England's Antiphon

PSALM XCII

  Thou who art enthroned above,  Thou by whom we live and move,  O how sweet, how excellent  Is't with tongue and heart's consent,  Thankful hearts and joyful tongues,  To renown thy name in songs!  When the morning paints the skies,  When the sparkling stars arise,  Thy high favours to rehearse,  Thy firm faith, in grateful verse!  Take the lute and violin,  Let the solemn harp begin,  Instruments strung with ten strings,  While the silver cymbal rings.  From thy works my joy proceeds;  How I triumph in thy deeds!  Who thy wonders can express?  All thy thoughts are fathomless—  Hid from men in knowledge blind,  Hid from fools to vice inclined.  Who that tyrant sin obey,  Though they spring like flowers in May—  Parched with heat, and nipt with frost,  Soon shall fade, for ever lost.  Lord, thou art most great, most high;  Such from all eternity.  Perish shall thy enemies,  Rebels that against thee rise.  All who in their sins delight,  Shall be scattered by thy might  But thou shall exalt my horn  Like a youthful unicorn,  Fresh and fragrant odours shed  On thy crowned prophet's head.  I shall see my foes' defeat,  Shortly hear of their retreat;  But the just like palms shall flourish  Which the plains of Judah nourish,  Like tall cedars mounted on  Cloud-ascending Lebanon.  Plants set in thy court, below  Spread their roots, and upwards grow;  Fruit in their old age shall bring,  Ever fat and flourishing.  This God's justice celebrates:  He, my rock, injustice hates.

PSALM CXXIII

  Thou mover of the rolling spheres,  I, through the glasses of my tears,    To thee my eyes erect.  As servants mark their master's hands,  As maids their mistress's commands,    And liberty expect,  So we, depressed by enemies  And growing troubles, fix our eyes    On God, who sits on high;  Till he in mercy shall descend,  To give our miseries an end,    And turn our tears to joy.  O save us, Lord, by all forlorn,  The subject of contempt and scorn:    Defend us from their pride  Who live in fluency and ease,  Who with our woes their malice please,    And miseries deride.

Here is a part of the 66th Psalm, which makes a complete little song of itself:

  Bless the Lord. His praise be sung  While an ear can hear a tongue.  He our feet establisheth;  He our souls redeems from death.  Lord, as silver purified,  Thou hast with affliction tried,  Thou hast driven into the net,  Burdens on our shoulders set.  Trod on by their horses' hooves,  Theirs whom pity never moves,  We through fire, with flames embraced,  We through raging floods have passed,  Yet by thy conducting hand,  Brought into a wealthy land.

CHAPTER IX

A FEW OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS.

From the nature of their adopted mode, we cannot look for much poetry of a devotional kind from the dramatists. That mode admitting of no utterance personal to the author, and requiring the scope of a play to bring out the intended truth, it is no wonder that, even in the dramas of Shakspere, profound as is the teaching they contain, we should find nothing immediately suitable to our purpose; while neither has he left anything in other form approaching in kind what we seek. Ben Jonson, however, born in 1574, who may be regarded as the sole representative of learning in the class, has left, amongst a large number of small pieces, three Poems of Devotion, whose merit may not indeed be great, but whose feeling is, I think, genuine. Whatever were his faults, and they were not few, hypocrisy was not one of them. His nature was fierce and honest. He might boast, but he could not pretend. His oscillation between the reformed and the Romish church can hardly have had other cause than a vacillating conviction. It could not have served any prudential end that we can see, to turn catholic in the reign of Elizabeth, while in prison for killing in a duel a player who had challenged him.

