Spare Hours

“Whatever ’tis, whose beauty here belowAttracts thee thus, and makes thee stream and flow,And winde and curle, and wink and smile,Shifting thy gate and guile.”

He is one of the earliest of our poets who treats external nature subjectively rather than objectively, in which he was followed by Gray (especially in his letters) and Collins and Cowper, and in some measure by Warton, until it reached its consummation, and perhaps its excess, in Wordsworth.

We shall now give our readers some specimens from the reprint of the Silex by Mr. Pickering, so admirably edited by the Rev. H. F. Lyte, himself a true poet, of whose careful life of our author we have made very free use.

The Timber“Sure thou didst flourish once! and many Springs,Many bright mornings, much dew, many showersPast o’er thy head: many light Hearts and Wings,Which now are dead, lodg’d in thy living bowers.“And still a new succession sings and flies;Fresh groves grow up, and their green branches shootTowards the old and still enduring skies;While the low Violet thriveth at their root.“But thou beneath the sad and heavy LineOf death dost waste all senseless, cold and dark;Where not so much as dreams of light may shine,Nor any thought of greenness, leaf or bark.“And yet, as if some deep hate and dissent,Bred in thy growth betwixt high winds and thee,Were still alive, thou dost great storms resent,Before they come, and know’st how near they be.“Else all at rest thou lyest, and the fierce breathOf tempests can no more disturb thy ease;But this thy strange resentment after deathMeans only those who broke in life thy peace.”

This poem is founded upon the superstition that a tree which had been blown down by the wind gave signs of restlessness and anger before the coming of a storm from the quarter whence came its own fall. It seems to us full of the finest fantasy and expression.

The World“I saw Eternity the other nightLike a great Ring of pure and endless light,All calm as it was bright;And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,Driv’n by the spheresLike a vast shadow mov’d, in which the worldAnd all her train were hurl’d.”

There is a wonderful magnificence about this; and what a Bunyan-like reality is given to the vision by “the other night”!

Man“Weighing the stedfastness and stateOf some mean things which here below reside,Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless dateAnd Intercourse of times divide,Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs,Early as well as late,Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs:“I would, said I, my God would giveThe staidness of these things to man! for theseTo His divine appointments ever cleave,And no new business breaks their peace;The birds nor sow nor reap, yet sup and dine,The flowres without clothes live,Yet Solomon was never drest so fine.“Man hath still either toyes or Care;He hath no root, nor to one place is ty’d,But ever restless and IrregularAbout this Earth doth run and ride.He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where;He says it is so far,That he hath quite forgot how to go there.“He knocks at all doors, strays and roams:Nay hath not so much wit as some stones have,Which in the darkest nights point to their homesBy some hid sense their Maker gave:Man is the shuttle, to whose winding questAnd passage through these loomsGod order’d motion, but ordain’d no rest.”

There is great moral force about this; its measure and words put one in mind of the majestic lines of Shirley, beginning

“The glories of our earthly stateAre shadows, not substantial things.”Cock-crowing“Father of lights! what Sunnie seed,What glance of day hast thou confin’dInto this bird? To all the breedThis busie Ray thou hast assign’d;Their magnetisme works all night,And dreams of Paradise and light.“Their eyes watch for the morning-hue,Their little grain expelling nightSo shines and sings, as if it knewThe path unto the house of light.It seems their candle, howe’er done,Was tinn’d and lighted at the sunne.”

This is a conceit, but an exquisite one.

Providence“Sacred and secret hand!By whose assisting, swift commandThe Angel shewd that holy Well,Which freed poor Hagar from her fears,And turn’d to smiles the begging tearsOf yong distressëd Ishmael.”

There is something very beautiful and touching in the opening of this on Providence, and in the “yong distressëd Ishmael.”

The Dawning“Ah! what time wilt thou come? when shall that crie,The Bridegroome’s Comming! fill the sky?Shall it in the Evening runWhen our words and works are done?Or will thy all-surprizing lightBreak at midnight,When either sleep, or some dark pleasurePossesseth mad man without measure?Or shall these early, fragrant hoursUnlock thy bowres?And with their blush of light descryThy locks crown’d with eternitie?Indeed, it is the only timeThat with thy glory doth best chime;All now are stirring, ev’ry fieldFull hymns doth yield;The whole Creation shakes off night,And for thy shadow looks the light.”

This last line is full of grandeur and originality.

