Greek word signifying "maker" or "creator"--_Poiêtês_. There is a
philosophy in language however much we continue to ask, "What's in a
name?" When those wonderful Greeks wished to express the thinker's
art, they spoke of _Sophia_ or wisdom; when they heard the first
preacher who told them of their innermost selves, they called him the
_Prophêtês_ or prophet, the man that speaketh forth as from an
illimitable deep; and when they listened to the soul of music coming
from the lips of a Homer or a Sappho, they called it by the most
expressive name of all, "making" or "creation". The poet was a
creator. And so he is if we come to think of it. Out of the materials
supplied to him by the thinking of other intelligences, he weaves his
song of joy and beauty which holds our senses as in a spell, and steeps
our souls in ecstasy. He is a "reed," to use an expression of Tennyson
himself, "through which all things blow to music". He is the creator
of the ideal world _par excellence_; the keys of the Unseen are in his
keeping.
We say that he transfigures the thoughts of other intelligences, that
he turns his genius to the rhythmic expression of the towering
fantasies of the philosopher. And he does. Poetry without thought
would be a jingle--a word which, if we may trust the reviews, is a
satisfactory account of much of the "minor" poetry of the day. If a
man does not see somewhat deeper into himself and things than the
average human being, never among the sacred band of lyric souls can he
find a lasting place. Philosophy is the propaedeutic of poetry. But
surely, it may be urged, the book of nature is open to every one, and a
poet's soul may sing of that without any need of the philosopher's
interpretation. Has not some of the sublimest verse been Nature
poetry? True, but this undoubted fact only confirms our statement.
When Wordsworth interprets nature in song, he is borrowing from a
philosopher; he is reading the thoughts of an intelligence other than
his own. He is revealing to you the innermost thoughts of that supreme
Mind, who conceived the beautiful whole, and made it to be a thought of
himself. The deepest thinker is he who thinks his thoughts into deeds.
There is a First Philosopher as there is a First Poet or Maker, and
because we are in our innermost selves of his kindred, we have the
power to think his thoughts again, and create an ideal world which
shall be the counterpart of his own. Men may be philosophers and poets
because the First Poet and First Thinker is their Parent.
This is not mysticism, still less imagination, but the soberest of
realities. In it you read the interpretation of the indisputable fact
that the world's greatest poets were men of intensely religious
feeling. They come so near to the Supreme Poet that their sense of the
Infinite is extraordinarily developed. It is gravely questionable
whether a man can be a great poet unless the influence of his great
prototype be a power in his life; unless his religious instincts be
reverently cultivated. A religious sense is needful to the highest
flights. Go over the greatest names of the past and present and you
will see how "the Over-soul" has been the truest source of inspiration.
The unknown singers of the Vedic hymns, Homer, Sophocles, Virgil,
Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, Wordsworth, and in our days,
Tennyson and Browning--in them all the religious sense, the instinct of
communion with the unseen world, is a distinguishing mark and
characteristic. A name here and there may be quoted on the other side,
but as far as my memory serves me for the moment, it would appear on
closer examination that such were exceptions only in appearance. An
excess, not a defect, of reverential feeling is often the explanation
of such non-manifestation of religious emotion as we may notice. With
Goethe, they would appear to feel the presumption of individualising,
the great Soul of the worlds by even so much as naming him.
Who dare name him, and who confess I believe him!
There is a reverent as well as an irreverent impatience of forms
associated with the Formless and the Infinite; and because of it one
never yet heard or read of a man truly great who had not the
profoundest reverence for religion. But, however that may be, it is
plain that we are justified in speaking of a poet's religion, and in
discussing the religious conceptions which took shape in the soul of
one of the two great poets of the Victorian era.
