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England's Antiphon

by George MacDonald · English · Gutenberg #10375 · 495,047 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: England's Antiphon

Author: George MacDonald


        
Release date: December 1, 2003 [eBook #10375]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ENGLAND'S ANTIPHON ***

[Illustration: England's Antiphon]



ENGLAND'S ANTIPHON

BY GEORGE MACDONALD


  ENGLAND'S ANTIPHON
  was originally published in 1868




PREFACE


In this book I have sought to trace the course of our religious poetry
from an early period of our literary history.

This could hardly be done without reference to some of the principal
phases of the religious history of the nation. To give anything like a
full history of the religious feeling of a single county, would require a
large book, and--not to mention sermons--would involve a thorough
acquaintance with the hymns of the country,--a very wide subject, which I
have not considered of sufficient importance from a literary point of
view to come within the scope of the volume.

But if its poetry be the cream of a people's thought, some true
indications of the history of its religious feeling must be found in its
religious verse, and I hope I have not altogether failed in setting forth
these indications.

My chief aim, however, will show itself to have been the mediating
towards an intelligent and cordial sympathy betwixt my readers and the
writers from whom I have quoted. In this I have some confidence of
success.

Heartily do I throw this my small pebble at the head of the great
Sabbath-breaker _Schism_.




CONTENTS


  INTRODUCTION.

  CHAPTER I.
  SACRED LYRICS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

  CHAPTER II.
  THE MIRACLE PLAYS, AND OTHER POEMS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

  CHAPTER III.
  THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

  CHAPTER IV.
  INTRODUCTION TO THE ELIZABETHAN ERA.

  CHAPTER V.
  SPENSER AND HIS FRIENDS.

  CHAPTER VI.
  LORD BACON AND HIS COEVALS.

  CHAPTER VII.
  DR. DONNE.

  CHAPTER VIII.
  BISHOP HALL AND GEORGE SANDYS.

  CHAPTER IX.
  A FEW OF THE ELIZABETHAN DRAMATISTS.

  CHAPTER X.
  SIR JOHN BEAUMONT AND DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.

  CHAPTER XI.
  THE BROTHERS FLETCHER.

  CHAPTER XII.
  WITHER, HERRICK, AND QUARLES.

  CHAPTER XIII.
  GEORGE HERBERT.

  CHAPTER XIV.
  JOHN MILTON.

  CHAPTER XV.
  EDMUND WALLER, THOMAS BROWN, AND JEREMY TAYLOR.

  CHAPTER XVI.
  HENRY MORE AND RICHARD BAXTER.

  CHAPTER XVII.
  CRASHAW AND MARVELL.

  CHAPTER XVIII.
  A MOUNT OF VISION--HENRY VAUGHAN.

  CHAPTER XIX.
  THE PLAIN.

  CHAPTER XX.
  THE ROOTS OF THE HILLS.

  CHAPTER XXI.
  THE NEW VISION.

  CHAPTER XXII.
  THE FERVOUR OF THE IMPLICIT. INSIGHT OF THE HEART.

  CHAPTER XXIII.
  THE QUESTIONING FERVOUR.




ENGLAND'S ANTIPHON.




INTRODUCTION.


If the act of worship be the highest human condition, it follows that the
highest human art must find material in the modes of worship. The first
poetry of a nation will not be religious poetry: the nation must have a
history at least before it can possess any material capable of being cast
into the mould of religious utterance; but, the nation once possessed of
this material, poetry is the first form religious utterance will assume.

The earliest form of literature is the ballad, which is the germ of all
subsequent forms of poetry, for it has in itself all their elements: the
_lyric_, for it was first chanted to some stringed instrument; the
_epic_, for it tells a tale, often of solemn and ancient report; the
_dramatic_, for its actors are ever ready to start forward into life,
snatch the word from the mouth of the narrator, and speak in their own
persons. All these forms have been used for the utterance of religious
thought and feeling. Of the lyrical poems of England, religion possesses
the most; of the epic, the best; of the dramatic, the oldest.

Of each of these I shall have occasion to speak; but, as the title of the
book implies,--for _Antiphon_ means the responsive song of the parted
choir,--I shall have chiefly to do with the lyric or song form.

For song is the speech of feeling. Even the prose of emotion always
wanders into the rhythmical. Hence, as well as for other reasons
belonging to its nature, it is one chief mode in which men unite to
praise God; for in thus praising they hold communion with each other, and
the praise expands and grows.

The _individual_ heart, however, must first have been uplifted into
praiseful song, before the common ground and form of feeling, in virtue
of which men might thus meet, could be supplied. But the vocal utterance
or the bodily presence is not at all necessary for this communion. When
we read rejoicingly the true song-speech of one of our singing brethren,
we hold song-worship with him and with all who have thus at any time
shared in his feelings, even if he have passed centuries ago into the
"high countries" of song.

My object is to erect, as it were, in this book, a little auricle, or
spot of concentrated hearing, where the hearts of my readers may listen,
and join in the song of their country's singing men and singing women.

I will build it, if I may, like a chapel in the great church of England's
worship, gathering the sounds of its never-ceasing choir, heart after
heart lifting up itself in the music of speech, heart after heart
responding across the ages. Hearing, we worship with them.

For we must not forget that, although the individual song springs from
the heart of the individual, the song of a country is not merely
cumulative: it is vital in its growth, and therefore composed of
historically dependent members. No man could sing as he has sung, had not
others sung before him. Deep answereth unto deep, face to face, praise to
praise. To the sound of the trumpet the harp returns its own vibrating
response--alike, but how different! The religious song of the country, I
say again, is a growth, rooted deep in all its story.

Besides the fact that the lyric chiefly will rouse the devotional
feeling, there is another reason why I should principally use it: I wish
to make my book valuable in its parts as in itself. The value of a thing
depends in large measure upon its unity, its wholeness. In a work of
these limits, that form of verse alone can be available for its unity
which is like the song of the bird--a warble and then a stillness.
However valuable an extract may be--and I shall not quite eschew such--an
entire lyric, I had almost said _however inferior_, if worthy of a place
at all, is of greater value, especially if regarded in relation to the
form of setting with which I hope to surround it.

There is a sense in which I may, without presumption, adopt the name of
Choragus, or leader of the chorus, in relation to these singers: I must
take upon me to order who shall sing, when he shall sing, and which of
his songs he shall sing. But I would rather assume the office of master
of the hearing, for my aim shall be to cause the song to be truly heard;
to set forth worthy points in form, in matter, and in relation; to say
with regard to the singer himself, his time, its modes, its beliefs, such
things as may help to set the song in its true light--its relation,
namely, to the source whence it sprung, which alone can secure its right
reception by the heart of the hearer. For my chief aim will be the heart;
seeing that, although there is no dividing of the one from the other, the
heart can do far more for the intellect than the intellect can do for the
heart.

We must not now attempt to hear the singers of times so old that their
language is unintelligible without labour. For this there is not room,
even if otherwise it were desirable that such should divide the volume.
We must leave Anglo-Saxon behind us. In Early English, I shall give a few
valuable lyrics, but they shall not be so far removed from our present
speech but that, with a reasonable amount of assistance, the nature and
degree of which I shall set forth, they shall not only present themselves
to the reader's understanding, but commend themselves to his imagination
and judgment.




CHAPTER I.

SACRED LYRICS OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.


In the midst of wars and rumours of wars, the strife of king and barons,
and persistent efforts to subdue neighbouring countries, the mere
effervescence of the life of the nation, let us think for a moment of
that to which the poems I am about to present bear good witness--the true
life of the people, growing quietly, slowly, unperceived--the leaven hid
in the meal. For what is the true life of a nation? That, I answer, in
its modes of thought, its manners and habits, which favours the growth
within the individual of that kingdom of heaven for the sake only of
which the kingdoms of earth exist. The true life of the people, as
distinguished from the nation, is simply the growth in its individuals of
those eternal principles of truth, in proportion to whose power in them
they take rank in the kingdom of heaven, the only kingdom that can
endure, all others being but as the mimicries of children playing at
government.

Little as they then knew of the relations of the wonderful story on which
their faith was built, to everything human, the same truth was at work
then which is now--poor as the recognition of these relations yet
is--slowly setting men free. In the hardest winter the roots are still
alive in the frozen ground.

In the silence of the monastery, unnatural as that life was, germinated
much of this deeper life. As we must not judge of the life of the nation
by its kings and mighty men, so we must not judge of the life in the
Church by those who are called Rabbi. The very notion of the kingdom of
heaven implies a secret growth, secret from no affectation of mystery,
but because its goings-on are in the depths of the human nature where it
holds communion with the Divine. In the Church, as in society, we often
find that that which shows itself uppermost is but the froth, a sign, it
may be, of life beneath, but in itself worthless. When the man arises
with a servant's heart and a ruler's brain, then is the summer of the
Church's content. But whether the men who wrote the following songs moved
in some shining orbit of rank, or only knelt in some dim chapel, and
walked in some pale cloister, we cannot tell, for they have left no name
behind them.

My reader will observe that there is little of theory and much of love in
these lyrics. The recognition of a living Master is far more than any
notions about him. In the worship of him a thousand truths are working,
unknown and yet active, which, embodied in theory, and dissociated from
the living mind that was in Christ, will as certainly breed worms as any
omer of hoarded manna. Holding the skirt of his garment in one hand, we
shall in the other hold the key to all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge.

I think almost all the earliest religious poetry is about him and his
mother. Their longing after his humanity made them idolize his mother. If
we forget that only through his humanity can we approach his divinity, we
shall soon forget likewise that his mother is blessed among women.

I take the poems from one of the Percy Society publications, edited by
Mr. Wright from a manuscript in the British Museum. He adjudges them to
the reign of Edward I. Perhaps we may find in them a sign or two that in
cultivating our intellect we have in some measure neglected our heart.

But first as to the mode in which I present them to my readers: I have
followed these rules:--

1. Wherever a word differs from the modern word only in spelling, I have,
for the sake of readier comprehension, substituted the modern form, with
the following exception:--Where the spelling indicates a different
pronunciation, necessary for the rhyme or the measure, I retain such part
of the older form, marking with an acute accent any vowel now silent
which must be sounded.

2. Where the word used is antique in root, I give the modern synonym in
the margin. Antique phrases I explain in foot-notes.

It must be borne in mind that our modern pronunciation can hardly fail in
other cases as well to injure the melody of the verses.

The modern reader will often find it difficult to get a rhythm out of
some of them. This may arise from any of several causes. In the first
place many final _e_'s were then sounded which are now silent; and it is
not easy to tell which of them to sound. Again, some words were
pronounced as dissyllables which we treat as monosyllables, and others as
monosyllables which we treat as dissyllables. I suspect besides, that
some of the old writers were content to allow a prolonged syllable to
stand for two short ones, a mode not without great beauty when sparingly
and judiciously employed. Short supernumerary syllables were likewise
allowed considerable freedom to come and go. A good deal must, however,
be put down to the carelessness and presumption of the transcribers, who
may very well have been incapable of detecting their own blunders. One of
these ancient mechanics of literature caused Chaucer endless annoyance
with his corruptions, as a humorous little poem, the last in his works,
sufficiently indicates. From the same sources no doubt spring as well
most of the variations of text in the manuscripts.

The first of the poems is chiefly a conversation between the Lord on the
cross and his mother standing at its foot. A few prefatory remarks in
explanation of some of its allusions will help my readers to enjoy it.

It was at one time a common belief, and the notion has not yet, I think,
altogether vanished, that the dying are held back from repose by the love
that is unwilling to yield them up. Hence, in the third stanza, the Lord
prays his mother to let him die. In the fifth, he reasons against her
overwhelming sorrows on the ground of the deliverance his sufferings will
bring to the human race. But she can only feel her own misery.

To understand the seventh and eighth, it is necessary to know that, among
other strange things accepted by the early Church, it was believed that
the mother of Jesus had no suffering at his birth. This of course
rendered her incapable of perfect sympathy with other mothers. It is a
lovely invention, then, that he should thus commend mothers to his
mother, telling her to judge of the pains of motherhood by those which
she now endured. Still he fails to turn aside her thoughts. She is
thinking still only of her own and her son's suffering, while he
continues bent on making her think of others, until, at last, forth comes
her prayer for all women. This seems to me a tenderness grand as
exquisite.

The outburst of the chorus of the Faithful in the last stanza but one,--

  When he rose, then fell her sorrow,

is as fine as anything I know in the region of the lyric.


  "Stand well, mother, under rood;[1]   _the cross._
  Behold thy son with gladé mood;       _cheerful._
    Blithe mother mayst thou be."
  "Son, how should I blithé stand?
  I see thy feet, I see thy hand
    Nailéd to the hard tree."

  "Mother, do way thy wepynde:          _give over thy weeping._
  I tholé death for mankind--           _suffer._
    For my guilt thole I none."
  "Son, I feel the dede stounde;        _death-pang._
  The sword is at my heart's ground     _bottom._
    That me byhet Simeon."              _foreshowed._

  "Mother, mercy! let me die,
  For Adam out of hell buy,             _for to buy Adam._
    And his kin that is forlore."       _lost._
  "Son, what shall me to rede?[2]
  My pain paineth me to dede:           _death._
    Let me die thee before!"

  "Mother, thou rue all of thy bairn;   _rue thou_; _all_ is only expletive
  Thou wash away the bloody tern;       _wash thou; tears._
    It doth me worse than my ded."      _hurts me more; death._
  "Son, how may I terés werne?          _turn aside tears._
  I see the bloody streamés erne        _flow._
    From thy heart to my fet."          _feet._

  "Mother, now I may thee seye,         _say to thee._
  Better is that I one deye             _die._
    Than all mankind to hellé go."
  "Son, I see thy body byswongen,       _lashed._
  Feet and hands throughout stongen:    _pierced through and through._
    No wonder though me be woe."        _woe be to me._

  "Mother, now I shall thee tell,
  If I not die, thou goest to hell:
    I thole death for thy sake."        _endure._
  "Son, thou art so meek and mynde,     _thoughtful._
  Ne wyt me not, it is my kind[3]
    That I for thee this sorrow make."

  "Mother, now thou mayst well leren     _learn._
  What sorrow have that children beren,  _they have; bear._
    What sorrow it is with childé gon."  _to go._
  "Sorrow, I wis! I can thee tell!
  But it be the pain of hell             _except._
    More sorrow wot I none."

  "Mother, rue of mother-care,               _take pity upon._
  For now thou wost of mother-fare,          _knowest._
    Though thou be clean maiden mon."[4]
  "Soné, help at alle need
  Allé those that to me grede,               _cry._
    Maiden, wife, and full wymmon."          _woman with child._

  "Mother, may I no longer dwell;
  The time is come I shall to hell;
    The third day I rise upon."
  "Son, I will with thee founden;            _set out, go._
  I die, I wis, for thy wounden:
    So sorrowful death nes never none."      _was not never none._

  When he rose, then fell her sorrow;
  Her bliss sprung the third morrow:
    Blithe mother wert thou tho!             _then._
  Lady, for that ilké bliss,                 _same._
  Beseech thy son of sunnés lisse:           _for sin's release._
    Thou be our shield against our foe.      _Be thou._

  Blessed be thou, full of bliss!
  Let us never heaven miss,
    Through thy sweeté Sonés might!
  Loverd, for that ilké blood,               _Lord,_
  That thou sheddest on the rood,
    Thou bring us into heaven's light. AMEN.


I think my readers will not be sorry to have another of a similar
character.

  I sigh when I sing
    For sorrow that I see,
  When I with weeping
    Behold upon the tree,

  And see Jesus the sweet
  His heart's blood for-lete            _yield quite._
    For the love of me.
  His woundés waxen wete,               _wet._
  They weepen still and mete:[5]
    Mary rueth thee.                    _pitieth._

  High upon a down,                     _hill._
    Where all folk it see may,
  A mile from each town,
    About the mid-day,
  The rood is up arearéd;
  His friendés are afearéd,
    And clingeth so the clay;[6]
  The rood stands in stone,
  Mary stands her on,
    And saith Welaway!

  When I thee behold
    With eyen brighté bo,               _eyes bright both._
  And thy body cold--
    Thy ble waxeth blo,                 _colour: livid._
  Thou hangest all of blood             _bloody._
  So high upon the rood
    Between thieves tuo--               _two._
  Who may sigh more?
  Mary weepeth sore,
    And sees all this woe.

