Chorus. O what a gracious God have we!How good? How great? Even as our misery.
Awake, my soul, and come away;Put on thy best array,Lest if thou longer stay,Thou lose some minutes of so blest a day.
Go run, And bid good-morrow to the sun;Welcome his safe return To Capricorn, And that great morn Whereina God was born, Whose story none can tell But he whose everyword's a miracle.
To-day Almightiness grew weak;The Word itself was mute, and could not speak.
That Jacob's star which made the sunTo dazzle if he durst look on,Now mantled o'er in Bethlehem's night,Borrowed a star to show him light.
He that begirt each zone,To whom both poles are one,Who grasped the zodiac in his hand,And made it move or stand,Is now by nature man,By stature but a span;Eternity is now grown short;A king is born without a court;The water thirsts; the fountain's dry;And life, being born, made apt to die.
Chorus.Then let our praises emulate and vieWith his humility!Since he's exiled from skiesThat we might rise,—From low estate of menLet's sing him up again!Each man wind up his heartTo bear a partIn that angelic choir, and showHis glory high, as he was low.Let's sing towards men goodwill and charity,Peace upon earth, glory to God on high!Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
My soul doth pant towards thee,My God, source of eternal life.Flesh fights with me:Oh end the strife,And part us, that in peace I mayUnclayMy wearied spirit, and takeMy flight to thy eternal spring,Where, for his sakeWho is my king,I may wash all my tears away,That day.
Thou conqueror of death,Glorious triumpher o'er the grave,Whose holy breathWas spent to saveLost mankind, make me to be styledThy child,And take me when I dieAnd go unto my dust; my soulAbove the skyWith saints enrol,That in thy arms, for ever, IMay lie.
This last is quite regular, that is, the second stanza is arranged precisely as the first, though such will not appear to be the case without examination: the disposition of the lines, so various in length, is confusing though not confused.
In these poems will be found that love of homeliness which is characteristic of all true poets—and orators too, in as far as they are poets. The meeting of the homely and the grand is heaven. One more.
Full of mercy, full of love,Look upon us from above;Thou who taught'st the blind man's nightTo entertain a double light,Thine and the day's—and that thine too:The lame away his crutches threw;The parchéd crust of leprosyReturned unto its infancy;The dumb amazéd was to hearHis own unchain'd tongue strike his ear;Thy powerful mercy did even chaseThe devil from his usurpéd place,Where thou thyself shouldst dwell, not he:Oh let thy love our pattern be;Let thy mercy teach one brotherTo forgive and love another;That copying thy mercy here,Thy goodness may hereafter rearOur souls unto thy glory, whenOur dust shall cease to be with men.Amen.
Dr. Henry More was born in the year 1614. Chiefly known for his mystical philosophy, which he cultivated in retirement at Cambridge, and taught not only in prose, but in an elaborate, occasionally poetic poem, of somewhere about a thousand Spenserian stanzas, calledA Platonic Song of the Soul, he has left some smaller poems, from which I shall gather good store for my readers. Whatever may be thought of his theories, they belong at least to the highest order of philosophy; and it will be seen from the poems I give that they must have borne their part in lifting the soul of the man towards a lofty spiritual condition of faith and fearlessness. The mystical philosophy seems to me safe enough in the hands of a poet: with others it may degenerate into dank and dusty materialism.
Where's now the objects of thy fears,Needless sighs, and fruitless tears?They be all gone like idle dreamSuggested from the body's steam.
* * * * *
What's plague and prison? Loss of friends?War, dearth, and death that all things ends?Mere bugbears for the childish mind;Pure panic terrors of the blind.
Collect thy soul unto one sphereOf light, and 'bove the earth it rear;Those wild scattered thoughts that erstLay loosely in the world dispersed,Call in:—thy spirit thus knit in oneFair lucid orb, those fears be goneLike vain impostures of the night,That fly before the morning bright.Then with pure eyes thou shalt beholdHow the first goodness doth infoldAll things in loving tender arms;That deeméd mischiefs are no harms,But sovereign salves and skilful curesOf greater woes the world endures;That man's stout soul may win a stateFar raised above the reach of fate.
Then wilt thou say,God rules the world,Though mountain over mountain hurledBe pitched amid the foaming mainWhich busy winds to wrath constrain;
* * * * *
Though pitchy blasts from hell up-bornStop the outgoings of the morn,And Nature play her fiery gamesIn this forced night, with fulgurant flames:
* * * * *
All this confusion cannot moveThe purgéd mind, freed from the loveOf commerce with her body dear,Cell of sad thoughts, sole spring of fear.
Whate'er I feel or hear or seeThreats but these parts that mortal be.Nought can the honest heart dismayUnless the love of living clay,
And long acquaintance with the lightOf this outworld, and what to sightThose two officious beams[135] discoverOf forms that round about us hover.
Power, wisdom, goodness, sure did frameThis universe, and still guide the same.But thoughts from passions sprung, deceiveVain mortals. No man can contriveA better course than what's been runSince the first circuit of the sun.
He that beholds all from on highKnows better what to do than I.I'm not mine own: should I repineIf he dispose of what's not mine?Purge but thy soul of blind self-will,Thou straight shall see God doth no ill.The world he fills with the bright raysOf his free goodness. He displaysHimself throughout. Like common airThat spirit of life through all doth fare,Sucked in by them as vital breathThat willingly embrace not death.But those that with that living lawBe unacquainted, cares do gnaw;Mistrust of God's good providenceDoth daily vex their wearied sense.
