"that temper which can lay by the garland when he might keep it on; which
can pass by a rosebud and bid it grow when he is invited to crop it." This
is the spirit of self-devotion in every worthy action, and especially of
the pains and penalties by which poets have enriched our daily life. We
are indebted to the poets, too, for something more than the alleviation of
sorrow. Perhaps it is, upon the whole, a rarer gift to improve
prosperity. Joy, commonly, is less of a positive feeling than grief, and
is more apt to slip by us unconsciously. Few people, says the proverb,
know when they are well off. It is the poet's vocation to teach the world
this--
--"to be possess'd with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet."
The poet lifts our eyes to the beauties of external nature, educates us to
a keener participation in the sweet joys of affection, to the loveliness
and grace of woman, to the honor and strength of manhood. His ideal world
thus becomes an actual one, as the creations of imagination first borrowed
from sense, alight from the book, the picture or the statue once again to
live and walk among us.
The resemblances which have induced us to bring together our sacred
triumvirate of poets, are the common period in which they lived, their
similar training in youth, a congenial bond of learning, a certain
generous family condition, the inspiration of the old mother church out of
which they sprung, the familiar discipline of sorrow, the early years in
which they severally wrote.
A brief glance at their respective lives may indicate still further these
similarities and point a moral which needs not many words to
express--which seems to us almost too sacred to be loudly or long dwelt
upon.
* * * * *
Herbert was the oldest of the band, having been born near the close of the
sixteenth century, in the days of James, who was an intelligent patron of
the family. The poet's brother, the learned Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
whose "Autobiography" breathes the fresh manly spirit of the best days of
chivalry, was the king's ambassador to France. George Herbert, too, was in
a fair way to this court patronage, when his hopes were checked by the
death of the monarch. It is a circumstance, this court favor, worth
considering in the poet's life, as the antecedent to his manifold spirit
of piety. Nothing is more noticeable than the wide, liberal culture of the
old English poets; they were first, men, often skilled in affairs, with
ample experience in life, and then--poets.
Herbert's education was all that care and affection could devise. "He
spent," says his amiable biographer, Izaak Walton, "much of his childhood
in a sweet content under the eye and care of his prudent mother, and the
tuition of a chaplain or tutor to him and two of his brothers in her own
family." At Cambridge he became orator to the University, gained the
applause of the court by his Latin orations, and what is more, secured the
friendship of such men as Bishop Andrews, Dr. Donne, and the model
diplomatist of his age, Sir Henry Wotton. The completion of his studies
and the failure of court expectations were followed by a passage of rural
retirement--a first pause of the soul previous to the deeper conflicts of
life. His solitariness was increased by sickness, a period of meditation
and devotional feeling, assisted by the intimations of a keen spirit in a
feeble body--and out of the furnace came forth Herbert the priest and
saint. All that knowledge can inspire, all that tenderness can endear,
centres about that picture of the beauty of holiness, his brief pastoral
career--as we read it in his prose writings and his poems, and the pages
of Walton--at the little village of Bemerton. He died at the age of
thirty-nine--his gentle spirit spared the approaching conflicts of his
country, which pressed so heavily upon the Church which he loved.
The poems of Herbert are now read throughout the world; no longer confined
to that Church which inspired them. They are echoed at times in the
pulpits of all denominations, while their practical lines are, if we
remember rightly, scattered among the sage aphorisms of Poor Richard, and
their wide philosophy commends itself to the genius of Emerson.
It is pleasant in these old poets to admire what has been admired by
others--to read the old verses with the indorsement of genius. The name
adds value to the bond. Coleridge, for instance, whose "paper," in a
mercantile sense, would have been, on "change," the worst in England, has
given us many of these notable "securities." They live in his still
echoing "Table-Talk," and are sprinkled generously over his
writings--while what record is there of the "good," the best financial
names of the day? One sonnet of Herbert was an especial favorite with
Coleridge. It was that heart-searching, sympathizing epitome of spiritual
life, entitled
SIN.
"Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us; then school-masters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound
To rules of reason, holy messengers.
"Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.
"Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness.
The sound of Glory ringing in our ears:
Without, our shame; within, our consciences:
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
"Yet all these fences and their whole array,
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away."
These poems, it should be remembered, are private devotional
heart-confessions, not written for sale, for pay or reputation; they were
not printed at all during the author's life, but were brought forth by
faithful friends from the sacred coffer of his dying-room, in order that
posterity might know the secret of that honorable life and its cheerful
end. Izaak Walton has given a beautiful setting to one stanza from the
eloquent ode "Sunday." "The Sunday before his death," his biographer tells
us, "he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of his
instruments, took it into his hand, and said:
"'My God, my God
My music shall find thee,
And every string
Shall have his attribute to sing.