Five years ago Tennyson passed hence, "crossing the bar" on that
tideless sea, still as the silent life which left its worn-out frame to
"turn again home". So much as the great poet desired that the world
should know of his own aspirations, his hopes and fears of the great
Hereafter, has been given to us in his own sweet singing, and a memoir
written by his son. It turns out that Tennyson was no exception to his
noble order. Like all the great singers he was a man of faith--a man
penetrated to his heart's core with the sense of the indestructible
character of the religious instinct, and of man's deep need of
communion with the Great Life which is within and beyond him--the Soul
of souls whom men call God.
The significance of this fact is not to be lost upon reflective minds.
In an age when positive science has made a progress which borders
almost on the miraculous; when discoveries of the innermost secrets of
nature, coupled with astounding combinations of her elements and
forces, which supply us with the chemical contrivances and implements
for further research surpassing the wildest dreams of astrologers and
alchemists of old, there has been an unmistakable tendency to push the
Divine agency farther and farther back in the chain of phenomenal
causation, until it would appear that it had been finally thrust out of
the world altogether. "I have swept the heavens with my telescope,"
said Lalande, "and I have not found your God." "The heavens are
telling no more the glory of God," said Auguste Comte, "but that of
Herschel and Laplace." Is it indeed so? The past has done all in its
power to make it so, and Lalande and Comte represent the inevitable and
natural reaction against the incredible puerilities, the stupid,
obstinate opposition to all science not in conformity with the Nicene
and Athanasian Creeds, or the fables incorporated in the Hebrew
Cosmogony. But that past is past indeed, and never can come back
again. The world returns no more to discarded ideals; the conception
of theology as "queen of the sciences" is as hopelessly impossible in
the civilised world as the Divine right of kings.
The result is that prophets and poets are "men of God" still, and
notwithstanding Lalande and Comte, the heavens are not so dazzling as
to quench for them the glory of a Diviner revelation which they scarce
conceal. I frankly say that I had rather believe all the fables of the
Talmud and the Koran than that the empty shadows of a vulgar
superstition are all that lie beneath the stately verse of "In
Memoriam," or the "Rabbi Ben Ezra" of Browning.
The religion of Tennyson is a perfume which fills much that he writes.
It is a "spirit" which broods over many a song, but is incarnate, so to
speak, in the elegy which immortalises the tomb of his lost friend.
For Tennyson, the spirit of poetry is the spirit of religion--a blowing
to music of the deepest thoughts of the philosopher. In "Merlin and
the Gleam" we may read this as in an allegory:--
Great the Master
And sweet the magic,
When o'er the valley
In early summers,
O'er the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me
Moving to melody
Floated the gleam.
The spirit of poetry, which bade him follow on in spite of
discouragement, touched all on which it hovered with a mystic light,
"moving him to melody". It was the soul of religion, binding the
spirit of man to nature and to "human faces" in themselves, and to the
Supreme, in whom all is One.
But what is an allegory in the spirit of the gleam is a reality in the
song of love, "passing the love of women," which he laid as the noblest
offering ever yet made at the bier of a departed friend. The religion
of Tennyson is there, but the poem must be carefully studied if its
true inwardness is to be grasped. Isolating a few stanzas wherein the
poet, alarmed and perplexed at the cruelties and terrors of Nature, her
dark and circuitous ways, her astounding prodigality and wastefulness,
lifts up in his helplessness "lame hands of faith," and falters where
once he firmly trod, many writers have professed to see in Tennyson the
expression of a reverent agnosticism. Such agnosticism we may all
respect, for it is very different from the noisy, clamorous thing
which, aping in name the humility of greater men, insists that the
sense limitations imposed upon its own intelligence shall forthwith be
erected into a dogma to be accepted as infallible by everybody else's
intelligence. Be as reverent as Darwin in your agnosticism, as
tolerant as Comte, we would say to such men, and there is much to
commend in your teaching; but spare us the ridiculous spectacle of a
handful of pamphleteers and minor essayists arraigning the sublimest
philosophy ever known to the world, and consecrated by the homage of
ninety out of every hundred thinkers who have ever approached its
study, as a system erected upon a mirage--the image of a man's own
personality distorted by its projection into the infinite. Tennyson
himself once said that "the average Englishman's god was an
immeasurable clergyman, and that not a few of them mistook their devil
for their god", That may very well be, but the philosophers of the
world who have built the house of wisdom are not "average Englishmen,"
and to describe their theism as the imagination of an immeasurable
man--surpliced clergyman or otherwise--is a criticism, not of the
philosophers, but of their would-be critics. _Non ragionian di lor, ma
guarda e passa!_
But Tennyson was a passionately convinced theist. With that scrupulous
voraciousness which, according to those who knew him most intimately,
was his leading characteristic, he surveys nature not only with the
reverent eye of a mystic, but with the exact vision of science, and
faithfully reports what he sees--so faithfully, indeed, that he was
hailed by Tyndall in, the sixties as "the poet of science". Loving
truth, "by which no man yet was ever harmed," he does not hesitate to
portray nature "red in tooth and claw with ravine shrieking against the
creed" of a moral and beneficent power. And when no reconciliation is
obvious he can but "faintly trust the larger hope" and point hence
where possibly the discords of life will be resolved into a final
harmony.
