England's Antiphon, George MacDonald [ready to read books TXT] 📗

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

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

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

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

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


PSALM XCVI.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


PSALM XLIV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


PSALM LXV.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following little psalm, The Lord reigneth