Now place me on the Libyan soil,With scorching sun and sands to toil,Far from the view of spring or tree,Where neither man nor house I see;
* * * * *
Commit me at my next removeTo icy Hyperborean ove;Confine me to the arctic pole,Where the numb'd heavens do slowly roll;To lands where cold raw heavy mistSol's kindly warmth and light resists;Where lowering clouds full fraught with snowDo sternly scowl; where winds do blowWith bitter blasts, and pierce the skin,Forcing the vital spirits in,Which leave the body thus ill bested,In this chill plight at least half-dead;Yet by an antiperistasis[136]My inward heat more kindled is;And while this flesh her breath expires,My spirit shall suck celestial firesBy deep-fetched sighs and pure devotion.Thus waxen hot with holy motion,At once I'll break forth in a flame;Above this world and worthless fameI'll take my flight, careless that menKnow not how, where I die, or when.
Yea, though the soul should mortal prove,So be God's life but in me moveTo my last breath—I'm satisfiedA lonesome mortal God to have died.
This last paragraph is magnificent as any single passage I know in literature.
Is it lawful, after reading this, to wonder whether Henry More, the retired, and so far untried, student of Cambridge, would have been able thus to meet the alternations of suffering which he imagines? It is one thing to see reasonableness, another to be reasonable when objects have become circumstances. Would he, then, by spiritual might, have risen indeed above bodily torture? It ispossiblefor a man to arrive at this perfection; it is absolutelynecessarythat a man should some day or other reach it; and I think the wise doctor would have proved the truth of his principles. But there are many who would gladly part with their whole bodies rather than offend, and could not yet so rise above the invasions of the senses. Here, as in less important things, our business is not to speculate what we would do in other circumstances, but to perform the duty of the moment, the one true preparation for the duty to come. Possibly, however, the right development of our human relations in the world may be a more difficult and more important task still than this condition of divine alienation. To find God in others is better than to growsolelyin the discovery of him in ourselves, if indeed the latter were possible.
Good God, when them thy inward grace dost showerInto my breast,How full of light and lively powerIs then my soul!How am I blest!How can I then all difficulties devour!Thy might,Thy spright,With ease my cumbrous enemy control.
If thou once turn away thy face and hideThy cheerful look,My feeble flesh may not abideThat dreadful stound;hour.I cannot brookThy absence. My heart, with care and grief then gride,Doth fail,Doth quail;My life steals from me at that hidden wound.
My fancy's then a burden to my mind;Mine anxious thoughtBetrays my reason, makes me blind;Near dangers draddreaded.Make me distraught;Surprised with fear my senses all I find:In hellI dwell,Oppressed with horror, pain, and sorrow sad.
My former resolutions all are fled—Slipped over my tongue;My faith, my hope, and joy are dead.Assist my heart,Rather than my song,My God, my Saviour! When I'm ill-bested.Stand by,And IShall bear with courage undeservéd smart.
Sing aloud!—His praise rehearseWho hath made the universe.He the boundless heavens has spread,All the vital orbs has kned,kneaded.He that on Olympus highTends his flocks with watchful eye,And this eye has multipliedsuns, as centres of systems.Midst each flock for to reside.Thus, as round about they stray,Toucheth[137] each with outstretched ray;Nimble they hold on their way,Shaping out their night and day.Summer, winter, autumn, spring,Their inclined axes bring.Never slack they; none respires,Dancing round their central fires.
In due order as they move,Echoes sweet be gently droveThorough heaven's vast hollowness,Which unto all corners press:Music that the heart of JoveMoves to joy and sportful love;Fills the listening sailers' earsRiding on the wandering spheres:Neither speech nor language isWhere their voice is not transmiss.
God is good, is wise, is strong,Witness all the creature throng,Is confessed by every tongue;All things back from whence they sprung,go back—a verb.As the thankful rivers payWhat they borrowed of the sea.
Now myself I do resign:Take me whole: I all am thine.Save me, God, from self-desire—Death's pit, dark hell's raging fire—[138]Envy, hatred, vengeance, ire;Let not lust my soul bemire.
Quit from these, thy praise I'll sing,Loudly sweep the trembling string.Bear a part, O Wisdom's sons,Freed from vain religïons!Lo! from far I you salute,Sweetly warbling on my lute—India, Egypt, Araby,Asia, Greece, and Tartary,Carmel-tracts, and Lebanon,With the Mountains of the Moon,From whence muddy Nile doth run,Or wherever else you won:dwell.Breathing in one vital air,One we are though distant far.
Rise at once;—let's sacrifice:Odours sweet perfume the skies;See how heavenly lightning firesHearts inflamed with high aspires!All the substance of our soulsUp in clouds of incense rolls.Leave we nothing to ourselvesSave a voice—what need we else!Or an hand to wear and tireOn the thankful lute or lyre!
Sing aloud!—His praise rehearseWho hath made the universe.
In thisPhilosopher's Devotionhe has clearly imitated one of those psalms of George Sandys which I have given.
Far have I clambered in my mind,But nought so great as love I find:Deep-searching wit, mount-moving might,Are nought compared to that good sprite.Life of delight and soul of bliss!Sure source of lasting happiness!Higher than heaven! lower than hell!What is thy tent? Where may'st thou dwell?
"My mansion hightHumility,is named.Heaven's vastest capability.The further it doth downward tend,The higher up it doth ascend;If it go down to utmost nought,It shall return with that it sought."
Lord, stretch thy tent in my strait breast;Enlarge it downward, that sure restMay there be pight for that pure firepitched.Wherewith thou wontest to inspireAll self-dead souls: my life is gone;Sad solitude's my irksome won;dwelling.Cut off from men and all this world,In Lethe's lonesome ditch I'm hurled;Nor might nor sight doth ought me move,Nor do I care to be above.O feeble rays of mental light,That best be seen in this dark night,What are you? What is any strengthIf it be not laid in one lengthWith pride or love? I nought desireBut a new life, or quite to expire.Could I demolish with mine eyeStrong towers, stop the fleet stars in sky,Bring down to earth the pale-faced moon,Or turn black midnight to bright noon;Though all things were put in my hand—As parched, as dry as the Libyan sandWould be my life, if charityWere wanting. But humilityIs more than my poor soul durst craveThat lies entombed in lowly grave;But if 'twere lawful up to sendMy voice to heaven, this should it rend:"Lord, thrust me deeper into dust,That thou may'st raise me with the just."