What hope of answer or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil!
But these facts, however unmistakable, are powerless to alter the main
inevitable conclusion that beneficent power does rule the cosmos,
though they may modify it provisionally, until a better insight into
the workings of nature supplies us with a clue to the mystery's
solution. He is a sorry philosopher indeed who will insist that
nothing whatever can be known because everything cannot be known, that
an established fact must be no fact because no explanation of it is
forthcoming. Tennyson is not one of these thriftless people, and the
"In Memoriam," read aright, leads one upward "upon the great world's
altar-stairs that slope through darkness up to God".
The poem is a drama of life. It was not written at one time or one
place, but over a path of some years. Those years and places are a
symbol of the ever-changeful thoughts and moods of man who communes
much with the world concealed behind the veil of sense. It is the
vivid portraiture of the soul, its sorrows, doubts, anxieties, and
aspirations; it tells of the eclipse as well as of the dawn and
meridian of faith. In fact, it is Tennyson's own religious life which
is the life of uncounted numbers in these latter times. Before the
supreme sad experience, the sudden, and to him incomprehensible, death
of Arthur Hallam, the poet had agnostic leanings. He did then
veritably fail and "falter" before the questions of life and death
which beset him. His long years of comparative poverty, "the eternal
want of pence," his failure to attract any measure of attention, his
long-delayed marriage as far off as ever, the _res angusta domi_ which
made his family dependent upon him, all conspired to shut out the
vision of anything but an iron necessity controlling him and
everything. Such lives are infinitely pathetic, and perhaps one had
rather devote oneself to ministering to minds distressed like these
than to any other form of charitable enterprise. Such souls have been
wounded inexpressibly; they are sore to the most delicate touch, and
gentle indeed must be the hand, and soft the voice, which would comfort
stricken creatures like these. To think of such afflicted spirits is
to recall the picture of the ideal servant of Jahveh, of whom Isaiah
sings in words of unearthly beauty: "A bruised reed he shall not break
and a smoking flax he shall not quench," for only by ministrations such
as these can they be healed.
Strangely enough, as it would seem, it was the last and saddest
experience of all, the blow which almost crushed his life, which
brought the young soul back to health and strength. It was the hand of
death, inopportunely touching the fairest and noblest thing he ever
hoped to know, which helped him to see that--
My own dim life should teach me this,
That life shall live for evermore,
Else earth is darkness at the core,
And dust and ashes all that is.
The conception of such a life as that of his lost friend, annihilated
with the vanishing of the touch of his hand and the sound of his voice,
was plainly an impossible one, and if one remembers all the bright
hopes, the extraordinarily brilliant future which, in the judgment of
all who knew him, were buried with that young life, it is impossible to
marvel at the change his death produced in the heart of his poet friend.
