“Poems are painted window panes.
If one looks from the square into the church,
Dusk and dimness are his gains--
Sir Philistine is left in the lurch!
The sight, so seen, may well enrage him,
Nor anything henceforth assuage him.
“But come just inside what conceals;
Cross the holy threshold quite--
All at once ‘tis rainbow-bright,
Device and story flash to light,
A gracious splendour truth reveals.
This to God’s children is full measure,
It edifies and gives you pleasure!”
This is true concerning every form in which truth is embodied, whether
it be sight or sound, geometric diagram or scientific formula.
Unintelligible, it may be dismal enough, regarded from the outside;
prismatic in its revelation of truth from within. Such is the world
itself, as beheld by the speculative eye; a thing of disorder,
obscurity, and sadness: only the child-like heart, to which the door
into the divine idea is thrown open, can understand somewhat the secret
of the Almighty. In human things it is particularly true of art, in
which the fundamental idea seems to be the revelation of the true
through the beautiful. But of all the arts it is most applicable to
poetry; for the others have more that is beautiful on the outside; can
give pleasure to the senses by the form of the marble, the hues of the
painting, or the sweet sounds of the music, although the heart may never
perceive the meaning that lies within. But poetry, except its rhythmic
melody, and its scattered gleams of material imagery, for which few care
that love it not for its own sake, has no attraction on the outside to
entice the passer to enter and partake of its truth. It is inwards that
its colours shine, within that its forms move, and the sound of its holy
organ cannot be heard from without.
Now, if one has been able to reach the heart of a poem, answering to
Goethe’s parabolic description; or even to discover a loop-hole, through
which, from an opposite point, the glories of its stained windows are
visible; it is well that he should seek to make others partakers in his
pleasure and profit. Some who might not find out for themselves, would
yet be evermore grateful to him who led them to the point of vision.
Surely if a man would help his fellow-men, he can do so far more
effectually by exhibiting truth than exposing error, by unveiling beauty
than by a critical dissection of deformity. From the very nature of the
things it must be so. Let the true and good destroy their opposites. It
is only by the good and beautiful that the evil and ugly are known. It
is the light that makes manifest.
The poem “Christmas Eve,” by Robert Browning, with the accompanying poem
“Easter Day,” seems not to have attracted much notice from the readers
of poetry, although highly prized by a few. This is, perhaps, to be
attributed, in a great measure, to what many would call a considerable
degree of obscurity. But obscurity is the appearance which to a first
glance may be presented either by profundity or carelessness of thought.
To some, obscurity itself is attractive, from the hope that worthiness
is the cause of it. To apply a test similar to that by which Pascal
tries the Koran and the Scriptures: what is the character of those
portions, the meaning of which is plain? Are they wise or foolish? If
the former, the presumption is that the obscurity of other parts is
caused not by opacity, but profundity. But some will object,
notwithstanding, that a writer ought to make himself plain to his
readers; nay, that if he has a clear idea himself, he must be able to
express that idea clearly. But for communion of thought, two minds, not
one, are necessary. The fault may lie in him that receives or in him
that gives, or it may be in neither. For how can the result of much
thought, the idea which for mouths has been shaping itself in the mind
of one man, be at once received by another mind to which it comes a
stranger and unexpected? The reader has no right to complain of so
caused obscurity. Nor is that form of expression, which is most easily
understood at first sight, necessarily the best. It will not, therefore,
continue to move; nor will it gather force and influence with more
intimate acquaintance. Here Goethe’s little parable, as he calls it, is
peculiarly applicable. But, indeed, if after all a writer is obscure,
the man who has spent most labour in seeking to enter into his thoughts,
will be the least likely to complain of his obscurity; and they who have
the least difficulty in understanding a writer, are frequently those who
understand him the least.
To those to whom the religion of Christ has been the law of liberty; who
by that door have entered into the universe of God, and have begun to
feel a growing delight in all the manifestations of God, it is cause of
much joy to find that, whatever may be the position taken by men of
science, or by those in whom the intellect predominates, with regard to
the Christian religion, men of genius, at least, in virtue of what is
child-like in their nature, are, in the present time, plainly
manifesting deep devotion to Christ. There are exceptions, certainly;
but even in those, there are symptoms of feelings which, one can hardly
help thinking, tend towards him, and will one day flame forth in
conscious worship. A mind that recognizes any of the multitudinous
meanings of the revelation of God, in the world of sounds, and forms,
and colours, cannot be blind to the higher manifestation of God in
common humanity; nor to him in whom is hid the key to the whole, the
First-born of the creation of God, in whose heart lies, as yet but
partially developed, the kingdom of heaven, which is the redemption of
the earth. The mind that delights in that which is lofty and great,
which feels there is something higher than self, will undoubtedly be
drawn towards Christ; and they, who at first looked on him as a great
prophet, came at length to perceive that he was the radiation of the
Father’s glory, the likeness of his unseen being.
A description of the poem may, perhaps, both induce to the reading of
it, and contribute to its easier comprehension while being perused. On a
stormy Christmas Eve, the poet, or rather the seer (for the whole must
be regarded as a poetic vision), is compelled to take refuge in the
“lath and plaster entry” of a little chapel, belonging to a congregation
of Calvinistic Methodists, who are at the time assembling for worship.
Wonderful in its reality is the description of various of the flock that
pass him as they enter the chapel, from
“the many-tattered
Little old-faced, peaking sister-turned-mother
Of the sickly babe she tried to smother
Somehow up, with its spotted face,
From the cold, on her breast, the one warm place:”
to the “shoemaker’s lad;” whom he follows, determined not to endure the
inquisition of their looks any longer, into the chapel. The humour of
the whole scene within is excellent. The stifling closeness, both of the
atmosphere and of the sermon, the wonderful content of the audience, the
“old fat woman,” who
“purred with pleasure,
And thumb round thumb went twirling faster,
While she, to his periods keeping measure,
Maternally devoured the pastor;”
are represented by a few rapid touches that bring certain points of the
reality almost unpleasantly near. At length, unable to endure it longer,
he rushes out into the air. Objection may, probably, be made to the
mingling of the humorous, even the ridiculous, with the serious; at
least, in a work of art like this, where they must be brought into such
close proximity. But are not these things as closely connected in the
world as they can be in any representation of it? Surely there are few
who have never had occasion to attempt to reconcile the thought of the
two in their own minds. Nor can there be anything human that is not, in
some connexion or other, admissible into art. The widest idea of art
must comprehend all things. A work of this kind must, like God’s world,
in which he sends rain on the just and on the unjust, be taken as a
whole and in regard to its design. The requisition is, that everything
introduced have a relation to the adjacent parts and to the whole
suitable to the design. Here the thing is real, is true, is human; a
thing to be thought about. It has its place amongst other phenomena,
with which, however apparently incongruous, it is yet vitally connected
within.
A coolness and delight visit us, on turning over the page and commencing
to read the description of sky, and moon, and clouds, which greet him
outside the chapel. It is as a vision of the vision-bearing world
itself, in one of its fine, though not, at first, one of its rarest
moods. And here a short digression to notice like feelings in unlike
dresses, one thought differently expressed will, perhaps, be pardoned.
The moon is prevented from shining out by the “blocks” of cloud “built
up in the west:”--
“And the empty other half of the sky
Seemed in its silence as if it knew
What, any moment, might look through
A chance-gap in that fortress massy.”