THE PEARL.
"I know the ways of learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the press, and make it run;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun
In laws and policy; what the stars conspire;
What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire;
Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas;
The stock and surplus, cause and history:
All these stand open, or I have the keys:
Yet I love thee.
"I know the ways of honor, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesy and wit:
In vies of favor whether party gains,
When glory swells the heart and mouldeth it
To all expressions both of hand and eye,
Which on the world a true-love knot may tie,
And bear the bundle, wheresoe'er it goes:
How many drams of spirits there must be
To sell my life unto my friends or foes:
Yet I love thee.
"I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot blood and brains;
What mirth and music mean; what love and wit
Have done these twenty hundred years, and more;
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuff is flesh, not grass; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Than he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.
"I know all these, and have them in my hand;
Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes
I fly to thee, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities;
And at what rate and price I have thy love;
With all the circumstances that may move:
Yet through the labyrinths, not my grovelling wit,
But thy silk-twist let down from heav'n to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how, by it,
To climb to thee."
A splendid retrospect this of a short life: and with what accurate knowledge of art, science, policy, literature, of powers of body and mind. Herbert's poems are full of this sterling sense and philosophical reflection—the mintage of a master mind.
Addison's version of the twenty-third Psalm has entered into every household and penetrated every heart by its sweetness and pathos. There is equal gentleness and sincerity in Herbert's:
"The God of love my shepherd is,
And he that doth me feed.
While he is mine, and I am his,
What can I want or need?
"He leads me to the tender grass,
Where I both feed and rest;
Then to the streams that gently pass:
In both I have the best.
"Or if I stray, he doth convert,
And bring my mind in frame
And all this not for my desert,
But for his holy name.
"Yea, in death's shady, black abode
Well may I walk, not fear:
For thou art with me, and thy rod
To guide, thy staff to bear.
"Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine,
E'en in my en'mies' sight;
My head with oil, my cup with wine,
Runs over day and night.
"Surely thy sweet and wond'rous love
Shall measure all my days:
And as it never shall remove,
So neither shall my praise."
We might linger long with Herbert, gathering the fruits of wisdom and piety from the abundant orchard of his poems, where many a fruit "hangs amiable;" but we must listen to his brethren.
Henry Vaughan was the literary offspring of George Herbert. His life, too, might have been written by good Izaak Walton, so gentle was it, full of all pleasant associations and quiet nobleness, decorated by the love of nature and letters, intimacies with poets, and with that especial touch of nature which always went to the heart of the Complete Angler, a love of fishing—for Vaughan was wont, at times, to skim the waters of his native rivers.
He was born in Wales; the old Roman name of the country conferring upon him the appellation "Silurist"—for in those days local pride and affection claimed the honor of the bard, as the poet himself first gathered strength from the home, earth and sky which concentrated rather than circumscribed his genius. His family was of good old lineage, breathing freely for generations in the upper atmosphere of life, warmed and cheered in a genial sunlight of prosperity. It could stir, too, at the call of patriotism, and send soldiers, as it did, to bite the heroic dust at Agincourt. Another time brought other duties. The poet came into the world in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the great awakening of thought and English intellect was to be followed by stirring action. He was not, indeed, to bear any great part in the senate or the field; but all noble spirits were moved by the issues of the time. To some the voice of the age brought hope and energy; to others, a not ignoble submission. It was perhaps as great a thing to suffer with the Royal Martyr, with all the burning life and traditions of England in the throbbing heart, as to rise from the ruins into the cold ether where the stern soul of Milton could wing its way in self-reliant calmness. Honor is due, as in all great struggles, to both parties. Vaughan's lot was cast with the conquered cause.
His youth was happy, as all poets' should be, and as the genius of all true poets, coupled with that period of life, will go far to make it. There must be early sunshine far the first nurture of that delicate plant: the storm comes afterward to perfect its life. Vaughan first saw the light in a rural district of great beauty. His songs bear witness to it. Indeed he is known by his own designation, a fragrant title in the sweet fields of English poesy, as the Swan of the Usk, though he veiled the title in the thin garb of the Latin, "Olor Iscanus." Another fortunate circumstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of a rural Welsh rector, with whom, his twin brother for a companion, he passed the years of youth in what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized in their waters.