Now this temporary eclipse of faith is truthfully set forth in the
poem, together with the manifold reasons which weigh at times so
powerfully, even with the most devout minds, suggesting that the
universe is not "righteous at heart". We all know them well, for we
have felt them, and it is a comfort for us to be assured that minds
more penetrating, consciences more sensitive, and emotions far deeper,
have been enabled to withstand the shock which nature so rudely deals
at our moral instincts, and to believe with a fervour and enthusiasm
conquering all obstacles, that--
Good
Will be the final goal of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.
It is "the heart-piercing, mind-bewildering" mystery of evil and pain
which has quenched the light in many a sincere and fervent heart. But
it is not for ever. Two things we may remember for our guidance amid
all this weltering sea of sorrow and distress. First, it is not all
nature. It is only a side of it; and if it is the most obvious, it is
only because it is a breach of the order and beneficence so uniformly
obtaining. And next, the holiest hearts, the spirits of the just made
perfect on earth were not adversely influenced by it. In spite of it
all, an elect spirit, such as Jesus of Nazara, could patiently endure a
life of austerity, and meet a death of unspeakable anguish with a
calmness and resignation seldom equalled and never surpassed. "Father,
into thy hands I commend my spirit," is a serious rebuke to those who
suffer so little and complain so loudly that the times are out of
joint, the world as probably as not the work of malignity or
indifference, and that he is no God who does not stretch forth an
omnipotent hand to slay the accursed thing of evil where it stands.
This is in very deed "the crying of an infant in the night". We forget
when we utter these foolish things that we ourselves should be among
the first to fall beneath that avenging hand.
And so with Tennyson. It was the visitation of evil in its most
mournful shape--the cold hand of death that fell upon the brow of his
beloved friend--which opened his eyes. His faith in goodness, in
beneficent purpose, was restored. The cloud was lifted for evermore.
He married. Wedded love, mystic symbol, sacramental image of a union
higher still, came at length as an added blessing, after years of
expectancy and disappointment. "When I wedded her the peace of God
entered into my heart," he wrote. His cup was full; "out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," and therefore he sang that
stately invocation, that sublime _Magnificat_ which, we may well
believe with his own most intimate friends, will endure while the lips
of men frame the sounds of our English speech.
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why;
He thinks he was not made to die;
And Thou hast made him: Thou art just.
Thus were "the wild and wandering cries, confusions of a wasted youth"
forgotten in the song of adoration, which is in reality the epilogue of
the elegiac drama. We can almost imagine its coming after the closing
glory of the bridal hymn which sings to its last note of God:--
That God which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off Divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.
A wedding on earth--that of his sister--is thus for him the symbol of
that love eternal which moves all things: _Amor che tutto muove_, of
Dante's peerless song. That light of love once seen anew he never
lost. As life declined it grew in intensity: brighter and more
reassuring than ever did it glow as the darkness of earth began to
close round him. It was borne in upon him with a depth of conviction
too deep for utterance that death was but a fact, like any other in our
many-sided life, that it was but a momentary occurrence, in no wise
impeding that progress of the individual spirit in that path which has
been with philosophic accuracy described by the Hebrew psalmist as "the
way everlasting". The most perfect prayer is that: "Lead me in the
ever-lasting way," for it is the destiny of man to one day reach that
journey's end; to be one day perfect; to be absolutely conformed in
mind and will to that most sacred of realities--the moral law.
It was this new vision which dawned on his soul, when the face and form
of his much-loved friend was taken away, and filled him with a profound
calm as the inevitable hour drew near.
I can no longer
But die rejoicing,
For through the magic
Of Him, the Mighty,
Who taught me in childhood
There on the borders
Of boundless ocean,
And all but in Heaven,
Hovers the gleam.
In the old days long past, when, tormented with doubts, embittered by
disappointment, he would fain be rid of his burden, the voice of the
Master kept ever repeating:--
"Follow the gleam".
