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_ 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,
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.
FOOTNOTE: [143] The "sunny seed" in their hearts.
FOOTNOTE: [144] From _tine_ or _tind_, to set on fire. Hence _tinder_.
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!
FOOTNOTE: [145] The body of Jesus.
FOOTNOTE: [146] Mark i. 35; Luke xxi. 37. The word _time_ must be associated both with _progress_ and _prayer_--his walking-time and prayer-time.
FOOTNOTE: [147] This is an allusion to the sphere-music: the great heavens is a clock whose hours are those when Jesus retires to his Father; and to these hours the sphere-music gives the chime.
FOOTNOTE: [148] He continues his poetic synonyms for the night.
FOOTNOTE: [149] "Behold I stand at the door and knock."
FOOTNOTE: [150] A monosyllable.
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
Unlock thy bowers,[151]
And with their blush of light descry
Thy locks crowned with eternity?
Indeed, it is the only time
That with thy glory doth best chime:
All now are stirring; every field
Full hymns doth yield;
The whole creation shakes off night,
And for thy shadow looks the light;[152]
Stars now vanish without number;
Sleepy planets set and slumber;
The pursy clouds disband and scatter;--
All expect some sudden matter;
Not one beam triumphs, but, from far,
That morning-star.
O, at what time soever thou,
Unknown to us, the heavens wilt bow,
And, with thy angels in the van,
Descend to judge poor careless man,
Grant I may not like puddle lie
In a corrupt security,
Where, if a traveller water crave,
He finds it dead, and in a grave;
But as this restless, vocal spring
All day and night doth run and sing,
And though here born, yet is acquainted
Elsewhere, and, flowing, keeps untainted,
So let me all my busy age
In thy free services engage;
And though, while here, of force,[153] I must
Have commerce sometimes with poor dust,[154]
And in my flesh, though vile and low,
As this doth in her channel, flow,
Yet let my course, my aim, my love,
And chief acquaintance be above.
So when that day and hour shall come,
In which thyself will be the sun,
Thou'lt find me drest and on my way,
Watching the break of thy great day.
FOOTNOTE: [151] Often used for _chambers_.
FOOTNOTE: [152] "The creation looks for the light, thy shadow?" Or, "The light looks for thy shadow, the sun"?
FOOTNOTE: [153] _Perforce_: of necessity.
FOOTNOTE: [154] He does not mean his fellows, but his bodily nature.
I do not think that description of the dawn has ever been surpassed. The verse "All expect some sudden matter," is wondrously fine. The water "dead and in a grave," because stagnant, is a true fancy; and the "acquainted elsewhere" of the running stream, is a masterly phrase. I need not point out the symbolism of the poem.
I do not know a writer, Wordsworth not excepted, who reveals more delight in the visions of Nature than Henry Vaughan. He is a true forerunner of Wordsworth, inasmuch as the latter sets forth with only greater profundity and more art than he, the relations between Nature and Human Nature; while, on the other hand, he is the forerunner as well of some one that must yet do what Wordsworth has left almost unattempted, namely--set forth the sympathy of Nature with the aspirations of the spirit that is born of God, born again, I mean, in the recognition of the child's relation to the Father. Both Herbert and Vaughan have thus read Nature, the latter turning many leaves which few besides have turned. In this he has struck upon a deeper and richer lode than even Wordsworth, although he has not wrought it with half his skill. In any history of the development of the love of the present age for Nature, Vaughan, although I fear his influence would be found to have been small as yet, must be represented as the Phosphor of coming dawn. Beside him, Thomson is cold, artistic, and gray: although larger in scope, he is not to be compared with him in sympathetic sight. It is this insight that makes Vaughan a mystic. He can see one thing everywhere, and all things the same--yet each with a thousand sides that radiate crossing lights, even as the airy particles around us. For him everything is the expression of, and points back to, some fact in the Divine Thought. Along the line of every ray he looks towards its radiating centre--the heart of the Maker.