THE SINNER'S SACRIFICE

1.—TO THE HOLY TRINITY

  O holy, blessed, glorious Trinity  Of persons, still one God in Unity,  The faithful man's believed mystery,                          Help, help to lift  Myself up to thee, harrowed, torn, and bruised  By sin and Satan, and my flesh misused.  As my heart lies—in pieces, all confused—                          O take my gift.  All-gracious God, the sinner's sacrifice,  A broken heart, thou wert not wont despise,  But, 'bove the fat of rams or bulls, to prize                          An offering meet  For thy acceptance: Oh, behold me right,  And take compassion on my grievous plight!  What odour can be, than a heart contrite,                          To thee more sweet?  Eternal Father, God, who didst create  This All of nothing, gav'st it form and fate,  And breath'st into it life and light, with state                          To worship thee!  Eternal God the Son, who not deniedst  To take our nature, becam'st man, and diedst,  To pay our debts, upon thy cross, and criedst                          All's done in me!  Eternal Spirit, God from both proceeding,  Father and Son—the Comforter, in breeding  Pure thoughts in man, with fiery zeal them feeding                          For acts of grace!  Increase those acts, O glorious Trinity  Of persons, still one God in Unity,  Till I attain the longed-for mystery                          Of seeing your face,  Beholding one in three, and three in one,  A Trinity, to shine in Union—  The gladdest light, dark man can think upon—                           O grant it me,  Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, you three,  All co-eternal in your majesty,  Distinct in persons, yet in unity                           One God to see;  My Maker, Saviour, and my Sanctifier,  To hear, to mediate,82 sweeten my desire,  With grace, with love, with cherishing entire!                           O then, how blest  Among thy saints elected to abide,  And with thy angels placéd, side by side!  But in thy presence truly glorified,                           Shall I there rest!

2.—AN HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER

  Hear me, O God!    A broken heart    Is my best part:  Use still thy rod,    That I may prove    Therein thy love.  If thou hadst not    Been stern to me,    But left me free,  I had forgot    Myself and thee.  For sin's so sweet    As minds ill bent that.    Rarely repent  Until they meet    Their punishment.  Who more can crave    Than thou hast done?    Thou gay'st a Son  To free a slave,    First made of nought,    With all since bought.  Sin, death, and hell    His glorious name    Quite overcame;  Yet I rebel,    And slight the same.  But I'll come in    Before my loss    Me farther toss,  As sure to win    Under his cross.

3.—AN HYMN ON THE NATIVITY OF MY SAVIOUR

  I sing the birth was born to-night,  The author both of life and light;    The angels so did sound it.  And like the ravished shepherds said,  Who saw the light, and were afraid,    Yet searched, and true they found it.  The Son of God, the eternal King,  That did us all salvation bring,    And freed the soul from danger;  He whom the whole world could not take,  The Word which heaven and earth did make,    Was now laid in a manger.  The Father's wisdom willed it so;  The Son's obedience knew no No;    Both wills were in one stature;  And, as that wisdom had decreed,  The Word was now made flesh indeed,    And took on him our nature.  What comfort by him do we win,  Who made himself the price of sin,    To make us heirs of glory!  To see this babe, all innocence,  A martyr born in our defence!—    Can man forget this story?

Somewhat formal and artificial, no doubt; rugged at the same time, like him who wrote them. When a man would utter that concerning which he has only felt, not thought, he can express himself only in the forms he has been taught, conventional or traditional. Let his powers be ever so much developed in respect of other things, here, where he has not meditated, he must understand as a child, think as a child, speak as a child. He can as yet generate no sufficing or worthy form natural to himself. But the utterance is not therefore untrue. There was no professional bias to cause the stream of Ben Jonson's verses to flow in that channel. Indeed, feeling without thought, and the consequent combination of impulse to speak with lack of matter, is the cause of much of that common-place utterance concerning things of religion which is so wearisome, but which therefore it is not always fair to despise as cant.

About the same age as Ben Jonson, though the date of his birth is unknown, I now come to mention Thomas Heywood, a most voluminous writer of plays, who wrote also a book, chiefly in verse, called The Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels, a strange work, in which, amongst much that is far from poetic, occur the following remarkable metaphysico-religious verses. He had strong Platonic tendencies, interesting himself chiefly however in those questions afterwards pursued by Dr. Henry More, concerning witches and such like subjects, which may be called the shadow of Platonism.

