LORD BACON AND HIS COEVALS.
Except it be Milton's, there is not any prose fuller of grand poetic
embodiments than Lord Bacon's. Yet he always writes contemptuously of
poetry, having in his eye no doubt the commonplace kinds of it, which
will always occupy more bulk, and hence be more obtrusive, than that
which is true in its nature and rare in its workmanship. Towards the
latter end of his life, however, being in ill health at the time, he
translated seven of the Psalms of David into verse, dedicating them to
George Herbert. The best of them is Psalm civ.--just the one upon which
we might suppose, from his love to the laws of Nature, he would dwell
with the greatest sympathy. Partly from the wish to hear his voice
amongst the rest of our singers, partly for the merits of the version
itself, which has some remarkable lines, I have resolved to include it
here. It is the first specimen I have given in the heroic couplet.
Father and King of Powers both high and low,
Whose sounding fame all creatures serve to blow;
My soul shall with the rest strike up thy praise,
And carol of thy works, and wondrous ways.
But who can blaze thy beauties, Lord, aright?
They turn the brittle beams of mortal sight.
Upon thy head thou wear'st a glorious crown,
All set with virtues, polished with renown:
Thence round about a silver veil doth fall
Of crystal light, mother of colours all.
The compass, heaven, smooth without grain or fold,
All set with spangs of glittering stars untold,
And striped with golden beams of power unpent,
Is raiséd up for a removing tent
Vaulted and archéd are his chamber beams
Upon the seas, the waters, and the streams;
The clouds as chariots swift do scour the sky;
The stormy winds upon their wings do fly
His angels spirits are, that wait his will;
As flames of fire his anger they fulfil.
In the beginning, with a mighty hand,
He made the earth by counterpoise to stand,
Never to move, but to be fixed still;
Yet hath no pillars but his sacred will.
This earth, as with a veil, once covered was;
The waters overflowéd all the mass;
But upon his rebuke away they fled,
And then the hills began to show their head;
The vales their hollow bosoms opened plain,
The streams ran trembling down the vales again;
And that the earth no more might drowned be,
He set the sea his bounds of liberty;
And though his waves resound and beat the shore,
Yet it is bridled by his holy lore.
Then did the rivers seek their proper places,
And found their heads, their issues, and their races;
The springs do feed the rivers all the way,
And so the tribute to the sea repay:
Running along through many a pleasant field,
Much fruitfulness unto the earth they yield;
That know the beasts and cattle feeding by,
Which for to slake their thirst do thither hie.
Nay, desert grounds the streams do not forsake,
But through the unknown ways their journey take;
The asses wild that hide in wilderness,
Do thither come, their thirst for to refresh.
The shady trees along their banks do spring,
In which the birds do build, and sit, and sing,
Stroking the gentle air with pleasant notes,
Plaining or chirping through their warbling throats.
The higher grounds, where waters cannot rise,
By rain and dews are watered from the skies,
Causing the earth put forth the grass for beasts,
And garden-herbs, served at the greatest feasts,
And bread that is all viands' firmament,
And gives a firm and solid nourishment;
And wine man's spirits for to recreate,
And oil his face for to exhilarate.
The sappy cedars, tall like stately towers,
High flying birds do harbour in their bowers;
The holy storks that are the travellers,
Choose for to dwell and build within the firs;
The climbing goats hang on steep mountains' side;
The digging conies in the rocks do bide.
The moon, so constant in inconstancy,
Doth rule the monthly seasons orderly;
The sun, eye of the world, doth know his race,
And when to show, and when to hide his face.
Thou makest darkness, that it may be night,
Whenas the savage beasts that fly the light,
As conscious of man's hatred, leave their den,
And range abroad, secured from sight of men.
Then do the forests ring of lions roaring,
That ask their meat of God, their strength restoring;
But when the day appears, they back do fly,
And in their dens again do lurking lie;
Then man goes forth to labour in the field,
Whereby his grounds more rich increase may yield.
