England's Antiphon

Each has paraphrased portions of Scripture, but with results of little value; and there is nothing of a religious nature I care to quote from either, except these five lines from an epistle of Sir Thomas Wyat's:

  Thyself content with that is thee assigned,  And use it well that is to thee allotted;  Then seek no more out of thyself to find  The thing that thou hast sought so long before,  For thou shalt feel it sticking in thy mind.

Students of versification will allow me to remark that Sir Thomas was the first English poet, so far as I know, who used the terza rima, Dante's chief mode of rhyming: the above is too small a fragment to show that it belongs to a poem in that manner. It has never been popular in England, although to my mind it is the finest form of continuous rhyme in any language. Again, we owe his friend Surrey far more for being the first to write English blank verse, whether invented by himself or not, than for any matter he has left us in poetic shape.

This period is somewhat barren of such poetry as we want. Here is a portion of the Fifty-first Psalm, translated amongst others into English verse by John Croke, Master in Chancery, in the reign of Henry VIII.

  Open my lips first to confess    My sin conceived inwardly;  And my mouth after shall express    Thy laud and praises outwardly.  If I should offer for my sin,    Or sacrifice do unto thee  Of beast or fowl, I should begin    To stir thy wrath more towards me.  Offer we must for sacrifice    A troubled mind with sorrow's smart:  Canst thou refuse? Nay, nor despise    The humble and the contrite heart.  To us of Sion that be born,    If thou thy favour wilt renew,  The broken sowle, the temple torn, threshold.    The walls and all shall be made new.  The sacrifice then shall we make    Of justice and of pure intent;  And all things else thou wilt well take    That we shall offer or present.

In the works of George Gascoigne I find one poem fit for quoting here. He is not an interesting writer, and, although his verse is very good, there is little likelihood of its ever being read more than it is now. The date of his birth is unknown, but probably he was in his teens when Surrey was beheaded in the year 1547. He is the only poet whose style reminds me of his, although the wherefore will hardly be evident from my quotation. It is equally flat, but more articulate. I need not detain my reader with remarks upon him. The fact is, I am glad to have something, if not "a cart-load of wholesome instructions," to cast into this Slough of Despond, should it be only to see it vanish. The poem is called

GASCOIGNE'S GOOD MORROW

  You that have spent the silent night    In sleep and quiet rest,  And joy to see the cheerful light    That riseth in the east;  Now clear your voice, now cheer your heart;    Come help me now to sing;  Each willing wight come bear a part,    To praise the heavenly King.  And you whom care in prison keeps,    Or sickness doth suppress,  Or secret sorrow breaks your sleeps,    Or dolours do distress;  Yet bear a part in doleful wise;    Yea, think it good accord,  And acceptable sacrifice,    Each sprite to praise the Lord.  The dreadful night with darksomeness    Had overspread the light,  And sluggish sleep with drowsiness    Had overpressed our might:  A glass wherein you may behold    Each storm that stops our breath,  Our bed the grave, our clothes like mould,    And sleep like dreadful death.  Yet as this deadly night did last    But for a little space,  And heavenly day, now night is past,    Doth shew his pleasant face;  So must we hope to see God's face    At last in heaven on high,  When we have changed this mortal place    For immortality.

This is not so bad, but it is enough. There are six stanzas more of it. I transcribe yet another, that my reader may enjoy a smile in passing. He is "moralizing" the aspects of morning:

  The carrion crow, that loathsome beast,    Which cries against the rain,  Both for his hue and for the rest,    The Devil resembleth plain;  And as with guns we kill the crow,    For spoiling our relief,  The Devil so must we overthrow,    With gunshot of belief.

So fares the wit, when it walks abroad to do its business without the heart that should inspire it.

Here is one good stanza from his De Profundis:

  But thou art good, and hast of mercy store;    Thou not delight'st to see a sinner fall;    Thou hearkenest first, before we come to call;  Thine ears are set wide open evermore;  Before we knock thou comest to the door.    Thou art more prest to hear a sinner cry, ready.    Than he is quick to climb to thee on high.  Thy mighty name be praised then alway:         Let faith and fear         True witness bear  How fast they stand which on thy mercy stay.

Here follow two of unknown authorship, belonging apparently to the same period.

