PSALM CXXX
From the deeps of grief and fear,
O Lord, to thee my soul repairs:
From thy heaven bow down thine ear;
Let thy mercy meet my prayers.
Oh! if thou mark'st what's done amiss,
What soul so pure can see thy bliss?
But with thee sweet Mercy stands,
Sealing pardons, working fear.
Wait, my soul, wait on his hands;
Wait, mine eye; oh! wait, mine ear:
If he his eye or tongue affords,
Watch all his looks, catch all his words.
As a watchman waits for day,
And looks for light, and looks again:
When the night grows old and gray,
To be relieved he calls amain:
So look, so wait, so long, mine eyes,
To see my Lord, my sun, arise.
Wait, ye saints, wait on our Lord,
For from his tongue sweet mercy flows;
Wait on his cross, wait on his word;
Upon that tree redemption grows:
He will redeem his Israel
From sin and wrath, from death and hell.
I shall now give two stanzas of his version of the 127th Psalm.
If God build not the house, and lay
The groundwork sure—whoever build,
It cannot stand one stormy day.
If God be not the city's shield,
If he be not their bars and wall,
In vain is watch-tower, men, and all.
Though then thou wak'st when others rest,
Though rising thou prevent'st the sun,
Though with lean care thou daily feast,
Thy labour's lost, and thou undone;
But God his child will feed and keep,
And draw the curtains to his sleep.
Compare this with a version of the same portion by Dr. Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, who, no great poet, has written some good verse. He was about the same age as Phineas Fletcher.
Except the Lord the house sustain,
The builder's labour is in vain;
Except the city he defend,
And to the dwellers safety send,
In vain are sentinels prepared,
Or arméd watchmen for the guard.
You vainly with the early light
Arise, or sit up late at night
To find support, and daily eat
Your bread with sorrow earned and sweat;
When God, who his beloved keeps,
This plenty gives with quiet sleeps.
What difference do we find? That the former has the more poetic touch, the latter the greater truth. The former has just lost the one precious thing in the psalm; the latter has kept it: that care is as useless as painful, for God gives us while we sleep, and not while we labour.
CHAPTER XII
WITHER, HERRICK, AND QUARLES.
George Wither, born in 1588, therefore about the same age as Giles Fletcher, was a very different sort of writer indeed. There could hardly be a greater contrast. Fancy, and all her motley train, were scarcely known to Wither, save by the hearing of the ears.
He became an eager Puritan towards the close of his life, but his poetry chiefly belongs to the earlier part of it. Throughout it is distinguished by a certain straightforward simplicity of good English thought and English word. His hymns remind me, in the form of their speech, of Gascoigne. I shall quote but little; for, although there is a sweet calm and a great justice of reflection and feeling, there is hardly anything of that warming glow, that rousing force, that impressive weight in his verse, which is the chief virtue of the lofty rhyme.
The best in a volume of ninety Hymns and Songs of the Church, is, I think, The Author's Hymn at the close, of which I give three stanzas. They manifest the simplicity and truth of the man, reflecting in their very tone his faithful, contented, trustful nature.
By thy grace, those passions, troubles,
And those wants that me opprest,
Have appeared as water-bubbles,
Or as dreams, and things in jest:
For, thy leisure still attending,
I with pleasure saw their ending.
Those afflictions and those terrors,
Which to others grim appear,
Did but show me where my errors
And my imperfections were;
But distrustful could not make me
Of thy love, nor fright nor shake me.
Those base hopes that would possess me,
And those thoughts of vain repute
Which do now and then oppress me,
Do not, Lord, to me impute;
And though part they will not from me,
Let them never overcome me.
He has written another similar volume, but much larger, and of a somewhat extraordinary character. It consists of no fewer than two hundred and thirty-three hymns, mostly long, upon an incredible variety of subjects, comprehending one for every season of nature and of the church, and one for every occurrence in life of which the author could think as likely to confront man or woman. Of these subjects I quote a few of the more remarkable, but even from them my reader can have little conception of the variety in the book: A Hymn whilst we are washing; In a clear starry Night; A Hymn for a House-warming; After a great Frost or Snow; For one whose Beauty is much praised; For one upbraided with Deformity; For a Widower or a Widow delivered from a troublesome Yokefellow; For a Cripple; For a Jailor; For a Poet.
Here is a portion of one which I hope may be helpful to some of my readers.
