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.