  The nails be too strong,
    The smiths are too sly;             _skilful._
  Thou bleedest all too long;
    The tree is all too high;
  The stones be all wete!               _wet._
  Alas, Jesu, the sweet!
    For now friend hast thou none,

  But Saint John to-mournynde,          _mourning greatly._
  And Mary wepynde,                     _weeping._
    For pain that thee is on.

  Oft when I sike                       _sigh._
    And makie my moan,
  Well ill though me like,
    Wonder is it none.[7]
  When I see hang high
  And bitter pains dreye,               _dree, endure._
    Jesu, my lemmon!                    _love._
  His woundés sore smart,
  The spear all to his heart
    And through his side is gone.

  Oft when I syke,                      _sigh._
    With care I am through-sought;      _searched through._
  When I wake I wyke;                   _languish._
    Of sorrow is all my thought.
  Alas! men be wood                     _mad._
  That swear by the rood                _swear by the cross._
    And sell him for nought
  That bought us out of sin.
  He bring us to wynne,                 _may he: bliss._
    That hath us dear bought!


I add two stanzas of another of like sort.

  Man that is in glory and bliss,
    And lieth in shame and sin,
  He is more than unwis                 _unwise._
    That thereof will not blynne.       _cease._
  All this world it goeth away,
  Me thinketh it nigheth Doomsday;
    Now man goes to ground:             _perishes._
  Jesus Christ that tholed ded          _endured death._
  He may our souls to heaven led        _lead._
    Within a little stound.             _moment._

  Jesus, that was mild and free,
    Was with spear y-stongen;           _stung_ or _pierced._
  He was nailéd to the tree,
    With scourges y-swongen.            _lashed._
  All for man he tholed shame,          _endured._
  Withouten guilt, withouten blame,
    Bothé day and other[8].
  Man, full muchel he loved thee,       _much._
  When he woldé make thee free,
    And become thy brother.


The simplicity, the tenderness, the devotion of these lyrics is to me
wonderful. Observe their realism, as, for instance, in the words: "The
stones beoth al wete;" a realism as far removed from the coarseness of a
Rubens as from the irreverence of too many religious teachers, who will
repeat and repeat again the most sacred words for the merest logical ends
until the tympanum of the moral ear hears without hearing the sounds that
ought to be felt as well as held holiest. They bear strongly, too, upon
the outcome of feeling in action, although doubtless there was the same
tendency then as there is now to regard the observance of
church-ordinances as the service of Christ, instead of as a means of
gathering strength wherewith to serve him by being in the world as he was
in the world.

From a poem of forty-eight stanzas I choose five, partly in order to
manifest that, although there is in it an occasional appearance of what
we should consider sentimentality, allied in nature to that worship of
the Virgin which is more a sort of French gallantry than a feeling of
reverence, the sense of duty to the Master keeps pace with the profession
of devotedness to him. There is so little continuity of thought in it,
that the stanzas might almost be arranged anyhow.

  Jesu, thy love be all my thought;
  Of other thing ne reck I nought;           _reckon._
  I yearn to have thy will y-wrought,
  For thou me hast well dear y-bought.

  Jesu, well may mine hearté see
  That mild and meek he must be,
  All unthews and lustés flee,               _bad habits._
  That feelen will the bliss of thee.        _feel._

  For sinful folk, sweet Jesus,
  Thou lightest from the high house;
  Poor and low thou wert for us.
  Thine heart's love thou sendest us.

  Jesu, therefore beseech I thee
  Thy sweet love thou grant me;
  That I thereto worthy be,
  Make me worthy that art so free.           _thou that art._

  Jesu, thine help at my ending!
  And in that dreadful out-wending,          _going forth of the spirit._
  Send my soul good weryyng,                 _guard._
  That I ne dread none evil thing.


I shall next present a short lyric, displaying more of art than this
last, giving it now in the old form, and afterwards in a new one, that my
reader may see both how it looks in its original dress, and what it
means.

  Wynter wakeneth al my care,
  Nou this leves waxeth bare,
  Ofte y sike ant mourne sare,               _sigh; sore._
    When hit cometh in my thoht
    Of this worldes joie, how hit goth al to noht.

  Now hit is, ant now hit nys,               _it is not._
  Also hit ner nere y-wys,[9]
  That moni mon seith soth hit ys,[10]
    Al goth bote Godes wille,
    Alle we shule deye, thah us like ylle.   _though it pleases us ill._

  Al that gren me graueth grene,[11]
  Nou hit faleweth al by-dene;               _grows yellow: speedily._
  Jhesu, help that hit be sene,              _seen._
    Ant shild us from helle;
    For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle.[12]


I will now give a modern version of it, in which I have spoiled the
original of course, but I hope as little as well may be.

  Winter wakeneth all my care;
  Now the trees are waxing bare;
  Oft my sighs my grief declare[13]
      When it comes into my thought
      Of this world's joy, how it goes all to nought.

  Now it is, and now 'tis not--
  As it ne'er had been, I wot.
  Hence many say--it is man's lot:
    All goeth but God's will;
    We all die, though we like it ill.

  Green about me grows the grain;
  Now it yelloweth all again:
  Jesus, give us help amain,
    And shield us from hell;
    For when or whither I go I cannot tell

There were no doubt many religious poems in a certain amount of
circulation of a different cast from these; some a metrical recounting of
portions of the Bible history--a kind unsuited to our ends; others a
setting forth of the doctrines and duties then believed and taught. Of
the former class is one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon poems we have, that of
Caedmon, and there are many specimens to be found in the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. They could, however, have been of little service to
the people, so few of whom could read, or could have procured manuscripts
if they had been able to use them. A long and elaborate composition of
the latter class was written in the reign of Edward II. by William de
Shoreham, vicar of Chart-Sutton in Kent. He probably taught his own
verses to the people at his catechisings. The intention was, no doubt, by
the aid of measure and rhyme to facilitate the remembrance of the facts
and doctrines. It consists of a long poem on the Seven Sacraments; of a
shorter, associating the Canonical Hours with the principal events of the
close of our Lord's life; of an exposition of the Ten Commandments,
followed by a kind of treatise on the Seven Cardinal Sins: the fifth part
describes the different joys of the Virgin; the sixth, in praise of the
Virgin, is perhaps the most poetic; the last is less easy to
characterize. The poem is written in the Kentish dialect, and is
difficult.

I shall now turn into modern verse a part of "The Canonical Hours,"
giving its represented foundation of the various acts of worship in the
Romish Church throughout the day, from early in the morning to the last
service at night. After every fact concerning our Lord, follows an
apostrophe to his mother, which I omit, being compelled to choose.

  Father's wisdom lifted high,
    Lord of us aright--
  God and man taken was,
    At matin-time by night.
  The disciples that were his,
    Anon they him forsook;
  Sold to Jews and betrayed,
    To torture him took.

  At the prime Jesus was led
    In presence of Pilate,
  Where witnesses, false and fell,
    Laughed at him for hate.
  In the neck they him smote,
    Bound his hands of might;
  Spit upon that sweet face
    That heaven and earth did light.

  "Crucify him! crucify!"
    They cried at nine o'clock;
  A purple cloth they put on him--
    To stare at him and mock.
  They upon his sweet head
    Stuck a thorny crown;
  To Calvary his cross he bears.
    Pitiful, from the town

  Jesus was nailed on the cross
    At the noon-tide;
  Strong thieves they hanged up,
    One on either side.
  In his pain, his strong thirst
    Quenched they with gall;
  So that God's holy Lamb
    From sin washed us all.

  At the nones Jesus Christ
    Felt the hard death;
  He to his father "Eloi!" cried,
    Gan up yield his breath.
  A soldier with a sharp spear
    Pierced his right side;
  The earth shook, the sun grew dim,
    The moment that he died.

  He was taken off the cross
    At even-song's hour;
  The strength left and hid in God
    Of our Saviour.
  Such death he underwent,
    Of life the medicine!
  Alas! he was laid adown--
    The crown of bliss in pine!

  At complines, it was borne away
    To the burying,
  That noble corpse of Jesus Christ,
    Hope of life's coming.
  Anointed richly it was,
    Fulfilled his holy book:
  I pray, Lord, thy passion
    In my mind lock.

Childlike simplicity, realism, and tenderness will be evident in this, as
in preceding poems, especially in the choice of adjectives. But indeed
the combination of certain words had become conventional; as "The hard
tree," "The nails great and strong," and such like.

I know I have spoiled the poem in half-translating it thus; but I have
rendered it intelligible to all my readers, have not wandered from the
original, and have retained a degree of antiqueness both in the tone and
the expression.




CHAPTER II.

THE MIRACLE PLAYS AND OTHER POEMS OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.


The oldest form of regular dramatic representation in England was the
Miracle Plays, improperly called Mysteries, after the French. To these
plays the people of England, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
owed a very large portion of what religious knowledge they possessed, for
the prayers were in an unknown tongue, the sermons were very few, and
printing was uninvented. The plays themselves, introduced into the
country by the Normans, were, in the foolish endeavour to make Normans of
Anglo-Saxons, represented in Norman French[14] until the year 1338, when
permission was obtained from the Pope to represent them in English.

The word _Miracle_, in their case, means anything recorded in Scripture.
The Miracle Plays had for their subjects the chief incidents of Old and
New Testament history; not merely, however, of this history as accepted
by the Reformed Church, but of that contained in the Apocryphal Gospels
as well. An entire series of these _Miracles_ consisted of short dramatic
representations of many single passages of the sacred story. The whole
would occupy about three days. It began with the Creation, and ended with
the Judgment. That for which the city of Coventry was famous consists of
forty-two subjects, with a long prologue. Composed by ecclesiastics, the
plays would seem to have been first represented by them only, although
afterwards it was not always considered right for the clergy to be
concerned with them. The hypocritical Franciscan friar, in "Piers
Ploughman's Creed," a poem of the close of the same century, claims as a
virtue for his order--

  At markets and miracles we meddleth us never.

They would seem likewise to have been first represented in churches and
chapels, sometimes in churchyards. Later, when the actors chiefly
belonged to city-guilds, they were generally represented in the streets
and squares.

It must be borne in mind by any who would understand the influence of
these plays upon the people, that much in them appearing to us grotesque,
childish, absurd, and even irreverent, had no such appearance in the eyes
of the spectators. A certain amount of the impression of absurdity is
simply the consequence of antiquity; and even that which is rightly
regarded as absurd in the present age, will not at least have produced
the discomposing effects of absurdity upon the less developed beholders
of that age; just as the quaint pictures with which their churches were
decorated may make us smile, but were by them regarded with awe and
reverence from their infancy.

It must be confessed that there is in them even occasional coarseness;
but that the devil for instance should always be represented as a baffled
fool, and made to play the buffoon sometimes after a disgusting fashion,
was to them only the treatment he deserved: it was their notion of
"poetic justice;" while most of them were too childish to be shocked at
the discord thus introduced, and many, we may well hope, too childlike to
lose their reverence for the holy because of the proximity of the
ridiculous.

There seems to me considerably more of poetic worth scattered through
these plays than is generally recognized; and I am glad to be able to do
a little to set forth the fact. I cannot doubt that my readers will be
interested in such fragments as the scope and design of my book will
allow me to offer. Had there been no such passages, I might have regarded
the plays as but remotely connected with my purpose, and mentioned them
merely as a dramatic form of religious versification. I quote from the
_Coventry Miracles_, better known than either of the other two sets in
existence, the Chester Plays and those of Widkirk Abbey. The manuscript
from which they have been edited by Mr. Halliwell, one of those students
of our early literature to whom we are endlessly indebted for putting
valuable things within our reach, is by no means so old as the plays
themselves; it bears date 1468, a hundred and thirty years after they
appeared in their English dress. Their language is considerably
modernized, a process constantly going on where transcription is the
means of transmission--not to mention that the actors would of course
make many changes to the speech of their own time. I shall modernize it a
little further, but only as far as change of spelling will go.

The first of the course is _The Creation_. God, and angels, and Lucifer
appear. That God should here utter, I cannot say announce, the doctrine
of the Trinity, may be defended on the ground that he does so in a
soliloquy; but when we find afterwards that the same doctrine is one of
the subjects upon which the boy Jesus converses with the doctors in the
Temple, we cannot help remarking the strange anachronism. Two remarkable
lines in the said soliloquy are these:

  And all that ever shall have being
  It is closed in my mind.

The next scene is the _Fall of Man_, which is full of poetic feeling and
expression both. I must content myself with a few passages.

Here is part of Eve's lamentation, when she is conscious of the death
that has laid hold upon her.

  Alas that ever that speech was spoken
    That the false angel said unto me!
  Alas! our Maker's bidding is broken,
    For I have touched his own dear tree.
  Our fleshly eyes are all unlokyn,               _unlocked._
    Naked for sin ourself we see;
  That sorry apple that we have sokyn             _sucked._
    To death hath brought my spouse and me.

When the voice of God is heard, saying,

  Adam, that with my hands I made,
    Where art thou now? what hast thou wrought?

Adam replies, in two lines, containing the whole truth of man's spiritual
condition ever since:

  Ah, Lord! for sin our flowers do fade:
  I hear thy voice, but I see thee nought.

The vision had vanished, but the voice remained; for they that hear shall
live, and to the pure in heart one day the vision shall be restored, for
"they shall see God." There is something wonderfully touching in the
quaint simplicity of the following words of God to the woman:

  Unwise woman, say me why
  That thou hast done this foul folly,
  And I made thee a great lady,
    In Paradise for to play?

As they leave the gates, the angel with the flaming sword ends his speech
thus:

  This bliss I spere from you right fast;    _bar._
    Herein come ye no more,
  Till a child of a maid be born,
  And upon the rood rent and torn,
  To save all that ye have forlorn,          _lost._
    Your wealth for to restore.

Eve laments bitterly, and at length offers her throat to her husband,
praying him to strangle her:

  Now stumble we on stalk and stone;
  My wit away from me is gone;
    Writhe on to my neck-bone
      With hardness of thine hand.

Adam replies--not over politely--

  Wife, thy wit is not worth a rush;

and goes on to make what excuse for themselves he can in a very simple
and touching manner:

  Our hap was hard, our wit was nesche,      _soft, weak,_ still in use in
    To Paradise when we were brought:                     [some provinces.
  My weeping shall be long fresh;
    Short liking shall be long bought.       _pleasure._

The scene ends with these words from Eve:

  Alas, that ever we wrought this sin!
  Our bodily sustenance for to win,
  Ye must delve and I shall spin,
    In care to lead our life.

_Cain and Abel_ follows; then _Noah's Flood_, in which God says,

  They shall not dread the flood's flow;

then _Abraham's Sacrifice_; then _Moses and the Two Tables_; then _The
Prophets_, each of whom prophesies of the coming Saviour; after which we
find ourselves in the Apocryphal Gospels, in the midst of much nonsense
about Anna and Joachim, the parents of Mary, about Joseph and Mary and
the birth of Jesus, till we arrive at _The Shepherds_ and _The Magi, The
Purification, The Slaughter of the Innocents, The Disputing in the
Temple, The Baptism, The Temptation_, and _The Woman taken in Adultery_,
at which point I pause for the sake of the remarkable tradition embodied
in the scene--that each of the woman's accusers thought Jesus was writing
his individual sins on the ground. While he is writing the second time,
the Pharisee, the Accuser, and the Scribe, who have chiefly sustained the
dialogue hitherto, separate, each going into a different part of the
Temple, and soliloquize thus:

  _Pharisee_. Alas! alas! I am ashamed!
    I am afeared that I shall die;
  All my sins even properly named
    Yon prophet did write before mine eye.
  If that my fellows that did espy,
    They will tell it both far and wide;
  My sinful living if they outcry,
    I wot not where my head to hide.

  _Accuser_. Alas! for sorrow mine heart doth bleed,
    All my sins yon man did write;
  If that my fellows to them took heed,
    I cannot me from death acquite.
  I would I were hid somewhere out of sight,
    That men should me nowhere see nor know;
  If I be taken I am aflyght                      _afraid._
    In mekyl shame I shall be throwe.             _much._

  _Scribe_. Alas the time that this betyd!        _happened._
    Right bitter care doth me embrace.
  All my sins be now unhid,
    Yon man before me them all doth trace.
  If I were once out of this place,
    To suffer death great and vengeance able,[15]
  I will never come before his face,
    Though I should die in a stable.

