From the note-books I take these unpublished lines:—
Dost thou perceive no God within the frog?
O poor, poor Soul!
Bristles and rankness only in the hog?
O wretched dole!
No wry'd beneficence in the fever's germ?
Nor any Heaven shut within the worm?
Dost shudder daintily
At words, in song, shaped so un-lovelily?
To school, to school!
For does it to thee seem
That God in an ill dream
Fashioned the twisted horrors of the standing pool?
Mr. Chesterton surmises the mountainous significance of minute things. In Tremendous Trifles, like the lover who writes an ode to his lady's eyebrow, or the professor who gives his life to the study of the capillary glands, he delights in disproportion. When Mr. Chesterton planned a volume of poems on the things in his pocket, but desisted because the volume would have bulked too large, he was only formulating, in a manner acceptable to the man who puts his hand in his pocket for a halfpenny, the old "religio poetæ." The things of the pocket constitute a pocket dictionary in more than two languages, a book of synonyms, a lexicon filled with cross references, all based upon the Word. The silly silver of men's purses is blessed, and every mortal thing assists in immortal liturgy. St. Charles was of one mind with those who sing the Magnificat of trifles. When asked how he would die, he answered: "Playing cards, as I now do, if it should so chance." Whenever such an one dies he holds trumps. And like the priest, the poet touches mysteries with his very hand; he makes daily communion. "To some," says Patmore, "there is revealed a sacrament greater than that of the Real Presence, a sacrament of the Manifest Presence, which is, and is more than, the sum of all the sacraments." And again we have Thompson's own
In thee, Queen, man is saturate in God.
The Psalmist is with him:—
"If I climb up into heaven thou art there, if I go down into hell, thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there also shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say peradventure the darkness shall cover me: then shall my night be turned into day; the darkness and light to thee are both alike."
Thompson's own
. . . Nay, I affirm
Nature is whole in her least things exprest
is a splendid justification of the poet's dalliance with trifles. Vaughan confines Eternity in the scope of a night, a ring—nay, a couplet:—
I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light.