ROBERT GRANT’S “SACRED POEMS”
When Gibbon wrote the famous fiftieth chapter of the Decline and Fall, he was suspected of being a Mohammedan, because he dealt leniently with the Arab religion. Edwin Arnold was half believed to be a Buddhist, because his Light of Asia idealized the saint of India. But Robert Grant was never called a Jew, despite the fact that he was the champion of Jewish rights in Parliament. Grant was too genuine a Christian for anyone to doubt his orthodoxy. The same man who brought in the 1830 Bill to remove Jewish political disabilities was the author of some of the most popular hymns of the Church.
Yet, as though to show the Hebrew spirit of this non-Hebraic friend of the Hebrews, the best of his poems were written on Hebrew themes. Sir Robert Grant died in India in 1838; he had gone out as governor of Bombay. In the following year, his brother, Lord Glenelg, published Grant’s Sacred Poems. It was a small book, containing in all only a dozen items. But it had a great vogue, and some of the poems found a place “in almost every collection of devotional verse,” as the children of the author proudly claim in the preface to the 1868 edition. Grant would have been especially gratified, one may feel certain, had he been able to anticipate that his translation of parts of Psalm 104 would be adopted in such Jewish compilations as the Services for Children drawn up for use in the New West End Synagogue, London.
A charming poem did Grant write on the text: “Whom have I in heaven but Thee? And there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee” (Psalm 73. 25). Earth is beautiful with its “woods that wave,” its “hills that tower,” and “Ocean rolling in his power”; human friendship is a “gem transcending price,” while love is a “flower from Paradise,”
Yet, amidst this scene so fair,
Should I cease Thy smile to share,
What were all its joys to me?
Whom have I on earth but Thee?
And so with heaven, where “beyond our sight,” there “rolls a world of purer light,” with its unclouded bliss, its union of severed hearts, where “immortal music rings” from “unnumbered seraph strings.”
O! that world is passing fair;
Yet if Thou wert absent there,
What were all its joys to me?
Whom have I in heaven but Thee?
The poem might have closed there, perhaps a stronger writer would have suppressed the thin stanza. But while it detracts from the virility of the verses, it adds measurably to their tenderness.
Lord of earth and heaven! my breast
Seeks in Thee its only rest;
I was lost, Thy accents mild
Homeward lur’d Thy wandering child;
I was blind; Thy healing ray
Charm’d the long eclipse away;
Source of every joy I know,
Solace of my every woe,
O if once Thy smile divine
Ceas’d upon my soul to shine,
What were earth or heaven to me?
What have I in each but Thee?
Almost as good in idea, though not so perfect in form, is Grant’s set of verses on Psalm 94. 12: “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest.”
Enchanted with all that was dazzling and fair,
I followed the rainbow—I caught at the toy;
And still in displeasure Thy goodness was there,
Disappointing the hope, and defeating the joy.
The divine goodness is seen in man’s disappointments, when the fulfilment of hope would have been loss, not gain.
On the whole, however, Grant is less successful when writing to a text than when paraphrasing a context. His renderings of certain Psalms are among the best attempts of the kind. This praise applies to his version of Psalm 49; less unreservedly to his adaptation of Psalm 2. In rendering Psalm 71, Grant gave sentiment too loose a rein. Addison had translated the opening verses of Psalm 19, beginning “The spacious firmament on high.” Grant composed what he called “a sequel or counterpart” to Addison’s hymn, corresponding to the latter portion of Psalm 19 as Addison’s fragment corresponds to the earlier portion. Grant’s supplement ends thus:
Almighty Lord! the sun shall fail,
The moon forget her nightly tale,
And deepest silence hush on high
The radiant chorus of the sky;
But, fixed for everlasting years,
Unmoved amid the wreck of spheres,
Thy word shall shine in cloudless day,
When heaven and earth have passed away.
This is fine, but Grant here hardly bears comparison with Addison: it is the fate of sequels to prove inferior to their forerunners. There is nothing in Grant’s version to equal Addison’s close, where the sun, moon, and stars are
Forever singing as they shine,
“The hand that made us is divine.”
On the other hand, Grant falls very little below Milton in his imitation of part of Psalm 84. I must find room to quote it in full.
How deep the joy, Almighty Lord,
Thy altars to the heart afford!
With envying eyes I see
The swallow fly to nestle there,
And find within the house of prayer
A bliss denied to me!
Compelled by day to roam for food
Where scorching suns or tempests rude
Their angry influence fling,
O, gladly in that sheltered nest
She smooths, at eve, her ruffled breast,
And folds her weary wing.
Thrice happy wand’rer! fain would I,
Like thee, from ruder climates fly,
That seat of rest to share;
Opprest with tumult, sick with wrongs,
How oft my fainting spirit longs
To lay its sorrows there!
Oh! ever on that holy ground
The cov’ring cherub Peace is found,
With brooding wings serene;
And Charity’s seraphic glow,
And gleams of glory that foreshow
A higher, brighter scene.
For even that refuge but bestows
A transient tho’ a sweet repose,
For one short hour allowed;—
Then upwards we shall take our flight
To hail a spring without a blight,
A heaven without a cloud!
Had Grant ever studied rabbinic commentaries? For this is the very use made of the eighty-fourth Psalm in the Midrash. The earthly pilgrimage leads to the heavenly Zion.
I have used for this poem space which some readers may have expected me to reserve for the best of all of Grant’s renderings, that of portions of Psalm 104. In this Grant not only does not fall below the greatest of his predecessors—Henry Vaughan—but he transcends even that master’s work. It is true that Vaughan renders the whole of this long Psalm literally, whereas Grant merely paraphrases a few verses. But none the less, Grant’s “O Worship the King” is a superb reproduction of the Psalmist’s spirit. As not uncommonly happens with Grant, he falls off towards the end, and his sixth verse is nowadays justly deleted when the rendering is used liturgically. Nothing, however, could be more exquisite than these stanzas:
The earth with its store
Of wonders untold,
Almighty! Thy power
Hath founded of old:
Hath ’stablished it fast
By a changeless decree,
And round it hath cast,
Like a mantle, the sea.
Thy bountiful care
What tongue can recite?
It breathes in the air,
It shines in the light;
It streams from the hills,
It descends to the plains,
And sweetly distils
In the dew and the rain.
One wonders at his versatility. He could draft a bill for parliament deftly, and then indite such verses as those quoted. There is, indeed, something akin to the Hebrew genius in the English. For David, too, could govern, and in the intervals of ruling meditate the Psalms which make so eternal an appeal. On Robert Grant, the advocate of Jewish rights, there had, indeed, fallen a portion of the Davidic spirit.