Upon this follows _The Raising of Lazarus_; next _The Council of the
Jews_, to which the devil appears as a Prologue, dressed in the extreme
of the fashion of the day, which he sets forth minutely enough in his
speech also. _The Entry into Jerusalem; The Last Supper; The Betrayal;
King Herod; The Trial of Christ; Pilate's Wife's Dream_ come next; to the
subject of the last of which the curious but generally accepted origin is
given, that it was inspired by Satan, anxious that Jesus should not be
slain, because he dreaded the mischief he would work when he entered
Hades or Hell, for there is no distinction between them either here or in
the Apocryphal Gospel whence the _Descent into Hell_ is taken. Then
follow _The Crucifixion_ and _The Descent into Hell_--often called the
_Harrowing of Hell_--that is, the _making war upon_ or _despoiling of
hell_,[16] for which the authority is a passage in the Gospel of
Nicodemus, full of a certain florid Eastern grandeur. I need hardly
remind my readers that the Apostles' Creed, as it now stands, contains
the same legend in the form of an article of faith. The allusions to it
are frequent in the early literature of Christendom.

The soul of Christ comes to the gates of hell, and says:

  Undo your gates of sorwatorie;             _place of sorrow._
  On man's soul I have memorie;
  There cometh now the king of glory,
    These gates for to breke!
  Ye devils that are here within,
  Hell gates ye shall unpin;
  I shall deliver man's kin--
    From woe I will them wreke.              _avenge._

       *       *       *       *       *

    Against me it were but waste
  To holdyn or to standyn fast;
  Hell-lodge may not last
    Against the king of glory.
  Thy dark door down I throw;
  My fair friends now well I know;
  I shall them bring, reckoned by row,
    Out of their purgatory!

_The Burial; The Resurrection; The Three Maries; Christ appearing to
Mary; The Pilgrim of Emmaus; The Ascension; The Descent of the Holy
Ghost; The Assumption of the Virgin_; and _Doomsday_, close the series. I
have quoted enough to show that these plays must, in the condition of the
people to whom they were presented, have had much to do with their
religious education.

This fourteenth century was a wonderful time of outbursting life.
Although we cannot claim the _Miracles_ as entirely English products,
being in all probability translations from the Norman-French, yet the
fact that they were thus translated is one remarkable amongst many in
this dawn of the victory of England over her conquerors. From this time,
English prospered and French decayed. Their own language was now, so far,
authorized as the medium of religious instruction to the people, while a
similar change had passed upon processes at law; and, most significant of
all, the greatest poet of the time, and one of the three greatest poets
as yet of all English time, wrote, although a courtier, in the language
of the people. Before selecting some of Chaucer's religious verses,
however, I must speak of two or three poems by other writers.

The first of these is _The Vision of William concerning Piers
Plowman_,--a poem of great influence in the same direction as the
writings of Wycliffe. It is a vision and an allegory, wherein the vices
of the time, especially those of the clergy, are unsparingly dealt with.
Towards the close it loses itself in a metaphysical allegory concerning
Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest.[17] I do not find much poetry in it. There is
more, to my mind, in another poem, written some thirty or forty years
later, the author of which is unknown, perhaps because he was an imitator
of William Langland, the author of the _Vision_. It is called _Pierce the
Plough-man's Crede_. Both are written after the fashion of the
Anglo-Saxon poetry, and not after the fashion of the Anglo-Norman, of
which distinction a little more presently. Its object is to contrast the
life and character of the four orders of friars with those of a simple
Christian. There is considerable humour in the working plan of the poem.

A certain poor man says he has succeeded in learning his A B C, his
Paternoster, and his Ave Mary, but he cannot, do what he will, learn his
Creed. He sets out, therefore, to find some one whose life, according
with his profession, may give him a hope that he will teach him his creed
aright. He applies to the friars. One after another, every order abuses
the other; nor this only, but for money offers either to teach him his
creed, or to absolve him for ignorance of the same. He finds no helper
until he falls in with Pierce the Ploughman, of whose poverty he gives a
most touching description. I shall, however, only quote some lines of
_The Believe_ as taught by the Ploughman, and this principally to show
the nature of the versification:

  Leve thou on our Lord God, that all the world wroughté;        _believe._
  Holy heaven upon high wholly he formed;
  And is almighty himself over all his workés;
  And wrought as his will was, the world and the heaven;
  And on gentle Jesus Christ, engendered of himselven,
  His own only Son, Lord over all y-knowen.

       *       *       *       *       *

  With thorn y-crowned, crucified, and on the cross diéd;
  And sythen his blessed body was in a stone buried;          _after that._
  And descended adown to the dark hellé,
  And fetched out our forefathers; and they full fain weren.        _glad._
  The third day readily, himself rose from death,
  And on a stone there he stood, he stey up to heaven.   _where: ascended._

Here there is no rhyme. There is measure--a dance-movement in the verse;
and likewise, in most of the lines, what was essential to Anglo-Saxon
verse--three or more words beginning with the same sound. This is
somewhat of the nature of rhyme, and was all our Anglo-Saxon forefathers
had of the kind. Their Norman conquerors brought in rhyme, regularity of
measure, and division into stanzas, with many refinements of
versification now regarded, with some justice and a little more
injustice, as peurilities. Strange as it may seem, the peculiar rhythmic
movement of the Anglo-Saxon verse is even yet the most popular of all
measures. Its representative is now that kind of verse which is measured
not by the number of syllables, but by the number of _accented_
syllables. The bulk of the nation is yet Anglo-Saxon in its blind poetic
tastes.

Before taking my leave of this mode, I would give one fine specimen from
another poem, lately printed, for the first time in full, from Bishop
Percy's manuscript. It may chronologically belong to the beginning of the
next century: its proper place in my volume is here. It is called _Death
and Liffe_. Like Langland's poem, it is a vision; but, short as it is in
comparison, there is far more poetry in it than in _Piers Plowman_. Life
is thus described:

  She was brighter of her blee[18] than was the bright sun;
  Her rudd[19] redder than the rose that on the rise[20] hangeth;
  Meekly smiling with her mouth, and merry in her looks;
  Ever laughing for love, as she like would.

Everything bursts into life and blossom at her presence,

  And the grass that was grey greened belive.                  _forthwith._

But the finest passage is part of Life's answer to Death, who has been
triumphing over her:

  How didst thou joust at Jerusalem, with Jesu, my Lord,
  Where thou deemedst his death in one day's time!              _judgedst._
  There wast thou shamed and shent and stripped for aye!         _rebuked._
  When thou saw the king come with the cross on his shoulder,
  On the top of Calvary thou camest him against;
  Like a traitor untrue, treason thou thought;
  Thou laid upon my liege lord loathful hands,
  Sithen beat him on his body, and buffeted him rightly,            _then._
  Till the railing red blood ran from his sides;            _pouring down._

  Sith rent him on the rood with full red wounds:                   _then._
  To all the woes that him wasted, I wot not few,
  Then deemedst (him) to have been dead, and dressed for ever.
  But, Death, how didst thou then, with all thy derffe words,     _fierce._
  When thou pricked at his pap with the point of a spear,
  And touched the tabernacle of his true heart,
  Where my bower was bigged to abide for ever?                     _built._
  When the glory of his Godhead glinted in thy face,
  Then wast thou feared of this fare in thy false heart;          _affair._
  Then thou hied into hell-hole to hide thee belive;             _at once._
  Thy falchion flew out of thy fist, so fast thou thee hied;
  Thou durst not blush once back, for better or worse,              _look._
  But drew thee down full in that deep hell,
  And bade them bar bigly Belzebub his gates.          _greatly, strongly._
  Then thou told them tidings, that teened them sore;            _grieved._
  How that king came to kithen his strength,                        _show._
  And how she[21] had beaten thee on thy bent,[22]
            and thy brand taken,
  With everlasting life that longed him till.            _belonged to him._

When Life has ended her speech to Death, she turns to her own followers
and says:--

  Therefore be not abashed, my barnes so dear,                  _children._
  Of her falchion so fierce, nor of her fell words.
  She hath no might, nay, no means, no more you to grieve,
  Nor on your comely corses to clap once her hands.
  I shall look you full lively, and latch full well,           _search for:
  And keere ye further of this kithe,[23] above              [lay hold of._
            the clear skies.

I now turn from those poems of national scope and wide social interest,
bearing their share, doubtless, in the growth of the great changes that
showed themselves at length more than a century after, and from the poem
I have just quoted of a yet wider human interest, to one of another tone,
springing from the grief that attends love, and the aspiration born of
the grief. It is, nevertheless, wide in its scope as the conflict between
Death and Life, although dealing with the individual and not with the
race. The former poems named of Pierce Ploughman are the cry of John the
Baptist in the English wilderness; this is the longing of Hannah at home,
having left her little son in the temple. The latter _seems_ a poorer
matter; but it is an easier thing to utter grand words of just
condemnation, than, in the silence of the chamber, or with the well-known
household-life around, forcing upon the consciousness only the law of
things seen, to regard with steadfastness the blank left by a beloved
form, and believe in the unseen, the marvellous, the eternal. In the
midst of "the light of common day," with all the persistently common
things pressing upon the despairing heart, to hold fast, after what
fashion may be possible, the vanishing song that has changed its key, is
indeed a victory over the flesh, however childish the forms in which the
faith may embody itself, however weak the logic with which it may defend
its intrenchments.

The poem which has led me to make these remarks is in many respects
noteworthy. It is very different in style and language from any I have
yet given. There was little communication to blend the different modes of
speech prevailing in different parts of the country. It belongs,[24]
according to students of English, to the Midland dialect of the
fourteenth century. The author is beyond conjecture.

It is not merely the antiquity of the language that causes its
difficulty, but the accumulated weight of artistically fantastic and
puzzling requirements which the writer had laid upon himself in its
composition. The nature of these I shall be enabled to show by printing
the first twelve lines almost as they stand in the manuscript.

  Perle plesaunte to prynces paye,
  To clanly clos in golde so clere!
  Oute of oryent I hardyly saye,
  Ne proued I neuer her precios pere;
  So rounde, so reken in vche araye,
  So smal, so smothe her sydes were!
  Quere-so-euer I iugged gemmes gaye,
  I sette hyr sengeley in synglure:
  Allas! I leste hyr in on erbere,
  Thurh gresse to grounde hit fro me yot;
  I dewyne for-dolked of luf daungere,
  Of that pryuy perle with-outen spot.

Here it will be observed that the Norman mode--that of rhymes--is
employed, and that there is a far more careful measure in the line that
is found in the poem last quoted. But the rhyming is carried to such an
excess as to involve the necessity of constant invention of phrase to
meet its requirements--a fertile source of obscurity. The most difficult
form of stanza in respect of rhyme now in use is the Spenserian, in
which, consisting of nine lines, four words rhyme together, three words,
and two words. But the stanza in the poem before us consists of twelve
lines, six of which, two of which, four of which, rhyme together. This we
should count hard enough; but it does not nearly exhaust the tyranny of
the problem the author has undertaken. I have already said that one of
the essentials of the poetic form in Anglo-Saxon was the commencement of
three or more words in the line with the same sound: this peculiarity he
has exaggerated: every line has as many words as possible commencing with
the same sound. In the first line, for instance,--and it must be
remembered that the author's line is much shorter than the Anglo-Saxon
line,--there are four words beginning with _p_; in the second, three
beginning with _cl_, and so on. This, of course, necessitates much not
merely of circumlocution, but of contrivance, involving endless
obscurity.

He has gone on to exaggerate the peculiarities of Norman verse as well;
but I think it better not to run the risk of wearying my reader by
pointing out more of his oddities. I will now betake myself to what is
far more interesting as well as valuable.

The poem sets forth the grief and consolation of a father who has lost
his daughter. It is called _The Pearl_. Here is a literal rendering, line
for line, into modern English words, not modern English speech, of the
stanza which I have already given in its original form:

  Pearl pleasant to prince's pleasure,
  Most cleanly closed in gold so clear!
  Out of the Orient, I boldly say,
  I never proved her precious equal;
  So round, so beautiful in every point!
  So small, so smooth, her sides were!

  Wheresoever I judged gemmes gay
  I set her singly in singleness.
  Alas! I lost her in an arbour;
  Through the grass to the ground it from me went.
  I pine, sorely wounded by dangerous love
  Of that especial pearl without spot.

The father calls himself a jeweller; the pearl is his daughter. He has
lost the pearl in the grass; it has gone to the ground, and he cannot
find it; that is, his daughter is dead and buried. Perhaps the most
touching line is one in which he says to the grave:

  O moul, thou marrez a myry mele.
  (O mould, thou marrest a merry talk.)

The poet, who is surely the father himself, cannot always keep up the
allegory; his heart burns holes in it constantly; at one time he says
_she_, at another _it_, and, between the girl and the pearl, the poem is
bewildered. But the allegory helps him out with what he means
notwithstanding; for although the highest aim of poetry is to say the
deepest things in the simplest manner, humanity must turn from mode to
mode, and try a thousand, ere it finds the best. The individual, in his
new endeavour to make "the word cousin to the deed," must take up the
forms his fathers have left him, and add to them, if he may, new forms of
his own. In both the great revivals of literature, the very material of
poetry was allegory.

The father falls asleep on his child's grave, and has a dream, or rather
a vision, of a country where everything--after the childish imagination
which invents differences instead of discovering harmonies--is
super-naturally beautiful: rich rocks with a gleaming glory, crystal
cliffs, woods with blue trunks and leaves of burnished silver, gravel of
precious Orient pearls, form the landscape, in which are delicious
fruits, and birds of flaming colours and sweet songs: its loveliness no
man with a tongue is worthy to describe. He comes to the bank of a river:

  Swinging sweet the water did sweep
  With a whispering speech flowing adown;
  (Wyth a rownande rourde raykande aryght)

and the stones at the bottom were shining like stars. It is a noteworthy
specimen of the mode in which the imagination works when invention is
dissociated from observation and faith. But the sort of way in which some
would improve the world now, if they might, is not so very far in advance
of this would-be glorification of Nature. The barest heath and sky have
lovelinesses infinitely beyond the most gorgeous of such phantasmagoric
idealization of her beauties; and the most wretched condition of humanity
struggling for existence contains elements of worth and future
development inappreciable by the philanthropy that would elevate them by
cultivating their self-love.

At the foot of a crystal cliff, on the opposite side of the river, which
he cannot cross, he sees a maiden sitting, clothed and crowned with
pearls, and wearing one pearl of surpassing wonder and spotlessness upon
her breast. I now make the spelling and forms of the words as modern as I
may, altering the text no further.


  "O pearl," quoth I, "in perlés pight,           _pitched, dressed._
  Art thou my pearl that I have plained?          _mourned._
  Regretted by myn one, on night?                 _by myself._
  Much longing have I for thee layned             _hidden._
  Since into grass thou me a-glyghte;             _didst glide from me._
  Pensive, payred, I am for-pained,[25]           _pined away._
  And thou in a life of liking light              _bright pleasure._
  In Paradise-earth, of strife unstrained!        _untortured with strife._
  What wyrde hath hither my jewel vayned,         _destiny: carried off._
  And done me in this del and great danger?       _sorrow._
  Fro we in twain were towen and twayned,         _since: pulled: divided._
  I have been a joyless jeweller."

  That jewel then in gemmés gente,                  _gracious._
  Vered up her vyse with even gray,                 _turned: face._
  Set on her crown of pearl orient,
  And soberly after then gan she say:

  "Sir, ye have your tale myse-tente,               _mistaken._
  To say your pearl is all away,
  That is in coffer so comely clente                _clenched._
  As in this garden gracious gay,
  Herein to lenge for ever and play,                _abide._
  There mys nor mourning come never--here,          _where: wrong._
  Here was a forser for thee in faye,               _strong-box: faith._
  If thou wert a gentle jeweller.

  "But jeweller gente, if thou shalt lose
  Thy joy for a gem that thee was lef,              _had left thee._
  Me thinks thee put in a mad purpose,
  And busiest thee about a reason bref.             _poor object._
  For that thou lostest was but a rose,
  That flowered and failed as kynd hit gef.         _nature gave it._
  Now through kind of the chest that it gan close,  _nature._
  To a pearl of price it is put in pref;[26]
  And thou hast called thy wyrde a thef,            _doom, fate: theft._
  That ought of nought has made thee, clear!        _something of nothing._
  Thou blamest the bote of thy mischef:             _remedy: hurt._
  Thou art no kyndé jeweller."                      _natural, reasonable._

When the father pours out his gladness at the sight of her, she rejoins
in these words:

  "I hold that jeweller little to praise
  That loves well that he sees with eye;
  And much to blame, and uncortoyse,        _uncourteous._
  That leves our Lord would make a lie,     _believes._
  That lelly hyghte your life to raise      _who truly promised._
  Though fortune did your flesh to die;     _caused._
  To set his words full westernays[27]
  That love no thing but ye it syghe!       _see._
  And that is a point of surquedrie,        _presumption._
  That each good man may evil beseem,       _ill become._
  To leve no tale be true to tryghe,        _trust in._
  But that his one skill may deme."[28]

Much conversation follows, the glorified daughter rebuking and
instructing her father. He prays for a sight of the heavenly city of
which she has been speaking, and she tells him to walk along the bank
until he comes to a hill. In recording what he saw from the hill, he
follows the description of the New Jerusalem given in the Book of the
Revelation. He sees the Lamb and all his company, and with them again his
lost Pearl. But it was not his prince's pleasure that he should cross the
stream; for when his eyes and ears were so filled with delight that he
could no longer restrain the attempt, he awoke out of his dream.

