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

wine
Before my sighs did dry it! There was corn
Before my tears did drown it!
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures. Leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made-and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away! Take heed-
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there. Tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load."
But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methought I heard one calling " Child! "
And I replied, " My Lord! "

Coming now to speak of his art, let me say something first about his use of homeliest imagery for highest thought. This, I think, is in itself enough to class him with the highest kind of poets. If my reader will refer to The Elixir , he will see an instance in the third stanza, "You may look at the glass, or at the sky:" "You may regard your action only, or that action as the will of God." Again, let him listen to the pathos and simplicity of this one stanza, from a poem he calls The Flower . He has been in trouble; his times have been evil; he has felt a spiritual old age creeping upon him; but he is once more awake.

And now in age[99] I bud again;
After so many deaths I live and write;
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing. O my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom thy tempests fell all night!

Again:

Some may dream merrily, but when they wake
They dress themselves and come to thee.

He has an exquisite feeling of lyrical art. Not only does he keep to one idea in it, but he finishes the poem like a cameo. Here is an instance wherein he outdoes the elaboration of a Norman trouvère; for not merely does each line in each stanza end with the same sound as the corresponding line in every other stanza, but it ends with the very same word. I shall hardly care to defend this if my reader chooses to call it a whim; but I do say that a large degree of the peculiar musical effect of the poem-subservient to the thought, keeping it dimly chiming in the head until it breaks out clear and triumphant like a silver bell in the last-is owing to this use of the same column of words at the line-ends of every stanza. Let him who doubts it, read the poem aloud.


AARON.

Holiness on the head;
Light and perfections on the breast;
Harmonious bells below, raising the dead,
To lead them unto life and rest-
Thus are true Aarons drest.

Profaneness in my head;
Defects and darkness in my breast;
A noise of passions ringing me for dead
Unto a place where is no rest-
Poor priest, thus am I drest!

Only another head
I have, another heart and breast,
Another music, making live, not dead,
Without whom I could have no rest-
In him I am well drest.

Christ is my only head,
My alone only heart and breast,
My only music, striking me even dead,
That to the old man I may rest,
And be in him new drest.

So, holy in my head,
Perfect and light in my dear breast,
My doctrine turned by Christ, who is not dead,
But lives in me while I do rest-
Come, people: Aaron's drest.

Note the flow and the ebb of the lines of each stanza-from six to eight to ten syllables, and back through eight to six, the number of stanzas corresponding to the number of lines in each; only the poem itself begins with the ebb, and ends with a full spring-flow of energy. Note also the perfect antithesis in their parts between the first and second stanzas, and how the last line of the poem clenches the whole in revealing its idea-that for the sake of which it was written. In a word, note the
unity .

Born in 1593, notwithstanding his exquisite art, he could not escape being influenced by the faulty tendencies of his age, borne in upon his youth by the example of his mother's friend, Dr. Donne. A man must be a giant like Shakspere or Milton to cast off his age's faults. Indeed no man has more of the "quips and cranks and wanton wiles" of the poetic spirit of his time than George Herbert, but with this difference from the rest of Dr. Donne's school, that such is the indwelling potency that it causes even these to shine with a radiance such that we wish them still to burn and not be consumed. His muse is seldom other than graceful, even when her motions are grotesque, and he is always a gentleman, which cannot be said of his master. We could not bear to part with his most fantastic oddities, they are so interpenetrated with his genius as well as his art.

In relation to the use he makes of these faulty forms, and to show that even herein he has exercised a refraining judgment, though indeed fancying he has quite discarded in only somewhat reforming it, I recommend the study of two poems, each of which he calls Jordan , though why I have not yet with certainty discovered.

It is possible that not many of his readers have observed the following instances of the freakish in his rhyming art, which however result well. When I say so, I would not be supposed to approve of the freak, but only to acknowledge the success of the poet in his immediate intent. They are related to a certain tendency to mechanical contrivance not seldom associated with a love of art: it is art operating in the physical understanding. In the poem called Home , every stanza is perfectly finished till the last: in it, with an access of art or artfulness, he destroys the rhyme. I shall not quarrel with my reader if he calls it the latter, and regards it as art run to seed. And yet-and yet-I confess I have a latent liking for the trick. I shall give one or two stanzas out of the rather long poem, to lead up to the change in the last.

Come, Lord; my head doth burn, my heart is sick,
While thou dost ever, ever stay;
Thy long deferrings wound me to the quick;
My spirit gaspeth night and day.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.

Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake,
Which way soe'er I look I see:
Some may dream merrily, but when they wake
They dress themselves and come to thee.
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.

Come, dearest Lord, pass not this holy season,
My flesh and bones and joints do pray;
And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason
The word is stay ,[100] says ever come .
O show thyself to me,
Or take me up to thee.

Balancing this, my second instance is of the converse. In all the stanzas but the last, the last line in each hangs unrhymed: in the last the rhyming is fulfilled. The poem is called Denial . I give only a part of it.

When my devotions could not pierce
Thy silent ears,
Then was my heart broken as was my verse;
My breast was full of fears
And disorder.

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue
To cry to thee,
And then not hear it crying! All day long
My heart was in my knee:
But no hearing!

Therefore my soul lay out of sight,
Untuned, unstrung;
My feeble spirit, unable to look right,
Like a nipt blossom, hung