She gives him back, her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short thick sobs, whose thund'ring vollies float,
And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, 'still'd out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody,
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripen'd airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath,
Which there reciprocally laboreth.
In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipp'd angel imps, that swill their throats
In cream of morning Helicon; and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,
To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing."
What wealth of imagery and proud association of ideas--the bubbling
spring, the golden, waving harvest, "ploughed by her breath"--the fane of
Apollo suggesting in a word images of Greek maidens in chorus by the white
temple of the God, the dew of Helicon, the soft waking of men from
beneficent repose. It is all very well to talk of a bird doing all this:
we admire nightingales, but Philomela never enchanted us in this way; it
is the sex with which we are charmed. The poet's "light-foot lady" tells
us the secret. We are subdued by the loveliest of prima-donnas.
There is more of this, and as good. The little poem is a poet's dictionary
of musical expression. Its lines, less than two hundred, deserve to be
committed to memory, to rise at times in the mind--the soft assuagement of
cares and sorrows.
A famous poem of Crashaw is "On a Prayer-Book sent to Mrs. M.R." It
breathes a divine ecstasy of the sacred ode:
"Delicious deaths, soft exhalations
Of soul; dear and divine annihilations;
A thousand unknown rites
Of joys, and rarefied delights."
It is human passion sublimated and refined to the uses of heaven, but
human passion still--the very luxury of religion--the rapture of
earth-born seraphs, as he sings with venturous exultation:
"The rich and roseal spring of those rare sweets,
Which with a swelling bosom there she meets,
Boundless and infinite, bottomless treasures
Of pure inebriating pleasures:
Happy proof she shall discover,
What joy, what bliss,
How many heavens at once it is,
To have a God become her lover!"
Mrs. M.R., whether maid or widow we know not--in Crashaw's day virgins
were called Mistress--has another poem addressed to her--"Counsel
concerning her choice." It alludes to some check or hindrance in love, and
asks:
"Dear, heav'n-designed soul!
Amongst the rest
Of suitors that besiege your maiden breast,
Why may not I
My fortune try,
And venture to speak one good word,
Not for myself, alas! but for my dearer Lord?
* * * * *
Your first choice fails; oh, when you choose again,
May it not be among the sons of men!"
This is the language of devotional rapture common to the extremes of the
religious world--Methodism and Roman Catholicism. Every one has heard the
ardent hymn by Newton--"The Name of Jesus," and that stirring anthem, "The
Coronation of Christ"--few have read the eloquent production of the canon
of Loretto, a canticle from the flaming heart of Rome, addressed "To the
name above every name, the name of Jesus."
"Pow'rs of my soul, be proud!
And speak loud
To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name;
And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim
New smiles to nature.
* * * * *
Sweet name, in thy each syllable
A thousand blest Arabias dwell;
A thousand hills of frankincense,
Mountains of myrrh, and beds of spices,
And ten thousand paradises,
The soul that tastes thee takes from thence,
How many unknown worlds there are
Of comforts, which thou hast in keeping!
How many thousand mercies there
In Pity's soft lap lie asleeping!"
Crashaw's invitations to holiness breathe the very gallantry of piety. He
addresses "the noblest and best of ladies, the Countess of Denbigh," who
had been his patroness in exile, "persuading her to resolution in
religion."
"What heaven-entreated heart is this
Stands trembling at the gate of bliss.
* * * * *
What magic bolts, what mystic bars
Maintain the will in these strange wars!
What fatal, what fantastic bands
Keep the free heart from its own hands!
So, when the year takes cold, we see
Poor waters their own prisoners be;
Fetter'd and lock'd up fast, they lie
In a sad self-captivity;
Th' astonish'd nymphs their floods' strange fate deplore,
To see themselves their own severer shore.
* * * * *
Disband dull fears; give Faith the day;
To save your life, kill your delay;
It is Love's siege, and sure to be
Your triumph, though his victory."
His poem, "The Weeper," shoots the prismatic hues of the rainbow athwart
the veil of fast-falling tears:
"Hail sister springs,
Parents of silver-footed rills!
Ever bubbling things!
Thawing crystal! snowy hills!
Still spending, never spent; I mean
Thy fair eyes, sweet Magdalene.
* * * * *
"Every morn from hence,
A brisk cherub something sips,
Whose soft influence
Adds sweetness to his sweetest lips;
Then to his music, and his song
Tastes of this breakfast all day long.