THAT EACH THING IS HURT OF ITSELF

  Why fearest thou the outward foe,    When thou thyself thy harm dost feed?  Of grief or hurt, of pain or woe,    Within each thing is sown the seed.  So fine was never yet the cloth,    No smith so hard his iron did beat,  But th' one consuméd was with moth,    Th' other with canker all to-freate. fretted away.  The knotty oak and wainscot old    Within doth eat the silly worm;53  Even so a mind in envy rolled    Always within it self doth burn.  Thus every thing that nature wrought,    Within itself his hurt doth bear!  No outward harm need to be sought,    Where enemies be within so near.

Lest this poem should appear to any one hardly religious enough for the purpose of this book, I would remark that it reminds me of what our Lord says about the true source of defilement: it is what is bred in the man that denies him. Our Lord himself taught a divine morality, which is as it were the body of love, and is as different from mere morality as«the living body is from the dead.

  TOTUS MUNDUS IN MALIGNO POSITUS.

  The whole world lieth in the Evil One.

  Complain we may; much is amiss;    Hope is nigh gone to have redress;  These days are ill, nothing sure is;    Kind heart is wrapt in heaviness.  The stern is broke, the sail is rent, helm or rudder—the    The ship is given to wind and wave; [thing to steer with.  All help is gone, the rock present,    That will be lost, what man can save? that which will be lost.  When power lacks care and forceth not, careth.    When care is feeble and may not, is not able.  When might is slothful and will not,    Weeds may grow where good herbs cannot.  Wily is witty, brainsick is wise; wiliness is counted    Truth is folly, and might is right; [prudence.  Words are reason, and reason is lies;    The bad is good, darkness is light.  Order is broke in things of weight:    Measure and mean who doth nor flee? who does not avoid  Two things prevail, money and sleight; [moderation?    To seem is better than to be.  Folly and falsehood prate apace;    Truth under bushel is fain to creep;  Flattery is treble, pride sings the bass,    The mean, the best part, scant doth peep.  With floods and storms thus be we tost:    Awake, good Lord, to thee we cry;  Our ship is almost sunk and lost;    Thy mercy help our misery.  Man's strength is weak; man's wit is dull;    Man's reason is blind these things t'amend:  Thy hand, O Lord, of might is full—    Awake betimes, and help us send.  In thee we trust, and in no wight;    Save us, as chickens under the hen;  Our crookedness thou canst make right—    Glory to thee for aye. Amen.

The apprehensions of the wiser part of the nation have generally been ahead of its hopes. Every age is born with an ideal; but instead of beholding that ideal in the future where it lies, it throws it into the past. Hence the lapse of the nation must appear tremendous, even when she is making her best progress.

CHAPTER V

SPENSER AND HIS FRIENDS.

We have now arrived at the period of English history in every way fullest of marvel—the period of Elizabeth. As in a northern summer the whole region bursts into blossom at once, so with the thought and feeling of England in this glorious era.

The special development of the national mind with which we are now concerned, however, did not by any means arrive at its largest and clearest result until the following century. Still its progress is sufficiently remarkable. For, while everything that bore upon the mental development of the nation must bear upon its poetry, the fresh vigour given by the doctrines of the Reformation to the sense of personal responsibility, and of immediate relation to God, with the grand influences, both literary and spiritual, of the translated, printed, and studied Bible, operated more immediately upon its devotional utterance.

Towards the close of the sixteenth century, we begin to find such verse as I shall now present to my readers. Only I must first make a few remarks upon the great poem of the period: I mean, of course, The Faerie Queen.

I dare not begin to set forth after any fashion the profound religious truth contained in this poem; for it would require a volume larger than this to set forth even that of the first book adequately. In this case it is well to remember that the beginning of comment, as well as of strife, is like the letting out of water.

The direction in which the wonderful allegory of the latter moves may be gathered from the following stanza, the first of the eighth canto:

  Ay me! how many perils do enfold    The righteous man to make him daily fail;  Were not that heavenly grace doth him uphold, it understood.    And steadfast Truth acquit him out of all!    Her love is firm, her care continual,  So oft as he, through his own foolish pride    Or weakness, is to sinful bands made thrall:  Else should this Redcross Knight in bands have died,  For whose deliverance she this Prince doth thither guide.

Nor do I judge it good to spend much of my space upon remarks personal to those who have not been especially writers of sacred verse. When we come to the masters of such song, we cannot speak of their words without speaking of themselves; but when in the midst of many words those of the kind we seek are few, the life of the writer does not justify more than a passing notice here.