And having tuned it, he played and sung:
"'The Sundays of man's life,
Threaded together on time's string,
Make bracelets to adorn the wife
Of the eternal glorious King.
On Sundays, heaven's door stands ope;
Blessings are plentiful and rife;
More plentiful than hope.'
"Thus he sung on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels and he, and
Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven."
As we have fallen upon this personal, biographical vein, and as the best
key to a man's poetry is to know the man and what he may have encountered,
we may cite the poem entitled "The Pearl." It is compact of life and
experience: we see the courtier and the scholar ripening into the saint;
the world not forgotten or ignored, but its best pursuits calmly weighed,
fondly enumerated and left behind, as steps of the celestial ladder.
THE PEARL.
"I know the ways of learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the press, and make it run;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun
In laws and policy; what the stars conspire;
What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire;
Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas;
The stock and surplus, cause and history:
All these stand open, or I have the keys:
Yet I love thee.
"I know the ways of honor, what maintains
The quick returns of courtesy and wit:
In vies of favor whether party gains,
When glory swells the heart and mouldeth it
To all expressions both of hand and eye,
Which on the world a true-love knot may tie,
And bear the bundle, wheresoe'er it goes:
How many drams of spirits there must be
To sell my life unto my friends or foes:
Yet I love thee.
"I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains,
The lullings and the relishes of it;
The propositions of hot blood and brains;
What mirth and music mean; what love and wit
Have done these twenty hundred years, and more;
I know the projects of unbridled store:
My stuff is flesh, not grass; my senses live,
And grumble oft, that they have more in me
Than he that curbs them, being but one to five:
Yet I love thee.
"I know all these, and have them in my hand;
Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes
I fly to thee, and fully understand
Both the main sale, and the commodities;
And at what rate and price I have thy love;
With all the circumstances that may move:
Yet through the labyrinths, not my grovelling wit,
But thy silk-twist let down from heav'n to me,
Did both conduct and teach me, how, by it,
To climb to thee."
A splendid retrospect this of a short life: and with what accurate
knowledge of art, science, policy, literature, of powers of body and mind.
Herbert's poems are full of this sterling sense and philosophical
reflection--the mintage of a master mind.
Addison's version of the twenty-third Psalm has entered into every
household and penetrated every heart by its sweetness and pathos. There is
equal gentleness and sincerity in Herbert's:
"The God of love my shepherd is,
And he that doth me feed.
While he is mine, and I am his,
What can I want or need?
"He leads me to the tender grass,
Where I both feed and rest;
Then to the streams that gently pass:
In both I have the best.
"Or if I stray, he doth convert,
And bring my mind in frame
And all this not for my desert,
But for his holy name.
"Yea, in death's shady, black abode
Well may I walk, not fear:
For thou art with me, and thy rod
To guide, thy staff to bear.
"Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine,
E'en in my en'mies' sight;
My head with oil, my cup with wine,
Runs over day and night.
"Surely thy sweet and wond'rous love
Shall measure all my days:
And as it never shall remove,
So neither shall my praise."
We might linger long with Herbert, gathering the fruits of wisdom and
piety from the abundant orchard of his poems, where many a fruit "hangs
amiable;" but we must listen to his brethren.
* * * * *
Henry Vaughan was the literary offspring of George Herbert. His life, too,
might have been written by good Izaak Walton, so gentle was it, full of
all pleasant associations and quiet nobleness, decorated by the love of
nature and letters, intimacies with poets, and with that especial touch of
nature which always went to the heart of the Complete Angler, a love of
fishing--for Vaughan was wont, at times, to skim the waters of his native
rivers.
He was born in Wales; the old Roman name of the country conferring upon
him the appellation "Silurist"--for in those days local pride and
affection claimed the honor of the bard, as the poet himself first
gathered strength from the home, earth and sky which concentrated rather
than circumscribed his genius. His family was of good old lineage,
breathing freely for generations in the upper atmosphere of life, warmed
and cheered in a genial sunlight of prosperity. It could stir, too, at the
call of patriotism, and send soldiers, as it did, to bite the heroic dust
at Agincourt. Another time brought other duties. The poet came into the
world in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the great
awakening of thought and English intellect was to be followed by stirring
action. He was not, indeed, to bear any great part in the senate or the
field; but all noble spirits were moved by the issues of the time. To some
the voice of the age brought hope and energy; to others, a not ignoble
submission. It was perhaps as great a thing to suffer with the Royal
Martyr, with all the burning life and traditions of England in the
throbbing heart, as to rise from the ruins into the cold ether where the
stern soul of Milton could wing its way in self-reliant calmness. Honor is
due, as in all great struggles, to both parties. Vaughan's lot was cast
with the conquered cause.