O Lord, thy providence sufficeth all;
Thy goodness not restrained but general
Over thy creatures, the whole earth doth flow
With thy great largeness poured forth here below.
Nor is it earth alone exalts thy name,
But seas and streams likewise do spread the same.
The rolling seas unto the lot do fall
Of beasts innumerable, great and small;
There do the stately ships plough up the floods;
The greater navies look like walking woods;
The fishes there far voyages do make,
To divers shores their journey they do take;
There hast thou set the great leviathan,
That makes the seas to seethe like boiling pan:
All these do ask of thee their meat to live,
Which in due season thou to them dost give:
Ope thou thy hand, and then they have good fare;
Shut thou thy hand, and then they troubled are.
All life and spirit from thy breath proceed,
Thy word doth all things generate and feed:
If thou withdraw'st it, then they cease to be,
And straight return to dust and vanity;
But when thy breath thou dost send forth again,
Then all things do renew, and spring amain,
So that the earth but lately desolate
Doth now return unto the former state.
The glorious majesty of God above
Shall ever reign, in mercy and in love;
God shall rejoice all his fair works to see,
For, as they come from him, all perfect be.
The earth shall quake, if aught his wrath provoke;
Let him but touch the mountains, they shall smoke.
As long as life doth last, I hymns will sing,
With cheerful voice, to the Eternal King;
As long as I have being, I will praise
The works of God, and all his wondrous ways.
I know that he my words will not despise:
Thanksgiving is to him a sacrifice.
But as for sinners, they shall be destroyed
From off the earth--their places shall be void.
Let all his works praise him with one accord!
Oh praise the Lord, my soul! Praise ye the Lord!
His Hundred and Forty-ninth Psalm is likewise good; but I have given
enough of Lord Bacon's verse, and proceed to call up one who was a poet
indeed, although little known as such, being a Roman Catholic, a Jesuit
even, and therefore, in Elizabeth's reign, a traitor, and subject to the
penalties according. Robert Southwell, "thirteen times most cruelly
tortured," could "not be induced to confess anything, not even the colour
of the horse whereon on a certain day he rode, lest from such indication
his adversaries might conjecture in what house, or in company of what
Catholics, he that day was." I quote these words of Lord Burleigh, lest
any of my readers, discovering weakness in his verse, should attribute
weakness to the man himself.
It was no doubt on political grounds that these tortures, and the death
that followed them, were inflicted. But it was for the truth _as he saw
it_, that is, for the sake of duty, that Southwell thus endured. We must
not impute all the evils of a system to every individual who holds by it.
It may be found that a man has, for the sole sake of self-abnegation,
yielded homage, where, if his object had been personal aggrandizement, he
might have wielded authority. Southwell, if that which comes from within
a man may be taken as the test of his character, was a devout and humble
Christian. In the choir of our singers we only ask: "Dost thou lift up
thine heart?" Southwell's song answers for him: "I lift it up unto the
Lord."
His chief poem is called _St. Peter's Complaint_. It is of considerable
length--a hundred and thirty-two stanzas. It reminds us of the Countess
of Pembroke's poem, but is far more articulate and far superior in
versification. Perhaps its chief fault is that the pauses are so measured
with the lines as to make every line almost a sentence, the effect of
which is a considerable degree of monotony. Like all writers of the time,
he is, of course, fond of antithesis, and abounds in conceits and
fancies; whence he attributes a multitude of expressions to St. Peter of
which never possibly could the substantial ideas have entered the
Apostle's mind, or probably any other than Southwell's own. There is also
a good deal of sentimentalism in the poem, a fault from which I fear
modern Catholic verse is rarely free. Probably the Italian poetry with
which he must have been familiar in his youth, during his residence in
Rome, accustomed him to such irreverences of expression as this
sentimentalism gives occasion to, and which are very far from indicating
a correspondent state of feeling. Sentiment is a poor ape of love; but
the love is true notwithstanding. Here are a few stanzas from _St.
