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

And only gleams and fractions spies.

O take it off. Make no delay,
But brush me with thy light, that I
May shine unto a perfect day,
And warm me at thy glorious eye.
O take it off; or, till it flee,
Though with no lily, stay with me.

I have no room for poems often quoted, therefore not for that lovely one beginning "They are all gone into the world of light;" but I must not omit The Retreat , for besides its worth, I have another reason for presenting it.


THE RETREAT.

Happy those early days when I
Shined in my angel-infancy!
Before I understood this place
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first love,
And, looking back, at that short space
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense;
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
O how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain
Where first I left my glorious train,
From whence the enlightened spirit sees
That shady city of palm-trees.
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way!
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move;
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came return.

Let any one who is well acquainted with Wordsworth's grand ode-that on the Intimations of Immortality -turn his mind to a comparison between that and this: he will find the resemblance remarkable. Whether The Retreat suggested the form of the Ode is not of much consequence, for the Ode is the outcome at once and essence of all Wordsworth's theories; and whatever he may have drawn from The Retreat is glorified in the Ode . Still it is interesting to compare them. Vaughan believes with Wordsworth and some other great men that this is not our first stage of existence; that we are haunted by dim memories of a former state. This belief is not necessary, however, to sympathy with the poem, for whether the present be our first life or no, we have come from God, and bring from him conscience and a thousand godlike gifts.-"Happy those early days," Vaughan begins: "There was a time," begins Wordsworth, "when the earth seemed apparelled in celestial light." "Before I understood this place," continues Vaughan: "Blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized," says Wordsworth. "A white celestial thought," says Vaughan: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says Wordsworth. "A mile or two off, I could see his face," says Vaughan: "Trailing clouds of glory do we come," says Wordsworth. "On some gilded cloud or flower, my gazing soul would dwell an hour," says Vaughan: "The hour of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower," says Wordsworth.

Wordsworth's poem is the profounder in its philosophy, as well as far the grander and lovelier in its poetry; but in the moral relation, Vaughan's poem is the more definite of the two, and gives us in its close, poor as that is compared with the rest of it, just what we feel is wanting in Wordsworth's-the hope of return to the bliss of childhood. We may be comforted for what we lose by what we gain; but that is not a recompense large enough to be divine: we want both. Vaughan will be a child again. For the movements of man's life are in spirals: we go back whence we came, ever returning on our former traces, only upon a higher level, on the next upward coil of the spiral, so that it is a going back and a going forward ever and both at once. Life is, as it were, a constant repentance, or thinking of it again: the childhood of the kingdom takes the place of the childhood of the brain, but comprises all that was lovely in the former delight. The heavenly children will subdue kingdoms, work righteousness, wax valiant in fight, rout the armies of the aliens, merry of heart as when in the nursery of this world they fought their fancied frigates, and defended their toy-battlements.

Here are the beginning and end of another of similar purport:

CHILDHOOD.

I cannot reach it; and my striving eye
Dazzles at it, as at eternity.
Were now that chronicle alive,
Those white designs which children drive,
And the thoughts of each harmless hour,
With their content too in my power,
Quickly would I make my path even,
And by mere playing go to heaven.

* * * * *

An age of mysteries! which he
Must live twice that would God's face see;
Which angels guard, and with it play-
Angels which foul men drive away.

How do I study now, and scan
Thee more than e'er I studied man,
And only see, through a long night,
Thy edges and thy bordering light!
O for thy centre and mid-day!
For sure that is the narrow way!

Many a true thought comes out by the help of a fancy or half-playful exercise of the thinking power. There is a good deal of such fancy in the following poem, but in the end it rises to the height of the purest and best mysticism. We must not forget that the deepest man can utter, will be but the type or symbol of a something deeper yet, of which he can perceive only a doubtful glimmer. This will serve for general remark upon the mystical mode, as well as for comment explanatory of the close of the poem.


THE NIGHT.

JOHN iii. 2.

Through that pure virgin-shrine,
That sacred veil[145] drawn o'er thy glorious noon,
That men might look and live, as glowworms shine,
And face the moon,
Wise Nicodemus saw such light
As made him know his God by night.

Most blest believer he,
Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes,
Thy long-expected healing wings could see
When thou didst rise!
And, what can never more be done,
Did at midnight speak with the sun!

O who will tell me where
He found thee at that dead and silent hour?
What hallowed solitary ground did bear
So rare a flower,
Within whose sacred leaves did lie
The fulness of the Deity?

No mercy-seat of gold,
No dead and dusty cherub, nor carved stone,
But his own living works did my Lord hold
And lodge alone,
Where trees and herbs did watch and peep
And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

Dear night! this world's defeat;
The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb,
The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat
Which none disturb!
Christ's progress, and his prayer time,[146]
The hours to which high heaven doth chime![147]

God's silent, searching flight;[148]
When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night,
His still, soft call;
His knocking time;[149] the soul's dumb watch,
When spirits their fair kindred catch.

Were all my loud, evil[150] days
Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent,
Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice
Is seldom rent,
Then I in heaven all the long year
Would keep, and never wander here.

But living where the sun
Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire
Themselves and others, I consent and run
To every mire;
And by this world's ill guiding light,
Err more than I can do by night

There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear:
O for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim!

This is glorious; and its lesson of quiet and retirement we need more than ever in these hurried days upon which we have fallen. If men would but be still enough in themselves to hear, through all the noises of the busy light, the voice that is ever talking on in the dusky chambers of their hearts! Look at his love for Nature, too; and read the fourth stanza in connexion with my previous remarks upon symbolism. I think this poem grander than any of George Herbert's. I use the word with intended precision.

Here is one, the end of which is not so good, poetically considered, as the magnificent beginning, but which contains striking lines throughout:-


THE DAWNING.

Ah! what time wilt thou come? When shall that cry,
The Bridegroom's coming , fill the sky?
Shall it in the evening run
When our words and works are done?
Or will thy all-surprising light
Break at midnight,
When either sleep or some dark pleasure
Possesseth mad man without measure?
Or shail these early, fragrant hours