The Law and the Gospel“Lord, when thou didst on Sinai pitch,And shine from Paran, when a firie Law,Pronounc’d with thunder and thy threats, did thawThy People’s hearts, when all thy weeds were rich,And Inaccessible for light,Terrour, and might; —How did poore flesh, which after thou didst weare,Then faint and fear!Thy Chosen flock, like leafs in a high wind,Whisper’d obedience, and their heads inclin’d.”

The idea in the last lines, we may suppose, was suggested by what Isaiah says of the effect produced on Ahaz and the men of Judah, when they heard that Rezin, king of Syria, had joined Israel against them. “And his heart was moved, and the heart of his people, as the trees of the wood are moved by the winds.”

Holy Scriptures“Welcome, dear book, soul’s Joy and food! The feastOf Spirits; Heav’n extracted lyes in thee.Thou art life’s Charter, The Dove’s spotless nestWhere souls are hatch’d unto Eternitie.“In thee the hidden stone, the Manna lies;Thou art the great Elixir rare and Choice;The Key that opens to all Mysteries,The Word in Characters, God in the Voice.”

This is very like Herbert, and not inferior to him.

In a poem having the odd mark of “¶,” and which seems to have been written after the death of some dear friends, are these two stanzas, the last of which is singularly pathetic: —

“They are all gone into the world of light!And I alone sit lingring here!Their very memory is fair and bright,And my sad thoughts doth clear.“He that hath found some fledg’d bird’s nest may knowAt first sight if the bird be flown;But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now,That is to him unknown.”

Referring to Nicodemus visiting our Lord: —

The Night. (John iii. 2.)“Most blest believer he!Who in that land of darkness and blinde eyesThy long expected healing wings could see,When thou didst rise;And, what can never more be done,Did at midnight speak with the Sun!“O who will tell me whereHe found thee at that dead and silent hour?What hallow’d solitary ground did bearSo rare a flower;Within whose sacred leaves did lieThe fulness of the Deity?“No mercy-seat of gold,No dead and dusty Cherub, nor carved stone,But his own living works, did my Lord holdAnd lodge alone;Where trees and herbs did watch and peepAnd wonder, while the Jews did sleep.“Dear night! this world’s defeat;The stop to busie fools; care’s check and curb;The day of Spirits; my soul’s calm retreatWhich none disturb!Christ’s46 progress and his prayer time;The hours to which high Heaven doth chime.“God’s silent, searching flight:When my Lord’s head is filled with dew, and allHis locks are wet with the clear drops of night;His still, soft call;His knocking time; the soul’s dumb watch,When spirits their Fair Kindred catch.“Were all my loud, evil days,Calm and unhaunted as is Thy dark Tent,Whose peace but by some Angel’s wing or voiceIs seldom rent;Then I in Heaven all the long yearWould keep, and never wander here.”

At the end he has these striking words —

“There is in God, some say,A deep but dazzling darkness —”

This brings to our mind the concluding sentence of Mr. Ruskin’s fifth chapter in his second volume – “The infinity of God is not mysterious, it is only unfathomable; not concealed, but incomprehensible; it is a clear infinity, the darkness of the pure, unsearchable sea.” Plato, if we rightly remember, says – “Truth is the body of God, light is His shadow.”

Death“Though since thy first sad entranceBy just Abel’s blood,’Tis now six thousand years well nigh,And still thy sovereignty holds good;Yet by none art thou understood.“We talk and name thee with much ease,As a tryed thing,And every one can slight his lease,As if it ended in a Spring,Which shades and bowers doth rent-free bring.“To thy dark land these heedless go,But there was OneWho search’d it quite through to and fro,And then, returning like the Sun,Discover’d all that there is done.“And since his death we throughly seeAll thy dark way;Thy shades but thin and narrow be,Which his first looks will quickly fray:Mists make but triumphs for the day.”The Water-fall“With what deep murmurs, through time’s silent stealth,Doth thy transparent, cool and watry wealthHere flowing fall,And chide and call,As if his liquid, loose Retinue staidLingring, and were of this steep place afraid.”The Shower“Waters above! Eternal springs!The dew that silvers the Dove’s wings!O welcome, welcome to the sad!Give dry dust drink, drink that makes glad.Many fair Evenings, many flowersSweetened with rich and gentle showers,Have I enjoyed, and down have runMany a fine and shining Sun;But never, till this happy hour,Was blest with such an evening shower!”

What a curious felicity about the repetition of “drink” in the fourth line.

