England's Antiphon

THE CORONET

  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 mead  I gather flowers—my fruits are only flowers—    Dismantling all the fragrant towers  That 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 weave  As 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 them  And 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.

CHAPTER XVIII

A MOUNT OF VISION—HENRY VAUGHAN.

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 than graceful.

The following poem will instance Vaughan's fine mysticism and odd embodiment:

COCK-CROWING

  Father of lights! what sunny seed,  What glance of day hast thou confined  Into this bird? To all the breed  This 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 knew  The path unto the house of light:    It seems their candle, howe'er done,    Was tined144 and lighted at the sun.  If such a tincture, such a touch,  So firm a longing can empower,  Shall thy own image think it much  To 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 border    The 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 knows  A love-sick soul's exalted flight?    Can souls be tracked by any eye    But 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 cloak  And 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 I  May 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 omit The Retreat, for besides its worth, I have another reason for presenting it.

THE RETREAT

  Happy those early days when I  Shined in my angel-infancy!  Before I understood this place  Appointed for my second race,  Or taught my soul to fancy ought  But a white, celestial thought;  When yet I had not walked above  A mile or two from my first love,  And, looking back, at that short space  Could see a glimpse of his bright face;  When on some gilded cloud or flower  My gazing soul would dwell an hour,  And in those weaker glories spy  Some shadows of eternity;  Before I taught my tongue to wound  My conscience with a sinful sound,  Or had the black art to dispense  A several sin to every sense;  But felt through all this fleshly dress  Bright shoots of everlastingness.    O how I long to travel back,  And tread again that ancient track!  That I might once more reach that plain  Where first I left my glorious train,  From whence the enlightened spirit sees  That shady city of palm-trees.  But ah! my soul with too much stay  Is 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 the Intimations of Immortality—turn his mind to a comparison between that and this: he will find the resemblance remarkable. Whether The Retreat suggested the form of the Ode is not of much consequence, for the Ode is the outcome at once and essence of all Wordsworth's theories; and whatever he may have drawn from The Retreat is glorified in the Ode. 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:

CHILDHOOD

  I cannot reach it; and my striving eye  Dazzles 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 he  Must 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 scan  Thee 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.

THE NIGHT

JOHN iii. 2.

      Through that pure virgin-shrine,  That sacred veil145 drawn o'er thy glorious noon,  That men might look and live, as glowworms shine,          And face the moon,      Wise Nicodemus saw such light      As 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 see          When thou didst rise!      And, what can never more be done,      Did at midnight speak with the sun!      O who will tell me where  He found thee at that dead and silent hour?  What hallowed solitary ground did bear          So rare a flower,  Within whose sacred leaves did lie  The 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 hold          And lodge alone,      Where trees and herbs did watch and peep      And 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 retreat          Which 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 all  His 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, evil150 days  Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,  Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice      Is seldom rent,    Then I in heaven all the long year    Would keep, and never wander here.    But living where the sun  Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire  Themselves and others, I consent and run      To 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 here  Say it is late and dusky, because they      See not all clear:    O for that night! where I in him    Might 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 poem grander than 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:—

THE DAWNING

  Ah! what time wilt thou come? When shall that cry,  The Bridegroom's coming, fill the sky?  Shall it in the evening run  When our words and works are done?  Or will thy all-surprising light  Break at midnight,  When either sleep or some dark pleasure  Possesseth mad man without measure?  Or shail these early, fragrant hours  Unlock thy bowers,151  And with their blush of light descry  Thy locks crowned with eternity?  Indeed, it is the only time  That with thy glory doth best chime:  All now are stirring; every field  Full 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 lie  In a corrupt security,  Where, if a traveller water crave,  He finds it dead, and in a grave;  But as this restless, vocal spring  All day and night doth run and sing,  And though here born, yet is acquainted  Elsewhere, and, flowing, keeps untainted,  So let me all my busy age  In thy free services engage;  And though, while here, of force,153 I must  Have 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 yield      A gallant flower;  But winter now had ruffled all the bower      And curious store    I knew there heretofore.  Yet I whose search loved not to peep and peer      I' th' face of things,  Thought with myself, there might be other springs      Besides this here,  Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year;      And so the flower    Might have some other bower.  Then taking up what I could nearest spy,      I digged about  That place where I had seen him to grow out;      And by and by  I saw the warm recluse alone to lie,      Where fresh and green    He lived of us unseen.  Many a question intricate and rare      Did I there strow;  But all I could extort was, that he now      Did there repair  Such losses as befell him in this air,      And would ere long    Come forth most fair and young.  This past, I threw the clothes quite o'er his head;      And, stung with fear  Of my own frailty, dropped down many a tear      Upon his bed;  Then sighing, whispered, Happy are the dead!      What peace doth now    Rock him asleep below!  And yet, how few believe such doctrine springs      From a poor root  Which all the winter sleeps here under foot,      And hath no wings  To raise it to the truth and light of things,      But is still trod    By every wandering clod!  O thou, whose spirit did at first inflame      And warm the dead!  And by a sacred incubation fed      With life this frame,  Which once had neither being, form, nor name!      Grant I may so    Thy steps track here below,  That in these masks and shadows I may see      Thy sacred way;  And by those hid ascents climb to that day      Which 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 move      Without all pain:  There, hid in thee, show me his life again      At whose dumb urn    Thus 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.

CHRIST'S NATIVITY

  Awake, glad heart! Get up, and sing!  It is the birthday of thy king!      Awake! awake!      The sun doth shake  Light from his locks, and, all the way  Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.  Awake! awake! Hark how the wood rings  Winds whisper, and the busy springs      A concert make:      Awake! awake!  Man is their high-priest, and should rise  To offer up the sacrifice.  I would I were some bird or star,  Fluttering in woods, or lifted far      Above this inn      And road of sin!  Then either star or bird should be  Shining or singing still to thee.  I would I had in my best part  Fit rooms for thee! or that my heart      Were so clean as      Thy manger was!  But I am all filth, and obscene;  Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.  Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more  This 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

EASTER HYMN

  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 length  Of 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 thrown  Even to contempt thy kingdom down,  And by his blood did us advance  Unto 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 of Humiliation, and cannot do better than console ourselves by listening to the boy in mean clothes, of the fresh and well-favoured countenance, whom Christiana 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 shall    Have 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 savest155 such.  Fulness to such a burden is    That 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.

FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

* * * * *  Lord, 'tis thyself who hast impressed  In native light on human breast,    That their Creator all    Mankind 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 invites    To share in heaven's delights;  His arms he opens to receive  All who for past transgressions grieve.  My Father! O that name is sweet  To sinners mourning in retreat.    God's heart paternal yearns    When 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 sense    Of 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 all  In prayer his Father ours to call:    With confidence in need,    We to our Father speed:  Of his own Son the language dear  Intenerates 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! spread  Thy 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.