  My head upon that hill was laid
  There where my pearl to groundé strayed.
  I wrestled and fell in great affray,        _fear._
  And sighing to myself I said,
  "Now all be to that prince's paye."         _pleasure._

After this, he holds him to that prince's will, and yearns after no more
than he grants him.

  "As in water face is to face, so the heart of man."
  Out of the far past comes the cry of bereavement
  mingled with the prayer for hope: we hear, and lo!
  it is the cry and the prayer of a man like ourselves.

From the words of the greatest man of his age, let me now gather two rich
blossoms of utterance, presenting an embodiment of religious duty and
aspiration, after a very practical fashion. I refer to two short lyrics,
little noted, although full of wisdom and truth. They must be accepted as
the conclusions of as large a knowledge of life in diversified mode as
ever fell to the lot of man.


  GOOD COUNSEL OF CHAUCER.

  Fly from the press, and dwell with soothfastness;  _truthfulness._
  Suffice[29] unto thy good, though it be small;
  For hoard hath hate, and climbing tickleness;[30]
  Praise hath envy, and weal is blent over all.[31]
  Savour[32] no more than thee behové shall.
  Rede well thyself that other folk shall rede;      _counsel._
  And truth thee shall deliver--it is no drede.      _there is no doubt._

  Paine thee not each crooked to redress,            _every crooked thing._
  In trust of her that turneth as a ball:            Fortune.
  Great rest standeth in little busi-ness.
  Beware also to spurn against a nail;               _nail--to kick against
  Strive not as doth a crocké with a wall.                    [the pricks._
  Demé thyself that demest others' deed;             _judge._
  And truth thee shall deliver--it is no drede.

  That thee is sent receive in buxomness:            _submission_
  The wrestling of this world asketh a fall.         _tempts destruction_
  Here is no home, here is but wilderness:
  Forth, pilgrim, forth!--beast, out of thy stall!
  Look up on high, and thanké God of[33] all.
  Waivé thy lusts, and let thy ghost[34] thee lead,
  And truth thee shall deliver--it is no drede.

This needs no comment. Even the remark that every line is worth
meditation may well appear superfluous. One little fact only with regard
to the rhymes, common to this and the next poem, and usual enough in
Norman verse, may be pointed out, namely, that every line in the stanza
ends with the same rhyme-sound as the corresponding line in each of the
other stanzas. A reference to either of the poems will at once show what
I mean.

The second is superior, inasmuch as it carries one thought through the
three stanzas. It is entitled _A Balade made by Chaucer, teaching what is
gentilnesse, or whom is worthy to be called gentill._

  The first stock-father of gentleness--             _ancestor of the race
    What man desireth gentle for to be                     [of the gentle._
  Must follow his trace, and all his wittés dress    _track, footsteps:
    Virtue to love and vices for to flee;                          [apply._
    For unto virtue longeth dignity,                 _belongeth._
  And not the reverse falsely dare I deem,[35]
  All wear he mitre, crown, or diadem.               _although he wear._

  The first stock was full of righteousness;         _the progenitor._
    True of his word, sober, piteous, and free;
  Clean of his ghost, and loved busi-ness,           _pure in his spirit._
  Against the vice of sloth in honesty;

    And but his heir love virtue as did he,          _except._
  He is not gentle, though he rich seem,
  All wear he mitre, crown, or diadem.

  Vicesse may well be heir to old Richesse,          _Vice: Riches._
    But there may no man, as men may well see,
  Bequeath his heir his virtue's nobleness;
    That is appropried unto no degree,               _rank._
    But to the first father in majesty,
  That maketh his heirés them that him queme,        _please him._
  All wear he mitre, crown, or diadem.

I can come to no other conclusion than that by _the first stock-father_
Chaucer means our Lord Jesus.




CHAPTER III.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.


After the birth of a Chaucer, a Shakspere, or a Milton, it is long before
the genial force of a nation can again culminate in such a triumph: time
is required for the growth of the conditions. Between the birth of
Chaucer and the birth of Shakspere, his sole equal, a period of more than
two centuries had to elapse. It is but small compensation for this, that
the more original, that is simple, natural, and true to his own nature a
man is, the more certain is he to have a crowd of imitators. I do not say
that such are of no use in the world. They do not indeed advance art, but
they widen the sphere of its operation; for many will talk with the man
who know nothing of the master. Too often intending but their own glory,
they point the way to the source of it, and are straightway themselves
forgotten.

Very little of the poetry of the fifteenth century is worthy of a
different fate from that which has befallen it. Possibly the Wars of the
Roses may in some measure account for the barrenness of the time; but I
do not think they will explain it. In the midst of the commotions of the
seventeenth century we find Milton, the only English poet of whom we are
yet sure as worthy of being named with Chaucer and Shakspere.

It is in quality, however, and not in quantity that the period is
deficient. It had a good many writers of poetry, some of them prolific.
John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, a great imitator of Chaucer, was the
principal of these, and wrote an enormous quantity of verse. We shall
find for our use enough as it were to keep us alive in passing through
this desert to the Paradise of the sixteenth century--a land indeed
flowing with milk and honey. For even in the desert of the fifteenth are
spots luxuriant with the rich grass of language, although they greet the
eye with few flowers of individual thought or graphic speech.

Rather than give portions of several of Lydgate's poems, I will give one
entire--the best I know. It is entitled, _Thonke God of alle_.[36]


  THANK GOD FOR ALL.

  By a way wandering as I went,
    Well sore I sorrowed, for sighing sad;
  Of hard haps that I had hent
    Mourning me made almost mad;[37]

    Till a letter all one me lad[38],
  That well was written on a wall,
    A blissful word that on I rad[39],
  That alway said, 'Thank God for[40] all.'

  And yet I read furthermore[41]--
    Full good intent I took there till[42]:
  Christ may well your state restore;
    Nought is to strive against his will;           _it is useless._
    He may us spare and also spill:
  Think right well we be his thrall.                _slaves._
    What sorrow we suffer, loud or still,
  Alway thank God for all.

  Though thou be both blind and lame,
    Or any sickness be on thee set,
  Thou think right well it is no shame--            _think thou._
    The grace of God it hath thee gret[43].
    In sorrow or care though ye be knit,            _snared._
  And worldés weal be from thee fall,               _fallen._
    I cannot say thou mayst do bet,                 _better._
  But alway thank God for all.

  Though thou wield this world's good,
    And royally lead thy life in rest,
  Well shaped of bone and blood,
    None the like by east nor west;
    Think God thee sent as him lest;                _as it pleased him._
  Riches turneth as a ball;
    In all manner it is the best                    _in every condition._
  Alway to thank God for all.

  If thy good beginneth to pass,
    And thou wax a poor man,
  Take good comfort and bear good face,
    And think on him that all good wan;             _did win._

    Christ himself forsooth began--
  He may renew both bower and hall:
    No better counsel I ne kan                      _am capable of._
  But alway thank God for all.

  Think on Job that was so rich;
    He waxed poor from day to day;
  His beastés died in each ditch;
    His cattle vanished all away;
  He was put in poor array,
    Neither in purple nor in pall,
  But in simple weed, as clerkes say,               _clothes: learned men._
    And alway he thanked God for all.

  For Christés love so do we;[44]
    He may both give and take;
  In what mischief that we in be,                   _whatever trouble we
    He is mighty enough our sorrow to slake.                       [be in._
  Full good amends he will us make,
    And we to him cry or call:                      _if._
  What grief or woe that do thee thrall,[45]
    Yet alway thank God for all.

  Though thou be in prison cast,
    Or any distress men do thee bede,               _offer._
  For Christés love yet be steadfast,
    And ever have mind on thy creed;
  Think he faileth us never at need,
    The dearworth duke that deem us shall;[46]
  When thou art sorry, thereof take heed,[47]
    And alway thank God for all.

  Though thy friendes from thee fail,
    And death by rene hend[48] their life,
  Why shouldest thou then weep or wail?
    It is nought against God to strive:             _it is useless._

  Himself maked both man and wife--
  To his bliss he bring us all:                     _may he bring._
  However thou thole or thrive,                     _suffer._
  Alway thank God for all.

  What diverse sonde[49] that God thee send,
  Here or in any other place,
  Take it with good intent;
  The sooner God will send his grace.
  Though thy body be brought full base,             _low._
  Let not thy heart adown fall,
  But think that God is where he was,
  And alway thank God for all.

  Though thy neighbour have world at will,
  And thou far'st not so well as he,
  Be not so mad to think him ill,                   _wish._ (?)
  For his wealth envious to be:
  The king of heaven himself can see
  Who takes his sonde,[50] great or small;
  Thus each man in his degree,
  I rede thanké God for all.                        _counsel._

  For Cristés love, be not so wild,
  But rule thee by reason within and without;
  And take in good heart and mind
  The sonde that God sent all about;                _the gospel._ (?)
  Then dare I say withouten doubt,
  That in heaven is made thy stall.                 _place, seat, room._
  Rich and poor that low will lowte,                _bow._
  Alway thank God for all.

I cannot say there is much poetry in this, but there is much truth and
wisdom. There is the finest poetry, however, too, in the line--I give it
now letter for letter:--

  But think that God ys ther he was.

There is poetry too in the line, if I interpret it rightly as intending
the gospel--

  The sonde that God sent al abowte.

I shall now make a few extracts from poems of the same century whose
authors are unknown.[51] A good many such are extant. With regard to the
similarity of those I choose, I would remark, that not only will the
poems of the same period necessarily resemble each other, but, where the
preservation of any has depended upon the choice and transcription of one
person, these will in all probability resemble each other yet more. Here
are a few verses from a hymn headed _The Sweetness of Jesus_:--

  If I for kindness should love my kin,           _for natural reasons.
  Then me thinketh in my thought                          [Kind is nature,_
  By kindly skill I should begin                  _by natural judgment._
  At him that hath me made of nought;
  His likeness he set my soul within,
  And all this world for me hath wrought;
  As father he fondid my love to win,             _set about._
  For to heaven he hath me brought.

  Our brother and sister he is by skill,          _reason._
  For he so said, and lerid us that lore,         _taught._
  That whoso wrought his Father's will,
  Brethren and sisters to him they wore.          _were._
  My kind also he took ther-tille;                _my nature also he took
  Full truly trust I him therefore                      [for that purpose._
  That he will never let me spill,                _perish._
  But with his mercy salve my sore.

  With lovely lore his works to fill,             _fulfil._
  Well ought I, wretch, if I were kind--          _natural._
  Night and day to work his will,
  And ever have that Lord in mind.
  But ghostly foes grieve me ill,                 _spiritual._
  And my frail flesh maketh me blind;
  Therefore his mercy I take me till,             _betake me to._
  For better bote can I none find.                _aid._

In my choice of stanzas I have to keep in view some measure of
completeness in the result. These poems, however, are mostly very loose
in structure. This, while it renders choice easy, renders closeness of
unity impossible.

From a poem headed--again from the last line of each stanza--_Be my
comfort, Christ Jesus,_ I choose the following four, each possessing some
remarkable flavour, tone, or single touch. Note the alliteration in the
lovely line, beginning "Bairn y-born." The whole of the stanza in which
we find it, sounds so strangely fresh in the midst of its antiquated
tones, that we can hardly help asking whether it can be only the
quaintness of the expression that makes the feeling appear more real, or
whether in very truth men were not in those days nearer in heart, as well
as in time, to the marvel of the Nativity.

In the next stanza, how oddly the writer forgets that Jesus himself was a
Jew, when, embodying the detestation of Christian centuries in one line,
he says,

  And tormented with many a Jew!

In the third stanza, I consider the middle quatrain, that is, the four
lines beginning "Out of this world," perfectly grand.

The oddness of the last line but one of the fourth stanza is redeemed by
the wonderful reality it gives to the faith of the speaker: "See my
sorrow, and say Ho!" stopping it as one would call after a man and stop
him.

  Jesus, thou art wisdom of wit,                  _understanding._
    Of thy Father full of might!
  Man's soul--to save it,
    In poor apparel thou wert pight.              _pitched, placed,
  Jesus, thou wert in cradle knit,                               [dressed._
    In weed wrapped both day and night;           originally, _dress of
  In Bethlehem born, as the gospel writ,                        [any kind._
    With angels' song, and heaven-light.
  Bairn y-born of a beerde bright,[52]
    Full courteous was thy comely cus:            _kiss._
  Through virtue of that sweet light,
    So be my comfort, Christ Jesus.

  Jesus, that wert of yearis young,
    Fair and fresh of hide and hue,
  When thou wert in thraldom throng,              _driven._
    And tormented with many a Jew,
  When blood and water were out-wrung,
    For beating was thy body blue;
  As a clot of clay thou wert for-clong,          _shrunk._
    So dead in trough then men thee threw.        _coffin._
  But grace from thy grave grew:
    Thou rose up quick comfort to us.             _living._
  For her love that this counsel knew,
    So be my comfort, Christ Jesus.

  Jesus, soothfast God and man,
    Two kinds knit in one person,
  The wonder-work that thou began
    Thou hast fulfilled in flesh and bone.

  Out of this world wightly thou wan,             _thou didst win, or make
    Lifting up thyself alone;                        [thy way, powerfully._
  For mightily thou rose and ran
    Straight unto thy Father on throne.
  Now dare man make no more moan--
    For man it is thou wroughtest thus,
  And God with man is made at one;
    So be my comfort, Christ Jesus.

  Jesu, my sovereign Saviour,
    Almighty God, there ben no mo:                _there are no more--thou
  Christ, thou be my governor;                         [art all in all.(?)_
    Thy faith let me not fallen fro.              _from_
  Jesu, my joy and my succour,
    In my body and soul also,
  God, thou be my strongest food,                 the rhyme fails here.
    And wisse thou me when me is woe.             _think on me._
  Lord, thou makest friend of foe,
    Let me not live in languor thus,
  But see my sorrow, and say now "Ho,"
    And be my comfort, Christ Jesus.

Of fourteen stanzas called _Richard de Castre's Prayer to Jesus_, I
choose five from the latter half, where the prayer passes from his own
spiritual necessities, very tenderly embodied, to those of others. It
does our hearts good to see the clouded sun of prayer for oneself break
forth in the gladness of blessed entreaty for all men, for them that make
Him angry, for saints in trouble, for the country torn by war, for the
whole body of Christ and its unity. After the stanza--

  Jesus, for the deadly tears
    That thou sheddest for my guilt,
  Hear and speed my prayérs
    And spare me that I be not spilt;

the best that is in the suppliant shines out thus

  Jesu, for them I thee beseech
    That wrathen thee in any wise;
  Withhold from them thy hand of wreche,     _vengeance._
    And let them live in thy service.

  Jesu, most comfort for to see
    Of thy saintis every one,
  Comfort them that careful be,
    And help them that be woe-begone.

  Jesu, keep them that be good,
    And amend them that have grieved thee;
  And send them fruits of earthly food,
    As each man needeth in his degree.

  Jesu, that art, withouten lees,            _lies._
    Almighty God in trinity,
  Cease these wars, and send us peace,
    With lasting love and charity.

  Jesu, that art the ghostly stone           _spiritual._
    Of all holy church in middle-erde,       _the world._
  Bring thy folds and flocks in one,
    And rule them rightly with one herd.

We now approach the second revival of literature, preceded in England by
the arrival of the art of printing; after which we find ourselves walking
in a morning twilight, knowing something of the authors as well as of
their work.

I have little more to offer from this century. There are a few religious
poems by John Skelton, who was tutor to Henry VIII. But such poetry,
though he was a clergyman, was not much in Skelton's manner of mind. We
have far better of a similar sort already.

