England's Antiphon

The Angels.

  Run, shepherds, run where Bethlehem blest appears.    We bring the best of news; be not dismayed:  A Saviour there is born more old than years,    Amidst heaven's rolling height this earth who stayed.    In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid  A weakling did him bear, who all upbears;    There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid,  To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres:  Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth.    This is that night—no, day, grown great with bliss,    In which the power of Satan broken is:  In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth!    Thus singing, through the air the angels swam,    And cope of stars re-echoëd the same.

The Shepherds.

  O than the fairest day, thrice fairer night!    Night to best days, in which a sun doth rise    Of which that golden eye which clears the skies  Is but a sparkling ray, a shadow-light!  And blessed ye, in silly pastors' sight, simple.    Mild creatures, in whose warm88 crib now lies  That heaven-sent youngling, holy-maid-born wight,    Midst, end, beginning of our prophecies!  Blest cottage that hath flowers in winter spread!    Though withered—blessed grass, that hath the grace    To deck and be a carpet to that place!  Thus sang, unto the sounds of oaten reed,    Before the babe, the shepherds bowed on knees;    And springs ran nectar, honey dropped from trees.

No doubt there is a touch of the conventional in these. Especially in the close of the last there is an attempt to glorify the true by the homage of the false. But verses which make us feel the marvel afresh—the marvel visible and credible by the depth of its heart of glory—make us at the same time easily forget the discord in themselves.

The following, not a sonnet, although it looks like one, measuring the lawful fourteen lines, is the closing paragraph of a poem he calls A Hymn to the Fairest Fair.

  O king, whose greatness none can comprehend,  Whose boundless goodness doth to all extend!  Light of all beauty! ocean without ground,  That standing flowest, giving dost abound!  Rich palace, and indweller ever blest,  Never not working, ever yet in rest!  What wit cannot conceive, words say of thee,  Here, where, as in a mirror, we but see  Shadows of shadows, atoms of thy might,  Still owly-eyed while staring on thy light,  Grant that, released from this earthly jail,  And freed of clouds which here our knowledge veil,  In heaven's high temples, where thy praises ring,  I may in sweeter notes hear angels sing.

That is, "May I in heaven hear angels sing what wit cannot conceive here."

Drummond excels in nobility of speech, and especially in the fine line and phrase, so justly but disproportionately prized in the present day. I give an instance of each:

  Here do seraphim  Burn with immortal love; there cherubim  With other noble people of the light,  As eaglets in the sun, delight their sight.* * * * *  Like to a lightning through the welkin hurled,  That scores with flames the way, and every eye  With terror dazzles as it swimmeth by.

Here are six fine verses, in the heroic couplet, from An Hymn of the Resurrection.

  So a small seed that in the earth lies hid  And dies—reviving bursts her cloddy side;  Adorned with yellow locks, of new is born,  And doth become a mother great with corn;  Of grains bring hundreds with it, which when old  Enrich the furrows with a sea of gold.

But I must content myself now with a little madrigal, the only one fit for my purpose. Those which would best support what I have said of his music are not of the kind we want. Unfortunately, the end of this one is not equal to the beginning.

CHANGE SHOULD BREED CHANGE

      New doth the sun appear;      The mountains' snows decay;  Crowned with frail flowers comes forth the baby year.      My soul, time posts away;      And thou yet in that frost,      Which flower and fruit hath lost,    As if all here immortal were, dost stay!      For shame! thy powers awake;  Look to that heaven which never night makes black;  And there, at that immortal sun's bright rays,  Deck thee with flowers which fear not rage of days.

CHAPTER XI

THE BROTHERS FLETCHER.

I now come to make mention of two gifted brothers, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, both clergymen, the sons of a clergyman and nephews to the Bishop of Bristol, therefore the cousins of Fletcher the dramatist, a poem by whom I have already given Giles, the eldest, is supposed to have been born in 1588. From his poem Christ's Victory and Triumph, I select three passages.