I could give many instances of Vaughan's power in reading the heart of Nature, but I may not dwell upon this phase. Almost all the poems I give and have given will afford such.
I walked the other day, to spend my hour,
Into a field,
Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield
A gallant flower;
But winter now had ruffled all the bower
And curious store
I knew there heretofore.
Yet I whose search loved not to peep and peer
I' th' face of things,
Thought with myself, there might be other springs
Besides this here,
Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year;
And so the flower
Might have some other bower.
Then taking up what I could nearest spy,
I digged about
That place where I had seen him to grow out;
And by and by
I saw the warm recluse alone to lie,
Where fresh and green
He lived of us unseen.
Many a question intricate and rare
Did I there strow;
But all I could extort was, that he now
Did there repair
Such losses as befell him in this air,
And would ere long
Come forth most fair and young.
This past, I threw the clothes quite o'er his head;
And, stung with fear
Of my own frailty, dropped down many a tear
Upon his bed;
Then sighing, whispered, _Happy are the dead!
What peace doth now
Rock him asleep below!_
And yet, how few believe such doctrine springs
From a poor root
Which all the winter sleeps here under foot,
And hath no wings
To raise it to the truth and light of things,
But is still trod
By every wandering clod!
O thou, whose spirit did at first inflame
And warm the dead!
And by a sacred incubation fed
With life this frame,
Which once had neither being, form, nor name!
Grant I may so
Thy steps track here below,
That in these masks and shadows I may see
Thy sacred way;
And by those hid ascents climb to that day
Which breaks from thee,
Who art in all things, though invisibly:
Show me thy peace,
Thy mercy, love, and ease.
And from this care, where dreams and sorrows reign,
Lead me above,
Where light, joy, leisure, and true comforts move
Without all pain:
There, hid in thee, show me his life again
At whose dumb urn
Thus all the year I mourn.
There are several amongst his poems lamenting, like this, the death of some dear friend--perhaps his twin-brother, whom he outlived thirty years.
According to what a man is capable of seeing in nature, he becomes either a man of appliance, a man of science, a mystic, or a poet.
I must now give two that are simple in thought, construction, and music. The latter ought to be popular, from the nature of its rhythmic movement, and the holy merriment it carries. But in the former, note how the major key of gladness changes in the third stanza to the minor key of aspiration, which has always some sadness in it; a sadness which deepens to grief in the next stanza at the consciousness of unfitness for Christ's company, but is lifted by hope almost again to gladness in the last.
CHRIST'S NATIVITY.
Awake, glad heart! Get up, and sing!
It is the birthday of thy king!
Awake! awake!
The sun doth shake
Light from his locks, and, all the way
Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.
Awake! awake! Hark how the wood rings
Winds whisper, and the busy springs
A concert make:
Awake! awake!
Man is their high-priest, and should rise
To offer up the sacrifice.
I would I were some bird or star,
Fluttering in woods, or lifted far
Above this inn
And road of sin!
Then either star or bird should be
Shining or singing still to thee.
I would I had in my best part
Fit rooms for thee! or that my heart
Were so clean as
Thy manger was!
But I am all filth, and obscene;
Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.
Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
This leper haunt and soil thy door.
Cure him, ease him;
O release him!
And let once more, by mystic birth,
The Lord of life be born in earth.
The fitting companion to this is his
EASTER HYMN.
Death and darkness, get you packing:
Nothing now to man is lacking.
All your triumphs now are ended,
And what Adam marred is mended.
Graves are beds now for the weary;
Death a nap, to wake more merry;
Youth now, full of pious duty,
Seeks in thee for perfect beauty;
The weak and aged, tired with length
Of days, from thee look for new strength;
And infants with thy pangs contest,
As pleasant as if with the breast.