There are strange things and worth pondering in all these. An occasional classical allusion seems to us quite out of place, but such things we must pass. The poems are quite different from any we have had before. There has been only a few of such writers in our nation, but I suspect those have had a good deal more influence upon the religious life of it than many thinkers suppose. They are in closest sympathy with the deeper forms of truth employed by St. Paul and St. John. This last poem, concerning humility as the house in which charity dwells, is very truth. A repentant sinner feels that he is making himself little when he prays to be made humble: the Christian philosopher sees such a glory and spiritual wealth in humility that it appears to him almost too much to pray for.
The very essence of these mystical writers seems to me to be poetry. They use the largest figures for the largest spiritual ideas—lightforgood, darknessforevil. Such symbols are the true bodies of the true ideas. For this service mainly what we termnaturewas called into being, namely, to furnish forms for truths, for without form truth cannot be uttered. Having found their symbols, these writers next proceed to use them logically; and here begins the peculiar danger. When the logic leaves the poetry behind, it grows first presumptuous, then hard, then narrow and untrue to the original breadth of the symbol; the glory of the symbol vanishes; and the final result is a worship of the symbol, which has withered into an apple of Sodom. Witness some of the writings of the European master of the order—Swedenborg: the highest of them are rich in truth; the lowest are poverty-stricken indeed.
In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and devoutest of men—and no mean poet either. If ever a man sought between contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter. Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare—he pleased neither Royalists nor Puritans. Dull of heart and sadly unlike a mother was the Church when, by the Act of Uniformity of Charles II., she drove from her bosom such a son, with his two thousand brethren of the clergy!
He has left us a good deal of verse—too much, perhaps, if we consider the length of the poems and the value of condensation. There is in many of them a delightful fervour of the simplest love to God, uttered with a plain half poetic, half logical strength, from which sometimes the poetry breaks out clear and fine. Much that he writes is of death, from the dread of which he evidently suffered—a good thing when it drives a man to renew his confidence in his Saviour's presence. It has with him a very different origin from the vulgar fancy that to talk about death is religious. It was refuge from the fear of death he sought, and that is the part of every man who would not be a slave. Thedoor of deathof which he so often speaks is to him a door out of the fear of death.
The poem from which the following excerpt is made was evidently written in view of some imminent suffering for conscience-sake, probably when the Act of Uniformity was passed: twenty years after, he was imprisoned at the age of sixty-seven, and lay nearly a year and a half.—I omit many verses.
It's no great matter what men deem,Whether they count me good or bad:In their applause and best esteem,There's no contentment to be had.Thy steps, Lord, in this dirt I see;And lest my soul from God should stray,I'll bear my cross and follow thee:Let others choose the fairer way.My face is meeter for the spit;I am more suitable to shame,And to the taunts of scornful wit:It's no great matter for my name.
My Lord hath taught me how to wantA place wherein to put my head:While he is mine, I'll be contentTo beg or lack my daily bread.Must I forsake the soil and airWhere first I drew my vital breath?That way may be as near and fair:Thence I may come to thee by death.All countries are my Father's lands;Thy sun, thy love, doth shine on all;We may in all lift up pure hands,And with acceptance on thee call.
What if in prison I must dwell?May I not there converse with thee?Save me from sin, thy wrath, and hell,Call me thy child, and I am free.No walls or bars can keep thee out;None can confine a holy soul;The streets of heaven it walks about;None can its liberty control.This flesh hath drawn my soul to sin:If it must smart, thy will be done!O fill me with thy joys within,And then I'll let it grieve alone.
Frail, sinful flesh is loath to die;Sense to the unseen world is strange;The doubting soul dreads the Most High,And trembleth at so great a change.O let me not be strange at home,Strange to the sun and life of souls,Choosing this low and darkened room,Familiar with worms and moles!Am I the first that go this way?How many saints are gone before!How many enter every dayInto thy kingdom by this door!Christ was once dead, and in a grave;Yet conquered death, and rose again;And by this method he will saveHis servants that with him shall reign.The strangeness will be quickly over,When once the heaven-born soul is there:One sight of God will it recoverFrom all this backwardness and fear.To us, Christ's lowest parts, his feet,Union and faith must yet sufficeTo guide and comfort us: it's meetWe trust our head who hath our eyes.
We see here that faith in the Lord leads Richard Baxter to the same conclusions immediately to which his faithful philosophy led Henry More.
There is much in Baxter's poems that I would gladly quote, but must leave with regret. Here is a curious, skilful, and, in a homely way, poetic ballad, embodying a good parable. I give only a few of the stanzas.
Who was it that I left behindWhen I went last from home,That now I all disordered findWhen to myself I come?
I left it light, but now all's dark,And I am fain to grope:Were it not for one little sparkI should be out of hope.
My Gospel-book I open left,Where I the promise saw;But now I doubt it's lost by theft:I find none but the Law.
The stormy rain an entrance hathThrough the uncovered top:How should I rest when showers of wrathUpon my conscience drop?
I locked my jewel in my chest;I'll search lest that be gone:—If this one guest had quit my breast,I had been quite undone.
My treacherous Flesh had played its part,And opened Sin the door;And they have spoiled and robbed my heart,And left it sad and poor.
Yet have I one great trusty friendThat will procure my peace,And all this loss and ruin mend,And purchase my release.
The bellows I'll yet take in hand,Till this small spark shall flame:Love shall my heart and tongue commandTo praise God's holy name.
I'll mend the roof; I'll watch the door,And better keep the key;I'll trust my treacherous flesh no more,But force it to obey.
What have I said? That I'll do thisThat am so false and weak,And have so often done amiss,And did my covenants break?
I mean, Lord—all this shall be doneIf thou my heart wilt raise;And as the work must be thine own,So also shall the praise.
