England's Antiphon

No doubt there are in the poem instances of such faults in style as were common in the age in which his verse was rooted: for my own part, I never liked the first two stanzas of the hymn. But such instances are few; while for a right feeling of the marvel of this poem and of the two preceding it, we must remember that Milton was only twenty-one when he wrote them.

Apparently to make one of a set with the Nativity, he began to write an ode on the Passion, but, finding the subject "above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished." The fragment is full of unworthy, though skilful, and, for such, powerful conceits, but is especially interesting as showing how even Milton, trying to write about what he felt, but without yet having generated thoughts enow concerning the subject itself, could only fall back on conventionalities. Happy the young poet the wisdom of whose earliest years was such that he recognized his mistake almost at the outset, and dropped the attempt! Amongst the stanzas there is, however, one of exceeding loveliness:

  He, sovereign priest, stooping his regal head,  That dropped with odorous oil down his fair eyes,  Poor fleshly tabernacle enteréd,  His starry front low-roofed beneath the skies.  Oh what a masque was there! what a disguise!  Yet more! the stroke of death he must abide;  Then lies him meekly down fast by his brethren's side.

In this it will be seen that he has left the jubilant measure of the Hymn, and returned to the more stately and solemn rhyme-royal of its overture, as more suited to his subject. Milton could not be wrong in his music, even when he found the quarry of his thought too hard to work.

CHAPTER XV

EDMUND WALLER, THOMAS BROWN, AND JEREMY TAYLOR.

Edmund Waller, born in 1605, was three years older than Milton; but I had a fancy for not dividing Herbert and Milton. As a poet he had a high reputation for many years, gained chiefly, I think, by a regard to literary proprieties, combined with wit. He is graceful sometimes; but what in his writings would with many pass for grace, is only smoothness and the absence of faults. His horses were not difficult to drive. He dares little and succeeds in proportion—occasionally, however, flashing out into true song. In politics he had no character—let us hope from weakness rather than from selfishness; yet, towards the close of his life, he wrote some poems which reveal a man not unaccustomed to ponder sacred things, and able to express his thoughts concerning them with force and justice. From a poem called Of Divine Love, I gather the following very remarkable passages: I wish they had been enforced by greater nobility of character. Still they are in themselves true. Even where we have no proof of repentance, we may see plentiful signs of a growth towards it. We cannot tell how long the truth may of necessity require to interpenetrate the ramifications of a man's nature. By slow degrees he discovers that here it is not, and there it is not. Again and again, and yet again, a man finds that he must be born with a new birth.

  The fear of hell, or aiming to be blest,  Savours too much of private interest:  This moved not Moses, nor the zealous Paul,  Who for their friends abandoned soul and all;  A greater yet from heaven to hell descends,  To save and make his enemies his friends.* * * * *  That early love of creatures yet unmade,  To frame the world the Almighty did persuade.  For love it was that first created light,  Moved on the waters, chased away the night  From the rude chaos; and bestowed new grace  On things disposed of to their proper place—  Some to rest here, and some to shine above:  Earth, sea, and heaven, were all the effects of love.* * * * *  Not willing terror should his image move,  He gives a pattern of eternal love:  His son descends, to treat a peace with those  Which were, and must have ever been, his foes.  Poor he became, and left his glorious seat,  To make us humble, and to make us great;  His business here was happiness to give  To those whose malice could not let him live.* * * * *  He to proud potentates would not be known:  Of those that loved him, he was hid from none.  Till love appear, we live in anxious doubt;  But smoke will vanish when that flame breaks out:  This is the fire that would consume our dross,  Refine, and make us richer by the loss.* * * * *  Who for himself no miracle would make,  Dispensed with134 several for the people's sake.  He that, long-fasting, would no wonder show,  Made loaves and fishes, as they eat them, grow.  Of all his power, which boundless was above,  Here he used none but to express his love;  And such a love would make our joy exceed,  Not when our own, but others' mouths we feed.* * * * *  Love as he loved! A love so unconfined  With arms extended would embrace mankind.  Self-love would cease, or be dilated, when  We should behold as many selfs as men;  All of one family, in blood allied,  His precious blood that for our ransom died.* * * * *  Amazed at once and comforted, to find  A boundless power so infinitely kind,  The soul contending to that light to fly  From her dark cell, we practise how to die,  Employing thus the poet's wingéd art  To reach this love, and grave it in our heart.  Joy so complete, so solid, and severe,  Would leave no place for meaner pleasures there:  Pale they would look, as stars that must be gone  When from the east the rising sun comes on.* * * * *

To that and some other poems he adds the following—a kind of epilogue.