A new sort of dramatic representation had by this time greatly encroached
upon the old Miracle Plays. The fresh growth was called Morals or Moral
Plays. In them we see the losing victory of invention over the
imagination that works with given facts. No doubt in the Moral Plays
there is more exercise of intellect as well as of ingenuity; for they
consist of metaphysical facts turned into individual existences by
personification, and their relations then dramatized by allegory. But
their poetry is greatly inferior both in character and execution to that
of the Miracles. They have a religious tendency, as everything moral must
have, and sometimes they go even farther, as in one, for instance, called
_The Castle of Perseverance_, in which we have all the cardinal virtues
and all the cardinal sins contending for the possession of _Humanum
Genus_, the _Human Race_ being presented as a new-born child, who grows
old and dies in the course of the play; but it was a great stride in art
when human nature and human history began again to be exemplified after a
simple human fashion, in the story, that is, of real men and women,
instead of by allegorical personifications of the analysed and abstracted
constituents of them. Allegory has her place, and a lofty one, in
literature; but when her plants cover the garden and run to seed,
Allegory herself is ashamed of her children: the loveliest among them are
despised for the general obtrusiveness of the family. Imitation not only
brings the thing imitated into disrepute, but tends to destroy what
original faculty the imitator may have possessed.




CHAPTER IV.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ELIZABETHAN ERA.


Poets now began to write more smoothly--not a great virtue, but
indicative of a growing desire for finish, which, in any art, is a great
virtue. No doubt smoothness is often confounded with, and mistaken for
finish; but you might have a mirror-like polish on the surface of a
statue, for instance, and yet the marble be full of inanity, or
vagueness, or even vulgarity of result--irrespective altogether of its
idea. The influence of Italian poetry reviving once more in the country,
roused such men as Wyat and Surrey to polish the sound of their verses;
but smoothness, I repeat, is not melody, and where the attention paid to
the outside of the form results in flatness, and, still worse, in
obscurity, as is the case with both of these poets, little is gained and
much is lost.

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 eyas[55] 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 of[57] 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 us[58] 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,
  That[59] 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 wretches[60] 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 silly[61] 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-shell[62] 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.

There may be an appearance of irreverence in the way in which he
contrasts the bribeless Hall of Heaven with the proceedings at his own
trial, where he was browbeaten, abused, and, from the very commencement,
treated as a guilty man by Sir Edward Coke, the king's attorney. He even
puns with the words _angels_ and _fees_. Burning from a sense of
injustice, however, and with the solemnity of death before him, he could
not be guilty of _conscious_ irreverence, at least. But there is another
remark I have to make with regard to the matter, which will bear upon
much of the literature of the time: even the great writers of that period
had such a delight in words, and such a command over them, that like
their skilful horsemen, who enjoyed making their steeds show off the
fantastic paces they had taught them, they played with the words as they
passed through their hands, tossing them about as a juggler might his
balls. But even herein the true master of speech showed his masterdom:
his play must not be by-play; it must contribute to the truth of the idea
which was taking form in those words. We shall see this more plainly when
we come to transcribe some of Sir Philip Sidney's work. There is no
irreverence in it. Nor can I take it as any sign of hardness that Raleigh
should treat the visual image of his own anticipated death with so much
coolness, if the writer of a little elegy on his execution, when Raleigh
was fourteen years older than at the presumed date of the foregoing
verses, describes him truly when he says:

  I saw in every stander-by
  Pale death, life only in thy eye.

The following hymn is also attributed to Raleigh. If it has less
brilliance of fancy, it has none of the faults of the preceding, and is
far more artistic in construction and finish, notwithstanding a degree of
irregularity.

  Rise, oh my soul, with thy desires to heaven;
    And with divinest contemplation use
  Thy time, where time's eternity is given;
    And let vain thoughts no more thy thoughts abuse,
      But down in darkness let them lie:
      So live thy better, let thy worse thoughts die!

  And thou, my soul, inspired with holy flame,
    View and review, with most regardful eye,
  That holy cross, whence thy salvation came,
    On which thy Saviour and thy sin did die!
      For in that sacred object is much pleasure,
      And in that Saviour is my life, my treasure.

  To thee, O Jesus, I direct my eyes;
    To thee my hands, to thee my humble knees,
  To thee my heart shall offer sacrifice;
    To thee my thoughts, who my thoughts only sees--
      To thee myself,--myself and all I give;
      To thee I die; to thee I only live!

See what an effect of stately composure quiet artistic care produces, and
how it leaves the ear of the mind in a satisfied peace!

There are a few fine lines in the poem. The last two lines of the first
stanza are admirable; the last two of the second very weak. The last
stanza is good throughout.

But it would be very unfair to judge Sir Walter by his verse. His prose
is infinitely better, and equally displays the devout tendency of his
mind--a tendency common to all the great men of that age. The worst I
know of him is the selfishly prudent advice he left behind for his son.
No doubt he had his faults, but we must not judge a man even by what he
says in an over-anxiety for the prosperity of his child.

Another remarkable fact in the history of those great men is that they
were all men of affairs. Raleigh was a soldier, a sailor, a discoverer, a
politician, as well as an author. His friend Spenser was first secretary
to Lord Grey when he was Governor of Ireland, and afterwards Sheriff of
Cork. He has written a large treatise on the state of Ireland. But of all
the men of the age no one was more variously gifted, or exercised those
gifts in more differing directions, than the man who of them all was most
in favour with queen, court, and people--Philip Sidney. I could write
much to set forth the greatness, culture, balance, and scope of this
wonderful man. Renowned over Europe for his person, for his dress, for
his carriage, for his speech, for his skill in arms, for his
horsemanship, for his soldiership, for his statesmanship, for his
learning, he was beloved for his friendship, his generosity, his
steadfastness, his simplicity, his conscientiousness, his religion.
Amongst the lamentations over his death printed in Spenser's works, there
is one poem by Matthew Roydon, a few verses of which I shall quote, being
no vain eulogy. Describing his personal appearance, he says:

  A sweet, attractive kind of grace,
    A full assurance given by looks,
  Continual comfort in a face,
    The lineaments of Gospel books!--
      I trow, that countenance cannot lie
      Whose thoughts are legible in the eye.

  Was ever eye did see that face,
    Was ever ear did hear that tongue,
  Was ever mind did mind his grace
    That ever thought the travel long?
      But eyes and ears, and every thought,
      Were with his sweet perfections caught.

His _Arcadia_ is a book full of wisdom and beauty. None of his writings
were printed in his lifetime; but the _Arcadia_ was for many years after
his death one of the most popular books in the country. His prose, as
prose, is not equal to his friend Raleigh's, being less condensed and
stately. It is too full of fancy in thought and freak in rhetoric to find
now-a-days more than a very limited number of readers; and a good deal of
the verse that is set in it, is obscure and uninteresting, partly from
some false notions of poetic composition which he and his friend Spenser
entertained when young; but there is often an exquisite art in his other
poems.

The first I shall transcribe is a sonnet, to which the Latin words
printed below it might be prefixed as a title: _Splendidis longum
valedico nugis._


  A LONG FAREWELL TO GLITTERING TRIFLES.

  Leave me, O love, which reachest but to dust;
    And thou, my mind, aspire to higher things;
  Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
    What ever fades but fading pleasure brings.
  Draw in thy beams, and humble all thy might
    To that sweet yoke where lasting freedoms be;
  Which breaks the clouds, and opens forth the light
    That doth both shine and give us sight to see.
  Oh take fast hold; let that light be thy guide,
    In this small course which birth draws out to death;
  And think how evil[63] becometh him to slide
    Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.
      Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see:
      Eternal love, maintain thy life in me.

Before turning to the treasury of his noblest verse, I shall give six
lines from a poem in the _Arcadia_--chiefly for the sake of instancing
what great questions those mighty men delighted in:

  What essence destiny hath; if fortune be or no;
  Whence our immortal souls to mortal earth do stow[64]:

  What life it is, and how that all these lives do gather,
  With outward maker's force, or like an inward father.
  Such thoughts, me thought, I thought, and strained my single mind,
  Then void of nearer cares, the depth of things to find.

Lord Bacon was not the only one, in such an age, to think upon the mighty
relations of physics and metaphysics, or, as Sidney would say, "of
naturall and supernaturall philosophic." For a man to do his best, he
must be upheld, even in his speculations, by those around him.

In the specimen just given, we find that our religious poetry has gone
down into the deeps. There are indications of such a tendency in the
older times, but neither then were the questions so articulate, nor were
the questioners so troubled for an answer. The alternative expressed in
the middle couplet seems to me the most imperative of all questions--both
for the individual and for the church: Is man fashioned by the hands of
God, as a potter fashioneth his vessel; or do we indeed come forth from
his heart? Is power or love the making might of the universe? He who
answers this question aright possesses the key to all righteous
questions.

Sir Philip and his sister Mary, Countess of Pembroke, made between them a
metrical translation of the Psalms of David. It cannot be determined
which are hers and which are his; but if I may conclude anything from a
poem by the sister, to which I shall by and by refer, I take those I now
give for the brother's work.

The souls of the following psalms have, in the version I present,
transmigrated into fairer forms than I have found them occupy elsewhere.
Here is a grand hymn for the whole world: _Sing unto the Lord._


  PSALM XCVI.

  Sing, and let your song be new,
    Unto him that never endeth;
  Sing all earth, and all in you--
  Sing to God, and bless his name.
    Of the help, the health he sendeth,
  Day by day new ditties frame.

  Make each country know his worth:
    Of his acts the wondered story
  Paint unto each people forth.
  For Jehovah great alone,
    All the gods, for awe and glory,
  Far above doth hold his throne.

  For but idols, what are they
    Whom besides mad earth adoreth?
  He the skies in frame did lay.
  Grace and honour are his guides;
    Majesty his temple storeth;
  Might in guard about him bides.

  Kindreds come! Jehovah give--
    O give Jehovah all together,
  Force and fame whereso you live.
  Give his name the glory fit:
    Take your off'rings, get you thither,
  Where he doth enshrined sit.

  Go, adore him in the place
    Where his pomp is most displayed.
  Earth, O go with quaking pace,
  Go proclaim Jehovah king:
    Stayless world shall now be stayed;
  Righteous doom his rule shall bring.

  Starry roof and earthy floor,
    Sea, and all thy wideness yieldeth,
  Now rejoice, and leap, and roar.
  Leafy infants of the wood,
    Fields, and all that on you feedeth,
  Dance, O dance, at such a good!

  For Jehovah cometh, lo!
    Lo to reign Jehovah cometh!
  Under whom you all shall go.
  He the world shall rightly guide--
    Truly, as a king becometh,
  For the people's weal provide.

Attempting to give an ascending scale of excellence--I do not mean in
subject but in execution--I now turn to the national hymn, _God is our
Refuge._


  PSALM XLIV.

  God gives us strength, and keeps us sound--
    A present help when dangers call;
  Then fear not we, let quake the ground,
    And into seas let mountains fall;
    Yea so let seas withal
  In watery hills arise,
    As may the earthly hills appal
  With dread and dashing cries.

  For lo, a river, streaming joy,
    With purling murmur safely slides,
  That city washing from annoy,
    In holy shrine where God resides.
    God in her centre bides:
  What can this city shake?
    God early aids and ever guides:
  Who can this city take?

  When nations go against her bent,
    And kings with siege her walls enround;
  The void of air his voice doth rent,
    Earth fails their feet with melting ground.
    To strength and keep us sound,
  The God of armies arms;
    Our rock on Jacob's God we found,
  Above the reach of harms.

  O come with me, O come, and view
    The trophies of Jehovah's hand!
  What wrecks from him our foes pursue!
    How clearly he hath purged our land!
    By him wars silent stand:
  He brake the archer's bow,
    Made chariot's wheel a fiery brand,
  And spear to shivers go.

  Be still, saith he; know, God am I;
    Know I will be with conquest crowned
  Above all nations--raiséd high,
    High raised above this earthly round.
    To strength and keep us sound,
  The God of armies arms;
    Our rock on Jacob's God we found,
  Above the reach of harms.

"The God of armies arms" is a grand line.

Now let us have a hymn of Nature--a far finer, I think, than either of
the preceding: _Praise waiteth for thee._


  PSALM LXV.

  Sion it is where thou art praiséd,
    Sion, O God, where vows they pay thee:
  There all men's prayers to thee raiséd,
    Return possessed of what they pray thee.
  There thou my sins, prevailing to my shame,
  Dost turn to smoke of sacrificing flame.

  Oh! he of bliss is not deceivéd,                _disappointed._
    Whom chosen thou unto thee takest;
  And whom into thy court receivéd,
    Thou of thy checkrole[65] number makest:
  The dainty viands of thy sacred store
  Shall feed him so he shall not hunger more.

  From thence it is thy threat'ning thunder--
    Lest we by wrong should be disgracéd--
  Doth strike our foes with fear and wonder,
    O thou on whom their hopes are placéd,
  Whom either earth doth stedfastly sustain,
  Or cradle rocks the restless wavy plain.

  Thy virtue stays the mighty mountains,          _power._
    Girded with power, with strength abounding.
  The roaring dam of watery fountains             _the "dam of fountains"
    Thy beck doth make surcease her sounding.               [is the ocean._
  When stormy uproars toss the people's brain,
  That civil sea to calm thou bring'st again.     _political, as opposed
                                                              [to natural._

  Where earth doth end with endless ending,
    All such as dwell, thy signs affright them;
  And in thy praise their voices spending,
    Both houses of the sun delight them---
  Both whence he comes, when early he awakes,
  And where he goes, when evening rest he takes.

  Thy eye from heaven this land beholdeth,
    Such fruitful dews down on it raining,
  That storehouse-like her lap enfoldeth
    Assuréd hope of ploughman's gaining:
  Thy flowing streams her drought doth temper so,
  That buried seed through yielding grave doth grow.

  Drunk is each ridge of thy cup drinking;
    Each clod relenteth at thy dressing;          _groweth soft._
  Thy cloud-borne waters inly sinking,
    Fair spring sprouts forth, blest with thy blessing.
  The fertile year is with thy bounty crowned;
  And where thou go'st, thy goings fat the ground.

  Plenty bedews the desert places;
    A hedge of mirth the hills encloseth;
  The fields with flocks have hid their faces;
    A robe of corn the valleys clotheth.
  Deserts, and hills, and fields, and valleys all,
  Rejoice, shout, sing, and on thy name do call.

The first stanza seems to me very fine, especially the verse, "Return
possessed of what they pray thee." The third stanza might have been
written after the Spanish Philip's Armada, but both King David and Sir
Philip Sidney were dead before God brake that archer's bow.[66] The
fourth line of the next stanza is a noteworthy instance of the sense
gathering to itself the sound, and is in lovely contrast with the closing
line of the same stanza.

One of the most remarkable specimens I know of the play with words of
which I have already spoken as common even in the serious writings of
this century, is to be found in the next line: "Where earth doth end with
endless ending." David, regarding the world as a flat disc, speaks of the
_ends_ of the earth: Sidney, knowing it to be a globe, uses the word of
the Psalmist, but re-moulds and changes the form of it, with a power
fantastic, almost capricious in its wilfulness, yet causing it to express
the fact with a marvel of precision. We _see_ that the earth ends; we
cannot reach the end we see; therefore the "earth doth end with endless
ending." It is a case of that contradiction in the form of the words
used, which brings out a truth in another plane as it were;--a paradox in
words, not in meaning, for the words can bear no meaning but the one
which reveals its own reality.

The following little psalm, _The Lord reigneth_, is a thunderous
organ-blast of praise. The repetition of words in the beginning of the
second stanza produces a remarkably fine effect.


  PSALM XCIII.

  Clothed with state, and girt with might,
    Monarch-like Jehovah reigns;
  He who earth's foundation pight--               _pitched._
    Pight at first, and yet sustains;
    He whose stable throne disdains
  Motion's shock and age's flight;
    He who endless one remains
  One, the same, in changeless plight.

  Rivers--yea, though rivers roar,
    Roaring though sea-billows rise,
  Vex the deep, and break the shore--
    Stronger art thou, Lord of skies!
    Firm and true thy promise lies
  Now and still as heretofore:
    Holy worship never dies
  In thy house where we adore.

I close my selections from Sidney with one which I consider the best of
all: it is the first half of _Lord, thou hast searched me._


  PSALM CXXXIX.

  O Lord, in me there lieth nought
    But to thy search revealed lies;
          For when I sit
          Thou markest it;
    No less thou notest when I rise:
  Yea, closest closet of my thought
    Hath open windows to thine eyes.

  Thou walkest with me when I walk
    When to my bed for rest I go,
          I find thee there,
          And every where:
    Not youngest thought in me doth grow,
  No, not one word I cast to talk
    But, yet unuttered, thou dost know.

