"Through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise."
Poetry, in our age, has been made too much a thing to talk about—to show off upon—as if the writing and the reading of it were to be reckoned among what are commonly called accomplishments. Thus, poets have too often sacrificed the austere sanctity of the divine art to most unworthy purposes, of which, perhaps, the most unworthy—for it implies much voluntary self-degradation—is mere popularity. Against all such low aims he is preserved, who, with Christian meekness, approaches the muse in the sanctuaries of religion. He seeks not to force his songs on the public ear; his heart is free from the fever of fame; his poetry is praise and prayer. It meets our ear like the sound of psalms from some unseen dwelling among the woods or hills, at which the wayfarer or wanderer stops on his journey, and feels at every pause a holier solemnity in the silence of nature. Such poetry is indeed got by heart; and memory is then tenacious to the death, for her hold on what she loves is strengthened as much by grief as by joy; and, when even hope itself is dead—if, indeed, hope ever dies—the trust is committed to despair. Words are often as unforgetable as voiceless thoughts; they become very thoughts themselves, and are what they represent. How are many of the simply, rudely, but fervently and beautifully rhymed Psalms of David, very part and parcel of the most spiritual treasures of the Scottish peasant's being!
"The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want.
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green: he leadeth me
The quiet waters by."
These four lines sanctify to the thoughtful shepherd on the braes every stream that glides through the solitary places—they have often given colours to the greensward beyond the brightness of all herbage and of all flowers. Thrice hallowed is that poetry which makes us mortal creatures feel the union that subsists between the Book of Nature and the Book of Life!
Poetry has endeared childhood by a thousand pictures, in which fathers and mothers behold with deeper love the faces of their own offspring. Such poetry has almost always been the production of the strongest and wisest minds. Common intellects derive no power from earliest memories; the primal morn, to them never bright, has utterly faded in the smoky day; the present has swallowed up the past, as the future will swallow up the present; each season of life seems to stand by itself as a separate existence; and when old age comes, how helpless, melancholy, and forlorn! But he who lives in the spirit of another creed, sees far into the heart of Christianity. He hears a divine voice saying—"Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven!" Thus it is that Poetry throws back upon the New Testament the light she has borrowed from it, and that man's mortal brother speaks in accordance with the Saviour of Man. On a dead insensible flower—a lily—a rose—a violet—a daisy, poetry may pour out all its divinest power—just as the sun itself sometimes seems to look with all its light on some one especial blossom, all at once made transparently lustrous. And what if the flower be alive in all its leaves—and have in it an immortal spirit? Or what if its leaves be dead, and the immortal spirit gone away to heaven? Genius shall change death into sleep—till the grave, in itself so dark and dismal, shall seem a bed of bright and celestial repose. From poetry, in words or marble—both alike still and serene as water upon grass—we turn to the New Testament, and read of the "Holy Innocents." "They were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and to the Lamb." We look down into the depths of that text—and we then turn again to Keble's lines, which from those depths have flowed over upon the uninspired page! Yet not uninspired—if that name may be given to strains which, like the airs that had touched the flowers of Paradise, "whisper whence they stole those balmy sweets." Revelation has shown us that "we are greater than we know;" and who may neglect the Infancy of that Being for whom Godhead died!
They who read the lines on the "Holy Innocents" in a mood of mind worthy of them, will go on, with an equal delight, through those on "The Epiphany." They are separated in the volume by some kindred and congenial strains; but when brought close together, they occupy the still region of thought as two large clear stars do of themselves seem to occupy the entire sky.
How far better than skilfully—how inspiredly does this Christian poet touch upon each successive holy theme—winging his way through the stainless ether like some dove gliding from tree to tree, and leaving one place of rest only for another equally happy, on the folding and unfolding of its peaceful flight! Of late many versifiers have attempted the theme; and some of them with shameful unsuccess. A bad poem on such a subject is a sin. He who is a Christian indeed, will, when the star of Bethlehem rises before his closed eyes, be mute beneath the image, or he will hail it in strains simple as were those of the shepherds watching their flocks by night when it appeared of old, high as were those of the sages who came from the East bearing incense to the Child in the Manger. Such are this Poet's strains, evolving themselves out of the few words—"Behold, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young Child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy."
The transition from those affecting lines is natural and delightful to a strain further on in the volume, entitled "Catechism." How soon the infant spirit is touched with love—another name for religion—none may dare to say who have watched the eyes of little children. Feeling and thought would seem to come upon them like very inspiration—so strong it often is, and sudden, and clear; yet, no doubt, all the work of natural processes going on within Immortality. The wisdom of age has often been seen in the simplicity of childhood—creatures but five or six years old—soon perhaps about to disappear—astonishing, and saddening, and subliming the souls of their parents and their parents' friends, by a holy precocity of all pitiful and compassionate feelings, blended into a mysterious piety that has made them sing happy hymns on the brink of death and the grave. Such affecting instances of almost infantine unfolding of the spirit beneath spiritual influences should not be rare—nor are they rare—in truly Christian households. Almost as soon as the heart is moved by filial affection, that affection grows reverent even to earthly parents—and, ere long, becomes piety towards the name of God and Saviour. Yet philosophers have said that the child must not be too soon spoken to about religion. Will they fix the time? No—let religion—a myriad-meaning word—be whispered and breathed round about them, as soon as intelligence smiles in their eyes and quickens their ears, while enjoying the sights and sounds of their own small yet multitudinous world.
Let us turn to another strain of the same mood, which will be read with tears by many a grateful heart—on the "Churching of Women." What would become of us without the ceremonies of religion? How they strengthen the piety out of which they spring! How, by concentrating all that is holy and divine around their outward forms, do they purify and sanctify the affections! What a change on his infant's face is wrought before a father's eyes by Baptism! How the heart of the husband and the father yearns, as he sees the wife and mother kneeling in thanksgiving after childbirth!
"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." What is all the poetry that genius ever breathed over all the flowers of this earth to that one divine sentence! It has inspired our Christian poet—and here is his heartfelt homily.