Then unto him who thus hath thrown
Even to contempt thy kingdom down,
And by his blood did us advance
Unto his own inheritance--
To him be glory, power, praise,
From this unto the last of days!
We must now descend from this height of true utterance into the Valley of Humiliation, and cannot do better than console ourselves by listening to the boy in mean clothes, of the fresh and well-favoured countenance, whom Christiana and her fellow-pilgrims hear singing in that valley.
He that is down, needs fear no fall;
He that is low, no pride;
He that is humble ever shall
Have God to be his guide.
I am content with what I have,
Little be it or much;
And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
Because thou savest[155] such.
Fulness to such a burden is
That go on pilgrimage;
Here little, and hereafter bliss,
Is best from age to age.
FOOTNOTE: [155] _Savourest?_
I could not have my book without one word in it of John Bunyan, the tinker, probably the gipsy, who although born only and not made a poet, like his great brother, John Milton, has uttered in prose a wealth of poetic thought. He was born in 1628, twenty years after Milton. I must not, however, remark on this noble Bohemian of literature and prophecy; but leaving at length these flowery hills and meadows behind me, step on my way across the desert.--England had now fallen under the influence of France instead of Italy, and that influence has never been for good to our literature, at least. Thence its chief aim grew to be a desirable trimness of speech and logical arrangement of matter--good external qualities purchased at a fearful price with the loss of all that makes poetry precious. The poets of England, with John Dryden at their head, ceased almost for a time to deal with the truths of humanity, and gave themselves to the facts and relations of society. The nation which could recall the family of the Stuarts must necessarily fall into such a decay of spiritual life as should render its literature only respectable at the best, and its religious utterances essentially vulgar. But the decay is gradual.
Bishop Ken, born in 1637, is known chiefly by his hymns for the morning and evening, deservedly popular. He has, however, written a great many besides--too many, indeed, for variety or excellence. He seems to have set himself to write them as acts of worship. They present many signs of a perversion of taste which, though not in them so remarkable, rose to a height before long. He annoys us besides by the constant recurrence of certain phrases, one or two of which are not admirable, and by using, in the midst of a simple style, odd Latin words. Here are portions of, I think, one of his best, and good it is.
FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS. * * * * *
Lord, 'tis thyself who hast impressed
In native light on human breast,
That their Creator all
Mankind should Father call:
A father's love all mortals know,
And the love filial which they owe.
Our Father gives us heavenly light,
And to be happy, ghostly sight;
He blesses, guides, sustains;
He eases us in pains;
Abatements for our weakness makes,
And never a true child forsakes.
He waits till the hard heart relents;
Our self-damnation he laments;
He sweetly them invites
To share in heaven's delights;
His arms he opens to receive
All who for past transgressions grieve.
My Father! O that name is sweet
To sinners mourning in retreat.
God's heart paternal yearns
When he a change discerns;
He to his favour them restores;
He heals their most inveterate sores.
* * * * *
Religious honour, humble awe;
Obedience to our Father's law;
A lively grateful sense
Of tenderness immense;
Full trust on God's paternal cares;
Submission which chastisement bears;
Grief, when his goodness we offend;
Zeal, to his likeness to ascend;
Will, from the world refined,
To his sole will resigned:
These graces in God's children shine,
Reflections of the love divine.
* * * * *
God's Son co-equal taught us all
In prayer his Father ours to call:
With confidence in need,
We to our Father speed:
Of his own Son the language dear
Intenerates the Father's ear. _makes tender._
Thou Father art, though to my shame,
I often forfeit that dear name;
But since for sin I grieve,
Me father-like receive;
O melt me into filial tears,
To pay of love my vast arrears.
* * * * *
O Spirit of Adoption! spread
Thy wings enamouring o'er my head;
O Filial love immense!
Raise me to love intense;
O Father, source of love divine,
My powers to love and hymn incline!
While God my Father I revere,
Nor all hell powers, nor death I fear;
I am my Father's care;
His succours present are.