  I have wandered like a sheep that's lost,  To find Thee out in every coast:  Without I have long seeking bin, been.  Whilst thou, the while, abid'st within.  Through every broad street and strait lane  Of this world's city, but in vain,  I have enquired. The reason why?  I sought thee ill: for how could I  Find thee abroad, when thou, mean space,  Hadst made within thy dwelling-place?  I sent my messengers about,  To try if they could find thee out;  But all was to no purpose still,  Because indeed they sought thee ill:  For how could they discover thee  That saw not when thou entered'st me?  Mine eyes could tell me? If he were,  Not coloured, sure he came not there.  If not by sound, my ears could say  He doubtless did not pass my way.  My nose could nothing of him tell,  Because my God he did not smell.  None such I relished, said my taste,  And therefore me he never passed.  My feeling told me that none such  There entered, for he none did touch.  Resolved by them how should I be,  Since none of all these are in thee,  In thee, my God? Thou hast no hue  That man's frail optic sense can view;  No sound the ear hears; odour none  The smell attracts; all taste is gone  At thy appearance; where doth fail  A body, how can touch prevail?  What even the brute beasts comprehend—  To think thee such, I should offend.  Yet when I seek my God, I enquire  For light than sun and moon much higher,  More clear and splendrous, 'bove all light  Which the eye receives not, 'tis so bright.  I seek a voice beyond degree  Of all melodious harmony:  The ear conceives it not; a smell  Which doth all other scents excel:  No flower so sweet, no myrrh, no nard,  Or aloës, with it compared;  Of which the brain not sensible is.  I seek a sweetness—such a bliss  As hath all other sweets surpassed,  And never palate yet could taste.  I seek that to contain and hold  No touch can feel, no embrace enfold.  So far this light the rays extends,  As that no place it comprehends.  So deep this sound, that though it speak  It cannot by a sense so weak  Be entertained. A redolent grace  The air blows not from place to place.  A pleasant taste, of that delight  It doth confound all appetite.  A strict embrace, not felt, yet leaves  That virtue, where it takes it cleaves.  This light, this sound, this savouring grace,  This tasteful sweet, this strict embrace,  No place contains, no eye can see,  My God is, and there's none but he.

Very remarkable verses from a dramatist! They indicate substratum enough for any art if only the art be there. Even those who cannot enter into the philosophy of them, which ranks him among the mystics of whom I have yet to speak, will understand a good deal of it symbolically: for how could he be expected to keep his poetry and his philosophy distinct when of themselves they were so ready to run into one; or in verse to define carefully betwixt degree and kind, when kinds themselves may rise by degrees? To distinguish without separating; to be able to see that what in their effects upon us are quite different, may yet be a grand flight of ascending steps, "to stop—no record hath told where," belongs to the philosopher who is not born mutilated, but is a poet as well.

John Fletcher, likewise a dramatist, the author of the following poem, was two years younger than Ben Jonson. It is, so far as I am aware, the sole non-dramatic voice he has left behind him. Its opening is an indignant apostrophe to certain men of pretended science, who in his time were much consulted—the Astrologers.

UPON AN HONEST MAN'S FORTUNE

  You that can look through heaven, and tell the stars;  Observe their kind conjunctions, and their wars;  Find out new lights, and give them where you please—  To those men honours, pleasures, to those ease;  You that are God's surveyors, and can show  How far, and when, and why the wind doth blow;  Know all the charges of the dreadful thunder,  And when it will shoot over, or fall under;  Tell me—by all your art I conjure ye—  Yes, and by truth—what shall become of me.  Find out my star, if each one, as you say,  Have his peculiar angel, and his way;  Observe my fate; next fall into your dreams;  Sweep clean your houses, and new-line your schemes;83  Then say your worst. Or have I none at all?  Or is it burnt out lately? or did fall?  Or am I poor? not able? no full flame?  My star, like me, unworthy of a name?  Is it your art can only work on those  That deal with dangers, dignities, and clothes,  With love, or new opinions? You all lie:  A fishwife hath a fate, and so have I—  But far above your finding. He that gives,  Out of his providence, to all that lives—  And no man knows his treasure, no, not you;—* * * * *  He that made all the stars you daily read,  And from them filch a knowledge how to feed,  Hath hid this from you. Your conjectures all  Are drunken things, not how, but when they fall:  Man is his own star, and the soul that can  Render an honest, and a perfect man,  Commands all light, all influence, all fate;  Nothing to him falls early, or too late.  Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,  Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;  And when the stars are labouring, we believe  It is not that they govern, but they grieve  For stubborn ignorance. All things that are  Made for our general uses, are at war—  Even we among ourselves; and from the strife  Your first unlike opinions got a life.  Oh man! thou image of thy Maker's good,  What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy blood  His spirit is that built thee? What dull sense  Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence?  Who made the morning, and who placed the light  Guide to thy labours? Who called up the night,  And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers  In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers?  Who gave thee knowledge? Who so trusted thee,  To let thee grow so near himself, the Tree?84  Must he then be distrusted? Shall his frame  Discourse with him why thus and thus I am?  He made the angels thine, thy fellows all;  Nay, even thy servants, when devotions call.  Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim,  To seek a saving influence, and lose him?  Can stars protect thee? Or can poverty,  Which is the light to heaven, put out his eye?  He is my star; in him all truth I find,  All influence, all fate; and when my mind  Is furnished with his fulness, my poor story  Shall outlive all their age, and all their glory.  The hand of danger cannot fall amiss  When I know what, and in whose power it is;  Nor want, the cause85 of man, shall make me groan:  A holy hermit is a mind alone.86  Doth not experience teach us, all we can,  To work ourselves into a glorious man?* * * * *  My mistress then be knowledge and fair truth;  So I enjoy all beauty and all youth!* * * * *  Affliction, when I know it, is but this—  A deep alloy, whereby man tougher is  To bear the hammer; and the deeper still,  We still arise more image of his will;  Sickness, an humorous cloud 'twixt us and light;  And death, at longest, but another night,  Man is his own star, and that soul that can  Be honest, is the only perfect man.

There is a tone of contempt in the verses which is not religious; but they express a true philosophy and a triumph of faith in God. The word honest is here equivalent to true.

I am not certain whether I may not now be calling up a singer whose song will appear hardly to justify his presence in the choir. But its teaching is of high import, namely, of content and cheerfulness and courage, and being both worthy and melodious, it gravitates heavenward. The singer is yet another dramatist: I presume him to be Thomas Dekker. I cannot be certain, because others were concerned with him in the writing of the drama from which I take it. He it is who, in an often-quoted passage, styles our Lord "The first true gentleman that ever breathed;" just as Chaucer, in a poem I have given, calls him "The first stock-father of gentleness."

We may call the little lyric

A SONG OF LABOUR

  Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?               Oh, sweet content!    Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?               Oh, punishment!    Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed  To add to golden numbers, golden numbers?               Oh, sweet content!   Chorus.—Work apace, apace, apace, apace;              Honest labour bears a lovely face.  Canst drink the waters of the crispéd spring?               Oh, sweet content!    Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears?               Oh, punishment!    Then he that patiently want's burden bears,  No burden bears, but is a king, a king!               Oh, sweet content!   Chorus.—Work apace, apace, apace, apace;              Honest labour bears a lovely face.

It is a song of the poor in spirit, whose is the kingdom of heaven. But if my co-listeners prefer, we will call it the voice, not of one who sings in the choir, but of one who "tunes his instrument at the door."

CHAPTER X

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT AND DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

Sir John Beaumont, born in 1582, elder brother to the dramatist who wrote along with Fletcher, has left amongst his poems a few fine religious ones. From them I choose the following:

OF THE EPIPHANY

  Fair eastern star, that art ordained to run  Before the sages, to the rising sun,  Here cease thy course, and wonder that the cloud  Of this poor stable can thy Maker shroud:  Ye, heavenly bodies, glory to be bright,  And are esteemed as ye are rich in light;  But here on earth is taught a different way,  Since under this low roof the highest lay.  Jerusalem erects her stately towers,  Displays her windows, and adorns her bowers;  Yet there thou must not cast a trembling spark:  Let Herod's palace still continue dark;  Each school and synagogue thy force repels,  There Pride, enthroned in misty errors, dwells;  The temple, where the priests maintain their choir,  Shall taste no beam of thy celestial fire,  While this weak cottage all thy splendour takes:  A joyful gate of every chink it makes.  Here shines no golden roof, no ivory stair,  No king exalted in a stately chair,  Girt with attendants, or by heralds styled,  But straw and hay enwrap a speechless child;  Yet Sabae's lords before this babe unfold  Their treasures, offering incense, myrrh, and gold.  The crib becomes an altar: therefore dies  No ox nor sheep; for in their fodder lies  The Prince of Peace, who, thankful for his bed,  Destroys those rites in which their blood was shed:  The quintessence of earth he takes and87 fees,  And precious gums distilled from weeping trees;  Rich metals and sweet odours now declare  The glorious blessings which his laws prepare,  To clear us from the base and loathsome flood  Of sense, and make us fit for angels' food,  Who lift to God for us the holy smoke  Of fervent prayers with which we him invoke,  And try our actions in that searching fire,  By which the seraphims our lips inspire:  No muddy dross pure minerals shall infect,  We shall exhale our vapours up direct:  No storms shall cross, nor glittering lights deface  Perpetual sighs which seek a happy place.

The creatures, no longer offered on his altar, standing around the Prince of Life, to whom they have given a bed, is a lovely idea. The end is hardly worthy of the rest, though there is fine thought involved in it.

The following contains an utterance of personal experience, the truth of which will be recognized by all to whom heavenly aspiration and needful disappointment are not unknown.