“Isaac’s Marriage” is one of the best of the pieces, but is too long for insertion.

“The Rainbow”

has seldom been better sung:

“Still young and fine! but what is still in viewWe slight as old and soil’d, though fresh and new.How bright wert thou, when Shem’s admiring eyeThy burnisht, flaming Arch did first descry!When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot,The youthful world’s gray fathers in one knot,Did with intentive looks watch every hourFor thy new light, and trembled at each shower!When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair,Forms turn to Musick, clouds to smiles and air:Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and poursBalm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers.Bright pledge of peace and Sunshine! the sure tyeOf thy Lord’s hand, the object47 of His eye!When I behold thee, though my light be dim,Distant and low, I can in thine see HimWho looks upon thee from His glorious throne,And mindes the Covenant ’twixt All and One.”

What a knot of the gray fathers!

“Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot!”

Our readers will see whence Campbell stole, and how he spoiled in the stealing (by omitting the word “youthful”), the well-known line in his “Rainbow” —

“How came the world’s gray fathers forthTo view the sacred sign.”

Campbell did not disdain to take this, and no one will say much against him, though it looks ill, occurring in a poem on the rainbow; but we cannot so easily forgive him for saying that “Vaughan is one of the harshest even of the inferior order of conceit, having some few scattered thoughts that meet our eye amidst his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren heath.”

“Rules and Lessons” is his longest and one of his best poems; but we must send our readers to the book itself, where they will find much to make them grateful to “The Silurist” and to Mr. Pickering, who has already done such good service for the best of our elder literature.

We have said little about the deep godliness, the spiritual Christianity, with which every poem is penetrated and quickened. Those who can detect and relish this best, will not be the worse pleased at our saying little about it. Vaughan’s religion is deep, lively, personal, tender, kindly, impassioned, temperate, central. His religion grows up, effloresces into the ideas and forms of poetry as naturally, as noiselessly, as beautifully as the life of the unseen seed finds its way up into the “bright consummate flower.”

Of “IX. Poems by V.,” we would say with the Quarterly, βαιὰ μὲν ἀλλὰ ῬΟΔΑ. They combine rare excellences; the concentration, the finish, the gravity of a man’s thought, with the tenderness, the insight, the constitutional sorrowfulness of a woman’s – her purity, her passionateness, her delicate and keen sense and expression. We confess we would rather have been the author of any one of the nine poems in this little volume, than of the somewhat tremendous, absurd, raw, loud, and fuliginous “Festus,” with his many thousands of lines and his amazing reputation, his bad English, bad religion, bad philosophy, and very bad jokes – his “buttered thunder” (this is his own phrase), and his poor devil of a Lucifer – we would, we repeat (having in this our subita ac sæva indignatio run ourselves a little out of breath), as much rather keep company with “V.” than with Mr. Bailey, as we would prefer going to sea for pleasure, in a trim little yacht, with its free motions, its quiet, its cleanliness, to taking a state berth in some Fire-King steamer of one thousand horse-power, with his mighty and troublous throb, his smoke, his exasperated steam, his clangor, and fire and fury, his oils and smells.

Had we time, and were this the fit place, we could, we think, make something out of this comparison of the boat with its sail and its rudder, and the unseen, wayward, serviceable winds playing about it, inspiring it, and swaying its course, – and the iron steamer, with its machinery, its coarse energy, its noises and philosophy, its ungainly build and gait, its perilousness from within; and we think we could show how much of what Aristotle, Lord Jeffrey, Charles Lamb, or Edmund Burke would have called genuine poetry there is in the slender “V.,” and how little in the big “Festus.” We have made repeated attempts, but we cannot get through this poem. It beats us. We must want the Festus sense. Some of our best friends, with whom we generally agree on such matters, are distressed for us, and repeat long passages with great energy and apparent intelligence and satisfaction. Meanwhile, having read the six pages of public opinion at the end of the third and People’s edition, we take it for granted that it is a great performance, that, to use one of the author’s own words, there is a mighty “somethingness” about it – and we can entirely acquiesce in the quotation from The Sunday Times, that they “read it with astonishment, and closed it with bewilderment.” It would appear from these opinions, which from their intensity, variety, and number (upwards of 50), are curious signs of the times, that Mr. Bailey has not so much improved on, as happily superseded the authors of Job and Ecclesiastes, of the Divine Comedy, of Paradise Lost and Regained, of Dr. Faustus, Hamlet, and Faust, of Don Juan, the Course of Time, St. Leon, the Jolly Beggars, and the Loves of the Angels.