Peter's Complaint_:
Titles I make untruths: am I a rock,
That with so soft a gale was overthrown?
Am I fit pastor for the faithful flock
To guide their souls that murdered thus mine own?
A rock of ruin, not a rest to stay;
A pastor,--not to feed, but to betray.
Parting from Christ my fainting force declined;
With lingering foot I followed him aloof;
Base fear out of my heart his love unshrined,
Huge in high words, but impotent in proof.
My vaunts did seem hatched under Samson's locks,
Yet woman's words did give me murdering knocks
* * * * *
At Sorrow's door I knocked: they craved my name
I answered, "One unworthy to be known."
"What one?" say they. "One worthiest of blame."
"But who?" "A wretch not God's, nor yet his own."
"A man?" "Oh, no!" "A beast?" "Much worse." "What creature?"
"A rock." "How called?" "The rock of scandal, Peter."
* * * * *
Christ! health of fevered soul, heaven of the mind,
Force of the feeble, nurse of infant loves,
Guide to the wandering foot, light to the blind,
Whom weeping wins, repentant sorrow moves!
Father in care, mother in tender heart,
Revive and save me, slain with sinful dart!
If King Manasseh, sunk in depth of sin,
With plaints and tears recovered grace and crown,
A worthless worm some mild regard may win,
And lowly creep where flying threw it down.
A poor desire I have to mend my ill;
I should, I would, I dare not say I will.
I dare not say I will, but wish I may;
My pride is checked: high words the speaker spilt.
My good, O Lord, thy gift--thy strength, my stay--
Give what thou bidst, and then bid what thou wilt.
Work with me what of me thou dost request;
Then will I dare the worst and love the best.
Here, from another poem, are two little stanzas worth preserving:
Yet God's must I remain,
By death, by wrong, by shame;
I cannot blot out of my heart
That grace wrought in his name.
I cannot set at nought,
Whom I have held so dear;
I cannot make Him seem afar
That is indeed so near.
The following poem, in style almost as simple as a ballad, is at once of
the quaintest and truest. Common minds, which must always associate a
certain conventional respectability with the forms of religion, will
think it irreverent. I judge its reverence profound, and such none the
less that it is pervaded by a sweet and delicate tone of holy humour. The
very title has a glimmer of the glowing heart of Christianity:
NEW PRINCE, NEW POMP.
Behold a silly,[69] tender babe,
In freezing winter night,
In homely manger trembling lies;
Alas! a piteous sight.
The inns are full; no man will yield
This little pilgrim bed;
But forced he is with silly beasts
In crib to shroud his head.
Despise him not for lying there;
First what he is inquire:
An orient pearl is often found
In depth of dirty mire.
Weigh not his crib, his wooden dish,
Nor beasts that by him feed;
Weigh not his mother's poor attire,
Nor Joseph's simple weed.
This stable is a prince's court,
The crib his chair of state;
The beasts are parcel of his pomp,
The wooden dish his plate.
The persons in that poor attire
His royal liveries wear;
The Prince himself is come from heaven:
This pomp is praised there.
With joy approach, O Christian wight;
Do homage to thy King;
And highly praise this humble pomp,
Which he from heaven doth bring.
Another, on the same subject, he calls _New Heaven, New War_. It is
fantastic to a degree. One stanza, however, I like much:
This little babe, so few days old,
Is come to rifle Satan's fold;
All hell doth at his presence quake,
Though he himself for cold do shake;
For in this weak, unarmed wise,
The gates of hell he will surprise.
There is profoundest truth in the symbolism of this. Here is the latter
half of a poem called _St. Peters Remorse_:
Did mercy spin the thread
To weave injustice' loom?
Wert then a father to conclude
With dreadful judge's doom?
It is a small relief
To say I was thy child,
If, as an ill-deserving foe,
From grace I am exiled.
I was, I had, I could--
All words importing want;
They are but dust of dead supplies,
Where needful helps are scant.
Once to have been in bliss
That hardly can return,
Doth but bewray from whence I fell,
And wherefore now I mourn.