  If forth I march, thou goest before;
    If back I turn, thou com'st behind:
          So forth nor back
          Thy guard I lack;
    Nay, on me too thy hand I find.
  Well I thy wisdom may adore,
    But never reach with earthy mind.

  To shun thy notice, leave thine eye,
    O whither might I take my way?
          To starry sphere?
          Thy throne is there.
    To dead men's undelightsome stay?
  There is thy walk, and there to lie
    Unknown, in vain I should assay.

  O sun, whom light nor flight can match!
    Suppose thy lightful flightful wings
          Thou lend to me,
          And I could flee
    As far as thee the evening brings:
  Ev'n led to west he would me catch,
    Nor should I lurk with western things.

  Do thou thy best, O secret night,
    In sable veil to cover me:
          Thy sable veil
          Shall vainly fail:
    With day unmasked my night shall be;
  For night is day, and darkness light,
    O father of all lights, to thee.

Note the most musical play with the words _light_ and _flight_ in the
fifth stanza. There is hardly a line that is not delightful.

They were a wonderful family those Sidneys. Mary, for whom Philip wrote
his chief work, thence called "The Countess of Pembroke's _Arcadia,_" was
a woman of rare gifts. The chief poem known to be hers is called _Our
Saviour's Passion_. It is full of the faults of the age. Sir Philip's
sport with words is so graceful and ordered as to subserve the utterance
of the thought: his sister's fanciful convolutions appear to be there for
their own sake--certainly are there to the obscuration of the sense. The
difficulty of the poem arises in part, I believe, from corruption, but
chiefly from a certain fantastic way of dealing with thought as well as
word of which I shall have occasion to say more when we descend a little
further. It is, in the main, a lamentation over our Saviour's sufferings,
in which the countess is largely guilty of the very feminine fault of
seeking to convey the intensity of her emotions by forcing words,
accumulating forms, and exaggerating descriptions. This may indeed
convince as to the presence of feeling, but cannot communicate the
feeling itself. _The_ right word will at once generate a sympathy of
which all agonies of utterance will only render the willing mind more and
more incapable.

The poem is likewise very diffuse--again a common fault with women of
power; for indeed the faculty of compressing thought into crystalline
form is one of the rarest gifts of artistic genius. It consists of a
hundred and ten stanzas, from which I shall gather and arrange a few.

    He placed all rest, and had no resting place;
    He healed each pain, yet lived in sore distress;
    Deserved all good, yet lived in great disgrace;
    Gave all hearts joy, himself in heaviness;
      Suffered them live, by whom himself was slain:
      Lord, who can live to see such love again?

    Whose mansion heaven, yet lay within a manger;
    Who gave all food, yet sucked a virgin's breast;
    Who could have killed, yet fled a threatening danger;
    Who sought all quiet by his own unrest;
      Who died for them that highly did offend him,
      And lives for them that cannot comprehend him.

    Who came no further than his Father sent him,
    And did fulfil but what he did command him;
    Who prayed for them that proudly did torment him
    For telling truly of what they did demand him;
      Who did all good that humbly did intreat him,
      And bare their blows, that did unkindly beat him.

    Had I but seen him as his servants did,
    At sea, at land, in city, or in field,
    Though in himself he had his glory hid,
    That in his grace the light of glory held,
      Then might my sorrow somewhat be appeaséd,
      That once my soul had in his sight been pleaséd.

    No! I have run the way of wickedness,
    Forgetting what my faith should follow most;
    I did not think upon thy holiness,
    Nor by my sins what sweetness I have lost.
      Oh sin! for sin hath compassed me about,
      That, Lord, I know not where to find thee out.

    Where he that sits on the supernal throne,
    In majesty most glorious to behold,
    And holds the sceptre of the world alone,
    Hath not his garments of imbroidered gold,
      But he is clothed with truth and righteousness,
      Where angels all do sing with joyfulness,

    Where heavenly love is cause of holy life,
    And holy life increaseth heavenly love;
    Where peace established without fear or strife,
    Doth prove the blessing of the soul's behove;[67]
      Where thirst nor hunger, grief nor sorrow dwelleth,
      But peace in joy, and joy in peace excelleth.

Had all the poem been like these stanzas, I should not have spoken so
strongly concerning its faults. There are a few more such in it. It
closes with a very fantastic use of musical terms, following upon a
curious category of the works of nature as praising God, to which I refer
for the sake of one stanza, or rather of one line in the stanza:

  To see the greyhound course, the hound in chase,
  _Whilst little dormouse sleepeth out her eyne;_
  The lambs and rabbits sweetly run at base,[68]
  Whilst highest trees the little squirrels climb,
    The crawling worms out creeping in the showers,
    And how the snails do climb the lofty towers.

What a love of animated nature there is in the lovely lady! I am all but
confident, however, that second line came to her from watching her
children asleep. She had one child at least: that William Herbert, who is
generally, and with weight, believed the W.H. of Shakspere's Sonnets, a
grander honour than the earldom of Pembroke, or even the having Philip
Sidney to his uncle: I will not say grander than having Mary Sidney to
his _mother_.

Let me now turn to Sidney's friend, Sir Fulk Grevill, Lord Brooke, who
afterwards wrote his life, "as an intended preface" to all his "Monuments
to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney," the said _monuments_ being Lord
Brooke's own poems.

My extract is from _A Treatise of Religion_, in which, if the reader do
not find much of poetic form, he will find at least some grand spiritual
philosophy, the stuff whereof all highest poetry is fashioned. It is one
of the first poems in which the philosophy of religion, and not either
its doctrine, feeling, or history, predominates. It is, as a whole, poor,
chiefly from its being so loosely written. There are men, and men whose
thoughts are of great worth, to whom it never seems to occur that they
may utter very largely and convey very little; that what is clear to
themselves is in their speech obscure as a late twilight. Their utterance
is rarely articulate: their spiritual mouth talks with but half-movements
of its lips; it does not model their thoughts into clear-cut shapes, such
as the spiritual ear can distinguish as they enter it. Of such is Lord
Brooke. These few stanzas, however, my readers will be glad to have:

  What is the chain which draws us back again,
  And lifts man up unto his first creation?
  Nothing in him his own heart can restrain;
  His reason lives a captive to temptation;
    Example is corrupt; precepts are mixed;
    All fleshly knowledge frail, and never fixed.

  It is a light, a gift, a grace inspired;
  A spark of power, a goodness of the Good;
  Desire in him, that never is desired;
  An unity, where desolation stood;
    In us, not of us, a Spirit not of earth,
    Fashioning the mortal to immortal birth.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Sense of this God, by fear, the sensual have,
  Distresséd Nature crying unto Grace;
  For sovereign reason then becomes a slave,
  And yields to servile sense her sovereign place,
    When more or other she affects to be
    Than seat or shrine of this Eternity.

  Yea, Prince of Earth let Man assume to be,
  Nay more--of Man let Man himself be God,
  Yet without God, a slave of slaves is he;
  To others, wonder; to himself, a rod;
    Restless despair, desire, and desolation;
    The more secure, the more abomination.

  Then by affecting power, we cannot know him.
  By knowing all things else, we know him less.
  Nature contains him not. Art cannot show him.
  Opinions idols, and not God, express.
    Without, in power, we see him everywhere;
    Within, we rest not, till we find him there.

  Then seek we must; that course is natural--
  For ownéd souls to find their owner out.
  Our free remorses when our natures fall--
  When we do well, our hearts made free from doubt--
    Prove service due to one Omnipotence,
    And Nature of religion to have sense.

  Questions again, which in our hearts arise--
  Since loving knowledge, not humility--
  Though they be curious, godless, and unwise,
  Yet prove our nature feels a Deity;
    For if these strifes rose out of other grounds,
    Man were to God as deafness is to sounds.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Yet in this strife, this natural remorse,
  If we could bend the force of power and wit
  To work upon the heart, and make divorce
  There from the evil which preventeth it,
    In judgment of the truth we should not doubt
    Good life would find a good religion out.

If a fair proportion of it were equal to this, the poem would be a fine
one, not for its poetry, but for its spiritual metaphysics. I think the
fourth and fifth of the stanzas I have given, profound in truth, and
excellent in utterance. They are worth pondering.

We now descend a decade of the century, to find another group of names
within the immediate threshold of the sixties.




CHAPTER VI.

LORD BACON AND HIS COEVALS.


Except it be Milton's, there is not any prose fuller of grand poetic
embodiments than Lord Bacon's. Yet he always writes contemptuously of
poetry, having in his eye no doubt the commonplace kinds of it, which
will always occupy more bulk, and hence be more obtrusive, than that
which is true in its nature and rare in its workmanship. Towards the
latter end of his life, however, being in ill health at the time, he
translated seven of the Psalms of David into verse, dedicating them to
George Herbert. The best of them is Psalm civ.--just the one upon which
we might suppose, from his love to the laws of Nature, he would dwell
with the greatest sympathy. Partly from the wish to hear his voice
amongst the rest of our singers, partly for the merits of the version
itself, which has some remarkable lines, I have resolved to include it
here. It is the first specimen I have given in the heroic couplet.

  Father and King of Powers both high and low,
  Whose sounding fame all creatures serve to blow;
  My soul shall with the rest strike up thy praise,
  And carol of thy works, and wondrous ways.
  But who can blaze thy beauties, Lord, aright?
  They turn the brittle beams of mortal sight.
  Upon thy head thou wear'st a glorious crown,
  All set with virtues, polished with renown:
  Thence round about a silver veil doth fall
  Of crystal light, mother of colours all.
  The compass, heaven, smooth without grain or fold,
  All set with spangs of glittering stars untold,
  And striped with golden beams of power unpent,
  Is raiséd up for a removing tent
  Vaulted and archéd are his chamber beams
  Upon the seas, the waters, and the streams;
  The clouds as chariots swift do scour the sky;
  The stormy winds upon their wings do fly
  His angels spirits are, that wait his will;
  As flames of fire his anger they fulfil.
  In the beginning, with a mighty hand,
  He made the earth by counterpoise to stand,
  Never to move, but to be fixed still;
  Yet hath no pillars but his sacred will.
  This earth, as with a veil, once covered was;
  The waters overflowéd all the mass;
  But upon his rebuke away they fled,
  And then the hills began to show their head;
  The vales their hollow bosoms opened plain,
  The streams ran trembling down the vales again;
  And that the earth no more might drowned be,
  He set the sea his bounds of liberty;
  And though his waves resound and beat the shore,
  Yet it is bridled by his holy lore.
  Then did the rivers seek their proper places,
  And found their heads, their issues, and their races;
  The springs do feed the rivers all the way,
  And so the tribute to the sea repay:
  Running along through many a pleasant field,
  Much fruitfulness unto the earth they yield;
  That know the beasts and cattle feeding by,
  Which for to slake their thirst do thither hie.
  Nay, desert grounds the streams do not forsake,
  But through the unknown ways their journey take;
  The asses wild that hide in wilderness,
  Do thither come, their thirst for to refresh.
  The shady trees along their banks do spring,
  In which the birds do build, and sit, and sing,
  Stroking the gentle air with pleasant notes,
  Plaining or chirping through their warbling throats.
  The higher grounds, where waters cannot rise,
  By rain and dews are watered from the skies,
  Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts,
  And garden-herbs, served at the greatest feasts,
  And bread that is all viands' firmament,
  And gives a firm and solid nourishment;
  And wine man's spirits for to recreate,
  And oil his face for to exhilarate.
  The sappy cedars, tall like stately towers,
  High flying birds do harbour in their bowers;
  The holy storks that are the travellers,
  Choose for to dwell and build within the firs;
  The climbing goats hang on steep mountains' side;
  The digging conies in the rocks do bide.
  The moon, so constant in inconstancy,
  Doth rule the monthly seasons orderly;
  The sun, eye of the world, doth know his race,
  And when to show, and when to hide his face.
  Thou makest darkness, that it may be night,
  Whenas the savage beasts that fly the light,
  As conscious of man's hatred, leave their den,
  And range abroad, secured from sight of men.
  Then do the forests ring of lions roaring,
  That ask their meat of God, their strength restoring;
  But when the day appears, they back do fly,
  And in their dens again do lurking lie;
  Then man goes forth to labour in the field,
  Whereby his grounds more rich increase may yield.
  O Lord, thy providence sufficeth all;
  Thy goodness not restrained but general
  Over thy creatures, the whole earth doth flow
  With thy great largeness poured forth here below.
  Nor is it earth alone exalts thy name,
  But seas and streams likewise do spread the same.
  The rolling seas unto the lot do fall
  Of beasts innumerable, great and small;
  There do the stately ships plough up the floods;
  The greater navies look like walking woods;
  The fishes there far voyages do make,
  To divers shores their journey they do take;
  There hast thou set the great leviathan,
  That makes the seas to seethe like boiling pan:
  All these do ask of thee their meat to live,
  Which in due season thou to them dost give:
  Ope thou thy hand, and then they have good fare;
  Shut thou thy hand, and then they troubled are.
  All life and spirit from thy breath proceed,
  Thy word doth all things generate and feed:
  If thou withdraw'st it, then they cease to be,
  And straight return to dust and vanity;
  But when thy breath thou dost send forth again,
  Then all things do renew, and spring amain,
  So that the earth but lately desolate
  Doth now return unto the former state.
  The glorious majesty of God above
  Shall ever reign, in mercy and in love;
  God shall rejoice all his fair works to see,
  For, as they come from him, all perfect be.
  The earth shall quake, if aught his wrath provoke;
  Let him but touch the mountains, they shall smoke.
  As long as life doth last, I hymns will sing,
  With cheerful voice, to the Eternal King;
  As long as I have being, I will praise
  The works of God, and all his wondrous ways.
  I know that he my words will not despise:
  Thanksgiving is to him a sacrifice.
  But as for sinners, they shall be destroyed
  From off the earth--their places shall be void.
  Let all his works praise him with one accord!
  Oh praise the Lord, my soul! Praise ye the Lord!

His Hundred and Forty-ninth Psalm is likewise good; but I have given
enough of Lord Bacon's verse, and proceed to call up one who was a poet
indeed, although little known as such, being a Roman Catholic, a Jesuit
even, and therefore, in Elizabeth's reign, a traitor, and subject to the
penalties according. Robert Southwell, "thirteen times most cruelly
tortured," could "not be induced to confess anything, not even the colour
of the horse whereon on a certain day he rode, lest from such indication
his adversaries might conjecture in what house, or in company of what
Catholics, he that day was." I quote these words of Lord Burleigh, lest
any of my readers, discovering weakness in his verse, should attribute
weakness to the man himself.

It was no doubt on political grounds that these tortures, and the death
that followed them, were inflicted. But it was for the truth _as he saw
it_, that is, for the sake of duty, that Southwell thus endured. We must
not impute all the evils of a system to every individual who holds by it.
It may be found that a man has, for the sole sake of self-abnegation,
yielded homage, where, if his object had been personal aggrandizement, he
might have wielded authority. Southwell, if that which comes from within
a man may be taken as the test of his character, was a devout and humble
Christian. In the choir of our singers we only ask: "Dost thou lift up
thine heart?" Southwell's song answers for him: "I lift it up unto the
Lord."

His chief poem is called _St. Peter's Complaint_. It is of considerable
length--a hundred and thirty-two stanzas. It reminds us of the Countess
of Pembroke's poem, but is far more articulate and far superior in
versification. Perhaps its chief fault is that the pauses are so measured
with the lines as to make every line almost a sentence, the effect of
which is a considerable degree of monotony. Like all writers of the time,
he is, of course, fond of antithesis, and abounds in conceits and
fancies; whence he attributes a multitude of expressions to St. Peter of
which never possibly could the substantial ideas have entered the
Apostle's mind, or probably any other than Southwell's own. There is also
a good deal of sentimentalism in the poem, a fault from which I fear
modern Catholic verse is rarely free. Probably the Italian poetry with
which he must have been familiar in his youth, during his residence in
Rome, accustomed him to such irreverences of expression as this
sentimentalism gives occasion to, and which are very far from indicating
a correspondent state of feeling. Sentiment is a poor ape of love; but
the love is true notwithstanding. Here are a few stanzas from _St.
Peter's Complaint_:

  Titles I make untruths: am I a rock,
    That with so soft a gale was overthrown?
  Am I fit pastor for the faithful flock
    To guide their souls that murdered thus mine own?
  A rock of ruin, not a rest to stay;
  A pastor,--not to feed, but to betray.