The brothers left for Oxford at the mature age—not a whit too late for any minds—of seventeen or eighteen. At the University there were other words than the songs of Apollo. The Great Revolution was already on the carpet, and it was to be fought out with weapons not found in the logical armory of Aristotle. The brothers were royalists, of course; and Henry, before the drama was played out, like many good men and true, tasted the inside of a prison—doubtless, like Lovelace and Wither, singing his heartfelt minstrelsy behind the wires of his cage. He was not a fighting man. Poets rarely are. More than one lyrist—as Archilochus and Horace may bear witness—has thrown away his shield on the field of battle. Vaughan wisely retired to his native Wales. Jeremy Taylor, too, it may be remembered, was locking up the treasures of his richly-furnished mind and passionate feeling within the walls of those same Welsh hills. Nature, alone, however, is inadequate to the production of a true poet. Even Wordsworth, the most patient, absorbed of recluses, had his share of education in London and travel in foreign cities. Vaughan, too, early found his way, in visits, to the metropolis, where he heard at the Globe Tavern the last echoes of that burst of wit and knowledge which had spoken from the tongue and kindled in the eye of Shakspeare, Spenser and Raleigh. Ben Jonson was still alive, and the young poets who flocked to him, as a later age worshipped Dryden, were all "sealed of the tribe of Ben." Randolph and Cartwright were his friends.
Under these early inspirations of youth, nature, learning, witty companionship, Vaughan published his first verses—breathing a love of his art and its pleasures of imagination, paying his tribute to his paternal books in "Englishing," the "Tenth Satyre of Juvenal," and not forgetting, of course, the lovely "Amoret." A young poet without a lady in his verse is a solecism which nature abhors. All this, however, as his biographer remarks, "though fine in the way of poetic speculation, would not do for every-day practice." Of course not; and the young "swan" turned his wary feet from the glittering stream to the solid land. The poet became a physician. It was a noble art for such a spirit to practise, and not a very rude progress from youthful poesy if he felt and thought aright. There was a sterner change in store, however, and it came to him with the monition, "Physician, heal thyself!" He was prostrated by severe bodily disease, and thenceforth his spirit was bowed to the claims of the unseen world. The "light amorist" found a higher inspiration. He turned his footsteps to the Temple and worshipped at the holy altar of Herbert. His poetry becomes religious. "Sparks from the Flint" is the title which he gives his new verses, "Silex Scintillans." After that pledge to holiness given to the world, he survived nearly half a century, dying at the mature age of seventy-three—a happy subject of contemplation in the bosom of his Welsh retirement, passing quietly down the vale of life, feeding his spirit on the early-gathered harvest of wit, learning, taste, feeling, fancy, benevolence and piety.
Of such threads was the life of our poet spun.
His verse is light, airy, flying with the lark to heaven. Hear him with "his singing robes" about him:
"I would I were some bird or star,
Flutt'ring 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."
In this song of "Peace"—
"My soul, there is a country
Afar beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skillful in the wars.
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet peace sits crown'd with smiles,
And one born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend,
And (oh, my soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress and thy ease.
Leave, then, thy foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure,
But one, who never changes—
Thy God, thy Life, thy Cure."
Or in that kindred ode, full of "intimations of immortality received in childhood," entitled, "The Retreat:"
"Happy those early days, when I
Shin'd in my angel infancy!
Before I understood this place,
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walkt 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 sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
Oh 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 th' enlight'ned 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."
Here is a picture of the angel-visited world of Eden, not altogether destroyed by the Fall, when
"Each day
The valley or the mountain
Afforded visits, and still Paradise lay
In some green shade or fountain.
Angels lay lieger here: each bush and cell,
Each oak and highway knew them;
Walk but the fields, or sit down at some well,
And he was sure to view them."
Vaughan's birds and flowers gleam with light from the spirit land. This is the opening of a little piece entitled "The Bird:"
"Hither thou com'st. The busy wind all night
Blew through thy lodging, where thy own warm wing
Thy pillow was. Many a sullen storm,
For which coarse man seems much the fitter born,
Rain'd on thy bed
And harmless head;
And now, as fresh and cheerful as the light,
Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing
Unto that Providence, whose unseen arm
Curb'd them, and cloth'd thee well and warm."
How softly the image of the little bird again tempers the thought of death in his ode to the memory of the departed:
"He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know
At first sight if the bird be flown;
But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown."
But we must leave this fair garden of the poet's fancies. The reader will find there many a flower yet untouched.
Richard Crashaw was the contemporary of the early years of Vaughan; for, alas! he died young—though not till he had transcribed for the world the hopes, the aspirations, the sorrows of his troubled life. He lived but thirty-four years—the volume of his verses is not less nor more than the kindred books of the brother poets with whom we are now associating his memory. A small body of verse will hold much life; for the poet gives us a concentrated essence, an elixir, a skillful confection of humanity, which, diluted with the commonplaces of every-day thought and living, may cover whole shelves of libraries. The secret of the whole of one life may be expressed in a song or a sonnet. The little books of the world are not the least.
Crashaw, also, was a scholar. The son of a clergy-man, he was educated at the famed Charter-house and afterward at Cambridge. The Revolution, too, overtook him. He refused the oath of the covenant, was ejected from his fellowship, became a Roman Catholic, and took refuge in Paris, where he ate the bread of exile with Cowley and others, cheered by the noble sympathy—it could not be much more—of Queen Henrietta Maria. She recommended him to Rome, and the sensitive poet carried his joys and sorrows to the bosom of the church. He lived a few years, and died canon of Loretto, at the age of thirty-four.