He is more sublime and simple than Job – more royally witty and wise, more to the quick and the point than Solomon – more picturesque, more intense, more pathetic than Dante – more Miltonic (we have no other word) than Milton – more dreadful, more curiously blasphemous, more sonorous than Marlowe – more worldly-wise and clever, and intellectually svelt than Goethe. More passionate, more eloquent, more impudent than Byron – more orthodox, more edifying, more precocious than Pollok – more absorptive and inveterate than Godwin; and more hearty and tender, more of love and manhood all compact than Burns – more gay than Moore – more μυριάνους than Shakspeare.

It may be so. We have made repeated and resolute incursions in various directions into his torrid zone, but have always come out greatly scorched and stunned and affronted. Never before did we come across such an amount of energetic and tremendous words, going “sounding on their dim and perilous way,” like a cataract at midnight – not flowing like a stream, nor leaping like a clear waterfall, but always among breakers – roaring and tearing and tempesting with a sort of transcendental din; and then what power of energizing and speaking, and philosophizing and preaching, and laughing and joking and love-making, in vacuo! As far as we can judge, and as far as we can keep our senses in such a region, it seems to us not a poem at all, hardly even poetical – but rather the materials for a poem, made up of science, religion, and love, the (very raw) materials of a structure – as if the bricks and mortar, and lath and plaster, and furniture, and fire and fuel and meat and drink, and inhabitants male and female, of a house were all mixed “through other” in one enormous imbroglio. It is a sort of fire-mist, out of which poetry, like a star, might by curdling, condensation, crystallization, have been developed, after much purging, refining, and cooling, much time and pains. Mr. Bailey is, we believe, still a young man full of energy – full, we doubt not, of great and good aims; let him read over a passage, we dare say he knows it well, in the second book of Milton on Church Government, he will there, among many other things worthy of his regard, find that “the wily subtleties and refluxes of man’s thoughts from within,” which is the haunt and main region of his song, may be “painted out and described” with “a solid and treatable smoothness.” If he paint out and describe after this manner, he may yet more than make up for this sin of his youth; and let him take our word for it and fling away nine tenths of his adjectives, and in the words of Old Shirley —

“Compose his poem clean without ’em.A row of stately Substantives would marchLike Switzers, and bear all the fields before ’em;Carry their weight; show fair, like Deeds enroll’d;Not Writs, that are first made and after filed.Thence first came up the title of Blank Verse; —You know, sir, what Blank signifies; – when the sense,First framed, is tied with adjectives like points,Hang ’t, ’tis pedantic vulgar poetry.Let children, when they versify, stick hereAnd there, these piddling words for want of matter.Poets write masculine numbers.”

Here are some of “V.’s” Roses —

The Grave“I stood within the grave’s o’ershadowing vault;Gloomy and damp it stretch’d its vast domain;Shades were its boundary; for my strain’d eye soughtFor other limit to its width in vain.“Faint from the entrance came a daylight ray,And distant sound of living men and things;This, in th’ encountering darkness pass’d away,That, took the tone in which a mourner sings.“I lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp,Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom;And feebly burning ’gainst the rolling damp,I bore it through the regions of the tomb.“Around me stretch’d the slumbers of the dead,Whereof the silence ached upon my ear;More and more noiseless did I make my tread,And yet its echoes chill’d my heart with fear.“The former men of every age and place,From all their wand’rings gather’d, round me lay;The dust of wither’d Empires did I trace,And stood ’mid Generations pass’d away.“I saw whole cities, that in flood or fire,Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath;Whole armies whom a day beheld expire,Swept by ten thousands to the arms of Death.“I saw the old world’s white and wave-swept bonesA giant heap of creatures that had been;Far and confused the broken skeletonsLay strewn beyond mine eye’s remotest ken.“Death’s various shrines – the Urn, the Stone, the Lamp —Were scatter’d round, confused, amid the dead;Symbols and Types were mould’ring in the damp,Their shapes were waning and their meaning fled.“Unspoken tongues, perchance in praise or woe,Were character’d on tablets Time had swept;And deep were half their letters hid belowThe thick small dust of those they once had wept.“No hand was here to wipe the dust away,No reader of the writing traced beneath;No spirit sitting by its form of clay;No sigh nor sound from all the heaps of Death.“One place alone had ceased to hold its prey;A form had press’d it and was there no more;The garments of the Grave beside it lay,Where once they wrapp’d him on the rocky floor.“He only with returning footsteps brokeTh’ eternal calm wherewith the Tomb was bound;Among the sleeping Dead alone He woke,And bless’d with outstretch’d hands the host around.“Well is it that such blessing hovers here,To soothe each sad survivor of the throng,Who haunt the portals of the solemn sphere,And pour their woe the loaded air along.“They to the verge have follow’d what they love,And on th’ insuperable threshold stand;With cherish’d names its speechless calm reprove,And stretch in the abyss their ungrasp’d hand.“But vainly there they seek their soul’s relief,And of th’ obdurate Grave its prey implore;Till Death himself shall medicine their grief,Closing their eyes by those they wept before.“All that have died, the Earth’s whole race, reposeWhere Death collects his Treasures, heap on heap;O’er each one’s busy day, the nightshades close;Its Actors, Sufferers, Schools, Kings, Armies – sleep.”