The allegory is so good that one is absolutely sorry when it breaks down, and the poem says in plain words that which is the subject of the figures, bringing truths unmasked into the midst of the maskers who represent truths—thus interrupting the pleasure of the artistic sense in the transparent illusion.
The command of metrical form in Baxter is somewhat remarkable. He has not much melody, but he keeps good time in a variety of measures.
I come now to one of the loveliest of our angel-birds, Richard Crashaw. Indeed he was like a bird in more senses than one; for he belongs to that class of men who seem hardly ever to get foot-hold of this world, but are ever floating in the upper air of it.
What I said of a peculiar Æolian word-music in William Drummond applies with equal truth to Crashaw; while of our own poets, somehow or other, he reminds me of Shelley, in the silvery shine and bell-like melody both of his verse and his imagery; and in one of his poems,Music's Duel, the fineness of his phrase reminds me of Keats. But I must not forget that it is only with his sacred, his best poems too, that I am now concerned.
The date of his birth is not known with certainty, but it is judged about 1616, the year of Shakspere's death. He was the son of a Protestant clergyman zealous even to controversy. By a not unnatural reaction Crashaw, by that time, it is said, a popular preacher, when expelled from Oxford in 1644 by the Puritan Parliament because of his refusal to sign their Covenant, became a Roman Catholic. He died about the age of thirty-four, a canon of the Church of Loretto. There is much in his verses of that sentimentalism which, I have already said in speaking of Southwell, is rife in modern Catholic poetry. I will give from Crashaw a specimen of the kind of it. Avoiding a more sacred object, one stanza from a poem of thirty-one, most musical, and full of lovely speech concerning the tears of Mary Magdalen, will suit my purpose.
Hail, sister springs,Parents of silver-footed rills!Ever-bubbling things!Thawing crystal! Snowy hills,Still spending, never spent!—I meanThy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene!
The poem is calledThe Weeper, and is radiant of delicate fancy. But surely such tones are not worthy of flitting moth-like about the holy sorrow of a repentant woman! Fantastically beautiful, they but play with her grief. Sorrow herself would put her shoes off her feet in approaching the weeping Magdalene. They make much of her indeed, but they show her little reverence. There is in them, notwithstanding their fervour of amorous words, a coldness like that which dwells in the ghostly beauty of icicles shining in the moon.
But I almost reproach myself for introducing Crashaw thus. I had to point out the fact, and now having done with it, I could heartily wish I had room to expatiate on his loveliness even in such poems asThe Weeper.
HisDivine Epigramsare not the most beautiful, but they are to me the most valuable of his verses, inasmuch as they make us feel afresh the truth which he sets forth anew. In them some of the facts of our Lord's life and teaching look out upon us as from clear windows of the past. As epigrams, too, they are excellent—pointed as a lance.
Upon the Sepulchre of our Lord.
Here, where our Lord once laid his head,Now the grave lies buriëd.
The Widow's Mites.
Two mites, two drops, yet all her house and land,Fall from a steady heart, though trembling hand;The other's wanton wealth foams high and brave:The other cast away—she only gave.
On the Prodigal.
Tell me, bright boy! tell me, my golden lad!Whither away so frolic? Why so glad?
What!allthy wealth in council?allthy state?Are husks so dear? Troth, 'tis a mighty rate!
I value the following as a lovely parable. Mary is not contented: to see the place is little comfort. The church itself, with all its memories of the Lord, the gospel-story, and all theory about him, is but his tomb until we find himself.
Come, see the place-where the Lord lay.
Show me himself, himself, bright sir! Oh showWhich way my poor tears to himself may go.Were it enough to show the place, and say,"Look, Mary; here see where thy Lord once lay;"Then could I show these arms of mine, and say,"Look, Mary; here see where thy Lord once lay."
From one of eight lines, on the Mother Mary looking on her child in her lap, I take the last two, complete in themselves, and I think best alone.
This new guest to her eyes new laws hath given:'Twas oncelook up, 'tis nowlook down to heaven.
And here is perhaps his best.
Two went up into the Temple to pray.
Two went to pray? Oh rather say,One went to brag, the other to pray.
One stands up close, and treads on high,Where the other dares not lend his eye.
One nearer to God's altar trod;The other to the altar's God.
This appears to me perfect. Here is the true relation between the forms and the end of religion. The priesthood, the altar and all its ceremonies, must vanish from between the sinner and his God. When the priest forgets his mediation of a servant, his duty of a door-keeper to the temple of truth, and takes upon him the office of an intercessor, he stands between man and God, and is a Satan, an adversary. Artistically considered, the poem could hardly be improved.
Here is another containing a similar lesson.
I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof.
Thy God was making haste into thy roof;Thy humble faith and fear keeps him aloof.He'll be thy guest: because he may not be,He'll come—into thy house? No; into thee.
The following is a world-wide intercession for them that know not what they do. Of those that reject the truth, who can be said ever to havetrulyseen it? A man must be good to see truth. It is a thought suggested by our Lord's words, not an irreverent opposition to the truth ofthem.
But now they have seen and hated.
Seen?and yethated thee?They did not see—They saw thee not, that saw and hated thee!No, no; they saw thee not, O Life! O Love!Who saw aught in thee that their hate could move.
We must not be too ready to quarrel with every oddity: an oddity will sometimes just give the start to an outbreak of song. The strangeness of the following hymn rises almost into grandeur.
Rise, heir of fresh eternity,From thy virgin-tomb;Rise, mighty man of wonders, and thy world with thee;Thy tomb, the universal East—Nature's new womb;Thy tomb—fair Immortality's perfumed nest.
Of all the glories[139] make noon gayThis is the morn;This rock buds forth the fountain of the streams of day;In joy's white annals lives this hour,When life was born,No cloud-scowl on his radiant lids, no tempest-lower.
Life, by this light's nativity,All creatures have;Death only by this day's just doom is forced to die.Nor is death forced; for, may he lieThroned in thy grave,Death will on this condition be content to die.