  Parting from Christ my fainting force declined;
    With lingering foot I followed him aloof;
  Base fear out of my heart his love unshrined,
    Huge in high words, but impotent in proof.
  My vaunts did seem hatched under Samson's locks,
  Yet woman's words did give me murdering knocks

       *       *       *       *       *

  At Sorrow's door I knocked: they craved my name
    I answered, "One unworthy to be known."
  "What one?" say they. "One worthiest of blame."
    "But who?" "A wretch not God's, nor yet his own."
  "A man?" "Oh, no!" "A beast?" "Much worse." "What creature?"
    "A rock." "How called?" "The rock of scandal, Peter."

       *       *       *       *       *

  Christ! health of fevered soul, heaven of the mind,
    Force of the feeble, nurse of infant loves,
  Guide to the wandering foot, light to the blind,
    Whom weeping wins, repentant sorrow moves!
  Father in care, mother in tender heart,
  Revive and save me, slain with sinful dart!

  If King Manasseh, sunk in depth of sin,
    With plaints and tears recovered grace and crown,
  A worthless worm some mild regard may win,
    And lowly creep where flying threw it down.
  A poor desire I have to mend my ill;
  I should, I would, I dare not say I will.

  I dare not say I will, but wish I may;
    My pride is checked: high words the speaker spilt.
  My good, O Lord, thy gift--thy strength, my stay--
    Give what thou bidst, and then bid what thou wilt.
  Work with me what of me thou dost request;
  Then will I dare the worst and love the best.

Here, from another poem, are two little stanzas worth preserving:

  Yet God's must I remain,
    By death, by wrong, by shame;
  I cannot blot out of my heart
    That grace wrought in his name.

  I cannot set at nought,
    Whom I have held so dear;
  I cannot make Him seem afar
    That is indeed so near.

The following poem, in style almost as simple as a ballad, is at once of
the quaintest and truest. Common minds, which must always associate a
certain conventional respectability with the forms of religion, will
think it irreverent. I judge its reverence profound, and such none the
less that it is pervaded by a sweet and delicate tone of holy humour. The
very title has a glimmer of the glowing heart of Christianity:


  NEW PRINCE, NEW POMP.

  Behold a silly,[69] tender babe,
    In freezing winter night,
  In homely manger trembling lies;
    Alas! a piteous sight.

  The inns are full; no man will yield
    This little pilgrim bed;
  But forced he is with silly beasts
    In crib to shroud his head.

  Despise him not for lying there;
    First what he is inquire:
  An orient pearl is often found
    In depth of dirty mire.

  Weigh not his crib, his wooden dish,
    Nor beasts that by him feed;
  Weigh not his mother's poor attire,
    Nor Joseph's simple weed.

  This stable is a prince's court,
    The crib his chair of state;
  The beasts are parcel of his pomp,
    The wooden dish his plate.

  The persons in that poor attire
    His royal liveries wear;
  The Prince himself is come from heaven:
    This pomp is praised there.

  With joy approach, O Christian wight;
    Do homage to thy King;
  And highly praise this humble pomp,
    Which he from heaven doth bring.

Another, on the same subject, he calls _New Heaven, New War_. It is
fantastic to a degree. One stanza, however, I like much:

  This little babe, so few days old,
    Is come to rifle Satan's fold;
  All hell doth at his presence quake,
    Though he himself for cold do shake;
  For in this weak, unarmed wise,
    The gates of hell he will surprise.

There is profoundest truth in the symbolism of this. Here is the latter
half of a poem called _St. Peters Remorse_:

  Did mercy spin the thread
    To weave injustice' loom?
  Wert then a father to conclude
    With dreadful judge's doom?

  It is a small relief
    To say I was thy child,
  If, as an ill-deserving foe,
    From grace I am exiled.

  I was, I had, I could--
    All words importing want;
  They are but dust of dead supplies,
    Where needful helps are scant.

  Once to have been in bliss
    That hardly can return,
  Doth but bewray from whence I fell,
    And wherefore now I mourn.

  All thoughts of passed hopes
    Increase my present cross;
  Like ruins of decayed joys,
    They still upbraid my loss.

  O mild and mighty Lord!
    Amend that is amiss;
  My sin my sore, thy love my salve,
    Thy cure my comfort is.

  Confirm thy former deed;
    Reform that is defiled;
  I was, I am, I will remain
    Thy charge, thy choice, thy child.

Here are some neat stanzas from a poem he calls


  CONTENT AND RICH.

  My conscience is my crown,
    Contented thoughts my rest;
  My heart is happy in itself,
    My bliss is in my breast.

  My wishes are but few,
    All easy to fulfil;
  I make the limits of my power
    The bounds unto my will.

  Sith sails of largest size
    The storm doth soonest tear,
  I bear so small and low a sail
    As freeth me from fear.

  And taught with often proof,
    A tempered calm I find
  To be most solace to itself,
    Best cure for angry mind.

  No chance of Fortune's calms
    Can cast my comforts down;
  When Fortune smiles I smile to think
    How quickly she will frown.

  And when in froward mood
    She proves an angry foe:
  Small gain I found to let her come,
    Less loss to let her go.

There is just one stanza in a poem of Daniel, who belongs by birth to
this group, which I should like to print by itself, if it were only for
the love Coleridge had to the last two lines of it. It needs little
stretch of scheme to let it show itself amongst religious poems. It
occurs in a fine epistle to the Countess of Cumberland. Daniel's writing
is full of the practical wisdom of the inner life, and the stanza which I
quote has a certain Wordsworthian flavour about it. It will not make a
complete sentence, but must yet stand by itself:

  Knowing the heart of man is set to be
  The centre of this world, about the which
  These revolutions of disturbances
  Still roll; where all th' aspects of misery
  Predominate; whose strong effects are such
  As he must bear, being powerless to redress;
  And that unless above himself he can
  Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!

Later in the decade, comes Sir Henry Wotton. It will be seen that I have
arranged my singers with reference to their birth, not to the point of
time at which this or that poem was written or published. The poetic
influences which work on the shaping fantasy are chiefly felt in youth,
and hence the predominant mode of a poet's utterance will be determined
by what and where and amongst whom he was during that season. The kinds
of the various poems will therefore probably fall into natural sequence
rather after the dates of the youth of the writers than after the years
in which they were written.

Wotton was better known in his day as a politician than as a poet, and
chiefly in ours as the subject of one of Izaak Walton's biographies.
Something of artistic instinct, rather than finish, is evident in his
verses. Here is the best and the best-known of the few poems recognized
as his:


  THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.

  How happy is he born and taught,
    That serveth not another's will;
  Whose armour is his honest thought,
    And silly truth his highest skill;

  Whose passions not his masters are;
    Whose soul is still prepared for death,
  Untiéd to the world with care
    Of prince's grace or vulgar breath;

  Who hath his life from humours freed;
    Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
  Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
    Nor ruin make accusers great;

  Who envieth none whom chance doth raise
    Or vice; who never understood
  How swords give slighter wounds than praise.
    Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

  Who God doth late and early pray
    More of his grace than gifts to lend;
  And entertains the harmless day
    With a well-chosen book or friend.

  This man is free from servile bands
    Of hope to rise, or fear to fall:
  Lord of himself, though not of lands
    And having nothing, yet hath all.

Some of my readers will observe that in many places I have given a
reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem. I have
followed a manuscript in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot
tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but
in every case I find his reading the best.

Sir John Davies must have been about fifteen years younger than Sir Fulk
Grevill. He was born in 1570, was bred a barrister, and rose to high
position through the favour of James I.--gained, it is said, by the poem
which the author called _Nosce Teipsum_,[71] but which is generally
entitled _On the Immortality of the Soul_, intending by _immortality_ the
spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence. It is
a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by
means of imagination or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot
of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well it may
comport itself when there naturalized; and consequently, although there
are most poetic no less than profound passages in the treatise, a light
scruple arises whether its constituent matter can properly be called
poetry. At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and
stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the
more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in
human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions:
power shades off into feeling; and the driest logic may find the heroic
couplet render it good service.

Sir John Davies's treatise is not only far more poetic in image and
utterance than that of Lord Brooke, but is far more clear in argument and
firm in expression as well. Here is a fine invocation:

  O Light, which mak'st the light which makes the day!
    Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within;
  Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray,
    Which now to view itself doth first begin.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Thou, like the sun, dost, with an equal ray,
    Into the palace and the cottage shine;
  And show'st the soul both to the clerk and lay,              _learned and
    By the clear lamp of th' oracle divine.                     [unlearned_

He is puzzled enough to get the theology of his time into harmony with
his philosophy, and I cannot say that he is always triumphant in the
attempt; but here at least is good argument in justification of the
freedom of man to sin.

  If by His word he had the current stayed
    Of Adam's will, which was by nature free,
  It had been one as if his word had said,
    "I will henceforth that Man no Man shall be."

       *       *       *       *       *

  For what is Man without a moving mind,
    Which hath a judging wit, and choosing will?
  Now, if God's pow'r should her election bind,
    Her motions then would cease, and stand all still.

       *       *       *       *       *

  So that if Man would be unvariable,
    He must be God, or like a rock or tree;
  For ev'n the perfect angels were not stable,
    But had a fall more desperate than we.

The poem contains much excellent argument in mental science as well as in
religion and metaphysics; but with that department I have nothing to do.

I shall now give an outlook from the highest peak of the poem--to any who
are willing to take the trouble necessary for seeing what another would
show them.

The section from which I have gathered the following stanzas is devoted
to the more immediate proof of the soul's immortality.

  Her only end is never-ending bliss,
    Which is the eternal face of God to see,
  Who last of ends and first of causes is;
    And to do this, she must eternal be.

  Again, how can she but immortal be,
    When with the motions of both will and wit,
  She still aspireth to eternity,
    And never rests till she attains to it?

  Water in conduit-pipes can rise no higher
    Than the well-head from whence it first doth spring;
  Then since to eternal God she doth aspire,
    She cannot but be an eternal thing.

  At first her mother-earth she holdeth dear,
    And doth embrace the world and worldly things;
  She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,
    And mounts not up with her celestial wings.

  Yet under heaven she cannot light on ought
    That with her heavenly nature doth agree
  She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
    She cannot in this world contented be.

  For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth,
    Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
  Whoever ceased to wish, when he had health
    Or having wisdom, was not vexed in mind

  Then as a bee, which among weeds doth fall,
    Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay--
  She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,
    But, pleased with none, doth rise, and soar away;

  So, when the soul finds here no true content,
    And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take,
  She doth return from whence she first was sent,
    And flies to him that first her wings did make.

  Wit, seeking truth, from cause to cause ascends,
    And never rests till it the first attain;
  Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends,
    But never stays till it the last do gain.

  Now God the truth, and first of causes is;
    God is the last good end, which lasteth still;
  Being Alpha and Omega named for this:
    Alpha to wit, Omega to the will.

  Since then her heavenly kind she doth display
    In that to God she doth directly move,
  And on no mortal thing can make her stay,
    She cannot be from hence, but from above.

One passage more, the conclusion and practical summing up of the whole:

  O ignorant poor man! what dost thou bear,
    Locked up within the casket of thy breast?
  What jewels and what riches hast thou there!
    What heavenly treasure in so weak a chest!

  Think of her worth, and think that God did mean
    This worthy mind should worthy things embrace:
  Blot not her beauties with thy thoughts unclean,
    Nor her dishonour with thy passion base.

  Kill not her quickening power with surfeitings;
    Mar not her sense with sensuality;
  Cast not her serious wit on idle things;
    Make not her free-will slave to vanity.

  And when thou think'st of her eternity,
    Think not that death against our nature is;
  Think it a birth; and when thou go'st to die,
    Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to bliss.

  And if thou, like a child, didst fear before,
    Being in the dark where thou didst nothing see;
  Now I have brought thee torch-light, fear no more;
    Now when thou diest thou canst not hood-wink'd be.

  And thou, my soul, which turn'st with curious eye
    To view the beams of thine own form divine,
  Know, that thou canst know nothing perfectly,
    While thou art clouded with this flesh of mine.

  Take heed of over-weening, and compare
    Thy peacock's feet with thy gay peacock's train:
  Study the best and highest things that are,
    But of thyself an humble thought retain.

  Cast down thyself, and only strive to raise
    The story of thy Maker's sacred name:
  Use all thy powers that blessed Power to praise,
    Which gives the power to be, and use the same.

In looking back over our path from the point we have now reached, the
first thought that suggests itself is--How much the reflective has
supplanted the emotional! I do not mean for a moment that the earliest
poems were without thought, or that the latest are without emotion; but
in the former there is more of the skin, as it were--in the latter, more
of the bones of worship; not that in the one the worship is but
skin-deep, or that in the other the bones are dry.

To look at the change a little more closely: we find in the earliest
time, feeling working on historic fact and on what was received as such,
and the result simple aspiration after goodness. The next stage is good
_doctrine_--I use the word, as St. Paul uses it, for instruction in
righteousness--chiefly by means of allegory, all attempts at analysis
being made through personification of qualities. Here the general form is
frequently more poetic than the matter. After this we have a period
principally of imitation, sometimes good, sometimes indifferent. Next,
with the Reformation and the revival of literature together, come more of
art and more of philosophy, to the detriment of the lyrical expression.
People cannot think and sing: they can only feel and sing. But the
philosophy goes farther in this direction, even to the putting in
abeyance of that from which song takes its rise,--namely, feeling itself.
As to the former, amongst the verse of the period I have given, there is
hardly anything to be called song but Sir Philip Sidney's Psalms, and for
them we are more indebted to King David than to Sir Philip. As to the
latter, even in the case of that most mournful poem of the Countess of
Pembroke, it is, to quite an unhealthy degree, occupied with the attempt
to work upon her own feelings by the contemplation of them, instead of
with the utterance of those aroused by the contemplation of truth. In her
case the metaphysics have begun to prey upon and consume the emotions.
Besides, that age was essentially a dramatic age, as even its command of
language, especially as shown in the pranks it plays with it, would
almost indicate; and the dramatic impulse is less favourable, though not
at all opposed, to lyrical utterance. In the cases of Sir Fulk Grevill
and Sir John Davies, the feeling is assuredly profound; but in form and
expression the philosophy has quite the upper hand.

We must not therefore suppose, however, that the cause of religious
poetry has been a losing one. The last wave must sink that the next may
rise, and the whole tide flow shorewards. The man must awake through all
his soul, all his strength, all his mind, that he may worship God in
unity, in the one harmonious utterance of his being: his heart must be
united to fear his name. And for this final perfection of the individual
the race must awake. At this season and that season, this power or that
power must be chiefly developed in her elect; and for its sake the growth
of others must for a season be delayed. But the next generation will
inherit all that has gone before; and its elect, if they be themselves
pure in heart, and individual, that is original, in mind, will, more or
less thoroughly, embody the result, in subservience to some new
development, essential in its turn to further progress. Even the fallow
times, which we are so ready to call barren, must have their share in
working the one needful work. They may be to the nation that which
sickness so often is to the man--a time of refreshing from the Lord. A
nation's life does not lie in its utterance any more than in the things
which it possesses: it lies in its action. The utterance is a result, and
therefore a sign, of life; but there may be life without any _such_ sign.
To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God, is the highest
life of a nation as of an individual; and when the time for speech comes,
it will be such life alone that causes the speech to be strong at once
and harmonious. When at last there are not ten righteous men in Sodom,
Sodom can neither think, act, nor say, and her destruction is at hand.

While the wave of the dramatic was sinking, the wave of the lyric was
growing in force and rising in height. Especially as regards religious
poetry we are as yet only approaching the lyrical jubilee. Fact and
faith, self-consciousness and metaphysics, all are needful to the lyric
of love. Modesty and art find their grandest, simplest labour in rightly
subordinating each of those to the others. How could we have a George
Herbert without metaphysics? In those poems I have just given, the way of
metaphysics was prepared for him. That which overcolours one age to the
injury of its harmony, will, in the next or the next, fall into its own
place in the seven-chorded rainbow of truth.




CHAPTER VII.

DR. DONNE.


We now come to Dr. John Donne, a man of justly great respect and
authority, who, born in the year 1573, the fifteenth of Queen Elizabeth,
died Dean of St. Paul's in the year 1636. But, although even Ben Jonson
addresses him as "the delight of Phoebus and each Muse," we are too far
beyond the power of his social presence and the influence of his public
utterances to feel that admiration of his poems which was so largely
expressed during his lifetime. Of many of those that were written in his
youth, Izaak Walton says Dr. Donne "wished that his own eyes had
witnessed their funerals." Faulty as they are, however, they are not the
less the work of a great and earnest man.