All comes from my loved Father's will,
And that sweet name intends no ill.
God's Son his soul, when life he closed,
In his dear Father's hands reposed:
I'll, when my last I breathe,
My soul to God bequeath;
And panting for the joys on high,
Invoking Love Paternal, die.
Born in 1657, one of the later English Platonists, John Norris, who, with how many incumbents between I do not know, succeeded George Herbert in the cure of Bemerton, has left a few poems, which would have been better if he had not been possessed with the common admiration for the rough-shod rhythms of Abraham Cowley.
Here is one in which the peculiarities of his theories show themselves very prominently. There is a constant tendency in such to wander into the region half-spiritual, half-material.
THE ASPIRATION.
How long, great God, how long must I
Immured in this dark prison lie;
My soul must watch to have intelligence;
Where at the grates and avenues of sense
Where but faint gleams of thee salute my sight,
Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night?
When shall I leave this magic sphere,
And be all mind, all eye, all ear?
How cold this clime! And yet my sense
Perceives even here thy influence.
Even here thy strong magnetic charms I feel,
And pant and tremble like the amorous steel.
To lower good, and beauties less divine,
Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline,
But yet, so strong the sympathy,
It turns, and points again to thee.
I long to see this excellence
Which at such distance strikes my sense.
My impatient soul struggles to disengage
Her wings from the confinement of her cage.
Wouldst thou, great Love, this prisoner once set free,
How would she hasten to be linked to thee!
She'd for no angels' conduct stay,
But fly, and love on all the way.
THE RETURN.
Dear Contemplation! my divinest joy!
When I thy sacred mount ascend,
What heavenly sweets my soul employ!
Why can't I there my days for ever spend?
When I have conquered thy steep heights with pain,
What pity 'tis that I must down again!
And yet I must: my passions would rebel
Should I too long continue here:
No, here I must not think to dwell,
But mind the duties of my proper sphere.
So angels, though they heaven's glories know,
Forget not to attend their charge below.
The old hermits thought to overcome their impulses by retiring from the world: our Platonist has discovered for himself that the world of duty is the only sphere in which they can be combated. Never perhaps is a saint more in danger of giving way to impulse, let it be anger or what it may, than in the moment when he has just descended from this mount of contemplation.
We find ourselves now in the zone of _hymn_-writing. From this period, that is, from towards the close of the seventeenth century, a large amount of the fervour of the country finds vent in hymns: they are innumerable. With them the scope of my book would not permit me to deal, even had I inclination thitherward, and knowledge enough to undertake their history. But I am not therefore precluded from presenting any hymn whose literary excellence makes it worthy.
It is with especial pleasure that I refer to a little book which was once a household treasure in a multitude of families,[156] the _Spiritual Songs_ of John Mason, a clergyman in the county of Buckingham. The date of his birth does not appear to be known, but the first edition of these songs[157] was published in 1683. Dr. Watts was very fond of them: would that he had written with similar modesty of style! A few of them are still popular in congregational singing. Here is the first in the book:
FOOTNOTE: [156] The first I ever saw of its hymns was on a broad-sheet of Christmas Carols, with coloured pictures, printed in Seven Dials.
FOOTNOTE: [157] They passed through twenty editions, not to mention one lately published (_by Daniel Sedgwick, of 81, Sun-street, Bishopsgate, a man who, concerning hymns and their writers, knows more than any other man I have met_), from which, carefully edited, I have gathered all my _information_, although I had known the book itself for many years.
A GENERAL SONG OF PRAISE TO ALMIGHTY GOD.
How shall I sing that Majesty
Which angels do admire?
Let dust in dust and silence lie;
Sing, sing, ye heavenly choir.
Thousands of thousands stand around
Thy throne, O God most high;
Ten thousand times ten thousand sound
Thy praise; but who am I?
Thy brightness unto them appears,
Whilst I thy footsteps trace;
A sound of God comes to my ears;
But they behold thy face.