We know but little of Spenser's history: if we might know all, I do not fear that we should find anything to destroy the impression made by his verse—that he was a Christian gentleman, a noble and pure-minded man, of highest purposes and aims.

His style is injured by the artistic falsehood of producing antique effects in the midst of modern feeling.54 It was scarcely more justifiable, for instance, in Spenser's time than it would be in ours to use glitterand for glittering; or to return to a large use of alliteration, three, four, sometimes even five words in the same line beginning with the same consonant sound. Everything should look like what it is: prose or verse should be written in the language of its own era. No doubt the wide-spreading roots of poetry gather to it more variety of expression than prose can employ; and the very nature of verse will make it free of times and seasons, harmonizing many opposites. Hence, through its mediation, without discord, many fine old words, by the loss of which the language has grown poorer and feebler, might be honourably enticed to return even into our prose. But nothing ought to be brought back because it is old. That it is out of use is a presumptive argument that it ought to remain out of use: good reasons must be at hand to support its reappearance. I must not, however, enlarge upon this wide-reaching question; for of the two portions of Spenser's verse which I shall quote, one of them is not at all, the other not so much as his great poem, affected with this whim.

The first I give is a sonnet, one of eighty-eight which he wrote to his wife before their marriage. Apparently disappointed in early youth, he did not fall in love again,—at least there is no sign of it that I know,—till he was middle-aged. But then—woman was never more grandly wooed than was his Elizabeth. I know of no marriage-present worthy to be compared with the Epithalamion which he gave her "in lieu of many ornaments,"—one of the most stately, melodious, and tender poems in the world, I fully believe.

But now for the sonnet—the sixty-eighth of the Amoretti:

  Most glorious Lord of Life! that, on this day,  Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,  And having harrowed hell, didst bring away  Captivity thence captive, us to win:  This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin;  And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die,  Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,  May live for ever in felicity!  And that thy love we weighing worthily,  May likewise love thee for the same again;  And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,  With love may one another entertain.    So let us love, dear love, like as we ought:    Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

Those who have never felt the need of the divine, entering by the channel of will and choice and prayer, for the upholding, purifying, and glorifying of that which itself first created human, will consider this poem untrue, having its origin in religious affectation. Others will think otherwise.

The greater part of what I shall next quote is tolerably known even to those who have made little study of our earlier literature, yet it may not be omitted here. It is from An Hymne of Heavenly Love, consisting of forty-one stanzas, written in what was called Rime Royal—a favourite with Milton, and, next to the Spenserian, in my opinion the finest of stanzas. Its construction will reveal itself. I take two stanzas from the beginning of the hymn, then one from the heart of it, and the rest from the close. It gives no feeling of an outburst of song, but rather of a brooding chant, most quiet in virtue of the depth of its thoughtfulness. Indeed, all his rhythm is like the melodies of water, and I could quote at least three passages in which he speaks of rhythmic movements and watery progressions together. His thoughts, and hence his words, flow like a full, peaceful stream, diffuse, with plenteousness unrestrained.