His youth was happy, as all poets' should be, and as the genius of all
true poets, coupled with that period of life, will go far to make it.
There must be early sunshine far the first nurture of that delicate plant:
the storm comes afterward to perfect its life. Vaughan first saw the
light in a rural district of great beauty. His songs bear witness to it.
Indeed he is known by his own designation, a fragrant title in the sweet
fields of English poesy, as the Swan of the Usk, though he veiled the
title in the thin garb of the Latin, "Olor Iscanus." Another fortunate
circumstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of
a rural Welsh rector, with whom, his twin brother for a companion, he
passed the years of youth in what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths
of classical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek
and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be
less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving
powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized
in their waters.
The brothers left for Oxford at the mature age--not a whit too late for
any minds--of seventeen or eighteen. At the University there were other
words than the songs of Apollo. The Great Revolution was already on the
carpet, and it was to be fought out with weapons not found in the logical
armory of Aristotle. The brothers were royalists, of course; and Henry,
before the drama was played out, like many good men and true, tasted the
inside of a prison--doubtless, like Lovelace and Wither, singing his
heartfelt minstrelsy behind the wires of his cage. He was not a fighting
man. Poets rarely are. More than one lyrist--as Archilochus and Horace may
bear witness--has thrown away his shield on the field of battle. Vaughan
wisely retired to his native Wales. Jeremy Taylor, too, it may be
remembered, was locking up the treasures of his richly-furnished mind and
passionate feeling within the walls of those same Welsh hills. Nature,
alone, however, is inadequate to the production of a true poet. Even
Wordsworth, the most patient, absorbed of recluses, had his share of
education in London and travel in foreign cities. Vaughan, too, early
found his way, in visits, to the metropolis, where he heard at the Globe
Tavern the last echoes of that burst of wit and knowledge which had spoken
from the tongue and kindled in the eye of Shakspeare, Spenser and Raleigh.
Ben Jonson was still alive, and the young poets who flocked to him, as a
later age worshipped Dryden, were all "sealed of the tribe of Ben."
Randolph and Cartwright were his friends.
Under these early inspirations of youth, nature, learning, witty
companionship, Vaughan published his first verses--breathing a love of his
art and its pleasures of imagination, paying his tribute to his paternal
books in "Englishing," the "Tenth Satyre of Juvenal," and not forgetting,
of course, the lovely "Amoret." A young poet without a lady in his verse
is a solecism which nature abhors. All this, however, as his biographer
remarks, "though fine in the way of poetic speculation, would not do for
every-day practice." Of course not; and the young "swan" turned his wary
feet from the glittering stream to the solid land. The poet became a
physician. It was a noble art for such a spirit to practise, and not a
very rude progress from youthful poesy if he felt and thought aright.
There was a sterner change in store, however, and it came to him with the
monition, "Physician, heal thyself!" He was prostrated by severe bodily
disease, and thenceforth his spirit was bowed to the claims of the unseen
world. The "light amorist" found a higher inspiration. He turned his
footsteps to the Temple and worshipped at the holy altar of Herbert. His
poetry becomes religious. "Sparks from the Flint" is the title which he
gives his new verses, "Silex Scintillans." After that pledge to holiness
given to the world, he survived nearly half a century, dying at the mature
age of seventy-three--a happy subject of contemplation in the bosom of his
Welsh retirement, passing quietly down the vale of life, feeding his
spirit on the early-gathered harvest of wit, learning, taste, feeling,
fancy, benevolence and piety.
Of such threads was the life of our poet spun.
His verse is light, airy, flying with the lark to heaven. Hear him with
"his singing robes" about him:
"I would I were some bird or star,
Flutt'ring in woods, or lifted far
Above this inn
And road of sin!
Then either star or bird should be
Shining or singing still to thee."
In this song of "Peace"--
"My soul, there is a country
Afar beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry
All skillful in the wars.
There, above noise and danger,
Sweet peace sits crown'd with smiles,
And one born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend,
And (oh, my soul awake!)
Did in pure love descend,
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flower of peace,
The rose that cannot wither,
Thy fortress and thy ease.
Leave, then, thy foolish ranges;
For none can thee secure,
But one, who never changes--
Thy God, thy Life, thy Cure."
Or in that kindred ode, full of "intimations of immortality received in
childhood," entitled, "The Retreat:"
"Happy those early days, when I
Shin'd in my angel infancy!
Before I understood this place,
Appointed for my second race,
Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walkt above
A mile or two from my first love,
And looking back, at that short space,
Could see a glimpse of his bright face;
When on some gilded cloud or flower
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.