Bred to the law, but never having practised it, he lost his secretaryship
to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere through the revenge of Sir George More,
whose daughter Donne had married in secret because of her father's
opposition. Dependent thereafter for years on the generous kindness of
unrelated friends, he yet for conscience' sake refused to take orders
when a good living was offered him; and it was only after prolonged
thought that he yielded to the importunity of King James, who was so
convinced of his surpassing fitness for the church that he would speed
him towards no other goal. When at length he dared hope that God might
have called him to the high office, never man gave himself to its duties
with more of whole-heartedness and devotion, and none have proved
themselves more clean of the sacrilege of serving at the altar for the
sake of the things offered thereon.

He is represented by Dr. Johnson as one of the chief examples of that
school of poets called by himself the _metaphysical_, an epithet which,
as a definition, is almost false. True it is that Donne and his followers
were always ready to deal with metaphysical subjects, but it was from
their mode, and not their subjects, that Dr. Johnson classed them. What
this mode was we shall see presently, for I shall be justified in setting
forth its strangeness, even absurdity, by the fact that Dr. Donne was the
dear friend of George Herbert, and had much to do with the formation of
his poetic habits. Just twenty years older than Herbert, and the valued
and intimate friend of his mother, Donne was in precisely that relation
of age and circumstance to influence the other in the highest degree.

The central thought of Dr. Donne is nearly sure to be just: the
subordinate thoughts by means of which he unfolds it are often grotesque,
and so wildly associated as to remind one of the lawlessness of a dream,
wherein mere suggestion without choice or fitness rules the sequence. As
some of the writers of whom I have last spoken would play with words, Dr.
Donne would sport with ideas, and with the visual images or embodiments
of them. Certainly in his case much knowledge reveals itself in the
association of his ideas, and great facility in the management and
utterance of them. True likewise, he says nothing unrelated to the main
idea of the poem; but not the less certainly does the whole resemble the
speech of a child of active imagination, to whom judgment as to the
character of his suggestions is impossible, his taste being equally
gratified with a lovely image and a brilliant absurdity: a butterfly and
a shining potsherd are to him similarly desirable. Whatever wild thing
starts from the thicket of thought, all is worthy game to the hunting
intellect of Dr. Donne, and is followed without question of tone,
keeping, or harmony. In his play with words, Sir Philip Sidney kept good
heed that even that should serve the end in view; in his play with ideas,
Dr. John Donne, so far from serving the end, sometimes obscures it almost
hopelessly: the hart escapes while he follows the squirrels and weasels
and bats. It is not surprising that, their author being so inartistic
with regard to their object, his verses themselves should be harsh and
unmusical beyond the worst that one would imagine fit to be called verse.
He enjoys the unenviable distinction of having no rival in ruggedness of
metric movement and associated sounds. This is clearly the result of
indifference; an indifference, however, which grows very strange to us
when we find that he _can_ write a lovely verse and even an exquisite
stanza.

Greatly for its own sake, partly for the sake of illustration, I quote a
poem containing at once his best and his worst, the result being such an
incongruity that we wonder whether it might not be called his best _and_
his worst, because we cannot determine which. He calls it _Hymn to God,
my God, in my Sickness_. The first stanza is worthy of George Herbert in
his best mood.

  Since I am coming to that holy room,
    Where with the choir of saints for evermore
  I shall be made thy music, as I come
    I tune the instrument here at the door,
    And what I must do then, think here before.

To recognize its beauty, leaving aside the depth and truth of the phrase,
"Where I shall be made thy music," we must recall the custom of those
days to send out for "a noise of musicians." Hence he imagines that he
has been summoned as one of a band already gone in to play before the
king of "The High Countries:" he is now at the door, where he is
listening to catch the tone, that he may have his instrument tuned and
ready before he enters. But with what a jar the next stanza breaks on
heart, mind, and ear!

  Whilst my physicians by their love are grown
    Cosmographers, and I[72] their map, who lie
  Flat on this bed, that by them may be shown
    That this is my south-west discovery,
    _Per fretum febris_--by these straits to die;--

Here, in the midst of comparing himself to a map, and his physicians to
cosmographers consulting the map, he changes without warning into a
navigator whom they are trying to follow upon the map as he passes
through certain straits--namely, those of the fever--towards his
south-west discovery, Death. Grotesque as this is, the absurdity deepens
in the end of the next stanza by a return to the former idea. He is
alternately a map and a man sailing on the map of himself. But the first
half of the stanza is lovely: my reader must remember that the region of
the West was at that time the Land of Promise to England.

  I joy that in these straits I see my West;
    For though those currents yield return to none,
  What shall my West hurt me? As west and east
    In all flat maps (and I am one) are one,
    So death doth touch the resurrection.

It is hardly worth while, except for the strangeness of the phenomenon,
to spend any time in elucidating this. Once more a map, he is that of the
two hemispheres, in which the east of the one touches the west of the
other. Could anything be much more unmusical than the line, "In all flat
maps (and I am one) are one"? But the next stanza is worse.

  Is the Pacific sea my home? Or are
    The eastern riches? Is Jerusalem?
  Anvan, and Magellan, and Gibraltar?
    All straits, and none but straits are ways to them,
    Whether where Japhet dwelt, or Cham, or Sem.

The meaning of the stanza is this: there is no earthly home: all these
places are only straits that lead home, just as they themselves cannot be
reached but through straits.

Let my reader now forget all but the first stanza, and take it along with
the following, the last two:

  We think that Paradise and Calvary,
    Christ's cross and Adam's tree, stood in one place:
  Look, Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
    As the first Adam's sweat surrounds my face,
    May the last Adam's blood my soul embrace.

  So, in his purple wrapped, receive me, Lord;
    By these his thorns give me his other crown;
  And as to others' souls I preached thy word,
    Be this my text, my sermon to mine own:
    _Therefore, that he may raise, the Lord throws down._

Surely these are very fine, especially the middle verse of the former and
the first verse of the latter stanza. The three stanzas together make us
lovingly regret that Dr. Donne should have ridden his Pegasus over quarry
and housetop, instead of teaching him his paces.

The next I quote is artistic throughout. Perhaps the fact, of which we
are informed by Izaak Walton, "that he caused it to be set to a grave and
solemn tune, and to be often sung to the organ by the choristers of St.
Paul's church in his own hearing, especially at the evening service," may
have something to do with its degree of perfection. There is no sign of
his usual haste about it. It is even elaborately rhymed after Norman
fashion, the rhymes in each stanza being consonant with the rhymes in
every stanza.


  A HYMN TO GOD THE FATHER.

  Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
    Which was my sin, though it were done before?[73]
  Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,[74]
    And do run still, though still I do deplore?--
      When thou hast done, thou hast not done;
        For I have more.

  Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
    Others to sin, and made my sins their door?[75]
  Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
    A year or two, but wallowed in a score?--
      When thou hast done, thou hast not done;
        For I have more.

  I have a sin of fear, that when I've spun
    My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
  But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
    Shall shine, as he shines now and heretofore;
      And having done that, thou hast done:
        I fear no more.

In those days even a pun might be a serious thing: witness the play in
the last stanza on the words _son_ and _sun_--not a mere pun, for the Son
of the Father is the Sun of Righteousness: he is Life _and_ Light.

What the Doctor himself says concerning the hymn, appears to me not only
interesting but of practical value. He "did occasionally say to a friend,
'The words of this hymn have restored to me the same thoughts of joy that
possessed my soul in my sickness, when I composed it.'" What a help it
would be to many, if in their more gloomy times they would but recall the
visions of truth they had, and were assured of, in better moments!

Here is a somewhat strange hymn, which yet possesses, rightly understood,
a real grandeur:


  A HYMN TO CHRIST

  _At the Author's last going into Germany_.[76]

  In what torn ship soever I embark,
  That ship shall be my emblem of thy ark;
  What sea soever swallow me, that flood
  Shall be to me an emblem of thy blood.
  Though thou with clouds of anger do disguise
  Thy face, yet through that mask I know those eyes,
    Which, though they turn away sometimes--
      They never will despise.

  I sacrifice this island unto thee,
  And all whom I love here and who love me:
  When I have put this flood 'twixt them and me,
  Put thou thy blood betwixt my sins and thee.
  As the tree's sap doth seek the root below
  In winter, in my winter[77] now I go
    Where none but thee, the eternal root
      Of true love, I may know.

  Nor thou, nor thy religion, dost control
  The amorousness of an harmonious soul;
  But thou wouldst have that love thyself: as thou
  Art jealous, Lord, so I am jealous now.
  Thou lov'st not, till from loving more thou free
  My soul: who ever gives, takes liberty:
    Oh, if thou car'st not whom I love,
      Alas, thou lov'st not me!

  Seal then this bill of my divorce to all
  On whom those fainter beams of love did fall;
  Marry those loves, which in youth scattered be
  On face, wit, hopes, (false mistresses), to thee.
  Churches are best for prayer that have least light:
  To see God only, I go out of sight;
    And, to 'scape stormy days, I choose
      An everlasting night

To do justice to this poem, the reader must take some trouble to enter
into the poet's mood.

It is in a measure distressing that, while I grant with all my heart the
claim of his "Muse's white sincerity," the taste in--I do not say
_of_--some of his best poems should be such that I will not present them.

Out of twenty-three _Holy Sonnets_, every one of which, I should almost
say, possesses something remarkable, I choose three. Rhymed after the
true Petrarchian fashion, their rhythm is often as bad as it can be to be
called rhythm at all. Yet these are very fine.

  Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?
    Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste;
    I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
  And all my pleasures are like yesterday.
  I dare not move my dim eyes any way,
    Despair behind, and death before doth cast
    Such terror; and my feeble flesh doth waste
  By sin in it, which it towards hell doth weigh.
  Only them art above, and when towards thee
    By thy leave I can look, I rise again;
  But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
    That not one hour myself I can sustain:
  Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art,
  And thou like adamant draw mine iron heart.

  If faithful souls be alike glorified
    As angels, then my father's soul doth see,
    And adds this even to full felicity,
  That valiantly I hell's wide mouth o'erstride:
  But if our minds to these souls be descried
    By circumstances and by signs that be
    Apparent in us--not immediately[78]--
  How shall my mind's white truth by them be tried?
    They see idolatrous lovers weep and mourn,
  And, style blasphemous, conjurors to call
  On Jesu's name, and pharisaical
    Dissemblers feign devotiön. Then turn,
  O pensive soul, to God; for he knows best
  Thy grief, for he put it into my breast.

  Death, be not proud, though some have calléd thee
    Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
    For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
  Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou kill me.
  From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be,
    Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow;
    And soonest[79] our best men with thee do go,
  Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery!
    Thou'rt slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
  And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
  And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well,
    And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st[80] thou then?
  One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
  And death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die.

In a poem called _The Cross_, full of fantastic conceits, we find the
following remarkable lines, embodying the profoundest truth.

  As perchance carvers do not faces make,
  But that away, which hid them there, do take:
  Let crosses so take what hid Christ in thee,
  And be his image, or not his, but he.

One more, and we shall take our leave of Dr. Donne. It is called a
fragment; but it seems to me complete. It will serve as a specimen of his
best and at the same time of his most characteristic mode of presenting
fine thoughts grotesquely attired.


  RESURRECTION.

  Sleep, sleep, old sun; thou canst not have re-past[81]
  As yet the wound thou took'st on Friday last.
  Sleep then, and rest: the world may bear thy stay;
  A better sun rose before thee to-day;
  Who, not content to enlighten all that dwell
  On the earth's face as thou, enlightened hell,
  And made the dark fires languish in that vale,
  As at thy presence here our fires grow pale;
  Whose body, having walked on earth and now
  Hastening to heaven, would, that he might allow
  Himself unto all stations and fill all,
  For these three days become a mineral.
  He was all gold when he lay down, but rose
  All tincture; and doth not alone dispose
  Leaden and iron wills to good, but is
  Of power to make even sinful flesh like his.
  Had one of those, whose credulous piety
  Thought that a soul one might discern and see
  Go from a body, at this sepulchre been,
  And issuing from the sheet this body seen,
  He would have justly thought this body a soul,
  If not of any man, yet of the whole.

What a strange mode of saying that he is our head, the captain of our
salvation, the perfect humanity in which our life is hid! Yet it has its
dignity. When one has got over the oddity of these last six lines, the
figure contained in them shows itself almost grand.

As an individual specimen of the grotesque form holding a fine sense,
regard for a moment the words,

  He was all gold when he lay down, but rose
  All tincture;

which means, that, entirely good when he died, he was something yet
greater when he rose, for he had gained the power of making others good:
the _tincture_ intended here was a substance whose touch would turn the
basest metal into gold.

Through his poems are scattered many fine passages; but not even his
large influence on the better poets who followed is sufficient to justify
our listening to him longer now.




CHAPTER VIII.

BISHOP HALL AND GEORGE SANDYS.


Joseph Hall, born in 1574, a year after Dr. Donne, bishop, first of
Exeter, next of Norwich, is best known by his satires. It is not for such
that I can mention him: the most honest satire can claim no place amongst
religious poems. It is doubtful if satire ever did any good. Its very
language is that of the half-brute from which it is well named.

Here are three poems, however, which the bishop wrote for his choir.


  ANTHEM FOR THE CATHEDRAL OF EXETER.

  Lord, what am I? A worm, dust, vapour, nothing!
    What is my life? A dream, a daily dying!
  What is my flesh? My soul's uneasy clothing!
    What is my time? A minute ever flying:
      My time, my flesh, my life, and I,
      What are we, Lord, but vanity?

  Where am I, Lord? Down in a vale of death.
    What is my trade? Sin, my dear God offending;
  My sport sin too, my stay a puff of breath.
    What end of sin? Hell's horror never ending:
      My way, my trade, sport, stay, and place,
      Help to make up my doleful case.

  Lord, what art thou? Pure life, power, beauty, bliss.
    Where dwell'st thou? Up above in perfect light.
  What is thy time? Eternity it is.
    What state? Attendance of each glorious sprite:
      Thyself, thy place, thy days, thy state
      Pass all the thoughts of powers create.

  How shall I reach thee, Lord? Oh, soar above,
    Ambitious soul. But which way should I fly?
  Thou, Lord, art way and end. What wings have I?
    Aspiring thoughts--of faith, of hope, of love:
      Oh, let these wings, that way alone
      Present me to thy blissful throne.


  FOR CHRISTMAS-DAY.

  Immortal babe, who this dear day
  Didst change thine heaven for our clay,
  And didst with flesh thy Godhead veil,
  Eternal Son of God, all hail!

  Shine, happy star! Ye angels, sing
  Glory on high to heaven's king!
  Run, shepherds, leave your nightly watch!
  See heaven come down to Bethlehem's cratch!          _manger._

  Worship, ye sages of the east,
  The king of gods in meanness drest!
  O blessed maid, smile, and adore
  The God thy womb and arms have bore!

  Star, angels, shepherds, and wise sages!
  Thou virgin-glory of all ages!
  Restored frame of heaven and earth!
  Joy in your dear Redeemer's birth.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Leave, O my soul, this baser world below;
  O leave this doleful dungeön of woe;
  And soar aloft to that supernal rest
  That maketh all the saints and angels blest:
    Lo, there the Godhead's radiant throne,
    Like to ten thousand suns in one!

  Lo, there thy Saviour dear, in glory dight,          _dressed._
  Adored of all the powers of heavens bright!
  Lo, where that head that bled with thorny wound,
  Shines ever with celestíal honour crowned!
    That hand that held the scornful reed
    Makes all the fiends infernal dread.

  That back and side that ran with bloody streams
  Daunt angels' eyes with their majestic beams;
  Those feet, once fastened to the cursed tree,
  Trample on Death and Hell, in glorious glee.
    Those lips, once drenched with gall, do make
    With their dread doom the world to quake.

  Behold those joys thou never canst behold;
  Those precious gates of pearl, those streets of gold,
  Those streams of life, those trees of Paradise
  That never can be seen by mortal eyes!
    And when thou seest this state divine,
    Think that it is or shall be thine.

  See there the happy troops of purest sprites
  That live above in endless true delights!
  And see where once thyself shalt rangéd be,
  And look and long for immortality!
    And now beforehand help to sing
    Hallelujahs to heaven's king.

Polished as these are in comparison to those of Dr. Donne, and fine, too,
as they are intrinsically, there are single phrases in his that are worth
them all--except, indeed, that one splendid line,

  Trample on Death and Hell in glorious glee.

George Sandys, the son of an archbishop of York, and born in 1577, is
better known by his travels in the east than by his poetry. But his
version of the Psalms is in good and various verse, not unfrequently
graceful, sometimes fine. The following is not only in a popular rhythm,
but is neat and melodious as well.


  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 cause[85] 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

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