WHEN WE CANNOT SLEEP
What ails my heart, that in my breast
It thus unquiet lies;
And that it now of needful rest
Deprives my tiréd eyes?
Let not vain hopes, griefs, doubts, or fears,
Distemper so my mind;
But cast on God thy thoughtful cares,
And comfort thou shalt find.
In vain that soul attempteth ought,
And spends her thoughts in vain,
Who by or in herself hath sought
Desiréd peace to gain.
On thee, O Lord, on thee therefore,
My musings now I place;
Thy free remission I implore,
And thy refreshing grace.
Forgive thou me, that when my mind
Oppressed began to be,
I sought elsewhere my peace to find,
Before I came to thee.
And, gracious God, vouchsafe to grant,
Unworthy though I am,
The needful rest which now I want,
That I may praise thy name.
Before examining the volume, one would say that no man could write so many hymns without frequent and signal failure. But the marvel here is, that the hymns are all so very far from bad. He can never have written in other than a gentle mood. There must have been a fine harmony in his nature, that kept him, as it were. This peacefulness makes him interesting in spite of his comparative flatness. I must restrain remark, however, and give five out of twelve stanzas of another of his hymns.
A ROCKING HYMN
Sweet baby, sleep; what ails my dear?
What ails my darling thus to cry?
Be still, my child, and lend thine ear
To hear me sing thy lullaby.
My pretty lamb, forbear to weep;
Be still, my dear; sweet baby, sleep.
Whilst thus thy lullaby I sing,
For thee great blessings ripening be;
Thine eldest brother is a king,
And hath a kingdom bought for thee.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
A little infant once was he,
And strength in weakness then was laid
Upon his virgin mother's knee,
That power to thee might be conveyed.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Within a manger lodged thy Lord,
Where oxen lay, and asses fed;
Warm rooms we do to thee afford,
An easy cradle or a bed.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
Thou hast, yet more to perfect this,
A promise and an earnest got,
Of gaining everlasting bliss,
Though thou, my babe, perceiv'st it not.
Sweet baby, then forbear to weep;
Be still, my babe; sweet baby, sleep.
I think George Wither's verses will grow upon the reader of them, tame as they are sure to appear at first. His Hallelujah, or Britain's Second Remembrancer, from which I have been quoting, is well worth possessing, and can be procured without difficulty.
We now come to a new sort, both of man and poet—still a clergyman. It is an especial pleasure to write the name of Robert Herrick amongst the poets of religion, for the very act records that the jolly, careless Anacreon of the church, with his head and heart crowded with pleasures, threw down at length his wine-cup, tore the roses from his head, and knelt in the dust.
Nothing bears Herrick's name so unrefined as the things Dr. Donne wrote in his youth; but the impression made by his earlier poems is of a man of far shallower nature, and greatly more absorbed in the delights of the passing hour. In the year 1648, when he was fifty-seven years of age, being prominent as a Royalist, he was ejected from his living by the dominant Puritans; and in that same year he published his poems, of which the latter part and later written is his Noble Numbers, or religious poems. We may wonder at his publishing the Hesperides along with them, but we must not forget that, while the manners of a time are never to be taken as a justification of what is wrong, the judgment of men concerning what is wrong will be greatly influenced by those manners—not necessarily on the side of laxity. It is but fair to receive his own testimony concerning himself, offered in these two lines printed at the close of his Hesperides:
To his book's end this last line he'd have placed: Jocund his muse was, but his life was chaste.
We find the same artist in the Noble Numbers as in the Hesperides, but hardly the same man. However far he may have been from the model of a clergyman in the earlier period of his history, partly no doubt from the society to which his power of song made him acceptable, I cannot believe that these later poems are the results of mood, still less the results of mere professional bias, or even sense of professional duty.
In a good many of his poems he touches the heart of truth; in others, even those of epigrammatic form, he must be allowed to fail in point as well as in meaning. As to his art-forms, he is guilty of great offences, the result of the same passion for lawless figures and similitudes which Dr. Donne so freely indulged. But his verses are brightened by a certain almost childishly quaint and innocent humour; while the tenderness of some of them rises on the reader like the aurora of the coming sun of George Herbert. I do not forget that, even if some of his poems were printed in 1639, years before that George Herbert had done his work and gone home: my figure stands in relation to the order I have adopted.