When we come, in the writings of one who has revealed masterdom, upon any passage that seems commonplace, or any figure that suggests nothing true, the part of wisdom is to brood over that point; for the probability is that the barrenness lies in us, two factors being necessary for the result of sight—the thing to be seen and the eye to see it. No doubt the expression may be inadequate, but if we can compensate the deficiency by adding more vision, so much the better for us.
In the second stanza there is a strange combination of images: the rock buds; and buds a fountain; the fountain is light. But the images are so much one at the root, that they slide gracefully into each other, and there is no confusion or incongruity: the result is an inclined plane of development.
I now come to the most musical and most graceful, therefore most lyrical, of his poems. I have left out just three stanzas, because of the sentimentalism of which I have spoken: I would have left out more if I could have done so without spoiling the symmetry of the poem. My reader must be friendly enough to one who is so friendly to him, to let his peculiarities pass unquestioned—amongst the rest his conceits, as well as the trifling discord that the shepherds should be called, after the classical fashion—ill agreeing, from its associations, with Christian song—Tityrus and Thyrsis.
Chorus. Come, we shepherds, whose blest sightHath met love's noon in nature's night;Come, lift we up our loftier song,And wake the sun that lies too long.
To all our world of well-stolen[140] joyHe slept, and dreamed of no such thing,While we found out heaven's fairer eye,And kissed the cradle of our king:Tell him he rises now too lateTo show us aught worth looking at.
Tell him we now can show him moreThan he e'er showed to mortal sight—Than he himself e'er saw before,Which to be seen needs not his light:Tell him, Tityrus, where thou hast been;Tell him, Thyrsis, what thou hast seen.
Tityrus. Gloomy night embraced the placeWhere the noble infant lay:The babe looked up and showed his face:In spite of darkness it was day.It was thy day, sweet, and did riseNot from the east, but from thy eyes.Chorus.It was thy day, sweet, &c.
Thyrsis. Winter chid aloud, and sentThe angry north to wage his wars:The north forgot his fierce intent,And left perfumes instead of scars.By those sweet eyes' persuasive powers,Where he meant frosts, he scattered flowers.Chorus.By those sweet eyes', &c.
Both. We saw thee in thy balmy nest,Young dawn of our eternal day;We saw thine eyes break from the east,And chase the trembling shades away.We saw thee, and we blessed the sight;We saw thee by thine own sweet light.Chorus.We saw thee, &c.
Tityrus. "Poor world," said I, "what wilt thou doTo entertain this starry stranger?Is this the best thou canst bestow—A cold and not too cleanly manger?Contend, the powers of heaven and earth,To fit a bed for this huge birth."Chorus.Contend, the powers, &c.
Thyrsis. "Proud world," said I, "cease your contest,And let the mighty babe alone:The phoenix builds the phoenix' nest—Love's architecture is his own.The babe, whose birth embraves this morn,Made his own bed ere he was born."Chorus.The babe, whose birth, &c.
Tityrus. I saw the curl'd drops, soft and slow,Come hovering o'er the place's head,Offering their whitest sheets of snowTo furnish the fair infant's bed:"Forbear," said I; "be not too bold:Your fleece is white, but 'tis too cold."Chorus."Forbear," said I, &c.
Thyrsis. I saw the obsequious seraphimTheir rosy fleece of fire bestow;For well they now can spare their wings,Since heaven itself lies here below."Well done," said I; "but are you sureYour down, so warm, will pass for pure?"Chorus."Well done," said I, &c.
* * * * *
Full Chorus. Welcome all wonders in one sight!Eternity shut in a span!Summer in winter! day in night!Heaven in earth, and God in man!Great little one, whose all-embracing birthLifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth!
* * * * *
Welcome—though not to those gay fliesGilded i' th' beams of earthly kings—Slippery souls in smiling eyes—But to poor shepherds, homespun things,Whose wealth's their flocks, whose wit's to beWell read in their simplicity.
Yet when young April's husband showersShall bless the fruitful Maia's bed,We'll bring the firstborn of her flowersTo kiss thy feet, and crown thy head:To thee, dear Lamb! whose love must keepThe shepherds while they feed their sheep.
To thee, meek Majesty, soft kingOf simple graces and sweet loves,Each of us his lamb will bring,Each his pair of silver doves.At last, in fire of thy fair eyes,Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.
A splendid line to end with! too good for the preceding one. All temples and altars, all priesthoods and prayers, must vanish in this one and only sacrifice. Exquisite, however, as the poem is, we cannot help wishing it looked less heathenish. Its decorations are certainly meretricious.
From a few religious poems of Sir Edward Sherburne, another Roman Catholic, and a firm adherent of Charles I., I choose the following—the only one I care for.
Happy crib, that wert, alone,To my God, bed, cradle, throne!Whilst thy glorious vileness IView with divine fancy's eye,Sordid filth seems all the cost,State, and splendour, crowns do boast.
See heaven's sacred majestyHumbled beneath poverty;Swaddled up in homely rags,On a bed of straw and flags!He whose hands the heavens displayed,And the world's foundations laid,From the world's almost exiled,Of all ornaments despoiled.Perfumes bathe him not, new-born;Persian mantles not adorn;Nor do the rich roofs look brightWith the jasper's orient light.
Where, O royal infant, beThe ensigns of thy majesty;Thy Sire's equalizing state;And thy sceptre that rules fate?Where's thy angel-guarded throne,Whence thy laws thou didst make known—Laws which heaven, earth, hell obeyed?These, ah! these aside he laid;Would the emblem be—of prideBy humility outvied.
I pass by Abraham Cowley, mighty reputation as he has had, without further remark than that he is too vulgar to be admired more than occasionally, and too artificial almost to be, as a poet, loved at all.
Andrew Marvell, member of Parliament for Hull both before and after the Restoration, was twelve years younger than his friend Milton. Any one of some half-dozen of his few poems is to my mind worth all the verse that Cowley ever made. It is a pity he wrote so little; but his was a life as diligent, I presume, as it was honourable.
