And think how evil becometh him to slide,
Who seeketh heaven, and comes of heavenly breath.
Then farewell, world; thy uttermost I see:
Eternal Love, maintain thy life in me.
Sir Philip Sidney
[278].
Of the Lyke-wake Dirge is known neither the age nor the author. The body from which the "saule" or spirit within is fled away lies in its shroud, and the dirge tells of that spirit's journey. Its word "sleet," says Mr. Sidgwick, means either salt, for it was the custom to place in a wooden platter beside the dead, earth and salt for emblems, the one of corruption, the other of the immortal; or, as some suppose, "sleet" should be fleet, meaning embers or water or house-room. "Whinnies" means gorse. To explain the full meaning of Bridge of Dread would need many pages—but does not much of that meaning haunt in the very music and solemnity of the words?
[279].
Next this poem in Mr. Nahum's book was "Lead, Kindly Light," and there was a strange picture for it hanging in the round tower—the picture of a small becalmed ship, clumsy of rig and low in the water which was smooth and green as glass. In the midst of the ship there was piled high what might be taken for a vast heap of oranges, their fair reddish colour blazing in the rays of the sun that was about to plunge out of the greenish sky below the line of the west. But what even more particularly attracted my eye at the time was that ship's figurehead—a curious head and shoulders as if with wings, and of a kind of far beauty or wonder entirely past me to describe. Many years afterwards I read that this poem was written by John Henry Newman (one who even in his young days at Oxford was "never less alone than when alone"), when his mind was perplexed and unhappy, and he himself had time to ponder awhile, because the boat in which he was sailing to England had been for some days becalmed off the coast of Spain.