Though the son of a zealous opponent of the Roman church, Crashaw was born with an instinct and heart for its service. There runs through all his poetry that sensuousness of feeling which seeks the repose and luxury of faith which Rome always offers to her ardent votaries. It is profitable to compare the sentiment of Crashaw with the more intellectual development of Herbert. What in the former is the paramount, constant exhibition, in the latter is accepted, and holds its place subordinate to other claims. Without a portion of it there could be no deep religious life—with it, in excess, we fear for the weakness of a partial development. There is so much gain, however, to the poet, that we have no disposition to take exception to the single string of Crashaw. The beauty of the Venus was made up from the charms of many models. So, in our libraries, as in life, we must be content with parcel-work, and take one man's wisdom and another's sentiment, looking out that we get something of each to enrich our multifarious life.
Crashaw's poetry is one musical echo and aspiration. He finds his theme and illustration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him: his lute is always by his side. Following the "Steps of the Temple," a graceful tribute to Herbert, we have the congenial title, "The Delights of the Muses," opening with that exquisite composition:
"Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony,"
"Music's Duel." It is the story—a favorite one to the ears of our forefathers two centuries ago—of the nightingale and the musician contending with voice and instrument in alternate melodies, till the sweet songstress of the grove falls and dies upon the lute of her rapt rival. It is something more than a pretty tale. Ford, the dramatist, introduced it briefly in happy lines in "The Lover's Melancholy," but Crashaw's verses inspire the very sweetness and lingering pleasure of the contest. It is high noon when the "sweet lute's master" seeks retirement from the heat, "on the scene of a green plat, under protection of an oak," by the bank of the Tiber. The "light-foot lady,"
"The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,"
"entertains the music's soft report," which begins with a flying prelude, to which the lady of the tree "carves out her dainty voice" with "quick volumes of wild notes."
"His nimble hand's instinct then taught each string,
A cap'ring cheerfulness; and made them sing
To their own dance."
She
"Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note
Through the sleek passage of her open throat:
A clear, unwrinkled song."
The contention invites every art of expression. The highest powers of the lute are evoked in rapid succession closing with a martial strain:
"this lesson, too,
She gives him back, her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring vollies float,
And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, 'still'd out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody,
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripen'd airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath,
Which there reciprocally laboreth.
In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon; and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing."
What wealth of imagery and proud association of ideas—the bubbling spring, the golden, waving harvest, "ploughed by her breath"—the fane of Apollo suggesting in a word images of Greek maidens in chorus by the white temple of the God, the dew of Helicon, the soft waking of men from beneficent repose. It is all very well to talk of a bird doing all this: we admire nightingales, but Philomela never enchanted us in this way; it is the sex with which we are charmed. The poet's "light-foot lady" tells us the secret. We are subdued by the loveliest of prima-donnas.
There is more of this, and as good. The little poem is a poet's dictionary of musical expression. Its lines, less than two hundred, deserve to be committed to memory, to rise at times in the mind—the soft assuagement of cares and sorrows.
A famous poem of Crashaw is "On a Prayer-Book sent to Mrs. M.R." It breathes a divine ecstasy of the sacred ode:
"Delicious deaths, soft exhalations
Of soul; dear and divine annihilations;
A thousand unknown rites
Of joys, and rarefied delights."
It is human passion sublimated and refined to the uses of heaven, but human passion still—the very luxury of religion—the rapture of earth-born seraphs, as he sings with venturous exultation:
"The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets,
Which with a swelling bosom there she meets,
Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures
Of pure inebriating pleasures:
Happy proof she shall discover,
What joy, what bliss,
How many heavens at once it is,
To have a God become her lover!"
Mrs. M.R., whether maid or widow we know not—in Crashaw's day virgins were called Mistress—has another poem addressed to her—"Counsel concerning her choice." It alludes to some check or hindrance in love, and asks:
"Dear, heav'n-designed soul!
Amongst the rest
Of suitors that besiege your maiden breast,
Why may not I
My fortune try,
And venture to speak one good word,
Not for myself, alas! but for my dearer Lord?
Your first choice fails; oh, when you choose again,
May it not be among the sons of men!"
This is the language of devotional rapture common to the extremes of the religious world—Methodism and Roman Catholicism. Every one has heard the ardent hymn by Newton—"The Name of Jesus," and that stirring anthem, "The Coronation of Christ"—few have read the eloquent production of the canon of Loretto, a canticle from the flaming heart of Rome, addressed "To the name above every name, the name of Jesus."
"Pow'rs of my soul, be proud!
And speak loud
To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name;
And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim
New smiles to nature.