See how the orient dew,Shed from the bosom of the mornInto the blowing roses,Yet careless of its mansion newFor the clear region where 'twas born,Round in itself encloses,used intransitively.And in its little globe's extent,Frames as it can its native element.How it the purple flower does slight,Scarce touching where it lies,But gazing back upon the skies,Shines with a mournful light,Like its own tear,Because so long divided from the sphere:Restless it rolls, and unsecure,Trembling lest it grow impure,Till the warm sun pity its pain,And to the skies exhale it back again.So the soul, that drop, that rayOf the clear fountain of eternal day,Could it within the human flower be seen,Remembering still its former height,Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green;And, recollecting its own light,Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, expressThe greater heaven in an heaven less.In how coy a figure wound,Every way it turns away,So the world excluding round,Yet receiving in the day;Dark beneath but bright above,Here disdaining, there in love.How loose and easy hence to go!How girt and ready to ascend!Moving but on a point below,It all about does upwards bend.Such did the manna's sacred dew distil—White and entire,[141] though congealed and chill—Congealed on earth, but does, dissolving, runInto the glories of the almighty sun.
Surely a lovely fancy of resemblance, exquisitely wrought out; an instance of the lighter play of the mystical mind, which yet shadows forth truth.
When for the thorns with which I long too long,With many a piercing wound,My Saviour's head have crowned,I seek with garlands to redress that wrong,Through every garden, every meadI gather flowers—my fruits are only flowers—Dismantling all the fragrant towersThat once adorned my shepherdess's head;And now, when I have summed up all my store,Thinking—so I myself deceive—So rich a chaplet thence to weaveAs never yet the King of glory wore;Alas! I find the serpent old,That, twining in his speckled breast,About the flowers disguised does fold,With wreaths of fame and interest.Ah, foolish man that wouldst debase with themAnd mortal glory, heaven's diadem!But thou who only couldst the serpent tame,Either his slippery knots at once untie,And disentangle all his winding snare,Or shatter too with him my curious frame,[142]And let these wither, that so he may die,Though set with skill, and chosen out with care;That they, while thou on both their spoils dost tread,May crown thy feet that could not crown thy head.
A true sacrifice of worship, if not a garland of praise! The disciple would have his works tried by the fire, not only that the gold and the precious stones may emerge relucent, but that the wood and hay and stubble may perish. The will of God alone, not what we may have effected, deserves our care. In the perishing of our deeds they fall at his feet: in our willing their loss we crown his head.
We have now arrived at the borders of a long, dreary tract, which, happily for my readers, I can shorten for them in this my retrospect. From the heights of Henry Vaughan's verse, I look across a stony region, with a few feeble oases scattered over it, and a hazy green in the distance. It does not soften the dreariness that its stones are all laid in order, that the spaces which should be meadows are skilfully paved.
Henry Vaughan belongs to the mystical school, but his poetry rules his theories. You find no more of the mystic than the poet can easily govern; in fact, scarcely more than is necessary to the highest poetry. He develops his mysticism upwards, with relation to his higher nature alone: it blossoms into poetry. His twin-brother Thomas developed his mysticism downwards in the direction of the material sciences—a true effort still, but one in which the danger of ceasing to be true increases with increasing ratio the further it is carried.
They were born in South Wales in the year 1621. Thomas was a clergyman; Henry a doctor of medicine. Both were Royalists, and both suffered in the cause—Thomas by expulsion from his living, Henry by imprisonment. Thomas died soon after the Restoration; Henry outlived the Revolution.
Henry Vaughan was then nearly thirty years younger than George Herbert, whom he consciously and intentionally imitates. His art is not comparable to that of Herbert: hence Herbert remains the master; for it is not the thought that makes the poet; it is the utterance of that thought in worthy presence of speech. He is careless and somewhat rugged. If he can get his thought dressed, and thus made visible, he does not mind the dress fitting awkwardly, or even being a little out at elbows. And yet he has grander lines and phrases than any in Herbert. He has occasionally a daring success that strikes one with astonishment. In a word, he says more splendid things than Herbert, though he writes inferior poems. His thought is profound and just; the harmonies in his soul are true; its artistic and musical ear is defective. His movements are sometimes grand, sometimes awkward. Herbert is always gracious—I use the word as meaning much more thangraceful.
The following poem will instance Vaughan's fine mysticism and odd embodiment:
Father of lights! what sunny seed,What glance of day hast thou confinedInto this bird? To all the breedThis busy ray thou hast assigned;Their magnetism works all night,And dreams of Paradise and light.
Their eyes watch for the morning hue;Their little grain,[143] expelling night,So shines and sings, as if it knewThe path unto the house of light:It seems their candle, howe'er done,Was tined[144] and lighted at the sun.
If such a tincture, such a touch,So firm a longing can empower,Shall thy own image think it muchTo watch for thy appearing hour?If a mere blast so fill the sail,Shall not the breath of God prevail?
O thou immortal Light and Heat,Whose hand so shines through all this frame,That by the beauty of the seat,We plainly see who made the same!Seeing thy seed abides in me,Dwell thou in it, and I in thee.
To sleep without thee is to die;Yea, 'tis a death partakes of hell;For where thou dost not close the eye,It never opens, I can tell:In such a dark, Egyptian borderThe shades of death dwell and disorder
Its joys and hopes and earnest throws,And hearts whose pulse beats still for light,Are given to birds, who but thee knowsA love-sick soul's exalted flight?Can souls be tracked by any eyeBut his who gave them wings to fly?
Only this veil, which thou hast broke,And must be broken yet in me;This veil, I say, is all the cloakAnd cloud which shadows me from thee.This veil thy full-eyed love denies,And only gleams and fractions spies.
O take it off. Make no delay,But brush me with thy light, that IMay shine unto a perfect day,And warm me at thy glorious eye.O take it off; or, till it flee,Though with no lily, stay with me.