To understand the first, it is necessary to explain that while Christ is on earth a dispute between Justice and Mercy, such as is often represented by the theologians, takes place in heaven. We must allow the unsuitable fiction attributing distraction to the divine Unity, for the sake of the words in which Mercy overthrows the arguments of Justice. For the poet unintentionally nullifies the symbolism of the theologian, representing Justice as defeated. He forgets that the grandest exercise of justice is mercy. The confusion comes from the fancy that justice means vengeance upon sin, and not the doing of what is right. Justice can be at no strife with mercy, for not to do what is just would be most unmerciful.

Mercy first sums up the arguments Justice has been employing against her, in the following stanza:

  He was but dust; why feared he not to fall?      And being fallen how can he hope to live?    Cannot the hand destroy him that made all?      Could he not take away as well as give?      Should man deprave, and should not God deprive?    Was it not all the world's deceiving spirit    (That, bladdered up with pride of his own merit,  Fell in his rise) that him of heaven did disinherit?

To these she then proceeds to make reply:

  He was but dust: how could he stand before him?      And being fallen, why should he fear to die?    Cannot the hand that made him first, restore him?      Depraved of sin, should he deprivéd lie      Of grace? Can he not find infirmity    That gave him strength?—Unworthy the forsaking    He is, whoever weighs (without mistaking)  Or maker of the man or manner of his making.89    Who shall thy temple incense any more,      Or to thy altar crown the sacrifice,    Or strew with idle flowers the hallowed floor?      Or what should prayer deck with herbs and spice, why.      Her vials breathing orisons of price,    If all must pay that which all cannot pay?    O first begin with me, and Mercy slay,  And thy thrice honoured Son, that now beneath doth stray.    But if or he or I may live and speak,      And heaven can joy to see a sinner weep,    Oh! let not Justice' iron sceptre break      A heart already broke, that low doth creep,      And with prone humbless her feet's dust doth sweep.    Must all go by desert? Is nothing free?    Ah! if but those that only worthy be,  None should thee ever see! none should thee ever see!    What hath man done that man shall not undo      Since God to him is grown so near akin?    Did his foe slay him? He shall slay his foe.      Hath he lost all? He all again shall win.      Is sin his master? He shall master sin.    Too hardy soul, with sin the field to try!    The only way to conquer was to fly;  But thus long death hath lived, and now death's self shall die.    He is a path, if any be misled;      He is a robe, if any naked be;    If any chance to hunger, he is bread;      If any be a bondman, he is free;      If any be but weak, how strong is he!    To dead men life he is, to sick men health,    To blind men sight, and to the needy wealth;  A pleasure without loss, a treasure without stealth.    Who can forget—never to be forgot—      The time that all the world in slumber lies,    When like the stars the singing angels shot      To earth, and heaven awakéd all his eyes      To see another sun at midnight rise?    On earth was never sight of peril fame; pareil: equal.    For God before man like himself did frame,  But God himself now like a mortal man became.* * * * *    The angels carolled loud their song of peace;      The cursed oracles were stricken dumb;    To see their Shepherd the poor shepherds press;      To see their King, the kingly Sophies come;      And them to guide unto his master's home,    A star comes dancing up the orient,    That springs for joy over the strawy tent,  Where gold, to make their prince a crown, they all present.

No doubt there are here touches of execrable taste, such as the punning trick with man and manners, suggesting a false antithesis; or the opposition of the words deprave and deprive; but we have in them only an instance of how the meretricious may co-exist with the lovely. The passage is fine and powerful, notwithstanding its faults and obscurities.

Here is another yet more beautiful:  So down the silver streams of Eridan,90      On either side banked with a lily wall,    Whiter than both, rides the triumphant swan,      And sings his dirge, and prophesies his fall,      Diving into his watery funeral!    But Eridan to Cedron must submit    His flowery shore; nor can he envy it,  If, when Apollo sings, his swans do silent sit.91    That heavenly voice I more delight to hear      Than gentle airs to breathe; or swelling waves    Against the sounding rocks their bosoms tear;92      Or whistling reeds that rutty93 Jordan laves,      And with their verdure his white head embraves; adorns.    To chide the winds; or hiving bees that fly    About the laughing blossoms94 of sallowy,95  Rocking asleep the idle grooms96 that lazy lie.    And yet how can I hear thee singing go,      When men, incensed with hate, thy death foreset?    Or else, why do I hear thee sighing so,      When thou, inflamed with love, their life dost get,97      That love and hate, and sighs and songs are met?    But thus, and only thus, thy love did crave    To send thee singing for us to thy grave,  While we sought thee to kill, and thou sought'st us to save.    When I remember Christ our burden bears,      I look for glory, but find misery;    I look for joy, but find a sea of tears;      I look that we should live, and find him die;      I look for angels' songs, and hear him cry:    Thus what I look, I cannot find so well;    Or rather, what I find I cannot tell,  These banks so narrow are, those streams so highly swell.

