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

however, as the poem is, we cannot help wishing it looked less heathenish. Its decorations are certainly meretricious.

From a few religious poems of Sir Edward Sherburne, another Roman Catholic, and a firm adherent of Charles I., I choose the following-the only one I care for.


AND THEY LAID HIM IN A MANGER.

Happy crib, that wert, alone,
To my God, bed, cradle, throne!
Whilst thy glorious vileness I
View with divine fancy's eye,
Sordid filth seems all the cost,
State, and splendour, crowns do boast.

See heaven's sacred majesty
Humbled beneath poverty;
Swaddled up in homely rags,
On a bed of straw and flags!
He whose hands the heavens displayed,
And the world's foundations laid,
From the world's almost exiled,
Of all ornaments despoiled.
Perfumes bathe him not, new-born;
Persian mantles not adorn;
Nor do the rich roofs look bright
With the jasper's orient light.

Where, O royal infant, be
The ensigns of thy majesty;
Thy Sire's equalizing state;
And thy sceptre that rules fate?
Where's thy angel-guarded throne,
Whence thy laws thou didst make known-
Laws which heaven, earth, hell obeyed?
These, ah! these aside he laid;
Would the emblem be-of pride
By humility outvied.

I pass by Abraham Cowley, mighty reputation as he has had, without further remark than that he is too vulgar to be admired more than occasionally, and too artificial almost to be, as a poet, loved at all.

Andrew Marvell, member of Parliament for Hull both before and after the Restoration, was twelve years younger than his friend Milton. Any one of some half-dozen of his few poems is to my mind worth all the verse that Cowley ever made. It is a pity he wrote so little; but his was a life as diligent, I presume, as it was honourable.


ON A DROP OF DEW.

See how the orient dew,
Shed from the bosom of the morn
Into the blowing roses,
Yet careless of its mansion new
For the clear region where 'twas born,
Round in itself encloses, used intransitively.
And in its little globe's extent,
Frames as it can its native element.
How it the purple flower does slight,
Scarce touching where it lies,
But gazing back upon the skies,
Shines with a mournful light,
Like its own tear,
Because so long divided from the sphere:
Restless it rolls, and unsecure,
Trembling lest it grow impure,
Till the warm sun pity its pain,
And to the skies exhale it back again.
So the soul, that drop, that ray
Of the clear fountain of eternal day,
Could it within the human flower be seen,
Remembering still its former height,
Shuns the sweet leaves and blossoms green;
And, recollecting its own light,
Does, in its pure and circling thoughts, express
The greater heaven in an heaven less.
In how coy a figure wound,
Every way it turns away,
So the world excluding round,
Yet receiving in the day;
Dark beneath but bright above,
Here disdaining, there in love.
How loose and easy hence to go!
How girt and ready to ascend!
Moving but on a point below,
It all about does upwards bend.
Such did the manna's sacred dew distil-
White and entire,[141] though congealed and chill-
Congealed on earth, but does, dissolving, run
Into the glories of the almighty sun.

Surely a lovely fancy of resemblance, exquisitely wrought out; an instance of the lighter play of the mystical mind, which yet shadows forth truth.


THE CORONET.

When for the thorns with which I long too long,
With many a piercing wound,
My Saviour's head have crowned,
I seek with garlands to redress that wrong,
Through every garden, every mead
I gather flowers-my fruits are only flowers-
Dismantling all the fragrant towers
That once adorned my shepherdess's head;
And now, when I have summed up all my store,
Thinking-so I myself deceive-
So rich a chaplet thence to weave
As never yet the King of glory wore;
Alas! I find the serpent old,
That, twining in his speckled breast,
About the flowers disguised does fold,
With wreaths of fame and interest.
Ah, foolish man that wouldst debase with them
And mortal glory, heaven's diadem!
But thou who only couldst the serpent tame,
Either his slippery knots at once untie,
And disentangle all his winding snare,
Or shatter too with him my curious frame,[142]
And let these wither, that so he may die,
Though set with skill, and chosen out with care;
That they, while thou on both their spoils dost tread,
May crown thy feet that could not crown thy head.

