Trembling I seek thy holy ground,
Apollo, lord of kings;
Thou hast the darts that kill. Oh, free
The senseless world of apathy,
Pierce it! for when
In poet’s strain no joy is found,
His call no answer brings,
Oh, then my heart turns cold, and then
I drop my wings.
When through thy breast wild wrath doth spread
And work thy inmost being harm,
Leave thou the fiery word unsaid,
Guard thee; be calm.
Closed be thy lips: where Love perchance
Lies at the door to be thy guest,
Shall there be noise and dissonance?
Quiet were best.
Apollo, when they do thee wrong,
Speechless thou tak’st the golden dart:
I will refrain my barking tongue,
And strike the heart.
To pass immediately from Long Ago to the poets’ last lyrical works may seem a wilful act, considering the length of time between the books, and their amazing unlikeness. Yet there is a very great interest in the contrast and all that it implies, and a piquancy which one may hope is not too irreverent in the reflection that at the root there is no great difference, after all, between the Lesbian songs and the Christian ones.
The volume called Poems of Adoration was published in 1912, and Mystic Trees in 1913. They were both signed Michael Field, but the first is all Henry’s work with the exception of two pieces, and the second is all by Michael except the poems called Qui Renovat Juventutem Meam and The Homage of Death. The two volumes therefore provide material for a useful study from the point of view of the collaboration; and they are a positive lure to a comparison with the devotional poetry of the seventeenth century, notably, of course, with Herbert and Vaughan. One would not go so far as to claim an absolute likeness between Henry and George Herbert, if only because Henry does not spread herself in tedious moralizing nor indulge in concetti. To that extent her work is purer poetry and, one would suppose, purer religion than that of the old poet; and she rises oftener to sublimity. But in essentials the two are close akin—;in sweetness and strength and clarity, in their sense of form, and in terse, vigorous expression. Between Michael and Vaughan the likeness is even closer, and would tempt one far if it were not that our limits prevent straying. But indeed the human and spiritual values of the two books transcend mere literary questions so greatly as to make those look trivial and even impertinent.
For Poems of Adoration was published only a few months before Henry died. Much of the book was composed at dead of night, during great pain, when, as her father confessor has remarked, “most of us would be trying not to blaspheme.” The poems are in fact those of a dying woman, and one who had refused herself any alleviating drug. Two of them, Extreme Unction and After Anointing, were written when she was at the point of death and had received the last offices of the Church. Some bear evidence of acute crises of body or soul; and in some the vision of the mysteries of her faith is so vivid that the poet herself is almost overwhelmed. Once or twice, when she has gone to the limit of spiritual sight, she falters; but never does that fine intelligence stumble into the outer darkness. Perceiving that it is coming near the verge of sanity, it draws back in time to leave the vision distinct and credible.
To the strict eye of criticism these poignant facts may appear irrelevant. I cannot bring myself to think that such splendour of soul has no relation to the art that it produced; but those persons who insist on cleaving the two asunder may be reassured as to the technical accomplishment of this poetry. Often cast into something of the poets’ earlier dramatic form, its music is sweet, its measures are rhythmical, and its language has force and clarity. It has a majesty which proclaims its origin, and one has no need to know the circumstances of its birth. Imagination rises, swift and daring, to heights which are sometimes sublime, as in the first poem quoted below. Here the conception of Christ the wine-treader is treated with magnificent audacity of image and metaphor, while underneath runs a stream of thought which, though it makes great leaps now and then, pouring its strong current into cataract as it goes, yet bears its craft safely up and on.
DESOLATION
Who comes?...
O Beautiful!
Low thunder thrums,
As if a chorus struck its shawms and drums.
The sun runs forth
To stare at Him, who journeys north
From Edom, from the lonely sands, arrayed
In vesture sanguine as at Bosra made.
O beautiful and whole,
In that red stole!