All thoughts of passed hopes
Increase my present cross;
Like ruins of decayed joys,
They still upbraid my loss.
O mild and mighty Lord!
Amend that is amiss;
My sin my sore, thy love my salve,
Thy cure my comfort is.
Confirm thy former deed;
Reform that is defiled;
I was, I am, I will remain
Thy charge, thy choice, thy child.
Here are some neat stanzas from a poem he calls
CONTENT AND RICH.
My conscience is my crown,
Contented thoughts my rest;
My heart is happy in itself,
My bliss is in my breast.
My wishes are but few,
All easy to fulfil;
I make the limits of my power
The bounds unto my will.
Sith sails of largest size
The storm doth soonest tear,
I bear so small and low a sail
As freeth me from fear.
And taught with often proof,
A tempered calm I find
To be most solace to itself,
Best cure for angry mind.
No chance of Fortune's calms
Can cast my comforts down;
When Fortune smiles I smile to think
How quickly she will frown.
And when in froward mood
She proves an angry foe:
Small gain I found to let her come,
Less loss to let her go.
There is just one stanza in a poem of Daniel, who belongs by birth to
this group, which I should like to print by itself, if it were only for
the love Coleridge had to the last two lines of it. It needs little
stretch of scheme to let it show itself amongst religious poems. It
occurs in a fine epistle to the Countess of Cumberland. Daniel's writing
is full of the practical wisdom of the inner life, and the stanza which I
quote has a certain Wordsworthian flavour about it. It will not make a
complete sentence, but must yet stand by itself:
Knowing the heart of man is set to be
The centre of this world, about the which
These revolutions of disturbances
Still roll; where all th' aspects of misery
Predominate; whose strong effects are such
As he must bear, being powerless to redress;
And that unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!
Later in the decade, comes Sir Henry Wotton. It will be seen that I have
arranged my singers with reference to their birth, not to the point of
time at which this or that poem was written or published. The poetic
influences which work on the shaping fantasy are chiefly felt in youth,
and hence the predominant mode of a poet's utterance will be determined
by what and where and amongst whom he was during that season. The kinds
of the various poems will therefore probably fall into natural sequence
rather after the dates of the youth of the writers than after the years
in which they were written.
Wotton was better known in his day as a politician than as a poet, and
chiefly in ours as the subject of one of Izaak Walton's biographies.
Something of artistic instinct, rather than finish, is evident in his
verses. Here is the best and the best-known of the few poems recognized
as his:
THE CHARACTER OF A HAPPY LIFE.
How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not another's will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And silly truth his highest skill;
Whose passions not his masters are;
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untiéd to the world with care
Of prince's grace or vulgar breath;
Who hath his life from humours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make accusers great;
Who envieth none whom chance doth raise
Or vice; who never understood
How swords give slighter wounds than praise.
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;
Who God doth late and early pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a well-chosen book or friend.
This man is free from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands
And having nothing, yet hath all.
Some of my readers will observe that in many places I have given a
reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem. I have
followed a manuscript in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot
tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but
in every case I find his reading the best.
Sir John Davies must have been about fifteen years younger than Sir Fulk
Grevill. He was born in 1570, was bred a barrister, and rose to high
position through the favour of James I.--gained, it is said, by the poem
which the author called _Nosce Teipsum_,[71] but which is generally
entitled _On the Immortality of the Soul_, intending by _immortality_ the
spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence. It is
a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by
means of imagination or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot
of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well it may
comport itself when there naturalized; and consequently, although there
are most poetic no less than profound passages in the treatise, a light
scruple arises whether its constituent matter can properly be called
poetry. At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and
stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the
more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in
human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions:
power shades off into feeling; and the driest logic may find the heroic
couplet render it good service.
Sir John Davies's treatise is not only far more poetic in image and
utterance than that of Lord Brooke, but is far more clear in argument and
firm in expression as well. Here is a fine invocation:
O Light, which mak'st the light which makes the day!
Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within;
Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray,
Which now to view itself doth first begin.
* * * * *
Thou, like the sun, dost, with an equal ray,
Into the palace and the cottage shine;
And show'st the soul both to the clerk and lay, _learned and
By the clear lamp of th' oracle divine. [unlearned_
He is puzzled enough to get the theology of his time into harmony with
his philosophy, and I cannot say that he is always triumphant in the
attempt; but here at least is good argument in justification of the
freedom of man to sin.
If by His word he had the current stayed
Of Adam's will, which was by nature free,
It had been one as if his word had said,
"I will henceforth that Man no Man shall be."
* * * * *
For what is Man without a moving mind,
Which hath a judging wit, and choosing will?
Now, if God's pow'r should her election bind,
Her motions then would cease, and stand all still.
* * * * *
So that if Man would be unvariable,
He must be God, or like a rock or tree;
For ev'n the perfect angels were not stable,
But had a fall more desperate than we.
The poem contains much excellent argument in mental science as well as in
religion and metaphysics; but with that department I have nothing to do.
I shall now give an outlook from the highest peak of the poem--to any who
are willing to take the trouble necessary for seeing what another would
show them.
The section from which I have gathered the following stanzas is devoted
to the more immediate proof of the soul's immortality.
Her only end is never-ending bliss,
Which is the eternal face of God to see,
Who last of ends and first of causes is;
And to do this, she must eternal be.
Again, how can she but immortal be,
When with the motions of both will and wit,
She still aspireth to eternity,
And never rests till she attains to it?
Water in conduit-pipes can rise no higher
Than the well-head from whence it first doth spring;
Then since to eternal God she doth aspire,
She cannot but be an eternal thing.
At first her mother-earth she holdeth dear,
And doth embrace the world and worldly things;
She flies close by the ground, and hovers here,
And mounts not up with her celestial wings.
Yet under heaven she cannot light on ought
That with her heavenly nature doth agree
She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought,
She cannot in this world contented be.
For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth,
Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?
Whoever ceased to wish, when he had health
Or having wisdom, was not vexed in mind
Then as a bee, which among weeds doth fall,
Which seem sweet flowers, with lustre fresh and gay--
She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all,
But, pleased with none, doth rise, and soar away;
So, when the soul finds here no true content,
And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take,
She doth return from whence she first was sent,
And flies to him that first her wings did make.
Wit, seeking truth, from cause to cause ascends,
And never rests till it the first attain;
Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends,
But never stays till it the last do gain.
Now God the truth, and first of causes is;
God is the last good end, which lasteth still;
Being Alpha and Omega named for this:
Alpha to wit, Omega to the will.
Since then her heavenly kind she doth display
In that to God she doth directly move,
And on no mortal thing can make her stay,
She cannot be from hence, but from above.
One passage more, the conclusion and practical summing up of the whole:
O ignorant poor man! what dost thou bear,
Locked up within the casket of thy breast?
What jewels and what riches hast thou there!
What heavenly treasure in so weak a chest!
Think of her worth, and think that God did mean
This worthy mind should worthy things embrace:
Blot not her beauties with thy thoughts unclean,
Nor her dishonour with thy passion base.
Kill not her quickening power with surfeitings;
Mar not her sense with sensuality;
Cast not her serious wit on idle things;
Make not her free-will slave to vanity.
And when thou think'st of her eternity,
Think not that death against our nature is;
Think it a birth; and when thou go'st to die,
Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to bliss.
And if thou, like a child, didst fear before,
Being in the dark where thou didst nothing see;
Now I have brought thee torch-light, fear no more;
Now when thou diest thou canst not hood-wink'd be.
And thou, my soul, which turn'st with curious eye
To view the beams of thine own form divine,
Know, that thou canst know nothing perfectly,
While thou art clouded with this flesh of mine.
Take heed of over-weening, and compare
Thy peacock's feet with thy gay peacock's train:
Study the best and highest things that are,
But of thyself an humble thought retain.