They sing because thou art their sun:
Lord, send a beam on me;
For where heaven is but once begun,
There hallelujahs be.
Enlighten with faith's light my heart;
Enflame it with love's fire;
Then shall I sing and bear a part
With that celestial choir.
I shall, I fear, be dark and cold,
With all my fire and light;
Yet when thou dost accept their gold,
Lord, treasure up my mite.
How great a being, Lord, is thine.
Which doth all beings keep!
Thy knowledge is the only line
To sound so vast a deep.
Thou art a sea without a shore,
A sun without a sphere;
Thy time is now and evermore,
Thy place is everywhere.
How good art thou, whose goodness is
Our parent, nurse, and guide!
Whose streams do water Paradise,
And all the earth beside!
Thine upper and thy nether springs
Make both thy worlds to thrive;
Under thy warm and sheltering wings
Thou keep'st two broods alive.
Thy arm of might, most mighty king
Both rocks and hearts doth break:
My God, thou canst do everything
But what should show thee weak.
Thou canst not cross thyself, or be
Less than thyself, or poor;
But whatsoever pleaseth thee,
That canst thou do, and more.
Who would not fear thy searching eye,
Witness to all that's true!
Dark Hell, and deep Hypocrisy
Lie plain before its view.
Motions and thoughts before they grow,
Thy knowledge doth espy;
What unborn ages are to do,
Is done before thine eye.
Thy wisdom which both makes and mends,
We ever much admire:
Creation all our wit transcends;
Redemption rises higher.
Thy wisdom guides strayed sinners home,
'Twill make the dead world rise,
And bring those prisoners to their doom:
Its paths are mysteries.
Great is thy truth, and shall prevail
To unbelievers' shame:
Thy truth and years do never fail;
Thou ever art the same.
Unbelief is a raging wave
Dashing against a rock:
If God doth not his Israel save,
Then let Egyptians mock.
Most pure and holy are thine eyes,
Most holy is thy name;
Thy saints, and laws, and penalties,
Thy holiness proclaim.
This is the devil's scourge and sting,
This is the angels' song,
Who _holy, holy, holy_ sing,
In heavenly Canaan's tongue.
Mercy, that shining attribute,
The sinner's hope and plea!
Huge hosts of sins in their pursuit,
Are drowned in thy Red Sea.
Mercy is God's memorial,
And in all ages praised:
My God, thine only Son did fall,
That Mercy might be raised.
Thy bright back-parts, O God of grace,
I humbly here adore:
Show me thy glory and thy face,
That I may praise thee more.
Since none can see thy face and live,
For me to die is best:
Through Jordan's streams who would not dive,
To land at Canaan's rest?
To these _Songs of Praise_ is appended another series called _Penitential Cries_, by the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, who, for a short time a clergyman in Buckinghamshire, became the minister of the Congregational church at Northampton, afterwards under the care of Doddridge. Although he was an imitator of Mason, some of his hymns are admirable. The following I think one of the best:--
FOR COMMUNION WITH GOD.
Alas, my God, that we should be
Such strangers to each other!
O that as friends we might agree,
And walk and talk together!
Thou know'st my soul does dearly love
The place of thine abode;
No music drops so sweet a sound
As these two words, _My God_.
* * * * *
May I taste that communion, Lord,
Thy people have with thee?
Thy spirit daily talks with them,
O let it talk with me!
Like Enoch, let me walk with God,
And thus walk out my day,
Attended with the heavenly guards,
Upon the king's highway.
When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?
O come, my Lord most dear!
Come near, come nearer, nearer still:
I'm well when thou art near.
* * * * *
When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?
For, till thou dost appear,
I count each moment for a day,
Each minute for a year.
* * * * *
There's no such thing as pleasure here;
My Jesus is my all:
As thou dost shine or disappear,
My pleasures rise and fall.