I have no room for poems often quoted, therefore not for that lovely one beginning "They are all gone into the world of light;" but I must not omitThe Retreat, for besides its worth, I have another reason for presenting it.
Happy those early days when IShined in my angel-infancy!Before I understood this placeAppointed for my second race,Or taught my soul to fancy oughtBut a white, celestial thought;When yet I had not walked aboveA mile or two from my first love,And, looking back, at that short spaceCould see a glimpse of his bright face;When on some gilded cloud or flowerMy gazing soul would dwell an hour,And in those weaker glories spySome shadows of eternity;Before I taught my tongue to woundMy conscience with a sinful sound,Or had the black art to dispenseA several sin to every sense;But felt through all this fleshly dressBright shoots of everlastingness.O how I long to travel back,And tread again that ancient track!That I might once more reach that plainWhere first I left my glorious train,From whence the enlightened spirit seesThat shady city of palm-trees.But ah! my soul with too much stayIs drunk, and staggers in the way!Some men a forward motion love,But I by backward steps would move;And when this dust falls to the urn,In that state I came return.
Let any one who is well acquainted with Wordsworth's grand ode—that on theIntimations of Immortality—turn his mind to a comparison between that and this: he will find the resemblance remarkable. WhetherThe Retreatsuggested the form of theOdeis not of much consequence, for theOdeis the outcome at once and essence of all Wordsworth's theories; and whatever he may have drawn fromThe Retreatis glorified in theOde. Still it is interesting to compare them. Vaughan believes with Wordsworth and some other great men that this is not our first stage of existence; that we are haunted by dim memories of a former state. This belief is not necessary, however, to sympathy with the poem, for whether the present be our first life or no, we have come from God, and bring from him conscience and a thousand godlike gifts.—"Happy those early days," Vaughan begins: "There was a time," begins Wordsworth, "when the earth seemed apparelled in celestial light." "Before I understood this place," continues Vaughan: "Blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized," says Wordsworth. "A white celestial thought," says Vaughan: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says Wordsworth. "A mile or two off, I could see his face," says Vaughan: "Trailing clouds of glory do we come," says Wordsworth. "On some gilded cloud or flower, my gazing soul would dwell an hour," says Vaughan: "The hour of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower," says Wordsworth.
Wordsworth's poem is the profounder in its philosophy, as well as far the grander and lovelier in its poetry; but in the moral relation, Vaughan's poem is the more definite of the two, and gives us in its close, poor as that is compared with the rest of it, just what we feel is wanting in Wordsworth's—the hope of return to the bliss of childhood. We may be comforted for what we lose by what we gain; but that is not a recompense large enough to be divine: we want both. Vaughan will be a child again. For the movements of man's life are in spirals: we go back whence we came, ever returning on our former traces, only upon a higher level, on the next upward coil of the spiral, so that it is a going back and a going forward ever and both at once. Life is, as it were, a constant repentance, or thinking of it again: the childhood of the kingdom takes the place of the childhood of the brain, but comprises all that was lovely in the former delight. The heavenly children will subdue kingdoms, work righteousness, wax valiant in fight, rout the armies of the aliens, merry of heart as when in the nursery of this world they fought their fancied frigates, and defended their toy-battlements.
Here are the beginning and end of another of similar purport:
I cannot reach it; and my striving eyeDazzles at it, as at eternity.Were now that chronicle alive,Those white designs which children drive,And the thoughts of each harmless hour,With their content too in my power,Quickly would I make my path even,And by mere playing go to heaven.
* * * * *
An age of mysteries! which heMust live twice that would God's face see;Which angels guard, and with it play—Angels which foul men drive away.
How do I study now, and scanThee more than e'er I studied man,And only see, through a long night,Thy edges and thy bordering light!O for thy centre and mid-day!For sure that is the narrow way!
Many a true thought comes out by the help of a fancy or half-playful exercise of the thinking power. There is a good deal of such fancy in the following poem, but in the end it rises to the height of the purest and best mysticism. We must not forget that the deepest man can utter, will be but the type or symbol of a something deeper yet, of which he can perceive only a doubtful glimmer. This will serve for general remark upon the mystical mode, as well as for comment explanatory of the close of the poem.
JOHN iii. 2.
Through that pure virgin-shrine,That sacred veil[145] drawn o'er thy glorious noon,That men might look and live, as glowworms shine,And face the moon,Wise Nicodemus saw such lightAs made him know his God by night.
Most blest believer he,Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes,Thy long-expected healing wings could seeWhen thou didst rise!And, what can never more be done,Did at midnight speak with the sun!
O who will tell me whereHe found thee at that dead and silent hour?What hallowed solitary ground did bearSo rare a flower,Within whose sacred leaves did lieThe fulness of the Deity?
No mercy-seat of gold,No dead and dusty cherub, nor carved stone,But his own living works did my Lord holdAnd lodge alone,Where trees and herbs did watch and peepAnd wonder, while the Jews did sleep.
Dear night! this world's defeat;The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb,The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreatWhich none disturb!Christ's progress, and his prayer time,[146]The hours to which high heaven doth chime![147]
God's silent, searching flight;[148]When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and allHis locks are wet with the clear drops of night,His still, soft call;His knocking time;[149] the soul's dumb watch,When spirits their fair kindred catch.
Were all my loud, evil[150] daysCalm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voiceIs seldom rent,Then I in heaven all the long yearWould keep, and never wander here.
But living where the sunDoth all things wake, and where all mix and tireThemselves and others, I consent and runTo every mire;And by this world's ill guiding light,Err more than I can do by night
There is in God, some say,A deep but dazzling darkness; as men hereSay it is late and dusky, because theySee not all clear:O for that night! where I in himMight live invisible and dim!
