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 bribed 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—raised 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 praised, Sion, O God, where vows they pay thee: There all men's prayers to thee raised, 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 deceived, disappointed. Whom chosen thou unto thee takest; And whom into thy court received, 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 disgraced— Doth strike our foes with fear and wonder, O thou on whom their hopes are placed, 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 Assured 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 appeased, That once my soul had in his sight been pleased.

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, Distressed 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 owned 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 raised up for a removing tent Vaulted and arched 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 overflowed 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, Untied 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 devotioen. 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 called 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 dungeoen 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 celestial 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 ranged 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 placed, 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.