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_ CHAPTER XVII. CRASHAW AND MARVELL
I come now to one of the loveliest of our angel-birds, Richard Crashaw. Indeed he was like a bird in more senses than one; for he belongs to that class of men who seem hardly ever to get foot-hold of this world, but are ever floating in the upper air of it.
What I said of a peculiar AEolian word-music in William Drummond applies with equal truth to Crashaw; while of our own poets, somehow or other, he reminds me of Shelley, in the silvery shine and bell-like melody both of his verse and his imagery; and in one of his poems, _Music's Duel_, the fineness of his phrase reminds me of Keats. But I must not forget that it is only with his sacred, his best poems too, that I am now concerned.
The date of his birth is not known with certainty, but it is judged about 1616, the year of Shakspere's death. He was the son of a Protestant clergyman zealous even to controversy. By a not unnatural reaction Crashaw, by that time, it is said, a popular preacher, when expelled from Oxford in 1644 by the Puritan Parliament because of his refusal to sign their Covenant, became a Roman Catholic. He died about the age of thirty-four, a canon of the Church of Loretto. There is much in his verses of that sentimentalism which, I have already said in speaking of Southwell, is rife in modern Catholic poetry. I will give from Crashaw a specimen of the kind of it. Avoiding a more sacred object, one stanza from a poem of thirty-one, most musical, and full of lovely speech concerning the tears of Mary Magdalen, will suit my purpose.
Hail, sister springs,
Parents of silver-footed rills!
Ever-bubbling things!
Thawing crystal! Snowy hills,
Still spending, never spent!--I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene!
The poem is called _The Weeper_, and is radiant of delicate fancy. But surely such tones are not worthy of flitting moth-like about the holy sorrow of a repentant woman! Fantastically beautiful, they but play with her grief. Sorrow herself would put her shoes off her feet in approaching the weeping Magdalene. They make much of her indeed, but they show her little reverence. There is in them, notwithstanding their fervour of amorous words, a coldness like that which dwells in the ghostly beauty of icicles shining in the moon.
But I almost reproach myself for introducing Crashaw thus. I had to point out the fact, and now having done with it, I could heartily wish I had room to expatiate on his loveliness even in such poems as _The Weeper_.
His _Divine Epigrams_ are not the most beautiful, but they are to me the most valuable of his verses, inasmuch as they make us feel afresh the truth which he sets forth anew. In them some of the facts of our Lord's life and teaching look out upon us as from clear windows of the past. As epigrams, too, they are excellent--pointed as a lance.
_Upon the Sepulchre of our Lord._
Here, where our Lord once laid his head,
Now the grave lies buried.
_The Widow's Mites._
Two mites, two drops, yet all her house and land,
Fall from a steady heart, though trembling hand;
The other's wanton wealth foams high and brave:
The other cast away--she only gave.
_On the Prodigal._
Tell me, bright boy! tell me, my golden lad!
Whither away so frolic? Why so glad?
What! _all_ thy wealth in council? _all_ thy state?
Are husks so dear? Troth, 'tis a mighty rate!
I value the following as a lovely parable. Mary is not contented: to see the place is little comfort. The church itself, with all its memories of the Lord, the gospel-story, and all theory about him, is but his tomb until we find himself.
_Come, see the place-where the Lord lay._
Show me himself, himself, bright sir! Oh show
Which way my poor tears to himself may go.
Were it enough to show the place, and say,
"Look, Mary; here see where thy Lord once lay;"
Then could I show these arms of mine, and say,
"Look, Mary; here see where thy Lord once lay."
From one of eight lines, on the Mother Mary looking on her child in her lap, I take the last two, complete in themselves, and I think best alone.
This new guest to her eyes new laws hath given:
'Twas once _look up_, 'tis now _look down to heaven_.
And here is perhaps his best.
_Two went up into the Temple to pray_.
Two went to pray? Oh rather say,
One went to brag, the other to pray.
One stands up close, and treads on high,
Where the other dares not lend his eye.
One nearer to God's altar trod;
The other to the altar's God.
This appears to me perfect. Here is the true relation between the forms and the end of religion. The priesthood, the altar and all its ceremonies, must vanish from between the sinner and his God. When the priest forgets his mediation of a servant, his duty of a door-keeper to the temple of truth, and takes upon him the office of an intercessor, he stands between man and God, and is a Satan, an adversary. Artistically considered, the poem could hardly be improved.
Here is another containing a similar lesson.
_I am not worthy that thou shouldst come under my roof._
Thy God was making haste into thy roof;
Thy humble faith and fear keeps him aloof.
He'll be thy guest: because he may not be,
He'll come--into thy house? No; into thee.
The following is a world-wide intercession for them that know not what they do. Of those that reject the truth, who can be said ever to have _truly_ seen it? A man must be good to see truth. It is a thought suggested by our Lord's words, not an irreverent opposition to the truth of _them_.
_But now they have seen and hated._
_Seen?_ and yet _hated thee?_ They did not see--
They saw thee not, that saw and hated thee!
No, no; they saw thee not, O Life! O Love!
Who saw aught in thee that their hate could move.
We must not be too ready to quarrel with every oddity: an oddity will sometimes just give the start to an outbreak of song. The strangeness of the following hymn rises almost into grandeur.
EASTER DAY.
Rise, heir of fresh eternity,
From thy virgin-tomb;
Rise, mighty man of wonders, and thy world with thee;
Thy tomb, the universal East--
Nature's new womb;
Thy tomb--fair Immortality's perfumed nest.