We would gladly eliminate the few common-place allusions; but we must take them with the rest of the passage. Besides far higher merits, it is to my ear most melodious.

One more passage of two stanzas from Giles Fletcher, concerning the glories of heaven: I quote them for the sake of earth, not of heaven.

  Gaze but upon the house where man embowers:      With flowers and rushes pavéd is his way;    Where all the creatures are his servitours:      The winds do sweep his chambers every day,      And clouds do wash his rooms; the ceiling gay,    Starréd aloft, the gilded knobs embrave:    If such a house God to another gave,  How shine those glittering courts he for himself will have!    And if a sullen cloud, as sad as night,      In which the sun may seem embodiéd,    Depured of all his dross, we see so white,      Burning in melted gold his watery head,      Or round with ivory edges silvered;    What lustre super-excellent will he    Lighten on those that shall his sunshine see  In that all-glorious court in which all glories be!

These brothers were intense admirers of Spenser. To be like him Phineas must write an allegory; and such an allegory! Of all the strange poems in existence, surely this is the strangest. The Purple Island is man, whose body is anatomically described after the allegory of a city, which is then peopled with all the human faculties personified, each set in motion by itself. They say the anatomy is correct: the metaphysics are certainly good. The action of the poem is just another form of the Holy War of John Bunyan—all the good and bad powers fighting for the possession of the Purple Island. What renders the conception yet more amazing is the fact that the whole ponderous mass of anatomy and metaphysics, nearly as long as the Paradise Lost, is put as a song, in a succession of twelve cantos, in the mouth of a shepherd, who begins a canto every morning to the shepherds and shepherdesses of the neighbourhood, and finishes it by folding-time in the evening. And yet the poem is full of poetry. He triumphs over his difficulties partly by audacity, partly by seriousness, partly by the enchantment of song. But the poem will never be read through except by students of English literature. It is a whole; its members are well-fitted; it is full of beauties—in parts they swarm like fire-flies; and yet it is not a good poem. It is like a well-shaped house, built of mud, and stuck full of precious stones. I do not care, in my limited space, to quote from it. Never was there a more incongruous dragon of allegory.

Both brothers were injured, not by their worship of Spenser, but by the form that worship took—imitation. They seem more pleased to produce a line or stanza that shall recall a line or stanza of Spenser, than to produce a fine original of their own. They even copy lines almost word for word from their great master. This is pure homage: it was their delight that such adaptations should be recognized—just as it was Spenser's hope, when he inserted translated stanzas from Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered in The Fairy Queen, to gain the honour of a true reproduction. Yet, strange fate for imitators! both, but Giles especially, were imitated by a greater than their worship—even by Milton. They make Spenser's worse; Milton makes theirs better. They imitate Spenser, faults and all; Milton glorifies their beauties.

From the smaller poems of Phineas, I choose the following version of

PSALM CXXX

  From the deeps of grief and fear,    O Lord, to thee my soul repairs:  From thy heaven bow down thine ear;    Let thy mercy meet my prayers.  Oh! if thou mark'st what's done amiss,  What soul so pure can see thy bliss?  But with thee sweet Mercy stands,    Sealing pardons, working fear.  Wait, my soul, wait on his hands;    Wait, mine eye; oh! wait, mine ear:  If he his eye or tongue affords,  Watch all his looks, catch all his words.  As a watchman waits for day,    And looks for light, and looks again:  When the night grows old and gray,    To be relieved he calls amain:  So look, so wait, so long, mine eyes,  To see my Lord, my sun, arise.  Wait, ye saints, wait on our Lord,    For from his tongue sweet mercy flows;  Wait on his cross, wait on his word;    Upon that tree redemption grows:  He will redeem his Israel  From sin and wrath, from death and hell.