ON THE FOREGOING DIVINE POEMS

  When we for age could neither read nor write,  The subject made us able to indite:  The soul with nobler resolutions decked,  The body stooping, does herself erect:  No mortal parts are requisite to raise  Her that unbodied can her Maker praise.  The seas are quiet when the winds give o'er:  So calm are we when passions are no more;  For then we know how vain it was to boast  Of fleeting things, so certain to be lost.  Clouds of affection from our younger eyes passion.  Conceal that emptiness which age descries.  The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed,  Lets in new light, through chinks that time has made:  Stronger by weakness, wiser men become,  As they draw near to their eternal home.  Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view  That stand upon the threshold of the new.

It would be a poor victory where age was the sole conqueror. But I doubt if age ever gains the victory alone. Let Waller, however, have this praise: his song soars with his subject. It is a true praise. There are men who write well until they try the noble, and then they fare like the falling star, which, when sought where it fell, is, according to an old fancy, discovered a poor jelly.

Sir Thomas Brown, a physician, whose prose writings are as peculiar as they are valuable, was of the same age as Waller. He partakes to a considerable degree of the mysticism which was so much followed in his day, only in his case it influences his literature most—his mode of utterance more than his mode of thought. His True Christian Morals is a very valuable book, notwithstanding the obscurity that sometimes arises in that, as in all his writings, from his fondness for Latin words. The following fine hymn occurs in his Religio Medici, in which he gives an account of his opinions. I am not aware of anything else that he has published in verse, though he must probably have written more to be able to write this so well. It occurs in the midst of prose, as the prayer he says every night before he yields to the death of sleep. I follow it with the succeeding sentence of the prose.

  The night is come. Like to the day,  Depart not thou, great God, away.  Let not my sins, black as the night,  Eclipse the lustre of thy light.  Keep still in my horizon, for to me  The sun makes not the day but thee.  Thou whose nature cannot sleep,  On my temples sentry keep;  Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes  Whose eyes are open while mine close.  Let no dreams my head infest  But such as Jacob's temples blest.  While I do rest, my soul advance;  Make my sleep a holy trance,  That I may, my rest being wroughtt  Awake into some holy thought,  And with as active vigour run  My course as doth the nimble sun.  Sleep is a death: O make me try  By sleeping what it is to die,  And as gently lay my head  On my grave, as now my bed.  Howe'er I rest, great God, let me  Awake again at least with thee.  And thus assured, behold I lie  Securely, or to wake or die.  These are my drowsy days: in vain  I do now wake to sleep again:  O come that hour when I shall never  Sleep again, but wake for ever.

"This is the dormitive I take to bedward. I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection."

Jeremy Taylor, born in 1613, was the most poetic of English prose-writers: if he had written verse equal to his prose, he would have had a lofty place amongst poets as well as amongst preachers. Taking the opposite side from Milton, than whom he was five years younger, he was, like him, conscientious and consistent, suffering while Milton's cause prospered, and advanced to one of the bishoprics hated of Milton's soul when the scales of England's politics turned in the other direction. Such men, however, are divided only by their intellects. When men say, "I must or I must not, for it is right or it is not right," then are they in reality so bound together, even should they not acknowledge it themselves, that no opposing opinions, no conflicting theories concerning what is or is not right, can really part them. It was not wonderful that a mind like that of Jeremy Taylor, best fitted for worshipping the beauty of holiness, should mourn over the disrupted order of his church, or that a mind like Milton's, best fitted for the law of life, should demand that every part of that order which had ceased to vibrate responsive to every throb of the eternal heart of truth, should fall into the ruin which its death had preceded. The church was hardly dealt with, but the rulers of the church have to bear the blame.