"Not in the evening's eyes,
When they red with weeping are
For the sun that dies,
Sits sorrow with a face so fair.
Nowhere but here did ever meet
Sweetness so sad, sadness so sweet.
"When Sorrow would be seen
In her brightest majesty,
For she is a queen,
Then is she drest by none but thee.
Then, and only then, she wears
Her richest pearls, I mean thy tears.
"The dew no more will weep,
The primrose's pale cheek to deck;
The dew no more will sleep,
Nuzzled in the lily's neck.
Much rather would it tremble here,
And leave them both to be thy tear."
These are some of Crashaw's "Steps to the Temple"--verily he walked
thither on velvet.
"Wishes to his supposed Mistress," is more than a pretty enumeration of
the good qualities of woman as they rise in the heart of a noble, gallant
lover:
"Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she,
That shall command my heart and me:
"Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye,
In shady leaves of destiny:
"Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate, stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth:
"Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:
"Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye call'd my absent kisses."
We are not reprinting Crashaw, and must forbear further quotation. It is
enough if we have presented to the reader a lily or a rose from his pages,
and have given a clue to that treasure-house--
"A box where sweets compacted lie."
A generation nurtured in poetic susceptibility by the genius of Keats and
Tennyson, should not forget the early muse of Crashaw. His verse is the
very soul of tenderness and imaginative luxury: less intellectual, less
severe in the formation of a broad, manly character than Herbert; catching
up the brighter inspirations of Vaughan, and excelling him in richness--it
has a warm, graceful garb of its own. It is tinged with the glowing hues
of Spenser's fancy; baptized in the fountains of sacred love, it draws an
earthly inspiration from the beautiful in nature and life, as in the
devout paintings of the great Italian masters, we find the models of their
angels and seraphs on earth.
MISERERE DOMINE.
BY WILLIAM H. BURLEIGH.
Thou who look'st with pitying eye
From Thy radiant home on high,
On the spirit tempest-tost,
Wretched, weary, wandering, lost--
Ever ready help to give,
And entreating, "_Look and live!_"
By that love, exceeding thought,
Which from Heaven the Saviour brought,
By that mercy which could dare
Death to save us from despair,
Lowly bending at Thy feet,
We adore, implore, entreat,
Lifting heart and voice to Thee--
_Miserere Domine_!
With the vain and giddy throng,
FATHER! we have wandered long;
Eager from Thy paths to stray,
Chosen the forbidden way;
Heedless of the light within,
Hurried on from sin to sin,
And with scoffers madly trod
On the mercy of our God!
Now to where Thine altars burn,
FATHER! sorrowing we return.
Though forgotten, Thou hast not
To be merciful forgot;
Hear us! for we cry to Thee--
_Miserere Domine_!
From the burden of our grief
Who, but Thou, can give relief?
Who can pour Salvation's light
On the darkness of our night?
Bowed our load of sin beneath,
Who can snatch our souls from death?
Vain the help of man!--in dust
Vainly do we put our trust!
Smitten by Thy chastening rod,
Hear us, save us, SON OF GOD!
From the perils of our path,
From the terrors of thy wrath,
Save us, when we look to thee--
_Miserere Domine_!
Where the pastures greenly grow,
Where the waters gently flow,
And beneath the sheltering ROCK
With the shepherd rests the flock.
Oh, let us be gathered there
Richly of Thy love to share;
With the people of Thy choice
Live and labor and rejoice,
Till the toils of life are done,
Till the fight is fought and won,
And the crown, with heavenly glow,
Sparkles on the victor's brow!
Hear the prayer we lift to Thee--
_Miserere Domine_!
THE
KINGDOMS OF NATURE PRAISING GOD:
A SHORT ESSAY ON THE 148TH PSALM.
BY REV. C.A. BARTOL.
Surrounded as we are with the art and handicraft of man--almost everything
we see bearing the mark of his finger, the house and the street, the
market and exchange, every instrument and utensil--it is well,
occasionally, to look forth from this little world of custom and
convenience we ourselves have constructed, into that which bears the
impress of the Almighty's hand--is still as it was left from His forming
strength, and brings us into immediate communion with His Infinite mind.
Let us, at least, listen to the notes of David's lyre on the creative
Majesty.