Oh how I long to travel back,
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain
Where first I left my glorious train;
From whence th' enlight'ned spirit sees
That shady city of palm-trees.
But, ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way!
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move;
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return."
Here is a picture of the angel-visited world of Eden, not altogether
destroyed by the Fall, when
"Each day
The valley or the mountain
Afforded visits, and still Paradise lay
In some green shade or fountain.
Angels lay lieger here: each bush and cell,
Each oak and highway knew them;
Walk but the fields, or sit down at some well,
And he was sure to view them."
Vaughan's birds and flowers gleam with light from the spirit land. This is
the opening of a little piece entitled "The Bird:"
"Hither thou com'st. The busy wind all night
Blew through thy lodging, where thy own warm wing
Thy pillow was. Many a sullen storm,
For which coarse man seems much the fitter born,
Rain'd on thy bed
And harmless head;
And now, as fresh and cheerful as the light,
Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing
Unto that Providence, whose unseen arm
Curb'd them, and cloth'd thee well and warm."
How softly the image of the little bird again tempers the thought of death
in his ode to the memory of the departed:
"He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know
At first sight if the bird be flown;
But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown."
But we must leave this fair garden of the poet's fancies. The reader will
find there many a flower yet untouched.
* * * * *
Richard Crashaw was the contemporary of the early years of Vaughan; for,
alas! he died young--though not till he had transcribed for the world the
hopes, the aspirations, the sorrows of his troubled life. He lived but
thirty-four years--the volume of his verses is not less nor more than the
kindred books of the brother poets with whom we are now associating his
memory. A small body of verse will hold much life; for the poet gives us a
concentrated essence, an elixir, a skillful confection of humanity, which,
diluted with the commonplaces of every-day thought and living, may cover
whole shelves of libraries. The secret of the whole of one life may be
expressed in a song or a sonnet. The little books of the world are not the
least.
Crashaw, also, was a scholar. The son of a clergy-man, he was educated at
the famed Charter-house and afterward at Cambridge. The Revolution, too,
overtook him. He refused the oath of the covenant, was ejected from his
fellowship, became a Roman Catholic, and took refuge in Paris, where he
ate the bread of exile with Cowley and others, cheered by the noble
sympathy--it could not be much more--of Queen Henrietta Maria. She
recommended him to Rome, and the sensitive poet carried his joys and
sorrows to the bosom of the church. He lived a few years, and died canon
of Loretto, at the age of thirty-four.
Though the son of a zealous opponent of the Roman church, Crashaw was born
with an instinct and heart for its service. There runs through all his
poetry that sensuousness of feeling which seeks the repose and luxury of
faith which Rome always offers to her ardent votaries. It is profitable to
compare the sentiment of Crashaw with the more intellectual development of
Herbert. What in the former is the paramount, constant exhibition, in the
latter is accepted, and holds its place subordinate to other claims.
Without a portion of it there could be no deep religious life--with it,
in excess, we fear for the weakness of a partial development. There is so
much gain, however, to the poet, that we have no disposition to take
exception to the single string of Crashaw. The beauty of the Venus was
made up from the charms of many models. So, in our libraries, as in life,
we must be content with parcel-work, and take one man's wisdom and
another's sentiment, looking out that we get something of each to enrich
our multifarious life.
Crashaw's poetry is one musical echo and aspiration. He finds his theme
and illustration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him:
his lute is always by his side. Following the "Steps of the Temple," a
graceful tribute to Herbert, we have the congenial title, "The Delights of
the Muses," opening with that exquisite composition:
"Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony,"
"Music's Duel." It is the story--a favorite one to the ears of our
forefathers two centuries ago--of the nightingale and the musician
contending with voice and instrument in alternate melodies, till the sweet
songstress of the grove falls and dies upon the lute of her rapt rival. It
is something more than a pretty tale. Ford, the dramatist, introduced it
briefly in happy lines in "The Lover's Melancholy," but Crashaw's verses
inspire the very sweetness and lingering pleasure of the contest. It is
high noon when the "sweet lute's master" seeks retirement from the heat,
"on the scene of a green plat, under protection of an oak," by the bank of
the Tiber. The "light-foot lady,"
"The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,"
"entertains the music's soft report," which begins with a flying prelude,
to which the lady of the tree "carves out her dainty voice" with "quick
volumes of wild notes."
"His nimble hand's instinct then taught each string,
A cap'ring cheerfulness; and made them sing
To their own dance."
She
"Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note
Through the sleek passage of her open throat:
A clear, unwrinkled song."
The contention invites every art of expression. The highest powers of the
lute are evoked in rapid succession closing with a martial strain: