:Think and be thankful, in a different case,For there is grace in the desire of grace.
* * * * *
An heated fancy or imaginationMay be mistaken for an inspiration;True; but is this conclusion fair to make—That inspiration must be all mistake?A pebble-stone is not a diamond: true;But must a diamond be a pebble too?To own a God who does not speak to men,Is first to own, and then disown again;Of all idolatry the total sumIs having gods that are both deaf and dumb.
* * * * *
What is more tender than a mother's loveTo the sweet infant fondling in her arms?What arguments need her compassion moveTo hear its cries, and help it in its harms?Now, if the tenderest mother were possessedOf all the love within her single breastOf all the mothers since the world began,'Tis nothing to the love of God to man.
* * * * *
Faith, Hope, and Love were questioned what they thoughtOf future glory which Religion taught:Now Faith believed it firmly to be true,And Hope expected so to find it too:Love answered, smiling with a conscious glow,"Believe? Expect? Iknowit to be so."
In the poems of James Thomson, we find two hymns to the God of Creation—one in blank verse, the other in stanzas. They are of the kind which from him we should look for. The one in blank verse, which is as an epilogue to his great poem,The Seasons, I prefer.
We owe much to Thomson. Born (in Scotland) in the year 1700, he is the leading priest in a solemn procession to find God—not in the laws by which he has ordered his creation, but in the beauty which is the outcome of those laws. I do not say there is much of the relation of man to nature in his writing; but thitherward it tends. He is true about the outsides of God; and in Thomson we begin to feel that the revelation of God asmeaningand thereforebeingthe loveliness of nature, is about to be recognized. I do not say—to change my simile—that he is the first visible root in our literature whence we can follow the outburst of the flowers and foliage of our delight in nature: I could show a hundred fibres leading from the depths of our old literature up to the great root. Nor is it surprising that, with his age about him, he too should be found tending to magnify, not God's Word, but his works, above all his name: we have beauty for loveliness; beneficence for tenderness. I have wondered whether one great part of Napoleon's mission was not to wake people from this idolatry of the power of God to the adoration of his love.
TheHymnholds a kind of middle place between theMorning Hymnin the 5th Book of theParadise Lostand theHymn in the Vale of Chamouni. It would be interesting and instructive to compare the three; but we have not time. Thomson has been influenced by Milton, and Coleridge by both. We have delight in Milton; art in Thomson; heart, including both, in Coleridge.
These, as they change, Almighty Father, theseAre but the varied God. The rolling yearIs full of thee. Forth in the pleasing SpringThy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love.Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm;Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles;And every sense and every heart is joy.Then comes thy glory in the Summer months,With light and heat refulgent. Then thy sunShoots full perfection through the swelling yearAnd oft thy voice in dreadful thunder speaks,And oft at dawn, deep noon, or falling eve,By brooks and groves, in hollow-whispering gales.[159]A yellow-floating pomp, thy bounty shinesIn Autumn unconfined. Thrown from thy lap,Profuse o'er nature, falls the lucid showerOf beamy fruits; and, in a radiant stream,Into the stores of sterile Winter pours.In winter awful thou! with clouds and stormsAround thee thrown—tempest o'er tempest rolled.Majestic darkness! on the whirlwind's wingRiding sublime, thou bidst the world adore,[160]And humblest nature with thy northern blast.
Mysterious round! what skill, what force divineDeep felt, in these appear! a simple train,Yet so delightful mixed, with such kind art,Such beauty and beneficence combined!Shade unperceived so softening into shade!And all so forming an harmonious whole,That, as they still succeed, they ravish still.
* * * * *
Nature attend! Join, every living soul,Beneath the spacious temple of the sky—In adoration join; and, ardent, raiseOne general song! To him, ye vocal gales,Breathe soft, whose spirit in your freshness breathes;Oh! talk of him in solitary glooms,Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pineFills the brown shade with a religious awe;And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,Who shake the astonished world, lift high to heavenThe impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.His praise, ye brooks, attune,—ye trembling rills,And let me catch it as I muse along.Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound;Ye softer floods, that lead the humid mazeAlong the vale; and thou, majestic main,A secret world of wonders in thyself,Sound his stupendous praise, whose greater voiceOr bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall.Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers,In mingled clouds to him whose sun exalts,Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.Ye forests, bend, ye harvests, wave to him;Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart,As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.
* * * * *
Bleat out afresh, ye hills! ye mossy rocks,Retain the sound; the broad responsive low,Ye valleys raise; for the great Shepherd reigns,And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.
* * * * *
Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles,At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all,Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast,Assembled men, to the deep organ joinThe long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear,At solemn pauses, through the swelling base;And, as each mingling flame increases each,In one united ardour rise to heaven.
* * * * *
Should fate command me to the farthest vergeOf the green earth, to distant barbarous climes,Rivers unknown to song, where first the sunGilds Indian mountains, or his setting beamFlames on the Atlantic isles, 'tis nought to me,Since God is ever present, ever felt,In the void waste as in the city full;And where he vital breathes there must be joy.
* * * * *
The worship of intellectual power in laws and inventions is the main delight of the song; not the living presence of creative love, which never sings its own praises, but spends itself in giving. Still, although there has passed away a glory from the world of song, although the fervour of childlike worship has vanished for a season, there are signs in these verses of a new dawn of devotion. Even the exclusive and therefore blind worship of science will, when it has turned the coil of the ascending spiral, result in a new song to "him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters." But first, for a long time, the worship of power will go on. There is one sonnet by Kirke White, eighty-five years younger than Thomson, which is quite pagan in its mode of glorifying the power of the Deity.
But about the same time when Thomson'sSeasonswas published, which was in 1730, the third year of George II., that life which had burned on in the hidden corners of the church in spite of the worldliness and sensuality of its rulers, began to show a flame destined to enlarge and spread until it should have lighted up the mass with an outburst of Christian faith and hope. I refer to the movement called Methodism, in the midst of which, at an early stage of its history, arose the directing energies of John Wesley, a man sent of God to deepen at once and purify its motive influences. What he and his friends taught, would, I presume, in its essence, amount mainly to this: that acquiescence in the doctrines of the church is no fulfilment of duty—or anything, indeed, short of an obedient recognition of personal relation to God, who has sent every man the message of present salvation in his Son. A new life began to bud and blossom from the dry stem of the church. The spirit moved upon the waters of feeling, and the new undulation broke on the shores of thought in an outburst of new song. For while John Wesley roused the hearts of the people to sing, his brother Charles put songs in their mouths.
I do not say that many of these songs possess much literary merit, but many of them are real lyrics: they have that essential element, song, in them. The following, however, is a very fine poem. That certain expressions in it may not seem offensive, it is necessary to keep the allegory of Jacob and the Angel in full view—even better in view, perhaps, than the writer does himself.
Come, O thou traveller unknown,Whom still I hold, but cannot see!My company before is gone,And I am left alone with thee!With thee all night I mean to stay,And wrestle till the break of day!
I need not tell thee who I am,My misery or sin declare;Thyself hast called me by my name:Look on my hands, and read it there!But who, I ask thee, who art thou?Tell me thy name, and tell me now.
In vain thou struggles! to get free:I never will unloose my hold.Art thou the man that died for me?The secret of thy love unfold.Wrestling, I will not let thee goTill I thy name, thy nature know.
* * * * *
What though my sinking flesh complain,And murmur to contend so long!I rise superior to my pain:When I am weak, then I am strong;And when my all of strength shall fail,I shall with the God-man prevail.
My strength is gone; my nature dies;I sink beneath thy weighty hand:Faint to revive, and fall to rise;I fall, and yet by faith I stand—I stand, and will not let thee goTill I thy name, thy nature know.
Yield to me now, for I am weak,But confident in self-despair;Speak to my heart, in blessings speak;Be conquered by my instant[161] prayer.Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,And tell me if thy name is Love.
'Tis Love! 'tis Love! Thou diedst for me!I hear thy whisper in my heart!The morning breaks; the shadows flee:Pure universal Love thou art!To me, to all, thy bowels move:Thy nature and thy name is Love!
My prayer hath power with God; the graceUnspeakable I now receive;Through faith I see thee face to face—I see thee face to face, and live:In vain I have not wept and strove;Thy nature and thy name is Love.
I know thee, Saviour—who thou art—Jesus, the feeble sinner's friend!Nor wilt thou with the night depart,But stay and love me to the end!Thy mercies never shall remove:Thy nature and thy name is Love!
* * * * *
Contented now, upon my thighI halt till life's short journey end;All helplessness, all weakness, IOn thee alone for strength depend;Nor have I power from thee to move:Thy nature and thy name is Love.
Lame as I am, I take the prey;Hell, earth, and sin, with ease o'ercome;I leap for joy, pursue my way,And as a bounding hart fly home;Through all eternity to proveThy nature and thy name is Love.
It seems to me that the art with which his very difficult end in the management of the allegory is reached, is admirable. I have omitted three stanzas.
I cannot give much from William Cowper. His poems—graceful always, and often devout even when playful—have few amongst them that are expressly religious, while the best of his hymns are known to every reader of such. Born in 1731, he was greatly influenced by the narrow theology that prevailed in his circle; and most of his hymns are marred by the exclusiveness which belonged to the system and not to the man. There is little of it in the following:—
Far from the world, O Lord, I flee,From strife and tumult far;From scenes where Satan wages stillHis most successful war.
The calm retreat, the silent shade,With prayer and praise agree,And seem by thy sweet bounty madeFor those who follow thee.
There if thy spirit touch the soul,And grace her mean abode,Oh with what peace, and joy, and love,She communes with her God!
There, like the nightingale, she poursHer solitary lays,Nor asks a witness of her song,Nor thirsts for human praise.
Author and guardian of my life,Sweet source of light divine,And—all harmonious names in one—My Saviour, thou art mine!
What thanks I owe thee, and what love—A boundless, endless store—Shall echo through the realms aboveWhen time shall be no more.
Sad as was Cowper's history, with the vapours of a low insanity, if not always filling his garden, yet ever brooding on the hill-tops of his horizon, he was, through his faith in God, however darkened by the introversions of a neat, poverty-stricken theology, yet able to lead his life to the end. It is delightful to discover that, when science, which is the anatomy of nature, had poisoned the theology of the country, in creating a demand for clean-cut theory in infinite affairs, the loveliness and truth of the countenance of living nature could calm the mind which this theology had irritated to the very borders of madness, and give a peace and hope which the man was altogether right in attributing to the Spirit of God. How many have been thus comforted, who knew not, like Wordsworth, the immediate channel of their comfort; or even, with Cowper, recognized its source! God gives while men sleep.
William Blake, the painter of many strange and fantastic but often powerful—sometimes very beautiful pictures—wrote poems of an equally remarkable kind. Some of them are as lovely as they are careless, while many present a curious contrast in the apparent incoherence of the simplest language. He was born in 1757, towards the close of the reign of George II. Possibly if he had been sent to an age more capable of understanding him, his genius would not have been tempted to utter itself with such a wildness as appears to indicate hopeless indifference to being understood. We cannot tell sometimes whether to attribute the bewilderment the poems cause in us to a mysticism run wild, or to regard it as the reflex of madness in the writer. Here is a lyrical gem, however, although not cut with mathematical precision.
To find the western path,Right through the gates of wrathI urge my way;Sweet morning leads me on:With soft repentant moan,I see the break of day
The war of swords and spears,Melted by dewy tears,Exhales on high;The sun is freed from fears,And with soft grateful tears,Ascends the sky.
The following is full of truth most quaintly expressed, with a homeliness of phrase quite delicious. It is one of theSongs of Innocence, published, as we learn from Gilchrist's Life of Blake, in the year 1789. They were engraved on copper with illustrations by Blake, and printed and bound by his wife. When we consider them in respect of the time when they were produced, we find them marvellous for their originality and simplicity.