Sweet name, in thy each syllable
A thousand blest Arabias dwell;
A thousand hills of frankincense,
Mountains of myrrh, and beds of spices,
And ten thousand paradises,
The soul that tastes thee takes from thence,
How many unknown worlds there are
Of comforts, which thou hast in keeping!
How many thousand mercies there
In Pity's soft lap lie asleeping!"
Crashaw's invitations to holiness breathe the very gallantry of piety. He addresses "the noblest and best of ladies, the Countess of Denbigh," who had been his patroness in exile, "persuading her to resolution in religion."
"What heaven-entreated heart is this
Stands trembling at the gate of bliss.
What magic bolts, what mystic bars
Maintain the will in these strange wars!
What fatal, what fantastic bands
Keep the free heart from its own hands!
So, when the year takes cold, we see
Poor waters their own prisoners be;
Fetter'd and lock'd up fast, they lie
In a sad self-captivity;
Th' astonish'd nymphs their floods' strange fate deplore,
To see themselves their own severer shore.
Disband dull fears; give Faith the day;
To save your life, kill your delay;
It is Love's siege, and sure to be
Your triumph, though his victory."
His poem, "The Weeper," shoots the prismatic hues of the rainbow athwart the veil of fast-falling tears:
"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.
"Every morn from hence,
A brisk cherub something sips,
Whose soft influence
Adds sweetness to his sweetest lips;
Then to his music, and his song
Tastes of this breakfast all day long.
"Not in the evening's eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the sun that dies,
Sits sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
"When Sorrow would be seen
In her brightest majesty,
For she is a queen,
Then is she drest by none but thee.
Then, and only then, she wears
Her richest pearls, I mean thy tears.
"The dew no more will weep,
The primrose's pale cheek to deck;
The dew no more will sleep,
Nuzzled in the lily's neck.
Much rather would it tremble here,
And leave them both to be thy tear."
These are some of Crashaw's "Steps to the Temple"—verily he walked thither on velvet.
"Wishes to his supposed Mistress," is more than a pretty enumeration of the good qualities of woman as they rise in the heart of a noble, gallant lover:
"Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she,
That shall command my heart and me:
"Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye,
In shady leaves of destiny:
"Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate, stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth:
"Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:
"Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye call'd my absent kisses."
We are not reprinting Crashaw, and must forbear further quotation. It is enough if we have presented to the reader a lily or a rose from his pages, and have given a clue to that treasure-house—
"A box where sweets compacted lie."
A generation nurtured in poetic susceptibility by the genius of Keats and Tennyson, should not forget the early muse of Crashaw. His verse is the very soul of tenderness and imaginative luxury: less intellectual, less severe in the formation of a broad, manly character than Herbert; catching up the brighter inspirations of Vaughan, and excelling him in richness—it has a warm, graceful garb of its own. It is tinged with the glowing hues of Spenser's fancy; baptized in the fountains of sacred love, it draws an earthly inspiration from the beautiful in nature and life, as in the devout paintings of the great Italian masters, we find the models of their angels and seraphs on earth.
MISERERE DOMINE.
BY WILLIAM H. BURLEIGH.
Thou who look'st with pitying eye
From Thy radiant home on high,
On the spirit tempest-tost,
Wretched, weary, wandering, lost—
Ever ready help to give,
And entreating, "Look and live!"
By that love, exceeding thought,
Which from Heaven the Saviour brought,
By that mercy which could dare
Death to save us from despair,
Lowly bending at Thy feet,
We adore, implore, entreat,
Lifting heart and voice to Thee—
Miserere Domine!
With the vain and giddy throng,
Father! we have wandered long;
Eager from Thy paths to stray,
Chosen the forbidden way;
Heedless of the light within,
Hurried on from sin to sin,
And with scoffers madly trod
On the mercy of our God!
Now to where Thine altars burn,
Father! sorrowing we return.
Though forgotten, Thou hast not
To be merciful forgot;
Hear us! for we cry to Thee—
Miserere Domine!
From the burden of our grief
Who, but Thou, can give relief?
Who can pour Salvation's light
On the darkness of our night?
Bowed our load of sin beneath,
Who can snatch our souls from death?
Vain the help of man!—in dust
Vainly do we put our trust!
Smitten by Thy chastening rod,
Hear us, save us, Son of God!
From the perils of our path,
From the terrors of thy wrath,
Save us, when we look to thee—
Miserere Domine!
Where the pastures greenly grow,
Where the waters gently flow,
And beneath the sheltering Rock
With the shepherd rests the flock.
Oh, let us be gathered there
Richly of Thy love to share;
With the people of Thy choice
Live and labor and rejoice,
Till the toils of life are done,
Till the fight is fought and won,
And the crown, with heavenly glow,
Sparkles on the victor's brow!
Hear the prayer we lift to Thee—
Miserere Domine!