After an invocation to the heavenly host, the Psalmist calls first on the
forms of inanimate and inorganic existence. These things, of which he
enumerates a few, praise the power of God. The crags and headlands, jarred
and worn by the billows they breast; the granite peaks, bald and grey,
under light and tempest, with the silent host of rocky boulders, swept, we
know not by what convulsions, from their native seat, stand up as the
first rank in the choir of the Maker's worship; and infidelity and atheism
are hushed and abashed by their lofty praise.
Organized, but still unconscious existence takes the next station in this
universal chorus. The solemn grove lifting its green top into the heavens,
beside that motionless army of ancient stones, adds a sweeter note than
they can give to the great harmony. It is a note, speaking not alone of
the Creator's power, but of His wisdom too. Here is life and growth. Here
are adaptations and stages of progress. From the minutest germination,
from the slenderest stem, from the smallest trembling leaf to the hugest
trunks and the highest overshadowing branches, this vegetable
organization, verdant, pale, crimson, in changeable colors, runs; stopping
short only with Alpine summits or polar posts, swiftly and softly clothing
again the rents and gashes in the ground made by the stroke of labor or
the wheels of war--blooming into the golden and ruddy harvest on the stalk
and the bough, even overpassing the salt shore, to line the dismal and
unvisited caves of the deep with peculiar varieties of growth; and forth
into our hands from the foaming brine delicate and strangely beautiful
leaves and slight ramifications of matchless tints and proportions.
But the Psalmist summons a third order of beings to contribute its
melodious share to this hallelujah; and that is the living and conscious,
though irrational tribes. This sings not of power and wisdom alone, but
more complex and rich in adoration, sings of goodness also. God has not
made the world for a dead spectacle and mere picture for His own eye. How
full and crowded with life, and happy life, His creation is! Go forth from
inclosing city walls, and, in the summer noontide, stop in solitude and
apparent silence and listen; and soon the sounds of this joyous life shall
come to your ear: the chirp of the insects--the rustle of wings--the
crackling of the leaves, as the blithesome airy creatures pass--the short,
thick warble of the bird by your side, or its varied tune, clearer than
viol or organ, from the thicket beyond--while, from time to time, the deep
low of cattle reverberates from afar. Or if you are where the still and
speechless creatures inhabit, open your eye to gaze and examine, and it
shall be filled with the visible, as the ear with the vocal signs of
living enjoyment. Walking at the edge of the ebbing tide, you tread on
life at every step--shelly tribe on tribe of fish pressing together, while
in the clear water, other tribes noiselessly swim and glide away. Every
vital motion speaks of pleasure, whether in that restless current below,
or in the air above, as the feathered songster passes, darting up and down
his element, delight gushing from his throat at every buoyant
spring--silence and sound, with double demonstration, declaring to the
Creator's praise the great and limitless boon of life.
But there is one accent more, that of love, without which the hymn is not
complete; and there is another human order of Being to speak that accent.
Man includes in himself all the preceding orders of Being, with all the
notes of their praise: the material clod, for is he not made of dust; the
plant, for he has an outward growth and circulation--the animal, for he
has instinct and feeling; while reason and conscience and spiritual
affection he has peculiarly and alone; so that Power, Wisdom, Goodness and
Love, all concentrated in him, complete the ground of his praise.
Yet, as we look out upon this mighty sum of things in the external
universe, the level earth stretching off to some ascending ridge in the
horizon's blue distance--the boundless deep spread afar, till, at the
misty edge of vision it bends, in mingling threefold circles, to embrace
the globe, the impenetrable below and the infinite above him, how slight
and insignificant a creature he seems! like a fly that clings to the
ceiling, or a mote that swims in the sunbeam, one of the mere mites of
nature, easily lost by the way or a frail figure ready to be crushed by
any stroke of the ponderous machinery mid which he moves. When he reflects
on his condition--his brief date, his speedy doom--how inconsiderable his
existence appears! Or when he regards himself as not a compound of matter
merely, but as a living soul, how easy it seems, as his contemplation runs
out absorbed into the wondrous glory of the world, for all the vital
energy which is for a moment insulated in his frame, when his frame
dissolves, to pass into the general substance from which it came, the
thinking creature ending as it began! But a voice from heaven cries to him
and says, "Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver
him. I will set him on high because he hath known my name; with long life
will I satisfy him and show him my salvation."
This love of God makes the society of all human affection. "God made the
country, and man made the town," is an oft quoted line; and not seldom it
is implied that the open or thinly-peopled landscape is somehow a better
and holier place for the soul than the thronged city. But let it not be
forgotten that man himself is God's work and His highest work on earth.