Can I see another's woe,And not be in sorrow too?Can I see another's grief,And not seek for kind relief?
Can I see a falling tear,And not feel my sorrow's share?Can a father see his childWeep, nor be with sorrow filled?
Can a mother sit and hearAn infant groan, an infant fear?No, no; never can it be!Never, never can it be!
And can he, who smiles on all,Hear the wren, with sorrows small—Hear the small bird's grief and care,Hear the woes that infants bear,
And not sit beside the nest,Pouring pity in their breast?And not sit the cradle near,Weeping tear on infant's tear?
And not sit both night and day,Wiping all our tears away?Oh, no! never can it be!Never, never can it be!
He doth give his joy to all;He becomes an infant small;He becomes a man of woe;He doth feel the sorrow too.
Think not thou canst sigh a sigh,And thy Maker is not by;Think not thou canst weep a tear,And thy Maker is not near.
Oh! he gives to us his joy,That our grief he may destroy:Till our grief is fled and gone,He doth sit by us and moan.
There is our mystic yet again leading the way.
A supreme regard for science, and the worship of power, go hand in hand: that knowledge is power has been esteemed the grandest incitement to study. Yet the antidote to the disproportionate cultivation of science, is simply power in its crude form—breaking out, that is, as brute force. When science, isolated and glorified, has produced a contempt, not only for vulgar errors, but for the truths which are incapable of scientific proof, then, as we see in the French Revolution, the wild beast in man breaks from its den, and chaos returns. But all the noblest minds in Europe looked for grand things in the aurora of this uprising of the people. To the terrible disappointment that followed, we are indebted for the training of Wordsworth to the priesthood of nature's temple. So was he possessed with the hope of a coming deliverance for the nations, that he spent many months in France during the Revolution. At length he was forced to seek safety at home. Dejected even to hopelessness for a time, he believed in nothing. How could there be a God that ruled in the earth when such a rising sun of promise was permitted to set in such a sea! But for man to worship himself is a far more terrible thing than that blood should flow like water: the righteous plague of God allowed things to go as they would for a time. But the power of God came upon Wordsworth—I cannot say as it had never come before, but with an added insight which made him recognize in the fresh gift all that he had known and felt of such in the past. To him, as to Cowper, the benignities of nature restored peace and calmness and hope—sufficient to enable him to look back and gather wisdom. He was first troubled, then quieted, and then taught. Such presence of the Father has been an infinitely more active power in the redemption of men than men have yet become capable of perceiving. The divine expressions of Nature, that is, the face of the Father therein visible, began to heal the plague which the worship of knowledge had bred. And the power of her teaching grew from comfort to prayer, as will be seen in the poem I shall give. Higher than all that Nature can do in the way of direct lessoning, is the production of such holy moods as result in hope, conscience of duty, and supplication. Those who have never felt it have to be told there is in her such a power—yielding to which, the meek inherit the earth.
Composed upon an evening of extraordinary splendour and beauty.
Had this effulgence disappearedWith flying haste, I might have sentAmong the speechless clouds a lookOf blank astonishment;But 'tis endued with power to stay,And sanctify one closing day,That frail Mortality may see—What is?—ah no, but whatcanbe!Time was when field and watery coveWith modulated echoes rang,While choirs of fervent angels sangTheir vespers in the grove;Or, crowning, star-like, each some sovereign height,Warbled, for heaven above and earth below,Strains suitable to both.—Such holy rite,Methinks, if audibly repeated nowFrom hill or valley could not moveSublimer transport, purer love,Than doth this silent spectacle—the gleam—The shadow—and the peace supreme!