Here are those I judge the best of the bishop's Festival Hymns, printed as part of his Golden Grove, or Gide to Devotion. In the first there is a little confusion of imagery; and in others of them will be found a little obscurity. They bear marks of the careless impatience of rhythm and rhyme of one who though ever bursting into a natural trill of song, sometimes with more rhymes apparently than he intended, would yet rather let his thoughts pour themselves out in that unmeasured chant, that "poetry in solution," which is the natural speech of the prophet-orator. He is like a full river that must flow, which rejoices in a flood, and rebels against the constraint of mole or conduit. He exults in utterance itself, caring little for the mode, which, however, the law of his indwelling melody guides though never compels. Charmingly diffuse in his prose, his verse ever sounds as if it would overflow the banks of its self-imposed restraints.

THE SECOND HYMN FOR ADVENT; OR, CHRIST'S COMING TO JERUSALEM IN TRIUMPH

  Lord, come away;          Why dost thou stay?  Thy road is ready; and thy paths made straight      With longing expectation wait  The consecration of thy beauteous feet.  Ride on triumphantly: behold we lay  Our lusts and proud wills in thy way.  Hosanna! welcome to our hearts! Lord, here  Thou hast a temple too, and full as dear  As that of Sion, and as full of sin:  Nothing but thieves and robbers dwell therein.  Enter, and chase them forth, and cleanse the floor;  Crucify them, that they may never more          Profane that holy place      Where thou hast chose to set thy face.    And then if our stiff tongues shall be    Mute in the praises of thy deity,    The stones out of the temple-wall        Shall cry aloud and call  Hosanna! and thy glorious footsteps greet.

HYMN FOR CHRISTMAS-DAY; BEING A DIALOGUE BETWEEN THREE SHEPHERDS

         1. Where is this blessed babe                      That hath made            All the world so full of joy                      And expectation;                      That glorious boy                      That crowns each nation            With a triumphant wreath of blessedness?         2. Where should he be but in the throng,                              And among            His angel ministers that sing                              And take wing            Just as may echo to his voice,                              And rejoice,            When wing and tongue and all            May so procure their happiness?         3. But he hath other waiters now:                              A poor cow            An ox and mule stand and behold,                              And wonder            That a stable should enfold                              Him that can thunder.  Chorus. O what a gracious God have we!            How good? How great? Even as our misery.

A HYMN FOR CHRISTMAS-DAY

  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 Wherein    a God was born, Whose story none can tell But he whose every word's a miracle.    To-day Almightiness grew weak;  The Word itself was mute, and could not speak.    That Jacob's star which made the sun    To 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 vie                     With his humility!                 Since he's exiled from skies                     That we might rise,—                 From low estate of men                 Let's sing him up again!                 Each man wind up his heart                     To bear a part               In that angelic choir, and show               His glory high, as he was low.             Let's sing towards men goodwill and charity,             Peace upon earth, glory to God on high!                               Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

THE PRAYER

  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 may                      Unclay    My wearied spirit, and take  My flight to thy eternal spring,          Where, for his sake          Who is my king,  I may wash all my tears away,                      That day.    Thou conqueror of death,  Glorious triumpher o'er the grave,          Whose holy breath          Was spent to save  Lost mankind, make me to be styled                      Thy child,    And take me when I die  And go unto my dust; my soul          Above the sky          With saints enrol,  That in thy arms, for ever, I                      May 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.

A PRAYER FOR CHARITY

  Full of mercy, full of love,  Look upon us from above;  Thou who taught'st the blind man's night  To entertain a double light,  Thine and the day's—and that thine too:  The lame away his crutches threw;  The parchéd crust of leprosy  Returned unto its infancy;  The dumb amazéd was to hear  His own unchain'd tongue strike his ear;  Thy powerful mercy did even chase  The devil from his usurpéd place,  Where thou thyself shouldst dwell, not he:  Oh let thy love our pattern be;  Let thy mercy teach one brother  To forgive and love another;  That copying thy mercy here,  Thy goodness may hereafter rear  Our souls unto thy glory, when  Our dust shall cease to be with men. Amen.

CHAPTER XVI

HENRY MORE AND RICHARD BAXTER.

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, called A 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.