AN HYMN OF HEAVENLY LOVE

  Before this world's great frame, in which all things    Are now contained, found any being place,  Ere flitting Time could wag his eyas55 wings    About that mighty bound which doth embrace    The rolling spheres, and parts their hours by space,  That high eternal power, which now doth move  In all these things, moved in itself by love.  It loved itself, because itself was fair,    For fair is loved; and of itself begot  Like to itself his eldest son and heir,    Eternal, pure, and void of sinful blot,  The firstling of his joy, in whom no jot  Of love's dislike or pride was to be found,  Whom he therefore with equal honour crowned.* * * * *  Out of the bosom of eternal bliss,    In which he reignéd with his glorious Sire,  He down descended, like a most demisse humble.    And abject thrall, in flesh's frail attire,    That he for him might pay sin's deadly hire,  And him restore unto that happy state  In which he stood before his hapless fate.* * * * *  O blessed well of love! O flower of grace!    O glorious Morning-Star! O Lamp of Light!  Most lively image of thy Father's face!    Eternal King of Glory, Lord of might!    Meek Lamb of God, before all worlds behight! promised.  How can we thee requite for all this good?  Or what can prize that thy most precious blood? equal in value.  Yet nought thou ask'st in lieu of all this love    But love of us for guerdon of thy pain:  Ay me! what can us less than that behove?56    Had he required life of57 us again,    Had it been wrong to ask his own with gain?  He gave us life, he it restored lost;  Then life were least, that us so little cost.  But he our life hath left unto us free—    Free that was thrall, and blessed that was banned; enslaved; cursed.  Nor aught demands but that we loving be,    As he himself hath loved us aforehand,    And bound thereto with an eternal band—  Him first to love that us58 so dearly bought,  And next our brethren, to his image wrought.  Him first to love great right and reason is,    Who first to us our life and being gave,  And after, when we faréd had amiss,    Us wretches from the second death did save;    And last, the food of life, which now we have,  Even he himself, in his dear sacrament,  To feed our hungry souls, unto us lent.  Then next, to love our brethren that were made    Of that self mould, and that self Maker's hand,  That59 we, and to the same again shall fade,    Where they shall have like heritage of land, the same grave-room.    However here on higher steps we stand;  Which also were with selfsame price redeemed,  That we, however, of us light esteemed. as.  And were they not, yet since that loving Lord    Commanded us to love them for his sake,  Even for his sake, and for his sacred word,    Which in his last bequest he to us spake,    We should them love, and with their needs partake; share their  Knowing that, whatsoe'er to them we give, [needs.  We give to him by whom we all do live.  Such mercy he by his most holy rede instruction.    Unto us taught, and to approve it true,  Ensampled it by his most righteous deed,    Shewing us mercy, miserable crew!    That we the like should to the wretches60 shew,  And love our brethren; thereby to approve  How much himself that loved us we love.  Then rouse thyself, O earth! out of thy soil,    In which thou wallowest like to filthy swine,  And dost thy mind in dirty pleasures moyle, defile.    Unmindful of that dearest Lord of thine;    Lift up to him thy heavy clouded eyne,  That thou this sovereign bounty mayst behold,  And read through love his mercies manifold.  Begin from first, where he encradled was    In simple cratch, wrapt in a wad of hay, a rack or crib.  Between the toilful ox and humble ass;    And in what rags, and in what base array    The glory of our heavenly riches lay,  When him the silly61 shepherds came to see,  Whom greatest princes sought on lowest knee.  From thence read on the story of his life,    His humble carriage, his unfaulty ways,  His cankered foes, his fights, his toil, his strife,    His pains, his poverty, his sharp assays, temptations or trials.    Through which he passed his miserable days,  Offending none, and doing good to all,  Yet being maliced both by great and small.  And look at last, how of most wretched wights    He taken was, betrayed, and false accused;  How with most scornful taunts and fell despites    He was reviled, disgraced, and foul abused;    How scourged, how crowned, how buffeted, how bruised;  And, lastly, how 'twixt robbers crucified,  With bitter wounds through hands, through feet, and side!* * * * *  With sense whereof whilst so thy softened spirit    Is inly touched, and humbled with meek zeal  Through meditation of his endless merit,    Lift up thy mind to th' author of thy weal,    And to his sovereign mercy do appeal;  Learn him to love that lovéd thee so dear,  And in thy breast his blessed image bear.  With all thy heart, with all thy soul and mind,    Thou must him love, and his behests embrace; commands.  All other loves with which the world doth blind    Weak fancies, and stir up affections base,    Thou must renounce and utterly displace,  And give thyself unto him full and free,  That full and freely gave himself to thee.* * * * *  Thenceforth all world's desire will in thee die,    And all earth's glory, on which men do gaze,  Seem dust and dross in thy pure-sighted eye,    Compared to that celestial beauty's blaze,  Whose glorious beams all fleshly sense do daze    With admiration of their passing light,  Blinding the eyes and lumining the sprite.  Then shalt thy ravished soul inspiréd be    With heavenly thoughts far above human skill, reason.  And thy bright radiant eyes shall plainly see    The Idea of his pure glory present still    Before thy face, that all thy spirits shall fill  With sweet enragement of celestial love,  Kindled through sight of those fair things above.