I shall now give two stanzas of his version of the 127th Psalm.

  If God build not the house, and lay    The groundwork sure—whoever build,  It cannot stand one stormy day.    If God be not the city's shield,  If he be not their bars and wall,  In vain is watch-tower, men, and all.  Though then thou wak'st when others rest,    Though rising thou prevent'st the sun,  Though with lean care thou daily feast,    Thy labour's lost, and thou undone;  But God his child will feed and keep,  And draw the curtains to his sleep.

Compare this with a version of the same portion by Dr. Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, who, no great poet, has written some good verse. He was about the same age as Phineas Fletcher.

  Except the Lord the house sustain,  The builder's labour is in vain;  Except the city he defend,  And to the dwellers safety send,  In vain are sentinels prepared,  Or arméd watchmen for the guard.  You vainly with the early light  Arise, or sit up late at night  To find support, and daily eat  Your bread with sorrow earned and sweat;  When God, who his beloved keeps,  This plenty gives with quiet sleeps.

What difference do we find? That the former has the more poetic touch, the latter the greater truth. The former has just lost the one precious thing in the psalm; the latter has kept it: that care is as useless as painful, for God gives us while we sleep, and not while we labour.

CHAPTER XII

WITHER, HERRICK, AND QUARLES.

George Wither, born in 1588, therefore about the same age as Giles Fletcher, was a very different sort of writer indeed. There could hardly be a greater contrast. Fancy, and all her motley train, were scarcely known to Wither, save by the hearing of the ears.

He became an eager Puritan towards the close of his life, but his poetry chiefly belongs to the earlier part of it. Throughout it is distinguished by a certain straightforward simplicity of good English thought and English word. His hymns remind me, in the form of their speech, of Gascoigne. I shall quote but little; for, although there is a sweet calm and a great justice of reflection and feeling, there is hardly anything of that warming glow, that rousing force, that impressive weight in his verse, which is the chief virtue of the lofty rhyme.

The best in a volume of ninety Hymns and Songs of the Church, is, I think, The Author's Hymn at the close, of which I give three stanzas. They manifest the simplicity and truth of the man, reflecting in their very tone his faithful, contented, trustful nature.

  By thy grace, those passions, troubles,    And those wants that me opprest,  Have appeared as water-bubbles,    Or as dreams, and things in jest:  For, thy leisure still attending,  I with pleasure saw their ending.  Those afflictions and those terrors,    Which to others grim appear,  Did but show me where my errors    And my imperfections were;  But distrustful could not make me  Of thy love, nor fright nor shake me.  Those base hopes that would possess me,    And those thoughts of vain repute  Which do now and then oppress me,    Do not, Lord, to me impute;  And though part they will not from me,  Let them never overcome me.

He has written another similar volume, but much larger, and of a somewhat extraordinary character. It consists of no fewer than two hundred and thirty-three hymns, mostly long, upon an incredible variety of subjects, comprehending one for every season of nature and of the church, and one for every occurrence in life of which the author could think as likely to confront man or woman. Of these subjects I quote a few of the more remarkable, but even from them my reader can have little conception of the variety in the book: A Hymn whilst we are washing; In a clear starry Night; A Hymn for a House-warming; After a great Frost or Snow; For one whose Beauty is much praised; For one upbraided with Deformity; For a Widower or a Widow delivered from a troublesome Yokefellow; For a Cripple; For a Jailor; For a Poet.

Here is a portion of one which I hope may be helpful to some of my readers.

WHEN WE CANNOT SLEEP

  What ails my heart, that in my breast    It thus unquiet lies;  And that it now of needful rest    Deprives my tiréd eyes?  Let not vain hopes, griefs, doubts, or fears,    Distemper so my mind;  But cast on God thy thoughtful cares,    And comfort thou shalt find.  In vain that soul attempteth ought,    And spends her thoughts in vain,  Who by or in herself hath sought    Desiréd peace to gain.  On thee, O Lord, on thee therefore,    My musings now I place;  Thy free remission I implore,    And thy refreshing grace.  Forgive thou me, that when my mind    Oppressed began to be,  I sought elsewhere my peace to find,    Before I came to thee.  And, gracious God, vouchsafe to grant,    Unworthy though I am,  The needful rest which now I want,    That I may praise thy name.