Cast down thyself, and only strive to raise
The story of thy Maker's sacred name:
Use all thy powers that blessed Power to praise,
Which gives the power to be, and use the same.
In looking back over our path from the point we have now reached, the
first thought that suggests itself is--How much the reflective has
supplanted the emotional! I do not mean for a moment that the earliest
poems were without thought, or that the latest are without emotion; but
in the former there is more of the skin, as it were--in the latter, more
of the bones of worship; not that in the one the worship is but
skin-deep, or that in the other the bones are dry.
To look at the change a little more closely: we find in the earliest
time, feeling working on historic fact and on what was received as such,
and the result simple aspiration after goodness. The next stage is good
_doctrine_--I use the word, as St. Paul uses it, for instruction in
righteousness--chiefly by means of allegory, all attempts at analysis
being made through personification of qualities. Here the general form is
frequently more poetic than the matter. After this we have a period
principally of imitation, sometimes good, sometimes indifferent. Next,
with the Reformation and the revival of literature together, come more of
art and more of philosophy, to the detriment of the lyrical expression.
People cannot think and sing: they can only feel and sing. But the
philosophy goes farther in this direction, even to the putting in
abeyance of that from which song takes its rise,--namely, feeling itself.
As to the former, amongst the verse of the period I have given, there is
hardly anything to be called song but Sir Philip Sidney's Psalms, and for
them we are more indebted to King David than to Sir Philip. As to the
latter, even in the case of that most mournful poem of the Countess of
Pembroke, it is, to quite an unhealthy degree, occupied with the attempt
to work upon her own feelings by the contemplation of them, instead of
with the utterance of those aroused by the contemplation of truth. In her
case the metaphysics have begun to prey upon and consume the emotions.
Besides, that age was essentially a dramatic age, as even its command of
language, especially as shown in the pranks it plays with it, would
almost indicate; and the dramatic impulse is less favourable, though not
at all opposed, to lyrical utterance. In the cases of Sir Fulk Grevill
and Sir John Davies, the feeling is assuredly profound; but in form and
expression the philosophy has quite the upper hand.
We must not therefore suppose, however, that the cause of religious
poetry has been a losing one. The last wave must sink that the next may
rise, and the whole tide flow shorewards. The man must awake through all
his soul, all his strength, all his mind, that he may worship God in
unity, in the one harmonious utterance of his being: his heart must be
united to fear his name. And for this final perfection of the individual
the race must awake. At this season and that season, this power or that
power must be chiefly developed in her elect; and for its sake the growth
of others must for a season be delayed. But the next generation will
inherit all that has gone before; and its elect, if they be themselves
pure in heart, and individual, that is original, in mind, will, more or
less thoroughly, embody the result, in subservience to some new
development, essential in its turn to further progress. Even the fallow
times, which we are so ready to call barren, must have their share in
working the one needful work. They may be to the nation that which
sickness so often is to the man--a time of refreshing from the Lord. A
nation's life does not lie in its utterance any more than in the things
which it possesses: it lies in its action. The utterance is a result, and
therefore a sign, of life; but there may be life without any _such_ sign.
To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God, is the highest
life of a nation as of an individual; and when the time for speech comes,
it will be such life alone that causes the speech to be strong at once
and harmonious. When at last there are not ten righteous men in Sodom,
Sodom can neither think, act, nor say, and her destruction is at hand.
While the wave of the dramatic was sinking, the wave of the lyric was
growing in force and rising in height. Especially as regards religious
poetry we are as yet only approaching the lyrical jubilee. Fact and
faith, self-consciousness and metaphysics, all are needful to the lyric
of love. Modesty and art find their grandest, simplest labour in rightly
subordinating each of those to the others. How could we have a George
Herbert without metaphysics? In those poems I have just given, the way of
metaphysics was prepared for him. That which overcolours one age to the
injury of its harmony, will, in the next or the next, fall into its own
place in the seven-chorded rainbow of truth.