And so he followed--followed it through life, over the wide earth,
until the land's end was reached. But even then the Spirit did not
forsake him. The "gleam" still shone like a star in the deepening sky,
till it stood at length over the waters at the gates of the great bar
that led out into the Infinite. And last of all, the "call," clear and
unmistakable; and there sure enough, waiting beyond the bar, was the
"Pilot," the Master of the gleam, "ready to receive the soul".[1]
[1] Jean Valjean's death in _Les Miserables_.
XV.
"THE UNKNOWN GOD."
The God on whom I ever gaze,
The God I never once behold;
Above the cloud, beneath the clod,
The Unknown God, the Unknown God."
--WILLIAM WATSON.
One great function of poetry is to keep open the road which leads from
the seen to the unseen world, and as the last echoes of this noble poem
die away, it would seem as though a door had been opened in heaven and
an unearthly vision had been revealed to our wondering eyes. It is as
though some strange inspiration had fallen upon one suddenly, like that
which the seer in the Apocalypse felt when he said, "And immediately I
was in the spirit". The truth is we have been led into the invisible
world, we have gained with the poet "a sense of God". The strange,
undefinable attraction of the infinite is upon us.
Perhaps we have not yet learnt how strong that fascination is; how that
it is not only the source of that inner light which we see reflected in
the countenance of the philosopher and saint, but that it is powerful
to arrest the attention of men who are for ever saying that no such
reality exists, or, that even if it does, man need no more concern
himself about it. Has he not the solid earth and the realm of sense?
Why should he seek what is beyond it? _O caecas hominum mentes_! Man
cannot help himself. Well does the ethic master say, "What is the use
of affecting indifference towards that about which the mind of man
never can be indifferent?" And why not? Because man came thence?
There is that in us "which drew from out the boundless deep". In some
incomprehensible way the infinite is in us, and we are therefore
restless, dissatisfied ultimately with all that is not it. "The eye is
not filled with sight nor the ear with hearing," for in us there is the
capacity, and therefore, in our best moments, the yearning to see and
hear something which sense can never give. Greater than all that is
here, in silent moments, when the senses are tired and disappointment
steals over us, the truth of the insignificance of things bursts upon
us. "Man is but a reed, the feeblest thing in nature," says Pascal in
the _Pensées_, "but he is a thinking reed. The universe need not mass
its forces to accomplish his destruction. A breath, a drop of water
may destroy him. But even though the world should fall and crush him
he would still be more noble than his destroyer because he knows that
he dies, but the advantage which the world possesses over him--of that
the world knows nothing." And, therefore, the universe is nothing to
him who is conscious that there is that in man which made all worlds
and shall unmake them--the eternal Mind, one and identical throughout
the realm of intelligence.
This is no dreaming, but an interpretation of man and nature
necessitated by the undeniable facts of life. The finite does not
exhaust man's capacities, it cannot even satisfy them. He was made for
something vaster. He is ever seeking the boundless, the infinite.
Hence the most positive, the most scientific of philosophers, Mr.
Herbert Spencer, believes that there is one supreme emotion in man,
utterly indestructible, the emotion of religion; and what is religion
but the yearning I have described for communion, not with the world,
vast and entrancing as it is; not with humanity, admirable, even
worshipful in its highest estate; but with that which transcends them
and all things, the enduring reality which men call Divine? Spencer
and Emerson are at one. Nothing but the Infinite will ultimately
satisfy man.
Such are the thoughts awakened by the music of this poet's song, which
haunts one with a sense of the mystery of the illimitable. I do not
read it as a confession of agnosticism, save in the sense in which all
philosophers are ready to admit that our knowledge of the ultimate
reality of existence is as mere ignorance compared with what we do not,
and cannot, know of it. I read it rather as a profession of the higher
theism, or, if you will, of the higher pantheism, for it is immaterial
how far we go in maintaining the Divine immanence, provided we
safeguard the sovereign fact of individuality and abstain from all
confusion of the human personality and the Divine.