Come, spread thy savour on my frame--
No sweetness is so sweet;
Till I get up to sing thy name
Where all thy singers meet.
In the writings of both we recognize a straight-forwardness of expression equal to that of Wither, and a quaint simplicity of thought and form like that of Herrick; while the very charm of some of the best lines is their spontaneity. The men have just enough mysticism to afford them homeliest figures for deepest feelings.
I turn to the accomplished Joseph Addison.
He was born in 1672. His religious poems are so well known, and are for the greater part so ordinary in everything but their simplicity of composition, that I should hardly have cared to choose one, had it not been that we owe him much gratitude for what he did, in the reigns of Anne and George I., to purify the moral taste of the English people at a time when the influence of the clergy was not for elevation, and to teach the love of a higher literature when Milton was little known and less esteemed. Especially are we indebted to him for his modest and admirable criticism of the _Paradise Lost_ in the _Spectator_.
Of those few poems to which I have referred, I choose the best known, because it is the best. It has to me a charm for which I can hardly account.
Yet I imagine I see in it a sign of the poetic times: a flatness of spirit, arising from the evanishment of the mystical element, begins to result in a worship of power. Neither power nor wisdom, though infinite both, could constitute a God worthy of the worship of a human soul; and the worship of such a God must sink to the level of that fancied divinity. Small wonder is it then that the lyric should now droop its wings and moult the feathers of its praise. I do not say that God's more glorious attributes are already forgotten, but that the tendency of the Christian lyric is now to laudation of power--and knowledge, a form of the same--as _the_ essential of Godhead. This indicates no recalling of metaphysical questions, such as we have met in foregoing verse, but a decline towards system; a rising passion--if anything so cold may be called _a passion_--for the reduction of all things to the forms of the understanding, a declension which has prepared the way for the present worship of science, and its refusal, if not denial, of all that cannot be proved in forms of the intellect.
The hymn which has led to these remarks is still good, although, like the loveliness of the red and lowering west, it gives sign of a gray and cheerless dawn, under whose dreariness the child will first doubt if his father loves him, and next doubt if he has a father at all, and is not a mere foundling that Nature has lifted from her path.
The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue etherial sky,
And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
Their great Original proclaim.
The unwearied sun from day to day
Does his Creator's power display;
And publishes to every land
The work of an almighty hand.
Soon as the evening shades prevail,
The moon takes up the wondrous tale;
And nightly to the listening earth
Repeats the story of her birth;
Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
And all the planets, in their turn,
Confirm the tidings as they roll,
And spread the truth from pole to pole.
What though in solemn silence all
Move round the dark terrestrial ball?
What though no real voice nor sound
Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
In reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious voice,
For ever singing as they shine:
"The hand that made us is divine."
The very use of the words _spangled_ and _frame_ seems--to my fancy only, it may be--to indicate a tendency towards the unworthy and theatrical. Yet the second stanza is lovely beyond a doubt; and the whole is most artistic, although after a tame fashion. Whether indeed the heavenly bodies _teach_ what he says, or whether we should read divinity worthy of the name in them at all, without the human revelation which healed men, I doubt much. That divinity is there--_Yes_; that we could read it there without having seen the face of the Son of Man first, I think--_No_. I do not therefore dare imagine that no revelation dimly leading towards such result glimmered in the hearts of God's chosen amongst Jews and Gentiles before he came. What I say is, that power and order, although of God, and preparing the way for him, are not his revealers unto men. No doubt King David compares the perfection of God's law to the glory of the heavens, but he did not learn that perfection from the heavens, but from the law itself, revealed in his own heart through the life-teaching of God. When he had learned it he saw that the heavens were like it.
To unveil God, only manhood like our own will serve. And he has taken the form of man that he might reveal the manhood in him from awful eternity. _
Read next: Chapter 19. The Plain
Read previous: Chapter 17. Crashaw And Marvell
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