There is a companion to the poem of which these verses are a portion, called An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, filled like this, and like two others on Beauty and Love, with Platonic forms both of thought and expression; but I have preferred quoting a longer part of the former to giving portions of both. My reader will recognize in the extract a fuller force of intellect brought to bear on duty; although it would be unwise to take a mind like Spenser's for a type of more than the highest class of the age. Doubtless the division in the country with regard to many of the Church's doctrines had its part in bringing out and strengthening this tendency to reasoning which is so essential to progress. Where religion itself is not the most important thing with the individual, all reasoning upon it must indeed degenerate into strifes of words, vermiculate questions, as Lord Bacon calls them—such, namely, as like the hoarded manna reveal the character of the owner by breeding of worms—yet on no questions may the light of the candle of the Lord, that is, the human understanding, be cast with greater hope of discovery than on those of religion, those, namely, that bear upon man's relation to God and to his fellow. The most partial illumination of this region, the very cause of whose mystery is the height and depth of its truth, is of more awful value to the human being than perfect knowledge, if such were possible, concerning everything else in the universe; while, in fact, in this very region, discovery may bring with it a higher kind of conviction than can accompany the results of investigation in any other direction. In these grandest of all thinkings, the great men of this time showed a grandeur of thought worthy of their surpassing excellence in other noblest fields of human labour. They thought greatly because they aspired greatly.

Sir Walter Raleigh was a personal friend of Edmund Spenser. They were almost of the same age, the former born in 1552, the latter in the following year. A writer of magnificent prose, itself full of religion and poetry both in thought and expression, he has not distinguished himself greatly in verse. There is, however, one remarkable poem fit for my purpose, which I can hardly doubt to be his. It is called Sir Walter Raleigh's Pilgrimage. The probability is that it was written just after his condemnation in 1603—although many years passed before his sentence was carried into execution.

    Give me my scallop-shell62 of Quiet;  My staff of Faith to walk upon;  My scrip of Joy, immortal diet;  My bottle of Salvation;  My gown of Glory, hope's true gage;  And thus I'll take my pilgrimage.  Blood must be my body's balmer,—  No other balm will there be given—  Whilst my soul, like quiet palmer,  Travelleth towards the land of Heaven;  Over the silver mountains,  Where spring the nectar fountains—  There will I kiss  The bowl of Bliss,  And drink mine everlasting fill  Upon every milken hill:  My soul will be a-dry before,  But after, it will thirst no more.  Then by that happy blissful day,  More peaceful pilgrims I shall see,  That have cast off their rags of clay,  And walk apparelled fresh like me:  I'll take them first,  To quench their thirst,  And taste of nectar's suckets, sweet things—things to suck.      At those clear wells      Where sweetness dwells,  Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets.  And when our bottles and all we  Are filled with immortality,  Then the blessed paths we'll travel,  Strowed with rubies thick as gravel.  Ceilings of diamonds! sapphire floors!  High walls of coral, and pearly bowers!—  From thence to Heaven's bribeless hall,  Where no corrupted voices brawl;  No conscience molten into gold;  No forged accuser bought or sold;  No cause deferred; no vain-spent journey;  For there Christ is the King's Attorney,  Who pleads for all without degrees, irrespective of rank.  And he hath angels, but no fees.  And when the grand twelve million jury  Of our sins, with direful fury,  'Gainst our souls black verdicts give,  Christ pleads his death, and then we live.  Be thou my speaker, taintless Pleader,  Unblotted Lawyer, true Proceeder!  Thou giv'st salvation even for alms,—  Not with a bribéd lawyer's palms.  And this is my eternal plea  To him that made heaven, earth, and sea,  That, since my flesh must die so soon,  And want a head to dine next noon,—  Just at the stroke, when my veins start and spread,  Set on my soul an everlasting head:  Then am I ready, like a palmer fit,  To tread those blest paths which before I writ.  Of death and judgment, heaven and hell  Who oft doth think, must needs die well.

This poem is a somewhat strange medley, with a confusion of figure, and a repeated failure in dignity, which is very far indeed from being worthy of Raleigh's prose. But it is very remarkable how wretchedly some men will show, who, doing their own work well, attempt that for which practice has not—to use a word of the time—enabled them. There is real power in the poem, however, and the confusion is far more indicative of the pleased success of an unaccustomed hand than of incapacity for harmonious work. Some of the imagery, especially the "crystal buckets," will suggest those grotesque drawings called Emblems, which were much in use before and after this period, and, indeed, were only a putting into visible shape of such metaphors and similes as some of the most popular poets of the time, especially Doctor Donne, indulged in; while the profusion of earthly riches attributed to the heavenly paths and the places of repose on the journey, may well recall Raleigh's own descriptions of South American glories. Englishmen of that era believed in an earthly Paradise beyond the Atlantic, the wonderful reports of whose magnificence had no doubt a share in lifting the imaginations and hopes of the people to the height at which they now stood.