A true sacrifice of worship, if not a garland of praise! The disciple would have his works tried by the fire, not only that the gold and the precious stones may emerge relucent, but that the wood and hay and stubble may perish. The will of God alone, not what we may have effected, deserves our care. In the perishing of our deeds they fall at his feet: in our willing their loss we crown his head.


CHAPTER XVIII.

A MOUNT OF VISION-HENRY VAUGHAN.


We have now arrived at the borders of a long, dreary tract, which, happily for my readers, I can shorten for them in this my retrospect. From the heights of Henry Vaughan's verse, I look across a stony region, with a few feeble oases scattered over it, and a hazy green in the distance. It does not soften the dreariness that its stones are all laid in order, that the spaces which should be meadows are skilfully paved.

Henry Vaughan belongs to the mystical school, but his poetry rules his theories. You find no more of the mystic than the poet can easily govern; in fact, scarcely more than is necessary to the highest poetry. He develops his mysticism upwards, with relation to his higher nature alone: it blossoms into poetry. His twin-brother Thomas developed his mysticism downwards in the direction of the material sciences-a true effort still, but one in which the danger of ceasing to be true increases with increasing ratio the further it is carried.

They were born in South Wales in the year 1621. Thomas was a clergyman; Henry a doctor of medicine. Both were Royalists, and both suffered in the cause-Thomas by expulsion from his living, Henry by imprisonment. Thomas died soon after the Restoration; Henry outlived the Revolution.

Henry Vaughan was then nearly thirty years younger than George Herbert, whom he consciously and intentionally imitates. His art is not comparable to that of Herbert: hence Herbert remains the master; for it is not the thought that makes the poet; it is the utterance of that thought in worthy presence of speech. He is careless and somewhat rugged. If he can get his thought dressed, and thus made visible, he does not mind the dress fitting awkwardly, or even being a little out at elbows. And yet he has grander lines and phrases than any in Herbert. He has occasionally a daring success that strikes one with astonishment. In a word, he says more splendid things than Herbert, though he writes inferior poems. His thought is profound and just; the harmonies in his soul are true; its artistic and musical ear is defective. His movements are sometimes grand, sometimes awkward. Herbert is always gracious-I use the word as meaning much more than graceful .

The following poem will instance Vaughan's fine mysticism and odd embodiment:


COCK-CROWING.

Father of lights! what sunny seed,
What glance of day hast thou confined
Into this bird? To all the breed
This busy ray thou hast assigned;
Their magnetism works all night,
And dreams of Paradise and light.

Their eyes watch for the morning hue;
Their little grain,[143] expelling night,
So shines and sings, as if it knew
The path unto the house of light:
It seems their candle, howe'er done,
Was tined[144] and lighted at the sun.

If such a tincture, such a touch,
So firm a longing can empower,
Shall thy own image think it much
To watch for thy appearing hour?
If a mere blast so fill the sail,
Shall not the breath of God prevail?

O thou immortal Light and Heat,
Whose hand so shines through all this frame,
That by the beauty of the seat,
We plainly see who made the same!
Seeing thy seed abides in me,
Dwell thou in it, and I in thee.

To sleep without thee is to die;
Yea, 'tis a death partakes of hell;
For where thou dost not close the eye,
It never opens, I can tell:
In such a dark, Egyptian border
The shades of death dwell and disorder

Its joys and hopes and earnest throws,
And hearts whose pulse beats still for light,
Are given to birds, who but thee knows
A love-sick soul's exalted flight?
Can souls be tracked by any eye
But his who gave them wings to fly?

Only this veil, which thou hast broke,
And must be broken yet in me;
This veil, I say, is all the cloak
And cloud which shadows me from thee.
This veil thy full-eyed love denies,