Of all the glories[139] make noon gay
This is the morn;
This rock buds forth the fountain of the streams of day;
In joy's white annals lives this hour,
When life was born,
No cloud-scowl on his radiant lids, no tempest-lower.
Life, by this light's nativity,
All creatures have;
Death only by this day's just doom is forced to die.
Nor is death forced; for, may he lie
Throned in thy grave,
Death will on this condition be content to die.
FOOTNOTE: [139] _Which_ understood.
When we come, in the writings of one who has revealed masterdom, upon any passage that seems commonplace, or any figure that suggests nothing true, the part of wisdom is to brood over that point; for the probability is that the barrenness lies in us, two factors being necessary for the result of sight--the thing to be seen and the eye to see it. No doubt the expression may be inadequate, but if we can compensate the deficiency by adding more vision, so much the better for us.
In the second stanza there is a strange combination of images: the rock buds; and buds a fountain; the fountain is light. But the images are so much one at the root, that they slide gracefully into each other, and there is no confusion or incongruity: the result is an inclined plane of development.
I now come to the most musical and most graceful, therefore most lyrical, of his poems. I have left out just three stanzas, because of the sentimentalism of which I have spoken: I would have left out more if I could have done so without spoiling the symmetry of the poem. My reader must be friendly enough to one who is so friendly to him, to let his peculiarities pass unquestioned--amongst the rest his conceits, as well as the trifling discord that the shepherds should be called, after the classical fashion--ill agreeing, from its associations, with Christian song--Tityrus and Thyrsis.
A HYMN OF THE NATIVITY SUNG BY THE SHEPHERDS.
_Chorus_. Come, we shepherds, whose blest sight
Hath met love's noon in nature's night;
Come, lift we up our loftier song,
And wake the sun that lies too long.
To all our world of well-stolen[140] joy
He slept, and dreamed of no such thing,
While we found out heaven's fairer eye,
And kissed the cradle of our king:
Tell him he rises now too late
To show us aught worth looking at.
Tell him we now can show him more
Than he e'er showed to mortal sight--
Than he himself e'er saw before,
Which to be seen needs not his light:
Tell him, Tityrus, where thou hast been;
Tell him, Thyrsis, what thou hast seen.
_Tityrus_. Gloomy night embraced the place
Where the noble infant lay:
The babe looked up and showed his face:
In spite of darkness it was day.
It was thy day, sweet, and did rise
Not from the east, but from thy eyes.
_Chorus._ It was thy day, sweet, &c.
_Thyrsis_. Winter chid aloud, and sent
The angry north to wage his wars:
The north forgot his fierce intent,
And left perfumes instead of scars.
By those sweet eyes' persuasive powers,
Where he meant frosts, he scattered flowers.
_Chorus._ By those sweet eyes', &c.
_Both_. We saw thee in thy balmy nest,
Young dawn of our eternal day;
We saw thine eyes break from the east,
And chase the trembling shades away.
We saw thee, and we blessed the sight;
We saw thee by thine own sweet light.
_Chorus._ We saw thee, &c.
_Tityrus_. "Poor world," said I, "what wilt thou do
To entertain this starry stranger?
Is this the best thou canst bestow--
A cold and not too cleanly manger?
Contend, the powers of heaven and earth,
To fit a bed for this huge birth."
_Chorus._ Contend, the powers, &c.
_Thyrsis_. "Proud world," said I, "cease your contest,
And let the mighty babe alone:
The phoenix builds the phoenix' nest--
Love's architecture is his own.
The babe, whose birth embraves this morn,
Made his own bed ere he was born."
_Chorus._ The babe, whose birth, &c.
_Tityrus_. I saw the curl'd drops, soft and slow,
Come hovering o'er the place's head,
Offering their whitest sheets of snow
To furnish the fair infant's bed:
"Forbear," said I; "be not too bold:
Your fleece is white, but 'tis too cold."
_Chorus._ "Forbear," said I, &c.
_Thyrsis_. I saw the obsequious seraphim
Their rosy fleece of fire bestow;
For well they now can spare their wings,
Since heaven itself lies here below.
"Well done," said I; "but are you sure
Your down, so warm, will pass for pure?"
_Chorus._ "Well done," said I, &c.
* * * * *
_Full Chorus_. Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span!
Summer in winter! day in night!
Heaven in earth, and God in man!
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth!
* * * * *
Welcome--though not to those gay flies
Gilded i' th' beams of earthly kings--
Slippery souls in smiling eyes--
But to poor shepherds, homespun things,
Whose wealth's their flocks, whose wit's to be
Well read in their simplicity.
Yet when young April's husband showers
Shall bless the fruitful Maia's bed,
We'll bring the firstborn of her flowers
To kiss thy feet, and crown thy head:
To thee, dear Lamb! whose love must keep
The shepherds while they feed their sheep.
To thee, meek Majesty, soft king
Of simple graces and sweet loves,
Each of us his lamb will bring,
Each his pair of silver doves.
At last, in fire of thy fair eyes,
Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.
FOOTNOTE: [140] How unpleasant conceit can become. The joy of seeing the Saviour was _stolen_ because they gained it in the absence of the sun!
A splendid line to end with! too good for the preceding one. All temples and altars, all priesthoods and prayers, must vanish in this one and only sacrifice. Exquisite, 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.
FOOTNOTE: [141] A trisyllable.
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.
FOOTNOTE: [142] His garland.
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. _
Read next: Chapter 18. A Mount Of Vision--Henry Vaughan
Read previous: Chapter 16. Henry More And Richard Baxter
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