Some of his verse is homelier than even George Herbert's homeliest. One of its most remarkable traits is a quaint thanksgiving for the commonest things by name—not the less real that it is sometimes even queer. For instance:
God gives not only corn for need,
But likewise superabundant seed;
Bread for our service, bread for show;
Meat for our meals, and fragments too:
He gives not poorly, taking some
Between the finger and the thumb,
But for our glut, and for our store,
Fine flour pressed down, and running o'er.
Here is another, delightful in its oddity. We can fancy the merry yet gracious poet chuckling over the vision of the child and the fancy of his words.
A GRACE FOR A CHILD
Here a little child I stand,
Heaving up my either hand;
Cold as paddocks though they be, frogs.
Here I lift them up to thee,
For a benison to fall
On our meat, and on us all. Amen.
I shall now give two or three of his longer poems, which are not long, and then a few of his short ones. The best known is the following, but it is not so well known that I must therefore omit it.
HIS LITANY TO THE HOLY SPIRIT
In the hour of my distress,
When temptations me oppress,
And when I my sins confess,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When I lie within my bed,
Sick in heart, and sick in head,
And with doubts discomforted,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the house doth sigh and weep,
And the world is drowned in sleep,
Yet mine eyes the watch do keep,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the artless doctor sees without skill.
No one hope, but of his fees,
And his skill runs on the lees,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When his potion and his pill,
His or none or little skill,
Meet for nothing but to kill,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the passing-bell doth toll,
And the furies in a shoal
Come to fright a parting soul,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the tapers now burn blue,
And the comforters are few,
And that number more than true,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the priest his last hath prayed,
And I nod to what is said,
'Cause my speech is now decayed,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When God knows I'm tossed about,
Either with despair or doubt,
Yet, before the glass be out,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the tempter me pursu'th
With the sins of all my youth,
And half damns me with untruth,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the flames and hellish cries
Fright mine ears and fright mine eyes,
And all terrors me surprise,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
When the judgment is revealed,
And that opened which was sealed;
When to thee I have appealed,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me.
THE WHITE ISLAND, OR PLACE OF THE BLEST
In this world, the Isle of Dreams,
While we sit by sorrow's streams,
Tears and terrors are our themes,
Reciting;
But when once from hence we fly,
More and more approaching nigh
Unto young eternity,
Uniting;
In that whiter island, where
Things are evermore sincere;
Candour here and lustre there,
Delighting:
There no monstrous fancies shall
Out of hell an horror call,
To create, or cause at all,
Affrighting.
There, in calm and cooling sleep
We our eyes shall never steep,
But eternal watch shall keep,
Attending
Pleasures such as shall pursue
Me immortalized and you;
And fresh joys, as never too
Have ending.
TO DEATH
Thou bid'st me come away;
And I'll no longer stay
Than for to shed some tears
For faults of former years;
And to repent some crimes
Done in the present times;
And next, to take a bit
Of bread, and wine with it;
To don my robes of love,
Fit for the place above;
To gird my loins about
With charity throughout,
And so to travel hence
With feet of innocence:
These done, I'll only cry,
"God, mercy!" and so die.
ETERNITY
O years and age, farewell!
Behold I go
Where I do know
Infinity to dwell.
And these mine eyes shall see
All times, how they
Are lost i' th' sea
Of vast eternity,
Where never moon shall sway
The stars; but she
And night shall be
Drowned in one endless day.
THE GOODNESS OF HIS GOD
When winds and seas do rage,
And threaten to undo me,
Thou dost their wrath assuage,
If I but call unto thee.
A mighty storm last night
Did seek my soul to swallow;
But by the peep of light
A gentle calm did follow.
What need I then despair
Though ills stand round about me;
Since mischiefs neither dare
To bark or bite without thee?
TO GOD
Lord, I am like to mistletoe,
Which has no root, and cannot grow
Or prosper, but by that same tree
It clings about: so I by thee.
What need I then to fear at all
So long as I about thee crawl?
But if that tree should fall and die,
Tumble shall heaven, and down will I.
Here are now a few chosen from many that—to borrow a term from Crashaw—might be called
DIVINE EPIGRAMS
God, when he's angry here with any one,
His wrath is free from perturbation;
And when we think his looks are sour and grim,
The alteration is in us, not him.
* * * * *
God can't be wrathful; but we may conclude
Wrathful he may be by similitude:
God's wrathful said to be when he doth do
That without wrath, which wrath doth force us to.
* * * * *
'Tis hard to find God; but to comprehend
Him as he is, is labour without end.