The lines in italics are of the highest quality, both in thought and word; the allusion to Him who by dying abolished death, seems to us wonderfully fine – sudden, simple, – it brings to our mind the lines already quoted from Vaughan: —

“But there was OneWho search’d it quite through to and fro,And then returning like the Sun,Discover’d all that there is done.”

What a rich line this is!

“And pour their woe the loaded air along.”“The insuperable threshold!”

Do our readers remember the dying Corinne’s words? Je mourrais seule – au reste, ce moment se passe de secours; nos amis ne peuvent nous suivre que jusqu’au seuil de la vie. Là, commencent des pensées dont le trouble et la profondeur ne sauraient se confier.

We have only space for one more – verses entitled “Heart’s-Ease.”

Heart’s-Ease“Oh, Heart’s-Ease, dost thou lie within that flower?How shall I draw thee thence? – so much I needThe healing aid of thine enshrinéd powerTo veil the past – and bid the time good speed!“I gather it – it withers on my breast;The heart’s-ease dies when it is laid on mine;Methinks there is no shape by Joy possess’d,Would better fare than thou, upon that shrine.“Take from me things gone by – oh! change the past —Renew the lost – restore me the decay’d, —Bring back the days whose tide has ebb’d so fast —Give form again to the fantastic shade!“My hope, that never grew to certainty, —My youth, that perish’d in its vain desire, —My fond ambition, crush’d ere it could beAught save a self-consuming, wasted fire:“Bring these anew, and set me once againIn the delusion of Life’s Infancy —I was not happy, but I knew not thenThat happy I was never doom’d to be.“Till these things are, and powers divine descend —Love, kindness, joy, and hope, to gild my day,In vain the emblem leaves towards me bend,Thy Spirit, Heart’s-Ease, is too far away!”

We would fain have given two poems entitled “Bessy” and “Youth and Age.” Everything in this little volume is select and good. Sensibility and sense in right measure and proportion and keeping, and in pure, strong classical language; no intemperance of thought or phrase. Why does not “V.” write more?

We do not very well know how to introduce our friend Mr. Ellison, “The Bornnatural,” who addresses his “Madmoments to the Light-headed of Society at large.” We feel as a father, a mother, or other near of kin would at introducing an ungainly gifted and much loved son or kinsman, who had the knack of putting his worst foot foremost, and making himself imprimis ridiculous.

There is something wrong in all awkwardness, a want of nature somewhere, and we feel affronted even still, after we have taken the Bornnatural48 to our heart, and admire and love him, at his absurd gratuitous self-befoolment. The book is at first sight one farrago of oddities and offences – coarse foreign paper – bad printing – italics broad-cast over every page – the words run into each other in a way we are glad to say is as yet quite original, making such extraordinary monsters of words as these – beingsriddle – sunbeammotes – gooddeed – midjune – summerair – selffavor – seraphechoes – puredeedprompter – barkskeel, &c. Now we like Anglo-Saxon and the polygamous German,49 but we like better the well of English undefiled – a well, by the by, much oftener spoken of than drawn from; but to fashion such words as these words are, is as monstrous as for a painter to compose an animal not out of the elements, but out of the entire bodies of several, of an ass, for instance, a cock and a crocodile, so as to produce an outrageous individual, with whom even a duck-billed Platypus would think twice before he fraternized – ornithorynchous and paradoxical though he be, poor fellow.