Would we sing our psalm now or hereafter with the sweetest relish, we must
go forth from any little circle we may have drawn around us, of private
ease and personal comfort, in friendly intercourse to hear the cry of the
unfortunate, the sighing of the prisoner, the sob of the mourner, the
groan of the sick, the appeal of the injured and oppressed. By our aid,
consolation and succor, we must gather their voices into the chorus,
before, with perfect satisfaction, we can mingle in it our own.
Upon a Sabbath day, I walked amid all those charms and fascinations, in
which nature can bind us as in a spell. I passed through green aisles of
woods, that were ever-shadowed and made fragrant with every various
vegetable growth of this temperate northern clime; while the morning beam
of the sun in heaven fell brightly aslant the leaves and branches; and the
birds, that my lonely step startled from their perch or nest, flew from
glen to glen, making with their song, save the murmur of the breeze in the
boughs, the only sound I could hear. At length, the high-arched avenues of
this immense forest-cathedral let me out upon the broad, open shore,
where I saw and heard wave after wave break on the rocks, with shifting
splendor and that mellow thundering music which so saddens while it
delights. Solitude, verily, was stretched out asleep in the sun upon the
length of sandy beach and beetling promontory; and I sat and gazed now
over the boundless waters, now into the devouring abysses opened by the
bending crests of the billows, and anon into the gloomy depths of the
forest or the serene and measureless openings of the sky. What grandeur in
every line transcendent! Yet what impenetrable mystery too, what menacing
ruin to the small remnant of human life still spared from the generations
in ages past, already swallowed up! Peering around in this pensive mood,
in which the joy of being mixed with the uneasy doubt of its tenure, my
eye fell at last on the spire of a little church, rising like a pencil of
light to heaven, out of the fathomless waste. And there my soul alighted
and found rest. Like some sea mark to the voyager, that slender shaft,
reared by the social religion of the world, stood to tell me where in the
universe I was; the common Christian consciousness reinforced my own, and
dark queries and agitating uncertainties subsided from my spirit, as the
deluge from the dove that Noah sent out to pluck the green branch of
promise. From the illimitable reaches of the huge, but dimly responding
creation around, the slight, frail temple for God's praise drew me to its
welcome and peaceful embrace. As I approached it, the tolling of the bell
struck on my ear in a touch of gladder tidings than I had received from
all the melody of the great wind-harp of the trees, with all the soft
accord of the tossing billows. Stroke after stroke, distinctly falling,
seemed to bring to me the echoes of a million holy telegraphic towers all
over the surface of the globe; and when I came to stand under the eaves of
the small sanctuary, the measured turning, in the belfry, of the wheel, by
revolutions such as I had seen long years ago in my childhood, filled my
eyes with gracious tokens, that were not drawn from me by the sublime
circling of the sun and moon, then moving east and west in their spheres.
The final tone of praise in the great ascription to God is, in its
fullness, supplied by a revelation greater than blessed the times of
David. A new and sweeter string is strung upon the lyre his royal fingers
so nobly swept, and the voice of thanksgiving is more highly raised for an
"unspeakable gift." The kingdoms of nature are the chords on the harp we
may sound to the Creator of all. There has been of late much discussion as
to the place nature should hold among religious influences and appeals,
some super-eminently exalting her, and others putting her in contrast and
almost opposition with all spirit, beauty and truth. This is no place, nor
has the present writer inclination, here, to take part in the grand
debate, infinitely interesting as it is, on either side. He would only
catch, or repeat and prolong the strain of an old and sacred ode--he would
contribute a meditation. He would run the matchless ancient verse into a
few particulars of fresh and modern illustration, content if he can make
no melody of his own, to recall for some, perhaps not enough heeding it,
the Hebrew music that has lingered so long on the ear of the world.
TRANSLATIONS.
BY THE REV. CHARLES T. BROOKS
I.
TO GOD'S CARE I COMMIT MYSELF!
(FROM THE GERMAN OF ARNDT.)
Again is hushed the busy day,
And all to sleep is gone away;
The deer hath sought his mossy bed,
The bird hath hid his little head.
And man to his still chamber goes
To rest from all his cares and woes.
Yet steps he first before his door,
To look into the night once more,
With love-thanks and love-greeting, there,
For rest his spirit to prepare,
To see the high stars shine abroad
And drink once more the breath of God.
Mild Father of the world, whose love
Keeps watch o'er all things from above,
To Thee my stammering prayer would rise;
Bend down from yonder starry skies;
And from Thy sparkling, sun-strewed way,
Oh teach thy feeble child to pray!
