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

Find thee abroad , when thou, mean space,
Hadst made within thy dwelling-place?

I sent my messengers about,
To try if they could find thee out;
But all was to no purpose still,
Because indeed they sought thee ill:
For how could they discover thee
That saw not when thou entered'st me?

Mine eyes could tell me? If he were,
Not coloured, sure he came not there.
If not by sound, my ears could say
He doubtless did not pass my way.
My nose could nothing of him tell,
Because my God he did not smell.
None such I relished, said my taste,
And therefore me he never passed.
My feeling told me that none such
There entered, for he none did touch.
Resolved by them how should I be,
Since none of all these are in thee,

In thee, my God? Thou hast no hue
That man's frail optic sense can view;
No sound the ear hears; odour none
The smell attracts; all taste is gone
At thy appearance; where doth fail
A body, how can touch prevail?
What even the brute beasts comprehend-
To think thee such, I should offend.

Yet when I seek my God, I enquire
For light than sun and moon much higher,
More clear and splendrous, 'bove all light
Which the eye receives not, 'tis so bright.
I seek a voice beyond degree
Of all melodious harmony:
The ear conceives it not; a smell
Which doth all other scents excel:
No flower so sweet, no myrrh, no nard,
Or aloës, with it compared;
Of which the brain not sensible is.
I seek a sweetness-such a bliss
As hath all other sweets surpassed,
And never palate yet could taste.
I seek that to contain and hold
No touch can feel, no embrace enfold.

So far this light the rays extends,
As that no place it comprehends.
So deep this sound, that though it speak
It cannot by a sense so weak
Be entertained. A redolent grace
The air blows not from place to place.
A pleasant taste, of that delight
It doth confound all appetite.
A strict embrace, not felt, yet leaves
That virtue, where it takes it cleaves.
This light, this sound, this savouring grace,
This tasteful sweet, this strict embrace,
No place contains, no eye can see,
My God is, and there's none but he.

Very remarkable verses from a dramatist! They indicate substratum enough for any art if only the art be there. Even those who cannot enter into the philosophy of them, which ranks him among the mystics of whom I have yet to speak, will understand a good deal of it symbolically: for how could he be expected to keep his poetry and his philosophy distinct when of themselves they were so ready to run into one; or in verse to define carefully betwixt degree and kind, when kinds themselves may rise by degrees? To distinguish without separating; to be able to see that what in their effects upon us are quite different, may yet be a grand flight of ascending steps, "to stop-no record hath told where," belongs to the philosopher who is not born mutilated, but is a poet as well.

John Fletcher, likewise a dramatist, the author of the following poem, was two years younger than Ben Jonson. It is, so far as I am aware, the sole non-dramatic voice he has left behind him. Its opening is an indignant apostrophe to certain men of pretended science, who in his time were much consulted-the Astrologers.


UPON AN HONEST MAN'S FORTUNE.

You that can look through heaven, and tell the stars;
Observe their kind conjunctions, and their wars;
Find out new lights, and give them where you please-
To those men honours, pleasures, to those ease;
You that are God's surveyors, and can show
How far, and when, and why the wind doth blow;
Know all the charges of the dreadful thunder,
And when it will shoot over, or fall under;
Tell me-by all your art I conjure ye-
Yes, and by truth-what shall become of me.
Find out my star, if each one, as you say,
Have his peculiar angel, and his way;
Observe my fate; next fall into your dreams;
Sweep clean your houses, and new-line your schemes;[83]
Then say your worst. Or have I none at all?
Or is it burnt out lately? or did fall?
Or am I poor? not able? no full flame?
My star, like me, unworthy of a name?
Is it your art can only work on those
That deal with dangers, dignities, and clothes,
With love, or new opinions? You all lie:
A fishwife hath a fate, and so have I-
But far above your finding. He that gives,
Out of his providence, to all that lives-
And no man knows his treasure, no, not you;-

* * * * *

He that made all the stars you daily read,
And from them filch a knowledge how to feed,
Hath hid this from you. Your conjectures all
Are drunken things, not how, but when they fall:
Man is his own star, and the soul that can
Render an honest, and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early, or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still;
And when the stars are labouring, we believe
It is not that they govern, but they grieve
For stubborn ignorance. All things that are
Made for our general uses, are at war-
Even we among ourselves; and from the strife
Your first unlike opinions got a life.
Oh man! thou image of thy Maker's good,
What canst thou fear, when breathed into thy blood
His spirit is that built thee? What dull sense
Makes thee suspect, in need, that Providence?
Who made the morning, and who placed the light
Guide to thy labours? Who called up the night,
And bid her fall upon thee like sweet showers
In hollow murmurs, to lock up thy powers?
Who gave thee knowledge? Who so trusted thee,
To let thee grow so near himself, the Tree?[84]
Must he then be distrusted? Shall his frame
Discourse with him why thus and thus I am?
He made the angels thine, thy fellows all;
Nay, even thy servants, when devotions call.
Oh! canst thou be so stupid then, so dim,
To seek a saving influence, and lose him?
Can stars protect thee? Or can poverty,
Which is the light to heaven, put out his eye?
He is my star; in him all truth I find,
All influence, all fate; and when my mind
Is furnished with his fulness, my poor story
Shall outlive all their age, and all their glory.
The hand of danger cannot fall amiss
When I know what, and in whose power it is;
Nor want, the cause[85] of man, shall make me groan:
A holy hermit is a mind alone.[86]
Doth not experience teach us, all we can,
To work ourselves into a glorious man?

* * * * *

My mistress then be knowledge and fair truth;
So I enjoy all beauty and all youth!

* * * * *

Affliction, when I know it, is but this-
A deep alloy, whereby man tougher is
To bear the hammer; and the deeper still,
We still arise more image of his will;
Sickness, an humorous cloud 'twixt us and light;
And death, at longest, but another night,
Man is his own star, and that soul that can
Be honest, is the only perfect man.

There is a tone of contempt in the verses which is not religious; but they express a true philosophy and a triumph of faith in God. The word
honest is here equivalent to true .

I am not certain whether I may not now be calling up a singer whose song will appear hardly to justify his presence in the choir. But its teaching is of high import, namely, of content and cheerfulness and courage, and being both worthy and melodious, it gravitates heavenward. The singer is yet another dramatist: I presume him to be Thomas Dekker. I cannot be certain, because others were concerned with him in the writing of the drama from which I take it. He it is who, in an often-quoted passage, styles our Lord "The first true gentleman that ever breathed;" just as Chaucer, in a poem I have given, calls him "The first stock-father of gentleness."

We may call the little lyric


A SONG OF LABOUR.

Art thou poor, yet hast thou golden slumbers?
Oh, sweet content!
Art thou rich, yet is thy mind perplexed?
Oh, punishment!
Dost thou laugh to see how fools are vexed
To add to golden numbers, golden numbers?
Oh, sweet content!
Chorus .-Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour bears a lovely face.

Canst drink the waters of the crispéd spring?
Oh, sweet content!
Swimm'st thou in wealth, yet sink'st in thine own tears?