RESOLUTION

  Where's now the objects of thy fears,  Needless sighs, and fruitless tears?  They be all gone like idle dream  Suggested 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 sphere  Of light, and 'bove the earth it rear;  Those wild scattered thoughts that erst  Lay loosely in the world dispersed,  Call in:—thy spirit thus knit in one  Fair lucid orb, those fears be gone  Like vain impostures of the night,  That fly before the morning bright.  Then with pure eyes thou shalt behold  How the first goodness doth infold  All things in loving tender arms;  That deeméd mischiefs are no harms,  But sovereign salves and skilful cures  Of greater woes the world endures;  That man's stout soul may win a state  Far raised above the reach of fate.  Then wilt thou say, God rules the world,  Though mountain over mountain hurled  Be pitched amid the foaming main  Which busy winds to wrath constrain;* * * * *  Though pitchy blasts from hell up-born  Stop the outgoings of the morn,  And Nature play her fiery games  In this forced night, with fulgurant flames:* * * * *  All this confusion cannot move  The purgéd mind, freed from the love  Of commerce with her body dear,  Cell of sad thoughts, sole spring of fear.  Whate'er I feel or hear or see  Threats but these parts that mortal be.  Nought can the honest heart dismay  Unless the love of living clay,  And long acquaintance with the light  Of this outworld, and what to sight  Those two officious beams135 discover  Of forms that round about us hover.  Power, wisdom, goodness, sure did frame  This universe, and still guide the same.  But thoughts from passions sprung, deceive  Vain mortals. No man can contrive  A better course than what's been run  Since the first circuit of the sun.  He that beholds all from on high  Knows better what to do than I.  I'm not mine own: should I repine  If 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 rays  Of his free goodness. He displays  Himself throughout. Like common air  That spirit of life through all doth fare,  Sucked in by them as vital breath  That willingly embrace not death.  But those that with that living law  Be unacquainted, cares do gnaw;  Mistrust of God's good providence  Doth 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 remove  To icy Hyperborean ove;  Confine me to the arctic pole,  Where the numb'd heavens do slowly roll;  To lands where cold raw heavy mist  Sol's kindly warmth and light resists;  Where lowering clouds full fraught with snow  Do sternly scowl; where winds do blow  With 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 antiperistasis136  My inward heat more kindled is;  And while this flesh her breath expires,  My spirit shall suck celestial fires  By 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 fame  I'll take my flight, careless that men  Know not how, where I die, or when.  Yea, though the soul should mortal prove,  So be God's life but in me move  To my last breath—I'm satisfied  A 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 is possible for a man to arrive at this perfection; it is absolutely necessary that 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 grow solely in the discovery of him in ourselves, if indeed the latter were possible.

DEVOTION

  Good God, when them thy inward grace dost shower              Into my breast,      How full of light and lively power              Is 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 hide              Thy cheerful look,      My feeble flesh may not abide              That dreadful stound; hour.              I cannot brook  Thy 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 thought    Betrays my reason, makes me blind;        Near dangers drad dreaded.        Make me distraught;  Surprised with fear my senses all I find:          In hell          I 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 I  Shall bear with courage undeservéd smart.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S DEVOTION

  Sing aloud!—His praise rehearse  Who hath made the universe.  He the boundless heavens has spread,  All the vital orbs has kned, kneaded.  He that on Olympus high  Tends his flocks with watchful eye,  And this eye has multiplied suns, as centres of systems.  Midst each flock for to reside.  Thus, as round about they stray,  Toucheth137 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 drove  Thorough heaven's vast hollowness,  Which unto all corners press:  Music that the heart of Jove  Moves to joy and sportful love;  Fills the listening sailers' ears  Riding on the wandering spheres:  Neither speech nor language is  Where 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 pay  What 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 fires  Hearts inflamed with high aspires!  All the substance of our souls  Up in clouds of incense rolls.  Leave we nothing to ourselves  Save a voice—what need we else!  Or an hand to wear and tire  On the thankful lute or lyre!  Sing aloud!—His praise rehearse  Who hath made the universe.

In this Philosopher's Devotion he has clearly imitated one of those psalms of George Sandys which I have given.