All day Thou hadst me in Thy sight;
So guard me, Father, through this night;
And by thy dear benignity
From Satan's malice shelter me;
For what of evil may befall
The body, is the least of all.
Oh send from realms of purity
The dearest angel in to me,
As a peace-herald let him come,
And watchman, to my house and home,
That all desires and thoughts of mine,
Around thy heaven may climb and twine.
Then day shall part exultingly,
Then night a word of love shall be,
Then morn an angel-smile shall wear
Whose brightness no base thing can bear,
And we, earth's children, walk abroad,
Children of light and sons of God.
And when the last red evening-glow
Shall greet these failing eyes below,
When yearns my soul to wing its way
To the high track of endless day,
Then all the shining ones shall come
To bear me to the spirit's home.
II.
THE UNKNOWN.
(FROM THE GERMAN OF AUERSPERG.)
Through the city's narrow gateway
Forth an aged beggar fares,
None is there to give him escort,
And no farewell word he bears.
Heaven's grey cloud to no one whispers
Of God's message in its fold;
Earth's grey rock to no one whispers
That it hides the shaft of gold.
And the naked tree in winter
Tells not straightway to the eye
That it once so greenly glistened,
Bloomed and bore so bounteously.
None would dream that yon old beggar,
Tottering, bending toward the ground,
Once was clothed in royal purple,
And his silver locks gold-crowned!
Foul conspirators discrowned him,
Tore the radiant purple off,
Placing in his hands, for sceptre,
Yonder wormy pilgrim-staff.
Thus, for years, now, has he wandered,
All ungreeted and unknown,
Through so many a foreign country,
Bowed and broken and alone.
Weary unto death, he lays him
'Neath a tree, in evening's beam,
Music in the twigs and blossoms
Sings him to an endless dream.
Men that to and fro pass by him,
Speak in softened tones of grief;
Who may be the poor old beggar,
That has found this sad relief?
But mild Nature, soft-eyed Nature,
Knows the aged sleeper there,
Obsequies of solemn splendor,
Meet for king, will she prepare.
From the tree fall wreaths of blossoms,
Floating down to crown his head,
And a sceptre's golden lustre
Sunset on his staff hath shed.
For a canopy above him
Rustling twigs a green arch throw,
And he wears a royal purple
In the evening's mantling glow.
RECOLLECTIONS OF NEANDER,
THE CHURCH HISTORIAN.
BY THE REV. ROSWELL D. HITCHCOCK, D.D.
In the spring of 1848, during the progress of the European revolutions,
which promised so much and performed so little, I spent several weeks in
Berlin, the capital of Prussia, and saw much, both in public and in
private, of "the father of modern church history," whose name I had long
revered, and whose image now is one of the choicest treasures of memory.
Of all the Christian scholars I have ever known, he stands in my thoughts
without a rival; a child in simplicity, a sage in learning, and in broad,
catholic and fervent piety, a noble saint. In common with hundreds of my
countrymen, I owe him a debt of gratitude, of which this humble tribute to
his memory will be but a faint acknowledgment.
Of Neander's outward history there is but little to be reported; his life
was the retired and uneventful one of a peculiarly intense and abstracted
student. It is hardly a figure of speech, but almost exactly the literal
truth to say that he was born, and lived, and died, beneath the shadow of
the Universities. He was not, indeed, quite so much of a recluse as his
fellow-countryman Kant, the renowned Königsberg philosopher, who, though
he reached the age of eighty, and had a reputation which filled all
Europe, was never more than thirty-two miles away from the spot where his
mother rocked him in his cradle. But considering the ampler means at his
command, and the greatly increased facilities for travelling, Neander's
neglect of locomotion is nearly as much to be wondered at as Kant's; I
doubt if he was ever beyond the boundaries of Germany.
He was born January 16th, 1789, in Göttingen, a city of some eleven
thousand inhabitants in the kingdom of Hanover, the seat of a famous
University, which, though now less prominent than formerly, has numbered
amongst its professors such men as Blumenbach, Eichhorn, and Michaelis.
His parents were of Jewish blood and the Jewish religion, and he inherited
from them, in a strong degree, both the peculiar physiognomy and the
distinguishing faith of that despised but most remarkable race. Nor was he
a Jew only outwardly; from the beginning he was marked as an Israelite
indeed, a true Nathanael soul.