* * * * *
God's rod doth watch while men do sleep, and then
The rod doth sleep while vigilant are men.
* * * * *
A man's trangression God does then remit,
When man he makes a penitent for it.
* * * * *
God, when he takes my goods and chattels hence,
Gives me a portion, giving patience:
What is in God is God: if so it be
He patience gives, he gives himself to me.
* * * * *
Humble we must be, if to heaven we go;
High is the roof there, but the gate is low.
* * * * *
God who's in heaven, will hear from thence,
If not to the sound, yet to the sense.
* * * * *
The same who crowns the conqueror, will be
A coadjutor in the agony.
* * * * *
God is so potent, as his power can that.
Draw out of bad a sovereign good to man.
* * * * *
Paradise is, as from the learn'd I gather,
A choir of blest souls circling in the Father.
* * * * *
Heaven is not given for our good works here;
Yet it is given to the labourer.
* * * * *
One more for the sake of Martha, smiled at by so many because they are incapable either of her blame or her sister's praise.
The repetition of the name, made known
No other than Christ's full affection.
And so farewell to the very lovable Robert Herrick.
Francis Quarles was born in 1592. I have not much to say about him, popular as he was in his own day, for a large portion of his writing takes the shape of satire, which I consider only an active form of negation. I doubt much if mere opposition to the false is of any benefit. Convince a man by argument that the thing he has been taught is false, and you leave his house empty, swept, and garnished; but the expulsion of the falsehood is no protection against its re-entrance in another mask, with seven worse than itself in its company. The right effort of the teacher is to give the positive—to present, as he may, the vision of reality, for the perception of which, and not for the discovery of falsehood, is man created. This will not only cast out the demon, but so people the house that he will not dare return. If a man might disprove all the untruths in creation, he would hardly be a hair's breadth nearer the end of his own making. It is better to hold honestly one fragment of truth in the midst of immeasurable error, than to sit alone, if that were possible, in the midst of an absolute vision, clear as the hyaline, but only repellent of falsehood, not receptive of truth. It is the positive by which a man shall live. Truth is his life. The refusal of the false is not the reception of the true. A man may deny himself into a spiritual lethargy, without denying one truth, simply by spending his strength for that which is not bread, until he has none left wherewith to search for the truth, which alone can feed him. Only when subjected to the positive does the negative find its true vocation.
I am jealous of the living force cast into the slough of satire. No doubt, either indignant or loving rebuke has its end and does its work, but I fear that wit, while rousing the admiration of the spiteful or the like witty, comes in only to destroy its dignity. At the same time, I am not sure whether there might not be such a judicious combination of the elements as to render my remarks inapplicable.
At all events, poetry favours the positive, and from the Emblems named of Quarles I shall choose one in which it fully predominates. There is something in it remarkably fine.
PHOSPHOR, BRING THE DAY
Will't ne'er be morning? Will that promised light
Ne'er break, and clear those clouds of night?
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day,
Whose conquering ray
May chase these fogs: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
How long, how long shall these benighted eyes
Languish in shades, like feeble flies
Expecting spring? How long shall darkness soil
The face of earth, and thus beguile
Our souls of sprightful action? When, when will day
Begin to dawn, whose new-born ray
May gild the weathercocks of our devotion,
And give our unsouled souls new motion?
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day:
The light will fray
These horrid mists: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
* * * * *
Let those whose eyes, like owls, abhor the light—
Let those have night that love the night:
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
How sad delay
Afflicts dull hopes! Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
Alas! my light-in-vain-expecting eyes
Can find no objects but what rise
From this poor mortal blaze, a dying spark
Of Vulcan's forge, whose flames are dark,—
A dangerous, dull, blue-burning light,
As melancholy as the night:
Here's all the suns that glister in the sphere
Of earth: Ah me! what comfort's here!
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
Haste, haste away
Heaven's loitering lamp: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
Blow, Ignorance. O thou, whose idle knee
Rocks earth into a lethargy,
And with thy sooty fingers hast benight
The world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite;
Since thou hast puffed our greater taper, do
Puff on, and out the lesser too.
If e'er that breath-exiled flame return,
Thou hast not blown as it will burn.
Sweet Phosphor, bring the day:
Light will repay
The wrongs of night: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.
With honoured, thrice honoured George Herbert waiting at the door, I cannot ask Francis Quarles to remain longer: I can part with him without regret, worthy man and fair poet as he is.