IN DESOLATION

  O thou who sweetly bend'st my stubborn will,  Who send'st thy stripes to teach and not to kill!  Thy cheerful face from me no longer hide;  Withdraw these clouds, the scourges of my pride;  I sink to hell, if I be lower thrown:  I see what man is, being left alone.  My substance, which from nothing did begin,  Is worse than nothing by the weight of sin:  I see myself in such a wretched state  As neither thoughts conceive, nor words relate.  How great a distance parts us! for in thee  Is endless good, and boundless ill in me.  All creatures prove me abject, but how low  Thou only know'st, and teachest me to know.  To paint this baseness, nature is too base;  This darkness yields not but to beams of grace.  Where shall I then this piercing splendour find?  Or found, how shall it guide me, being blind?  Grace is a taste of bliss, a glorious gift,  Which can the soul to heavenly comforts lift:  It will not shine to me, whose mind is drowned  In sorrows, and with worldly troubles bound;  It will not deign within that house to dwell,  Where dryness reigns, and proud distractions swell.  Perhaps it sought me in those lightsome days  Of my first fervour, when few winds did raise  The waves, and ere they could full strength obtain,  Some whispering gale straight charmed them down again;  When all seemed calm, and yet the Virgin's child  On my devotions in his manger smiled;  While then I simply walked, nor heed could take  Of complacence, that sly, deceitful snake;  When yet I had not dangerously refused  So many calls to virtue, nor abused  The spring of life, which I so oft enjoyed,  Nor made so many good intentions void,  Deserving thus that grace should quite depart,  And dreadful hardness should possess my heart:  Yet in that state this only good I found,  That fewer spots did then my conscience wound;  Though who can censure whether, in those times, judg  The want of feeling seemed the want of crimes?  If solid virtues dwell not but in pain,  I will not wish that golden age again  Because it flowed with sensible delights  Of heavenly things: God hath created nights  As well as days, to deck the varied globe;  Grace comes as oft clad in the dusky robe  Of desolation, as in white attire,  Which better fits the bright celestial choir.  Some in foul seasons perish through despair,  But more through boldness when the days are fair.  This then must be the medicine for my woes—  To yield to what my Saviour shall dispose;  To glory in my baseness; to rejoice  In mine afflictions; to obey his voice,  As well when threatenings my defects reprove,  As when I cherished am with words of love;  To say to him, in every time and place,  "Withdraw thy comforts, so thou leave thy grace."

Surely this is as genuine an utterance, whatever its merits as a poem—and those I judge not small—as ever flowed from Christian heart!

Chiefly for the sake of its beauty, I give the last passage of a poem written upon occasion of the feasts of the Annunciation and the Resurrection falling on the same day.

  Let faithful souls this double feast attend  In two processions. Let the first descend  The temple's stairs, and with a downcast eye  Upon the lowest pavement prostrate lie:  In creeping violets, white lilies, shine  Their humble thoughts and every pure design.  The other troop shall climb, with sacred heat,  The rich degrees of Solomon's bright seat: steps  In glowing roses fervent zeal they bear,  And in the azure flower-de-lis appear  Celestial contemplations, which aspire  Above the sky, up to the immortal choir.

William Drummond of Hawthornden, a Scotchman, born in 1585, may almost be looked upon as the harbinger of a fresh outburst of word-music. No doubt all the great poets have now and then broken forth in lyrical jubilation. Ponderous Ben Jonson himself, when he takes to song, will sing in the joy of the very sound; but great men have always so much graver work to do, that they comparatively seldom indulge in this kind of melody. Drummond excels in madrigals, or canzonets—baby-odes or songs—which have more of wing and less of thought than sonnets. Through the greater part of his verse we hear a certain muffled tone of the sweetest, like the music that ever threatens to break out clear from the brook, from the pines, from the rain-shower,—never does break out clear, but remains a suggested, etherially vanishing tone. His is a voix voilée, or veiled voice of song. It is true that in the time we are now approaching far more attention was paid not merely to the smoothness but to the melody of verse than any except the great masters had paid before; but some are at the door, who, not being great masters, yet do their inferior part nearly as well as they their higher, uttering a music of marvellous and individual sweetness, which no mere musical care could secure, but which springs essentially from music in the thought gathering to itself musical words in melodious division, and thus fashioning for itself a fitting body. The melody of their verse is all their own—as original as the greatest art-forms of the masters. Of Drummond, then, here are two sonnets on the Nativity; the first spoken by the angels, the second by the shepherds.