Before examining the volume, one would say that no man could write so many hymns without frequent and signal failure. But the marvel here is, that the hymns are all so very far from bad. He can never have written in other than a gentle mood. There must have been a fine harmony in his nature, that kept him, as it were. This peacefulness makes him interesting in spite of his comparative flatness. I must restrain remark, however, and give five out of twelve stanzas of another of his hymns.

A ROCKING HYMN

  Sweet baby, sleep; what ails my dear?    What ails my darling thus to cry?  Be still, my child, and lend thine ear    To hear me sing thy lullaby.  My pretty lamb, forbear to weep;  Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep.  Whilst thus thy lullaby I sing,    For thee great blessings ripening be;  Thine eldest brother is a king,    And hath a kingdom bought for thee.  Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;  Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.  A little infant once was he,    And strength in weakness then was laid  Upon his virgin mother's knee,    That power to thee might be conveyed.  Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;  Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.  Within a manger lodged thy Lord,    Where oxen lay, and asses fed;  Warm rooms we do to thee afford,    An easy cradle or a bed.  Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;  Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.  Thou hast, yet more to perfect this,    A promise and an earnest got,  Of gaining everlasting bliss,    Though thou, my babe, perceiv'st it not.  Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;  Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.

I think George Wither's verses will grow upon the reader of them, tame as they are sure to appear at first. His Hallelujah, or Britain's Second Remembrancer, from which I have been quoting, is well worth possessing, and can be procured without difficulty.

We now come to a new sort, both of man and poet—still a clergyman. It is an especial pleasure to write the name of Robert Herrick amongst the poets of religion, for the very act records that the jolly, careless Anacreon of the church, with his head and heart crowded with pleasures, threw down at length his wine-cup, tore the roses from his head, and knelt in the dust.

Nothing bears Herrick's name so unrefined as the things Dr. Donne wrote in his youth; but the impression made by his earlier poems is of a man of far shallower nature, and greatly more absorbed in the delights of the passing hour. In the year 1648, when he was fifty-seven years of age, being prominent as a Royalist, he was ejected from his living by the dominant Puritans; and in that same year he published his poems, of which the latter part and later written is his Noble Numbers, or religious poems. We may wonder at his publishing the Hesperides along with them, but we must not forget that, while the manners of a time are never to be taken as a justification of what is wrong, the judgment of men concerning what is wrong will be greatly influenced by those manners—not necessarily on the side of laxity. It is but fair to receive his own testimony concerning himself, offered in these two lines printed at the close of his Hesperides:

To his book's end this last line he'd have placed: Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste.

We find the same artist in the Noble Numbers as in the Hesperides, but hardly the same man. However far he may have been from the model of a clergyman in the earlier period of his history, partly no doubt from the society to which his power of song made him acceptable, I cannot believe that these later poems are the results of mood, still less the results of mere professional bias, or even sense of professional duty.

In a good many of his poems he touches the heart of truth; in others, even those of epigrammatic form, he must be allowed to fail in point as well as in meaning. As to his art-forms, he is guilty of great offences, the result of the same passion for lawless figures and similitudes which Dr. Donne so freely indulged. But his verses are brightened by a certain almost childishly quaint and innocent humour; while the tenderness of some of them rises on the reader like the aurora of the coming sun of George Herbert. I do not forget that, even if some of his poems were printed in 1639, years before that George Herbert had done his work and gone home: my figure stands in relation to the order I have adopted.

Some of his verse is homelier than even George Herbert's homeliest. One of its most remarkable traits is a quaint thanksgiving for the commonest things by name—not the less real that it is sometimes even queer. For instance:

  God gives not only corn for need,  But likewise superabundant seed;  Bread for our service, bread for show;  Meat for our meals, and fragments too:  He gives not poorly, taking some  Between the finger and the thumb,  But for our glut, and for our store,  Fine flour pressed down, and running o'er.

Here is another, delightful in its oddity. We can fancy the merry yet gracious poet chuckling over the vision of the child and the fancy of his words.