No sound is uttered,—but a deepAnd solemn harmony pervadesThe hollow vale from steep to steep,And penetrates the glades.Far distant images draw nigh,Called forth by wondrous potencyOf beamy radiance, that imbuesWhate'er it strikes with gem-like hues.In vision exquisitely clear,Herds range along the mountain side,And glistening antlers are descried,And gilded flocks appear.Thine is the tranquil hour, purpureal Eve!But long as godlike wish or hope divineInforms my spirit, ne'er can I believeThat this magnificence is wholly thine!From worlds nor quickened by the sunA portion of the gift is won;An intermingling of heaven's pomp is spreadOn ground which British shepherds tread!
And if there be whom broken tiesAfflict, or injuries assail,Yon hazy ridges to their eyesPresent a glorious scale[162]Climbing suffused with sunny air,To stop—no record hath told where;And tempting Fancy to ascend,And with immortal spirits blend!—Wings at my shoulders seem to play!But, rooted here, I stand and gazeOn those bright steps that heavenward raiseTheir practicable way.Come forth, ye drooping old men, look abroad,And see to what fair countries ye are bound!And if some traveller, weary of his road,Hath slept since noontide on the grassy ground,Ye genii, to his covert speed,And wake him with such gentle heedAs may attune his soul to meet the dowerBestowed on this transcendent hour.
Such hues from their celestial urnWere wont to stream before mine eyeWhere'er it wandered in the mornOf blissful infancy.This glimpse of glory, why renewed?Nay, rather speak with gratitude;For, if a vestige of those gleamsSurvived, 'twas only in my dreams.Dread Power! whom peace and calmness serveNo less than nature's threatening voice,If aught unworthy be my choice,From THEE if I would swerve;Oh, let thy grace remind me of the lightFull early lost, and fruitlessly deplored;Which, at this moment, on my waking sightAppears to shine, by miracle restored:My soul, though yet confined to earth,Rejoices in a second birth!—'Tis past; the visionary splendour fades;And night approaches with her shades.
Although I have mentioned Wordsworth before Coleridge because he was two years older, yet Coleridge had much to do with the opening of Wordsworth's eyes to such visions; as, indeed, more than any man in our times, he has opened the eyes of the English people to see wonderful things. There is little of a directly religious kind in his poetry; yet we find in him what we miss in Wordsworth, an inclined plane from the revelation in nature to the culminating revelation in the Son of Man. Somehow, I say, perhaps because we find it in his prose, we feel more of this in Coleridge's verse.
Coleridge is a sage, and Wordsworth is a seer; yet when the sage sees, that is, when, like the son of Beor, he falls into a trance having his eyes open, or, when feeling and sight are one and philosophy is in abeyance, the ecstasy is even loftier in Coleridge than in Wordsworth. In their highest moods they seem almost to change places—Wordsworth to become sage, and Coleridge seer. Perhaps the grandest hymn of praise which man, the mouth-piece of Nature, utters for her, is the hymn of Mont Blanc.
Before sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni.
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning starIn his steep course—so long he seems to pauseOn thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc?The Arve and Arveiron at thy baseRave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,How silently! Around thee and aboveDeep is the air and dark, substantial, black,An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest itAs with a wedge! But when I look again,It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,Thy habitation from eternity!O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon theeTill thou, still present to the bodily sense,Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayerI worshipped the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy;Till the dilating soul, enwrapt, transfused,Into the mighty vision passing—thereAs in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
Awake, my soul! Not only passive praiseThou owest! Not alone these swelling tears,Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovran[163] of the Vale!O struggling with the darkness all the night,And visited all night by troops of stars,[164]Or when they climb the sky or when they sink!Companion of the morning-star at dawn,Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn[165]Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!Who called you forth from night and utter death,From dark and icy caverns called you forth,[166]Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,For ever shattered, and the same for ever?Who gave you your invulnerable life,Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?And who commanded—and the silence came—Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?[167]
Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's browAdown enormous ravines slope amain—Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!—Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!Who made you glorious as the gates of heavenBeneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sunClothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowersOf loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—God!let the torrents, like a shout of nations,Answer! and let the ice-plains echo,God!God!sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,And in their perilous fall shall thunder,God!Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!Ye signs and wonders of the element!Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise.