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

Into my breast,
How full of light and lively power
Is then my soul!
How am I blest!
How can I then all difficulties devour!
Thy might,
Thy spright,
With ease my cumbrous enemy control.

If thou once turn away thy face and hide
Thy cheerful look,
My feeble flesh may not abide
That dreadful stound; hour.
I cannot brook
Thy absence. My heart, with care and grief then gride,
Doth fail,
Doth quail;
My life steals from me at that hidden wound.

My fancy's then a burden to my mind;
Mine anxious thought
Betrays my reason, makes me blind;
Near dangers drad dreaded.
Make me distraught;
Surprised with fear my senses all I find:
In hell
I dwell,
Oppressed with horror, pain, and sorrow sad.

My former resolutions all are fled-
Slipped over my tongue;
My faith, my hope, and joy are dead.
Assist my heart,
Rather than my song,
My God, my Saviour! When I'm ill-bested.
Stand by,
And I
Shall bear with courage undeservéd smart.


THE PHILOSOPHER'S DEVOTION.

Sing aloud!-His praise rehearse
Who hath made the universe.
He the boundless heavens has spread,
All the vital orbs has kned, kneaded.
He that on Olympus high
Tends his flocks with watchful eye,
And this eye has multiplied suns, as centres of systems.
Midst each flock for to reside.
Thus, as round about they stray,
Toucheth[137] each with outstretched ray;
Nimble they hold on their way,
Shaping out their night and day.
Summer, winter, autumn, spring,
Their inclined axes bring.
Never slack they; none respires,
Dancing round their central fires.

In due order as they move,
Echoes sweet be gently drove
Thorough heaven's vast hollowness,
Which unto all corners press:
Music that the heart of Jove
Moves to joy and sportful love;
Fills the listening sailers' ears
Riding on the wandering spheres:
Neither speech nor language is
Where their voice is not transmiss.

God is good, is wise, is strong,
Witness all the creature throng,
Is confessed by every tongue;
All things back from whence they sprung, go back -a verb.
As the thankful rivers pay
What they borrowed of the sea.

Now myself I do resign:
Take me whole: I all am thine.
Save me, God, from self-desire-
Death's pit, dark hell's raging fire-[138]
Envy, hatred, vengeance, ire;
Let not lust my soul bemire.

Quit from these, thy praise I'll sing,
Loudly sweep the trembling string.
Bear a part, O Wisdom's sons,
Freed from vain religïons!
Lo! from far I you salute,
Sweetly warbling on my lute-
India, Egypt, Araby,
Asia, Greece, and Tartary,
Carmel-tracts, and Lebanon,
With the Mountains of the Moon,
From whence muddy Nile doth run,
Or wherever else you won: dwell.
Breathing in one vital air,
One we are though distant far.

Rise at once;-let's sacrifice:
Odours sweet perfume the skies;
See how heavenly lightning fires
Hearts inflamed with high aspires!
All the substance of our souls
Up in clouds of incense rolls.
Leave we nothing to ourselves
Save a voice-what need we else!
Or an hand to wear and tire
On the thankful lute or lyre!

Sing aloud!-His praise rehearse
Who hath made the universe.

In this Philosopher's Devotion he has clearly imitated one of those psalms of George Sandys which I have given.


CHARITY AND HUMILITY.

Far have I clambered in my mind,
But nought so great as love I find:
Deep-searching wit, mount-moving might,
Are nought compared to that good sprite.
Life of delight and soul of bliss!
Sure source of lasting happiness!
Higher than heaven! lower than hell!
What is thy tent? Where may'st thou dwell?

"My mansion hight Humility , is named.
Heaven's vastest capability.
The further it doth downward tend,
The higher up it doth ascend;
If it go down to utmost nought,
It shall return with that it sought."

Lord, stretch thy tent in my strait breast;
Enlarge it downward, that sure rest
May there be pight for that pure fire pitched.
Wherewith thou wontest to inspire
All self-dead souls: my life is gone;
Sad solitude's my irksome won; dwelling.
Cut off from men and all this world,
In Lethe's lonesome ditch I'm hurled;
Nor might nor sight doth ought me move,
Nor do I care to be above.
O feeble rays of mental light,
That best be seen in this dark night,
What are you? What is any strength
If it be not laid in one length
With pride or love? I nought desire
But a new life, or quite to expire.
Could I demolish with mine eye
Strong towers, stop the fleet stars in sky,
Bring down to earth the pale-faced moon,
Or turn black midnight to bright noon;
Though all things were put in my hand-
As parched, as dry as the Libyan sand
Would be my life, if charity
Were wanting. But humility
Is more than my poor soul durst crave
That lies entombed in lowly grave;
But if 'twere lawful up to send
My voice to heaven, this should it rend:
"Lord, thrust me deeper into dust,
That thou may'st raise me with the just."

There are strange things and worth pondering in all these. An occasional classical allusion seems to us quite out of place, but such things we must pass. The poems are quite different from any we have had before. There has been only a few of such writers in our nation, but I suspect those have had a good deal more influence upon the religious life of it than many thinkers suppose. They are in closest sympathy with the deeper forms of truth employed by St. Paul and St. John. This last poem, concerning humility as the house in which charity dwells, is very truth. A repentant sinner feels that he is making himself little when he prays to be made humble: the Christian philosopher sees such a glory and spiritual wealth in humility that it appears to him almost too much to pray for.

The very essence of these mystical writers seems to me to be poetry. They use the largest figures for the largest spiritual ideas- light for
good, darkness for evil . Such symbols are the true bodies of the true ideas. For this service mainly what we term nature was called into being, namely, to furnish forms for truths, for without form truth cannot be uttered. Having found their symbols, these writers next proceed to use them logically; and here begins the peculiar danger. When the logic leaves the poetry behind, it grows first presumptuous, then hard, then narrow and untrue to the original breadth of the symbol; the glory of the symbol vanishes; and the final result is a worship of the symbol, which has withered into an apple of Sodom. Witness some of the writings of the European master of the order-Swedenborg: the highest of them are rich in truth; the lowest are poverty-stricken indeed.

In 1615 was born Richard Baxter, one of the purest and wisest and devoutest of men-and no mean poet either. If ever a man sought between contending parties to do his duty, siding with each as each appeared right, opposing each as each appeared wrong, surely that man was Baxter. Hence he fared as all men too wise to be partisans must fare-he pleased neither Royalists nor Puritans. Dull of heart and sadly unlike a mother was the Church when, by the Act of Uniformity of Charles II., she drove from her bosom such a son, with his two thousand brethren of the clergy!

He has left us a good deal of verse-too much, perhaps, if we consider the length of the poems and the value of condensation. There is in many of them a delightful fervour of the simplest love to God, uttered with a plain half poetic, half logical strength, from which sometimes the poetry breaks out clear and fine. Much that he writes is of death, from the dread of which he evidently suffered-a good thing when it drives a man to renew his confidence in his Saviour's presence. It has