This is glorious; and its lesson of quiet and retirement we need more than ever in these hurried days upon which we have fallen. If men would but be still enough in themselves to hear, through all the noises of the busy light, the voice that is ever talking on in the dusky chambers of their hearts! Look at his love for Nature, too; and read the fourth stanza in connexion with my previous remarks upon symbolism. I think this poemgranderthan any of George Herbert's. I use the word with intended precision.
Here is one, the end of which is not so good, poetically considered, as the magnificent beginning, but which contains striking lines throughout:—
Ah! what time wilt thou come? When shall that cry,The Bridegroom's coming, fill the sky?Shall it in the evening runWhen our words and works are done?Or will thy all-surprising lightBreak at midnight,When either sleep or some dark pleasurePossesseth mad man without measure?Or shail these early, fragrant hoursUnlock thy bowers,[151]And with their blush of light descryThy locks crowned with eternity?Indeed, it is the only timeThat with thy glory doth best chime:All now are stirring; every fieldFull hymns doth yield;The whole creation shakes off night,And for thy shadow looks the light;[152]Stars now vanish without number;Sleepy planets set and slumber;The pursy clouds disband and scatter;—All expect some sudden matter;Not one beam triumphs, but, from far,That morning-star.
O, at what time soever thou,Unknown to us, the heavens wilt bow,And, with thy angels in the van,Descend to judge poor careless man,Grant I may not like puddle lieIn a corrupt security,Where, if a traveller water crave,He finds it dead, and in a grave;But as this restless, vocal springAll day and night doth run and sing,And though here born, yet is acquaintedElsewhere, and, flowing, keeps untainted,So let me all my busy ageIn thy free services engage;And though, while here, of force,[153] I mustHave commerce sometimes with poor dust,[154]And in my flesh, though vile and low,As this doth in her channel, flow,Yet let my course, my aim, my love,And chief acquaintance be above.So when that day and hour shall come,In which thyself will be the sun,Thou'lt find me drest and on my way,Watching the break of thy great day.
I do not think that description of the dawn has ever been surpassed. The verse "All expect some sudden matter," is wondrously fine. The water "dead and in a grave," because stagnant, is a true fancy; and the "acquainted elsewhere" of the running stream, is a masterly phrase. I need not point out the symbolism of the poem.
I do not know a writer, Wordsworth not excepted, who reveals more delight in the visions of Nature than Henry Vaughan. He is a true forerunner of Wordsworth, inasmuch as the latter sets forth with only greater profundity and more art than he, the relations between Nature and Human Nature; while, on the other hand, he is the forerunner as well of some one that must yet do what Wordsworth has left almost unattempted, namely—set forth the sympathy of Nature with the aspirations of the spirit that is born of God, born again, I mean, in the recognition of the child's relation to the Father. Both Herbert and Vaughan have thus read Nature, the latter turning many leaves which few besides have turned. In this he has struck upon a deeper and richer lode than even Wordsworth, although he has not wrought it with half his skill. In any history of the development of the love of the present age for Nature, Vaughan, although I fear his influence would be found to have been small as yet, must be represented as the Phosphor of coming dawn. Beside him, Thomson is cold, artistic, and gray: although larger in scope, he is not to be compared with him in sympathetic sight. It is this insight that makes Vaughan a mystic. He can see one thing everywhere, and all things the same—yet each with a thousand sides that radiate crossing lights, even as the airy particles around us. For him everything is the expression of, and points back to, some fact in the Divine Thought. Along the line of every ray he looks towards its radiating centre—the heart of the Maker.
I could give many instances of Vaughan's power in reading the heart of Nature, but I may not dwell upon this phase. Almost all the poems I give and have given will afford such.
I walked the other day, to spend my hour,Into a field,Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yieldA gallant flower;But winter now had ruffled all the bowerAnd curious storeI knew there heretofore.
Yet I whose search loved not to peep and peerI' th' face of things,Thought with myself, there might be other springsBesides this here,Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year;And so the flowerMight have some other bower.
Then taking up what I could nearest spy,I digged aboutThat place where I had seen him to grow out;And by and byI saw the warm recluse alone to lie,Where fresh and greenHe lived of us unseen.
Many a question intricate and rareDid I there strow;But all I could extort was, that he nowDid there repairSuch losses as befell him in this air,And would ere longCome forth most fair and young.
This past, I threw the clothes quite o'er his head;And, stung with fearOf my own frailty, dropped down many a tearUpon his bed;Then sighing, whispered,Happy are the dead!What peace doth nowRock him asleep below!
And yet, how few believe such doctrine springsFrom a poor rootWhich all the winter sleeps here under foot,And hath no wingsTo raise it to the truth and light of things,But is still trodBy every wandering clod!
O thou, whose spirit did at first inflameAnd warm the dead!And by a sacred incubation fedWith life this frame,Which once had neither being, form, nor name!Grant I may soThy steps track here below,
That in these masks and shadows I may seeThy sacred way;And by those hid ascents climb to that dayWhich breaks from thee,Who art in all things, though invisibly:Show me thy peace,Thy mercy, love, and ease.
And from this care, where dreams and sorrows reign,Lead me above,Where light, joy, leisure, and true comforts moveWithout all pain:There, hid in thee, show me his life againAt whose dumb urnThus all the year I mourn.
There are several amongst his poems lamenting, like this, the death of some dear friend—perhaps his twin-brother, whom he outlived thirty years.
According to what a man is capable of seeing in nature, he becomes either a man of appliance, a man of science, a mystic, or a poet.
I must now give two that are simple in thought, construction, and music. The latter ought to be popular, from the nature of its rhythmic movement, and the holy merriment it carries. But in the former, note how the major key of gladness changes in the third stanza to the minor key of aspiration, which has always some sadness in it; a sadness which deepens to grief in the next stanza at the consciousness of unfitness for Christ's company, but is lifted by hope almost again to gladness in the last.
Awake, glad heart! Get up, and sing!It is the birthday of thy king!Awake! awake!The sun doth shakeLight from his locks, and, all the wayBreathing perfumes, doth spice the day.