THE FERVOUR OF THE IMPLICIT. INSIGHT OF THE HEART.
The late Dean Milman, born in 1791, best known by his very valuable
labours in history, may be taken as representing a class of writers in
whom the poetic fire is ever on the point, and only on the point, of
breaking into a flame. His composition is admirable--refined, scholarly,
sometimes rich and even gorgeous in expression--yet lacking that radiance
of the unutterable to which the loftiest words owe their grandest power.
Perhaps the best representative of his style is the hymn on the
Incarnation, in his dramatic poem, _The Fall of Jerusulem_. But as an
extract it is tolerably known. I prefer giving one from his few _Hymns
for Church Service_.
EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
When God came down from heaven--the living God--
What signs and wonders marked his stately way?
Brake out the winds in music where he trod?
Shone o'er the heavens a brighter, softer day?
The dumb began to speak, the blind to see,
And the lame leaped, and pain and paleness fled;
The mourner's sunken eye grew bright with glee,
And from the tomb awoke the wondering dead.
When God went back to heaven--the living God--
Rode he the heavens upon a fiery car?
Waved seraph-wings along his glorious road?
Stood still to wonder each bright wandering star?
Upon the cross he hung, and bowed his head,
And prayed for them that smote, and them that curst;
And, drop by drop, his slow life-blood was shed,
And his last hour of suffering was his worst.
_The Christian Year_ of the Rev. John Keble (born in 1800) is perhaps
better known in England than any other work of similar church character.
I must confess I have never been able to enter into the enthusiasm of its
admirers. Excellent, both in regard of their literary and religious
merits, true in feeling and thorough in finish, the poems always remind
me of Berlin work in iron--hard and delicate. Here is a portion of one of
the best of them.
ST. MATTHEW.
Ye hermits blest, ye holy maids,
The nearest heaven on earth,
Who talk with God in shadowy glades,
Free from rude care and mirth;
To whom some viewless teacher brings
The secret lore of rural things,
The moral of each fleeting cloud and gale,
The whispers from above, that haunt the twilight vale:
Say, when in pity ye have gazed
On the wreath'd smoke afar,
That o'er some town, like mist upraised,
Hung hiding sun and star;
Then as ye turned your weary eye
To the green earth and open sky,
Were ye not fain to doubt how Faith could dwell
Amid that dreary glare, in this world's citadel?
But Love's a flower that will not die
For lack of leafy screen,
And Christian Hope can cheer the eye
That ne'er saw vernal green:
Then be ye sure that Love can bless
Even in this crowded loneliness,
Where ever-moving myriads seem to say,
Go--thou art nought to us, nor we to thee--away!
There are in this loud stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime;
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.
There are here some indications of that strong reaction of the present
century towards ancient forms of church life. This reaction seems to me a
further consequence of that admiration of power of which I have spoken.
For, finding the progress of discovery in the laws of nature constantly
bring an assurance most satisfactory to the intellect, men began to
demand a similar assurance in other matters; and whatever department of
human thought could not be subjected to experiment or did not admit of
logical proof began to be regarded with suspicion. The highest realms of
human thought--where indeed only grand conviction, and that the result
not of research, but of obedience to the voice within, can be had--came
to be by such regarded as regions where, no scientific assurance being
procurable, it was only to his loss that a man should go wandering: the
whole affair was unworthy of him. And if there be no guide of humanity
but the intellect, and nothing worthy of its regard but what that
intellect can isolate and describe in the forms peculiar to its
operations,--that is, if a man has relations to nothing beyond his
definition, is not a creature of the immeasurable,--then these men are
right. But there have appeared along with them other thinkers who could
not thus be satisfied--men who had in their souls a hunger which the
neatest laws of nature could not content, who could not live on
chemistry, or mathematics, or even on geology, without the primal law of
_their_ many dim-dawning wonders--that is, the Being, if such there might
be, who thought their laws first and then embodied them in a world of
aeonian growth. These indeed seek law likewise, but a perfect law--a law
they can believe perfect beyond the comprehension of powers of whose
imperfection they are too painfully conscious. They feel in their highest
moments a helplessness that drives them to search after some Power with a
heart deeper than his power, who cares for the troubled creatures he has
made. But still under the influence of that faithless hunger for
intellectual certainty, they look about and divide into two parties: both
would gladly receive the reported revelation in Jesus, the one if they
could have evidence enough from without, the other if they could only get
rid of the difficulties it raises within. I am aware that I distinguish
in the mass, and that both sides would be found more or less influenced
by the same difficulties--but _more_ and _less_, and therefore thus
classified by the driving predominance. Those of the one party, then,
finding no proof to be had but that in testimony, and anxious to have all
they can--delighting too in a certain holy wilfulness of intellectual
self-immolation, accept the testimony in the mass, and become Roman
Catholics. Nor is it difficult to see how they then find rest. It is not
the dogma, but the contact with Christ the truth, with Christ the man,
which the dogma, in pacifying the troubles of the intellect--if only by a
soporific, has aided them in reaching, that gives them peace: it is the
truth itself that makes them free.
The worshippers of science will themselves allow, that when they cannot
gain observations enough to satisfy them upon any point in which a law of
nature is involved, they must, if possible, institute experiments. I say
therefore to those whose observation has not satisfied them concerning
the phenomenon Christianity,--"Where is your experiment? Why do you not
thus try the utterance claiming to be the law of life? Call it a
hypothesis, and experiment upon it. Carry into practice, well justified
of your conscience, the words which the Man spoke, for therein he says
himself lies the possibility of your acceptance of his mission; and if,
after reasonable time thus spent, you are not yet convinced enough to
give testimony--I will not annoy you by saying _to facts_, but--to
conviction, I think neither will you be ready to abandon the continuous
experiment." These Roman Catholics have thus met with Jesus, come into
personal contact with him: by the doing of what he tells us, and by
nothing else, are they blessed. What if their theories show to me like a
burning of the temple and a looking for the god in the ashes? They know
in whom they have believed. And if some of us think we have a more
excellent way, we shall be blessed indeed if the result be no less
excellent than in such men as Faber, Newman, and Aubrey de Vere. No man
needs be afraid that to speak the truth concerning such will hasten the
dominance of alien and oppressive powers; the truth is free, and to be
just is to be strong. Should the time come again when Liberty is in
danger, those who have defended the truth even in her adversaries, if
such there be, will be found the readiest to draw the sword for her, and,
hating not, yet smite for the liberty to do even them justice. To give
the justice we claim for ourselves is, if there be a Christ, the law of
Christ, to obey which is eternally better than truest theory.
I should like to give many of the hymns of Dr. Faber. Some of them are
grand, others very lovely, and some, of course, to my mind considerably
repulsive. He seems to me to go wrong nowhere in originating--he produces
nothing unworthy except when he reproduces what he never could have
entertained but for the pressure of acknowledged authority. Even such
things, however, he has enclosed in pearls, as the oyster its incommoding
sand-grains.
His hymn on _The Greatness of God_ is profound; that on _The Will of God_
is very wise; that to _The God of my Childhood_ is full of quite womanly
tenderness: all are most simple in speech, reminding us in this respect
of John Mason. In him, no doubt, as in all of his class, we find traces
of that sentimentalism in the use of epithets--small words, as
distinguished from homely, applied to great things--of which I have
spoken more than once; but criticism is not to be indulged in the
reception of great gifts--of such a gift as this, for instance:--
THE ETERNITY OF GOD.
O Lord! my heart is sick,
Sick of this everlasting change;
And life runs tediously quick
Through its unresting race and varied range:
Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee,
And wakes no echo in Thy mute eternity.
Dear Lord! my heart is sick
Of this perpetual lapsing time,
So slow in grief, in joy so quick,
Yet ever casting shadows so sublime:
Time of all creatures is least like to Thee,
And yet it is our share of Thine eternity.
Oh change and time are storms
For lives so thin and frail as ours;
For change the work of grace deforms
With love that soils, and help that overpowers;
And time is strong, and, like some chafing sea,
It seems to fret the shores of Thine eternity.
Weak, weak, for ever weak!
We cannot hold what we possess;
Youth cannot find, age will not seek,--
Oh weakness is the heart's worst weariness:
But weakest hearts can lift their thoughts to Thee;
It makes us strong to think of Thine eternity.
Thou hadst no youth, great God!
An Unbeginning End Thou art;
Thy glory in itself abode,
And still abides in its own tranquil heart:
No age can heap its outward years on Thee:
Dear God! Thou art Thyself Thine own eternity!
Without an end or bound
Thy life lies all outspread in light;
Our lives feel Thy life all around,
Making our weakness strong, our darkness bright;
Yet is it neither wilderness nor sea,
But the calm gladness of a full eternity.
Oh Thou art very great
To set Thyself so far above!
But we partake of Thine estate,
Established in Thy strength and in Thy love:
That love hath made eternal room for me
In the sweet vastness of its own eternity.
Oh Thou art very meek
To overshade Thy creatures thus!
Thy grandeur is the shade we seek;
To be eternal is Thy use to us:
Ah, Blessed God! what joy it is to me
To lose all thought of self in Thine eternity.
Self-wearied, Lord! I come;
For I have lived my life too fast:
Now that years bring me nearer home
Grace must be slowly used to make it last;
When my heart beats too quick I think of Thee,
And of the leisure of Thy long eternity.
Farewell, vain joys of earth!
Farewell, all love that it not His!
Dear God! be Thou my only mirth,
Thy majesty my single timid bliss!
Oh in the bosom of eternity
Thou dost not weary of Thyself, nor we of Thee!
How easily his words flow, even when he is saying the deepest things!
The poem is full of the elements of the finest mystical metaphysics, and
yet there is no effort in their expression. The tendency to find God
beyond, rather than in our daily human conditions, is discernible; but
only as a tendency.
What a pity that the sects are so slow to become acquainted with the
grand best in each other!
I do not find in Dr. Newman either a depth or a precision equal to that
of Dr. Faber. His earlier poems indicate a less healthy condition of
mind. His _Dream of Gerontius_ is, however, a finer, as more ambitious
poem than any of Faber's. In my judgment there are weak passages in it,
with others of real grandeur. But I am perfectly aware of the difficulty,
almost impossibility, of doing justice to men from some of whose forms of
thought I am greatly repelled, who creep from the sunshine into every
ruined archway, attracted by the brilliance with which the light from its
loophole glows in its caverned gloom, and the hope of discovering within
it the first steps of a stair winding up into the blue heaven. I
apologize for the unavoidable rudeness of a critic who would fain be
honest if he might; and I humbly thank all such as Dr. Newman, whose
verses, revealing their saintship, make us long to be holier men.
Of his, as of Faber's, I have room for no more than one. It was written
off Sardinia.
DESOLATION.
O say not thou art left of God,
Because His tokens in the sky
Thou canst not read: this earth He trod
To teach thee He was ever nigh.
He sees, beneath the fig-tree green,
Nathaniel con His sacred lore;
Shouldst thou thy chamber seek, unseen
He enters through the unopened door.
And when thou liest, by slumber bound,
Outwearied in the Christian fight,
In glory, girt with saints around,
He stands above thee through the night.
When friends to Emmaus bend their course,
He joins, although He holds their eyes:
Or, shouldst thou feel some fever's force,
He takes thy hand, He bids thee rise.
Or on a voyage, when calms prevail,
And prison thee upon the sea,
He walks the waves, He wings the sail,
The shore is gained, and thou art free.
Sir Aubrey de Vere is a poet profound in feeling, and gracefully tender
in utterance. I give one short poem and one sonnet.
REALITY.
Love thy God, and love Him only:
And thy breast will ne'er be lonely.
In that one great Spirit meet
All things mighty, grave, and sweet.
Vainly strives the soul to mingle
With a being of our kind:
Vainly hearts with hearts are twined:
For the deepest still is single.
An impalpable resistance
Holds like natures still at distance.
Mortal! love that Holy One!
Or dwell for aye alone.
I respond most heartily to the last two lines; but I venture to add, with
regard to the preceding six, "Love that holy One, and the impalpable
resistance will vanish; for when thou seest him enter to sup with thy
neighbour, thou wilt love that neighbour as thyself."
SONNET.
Ye praise the humble: of the meek ye say,
"Happy they live among their lowly bowers;
"The mountains, and the mountain-storms are ours."
Thus, self-deceivers, filled with pride alway,
Reluctant homage to the good ye pay,
Mingled with scorn like poison sucked from flowers--
Revere the humble; godlike are their powers:
No mendicants for praise of men are they.
The child who prays in faith "Thy will be done"
Is blended with that Will Supreme which moves
A wilderness of worlds by Thought untrod;
He shares the starry sceptre, and the throne:
The man who as himself his neighbour loves
Looks down on all things with the eyes of God!
Is it a fancy that, in the midst of all this devotion and lovely thought,
I hear the mingled mournful tone of such as have cut off a right hand and
plucked out a right eye, which had _not_ caused them to offend? This is
tenfold better than to have spared offending members; but the true
Christian ambition is to fill the divine scheme of humanity--abridging
nothing, ignoring nothing, denying nothing, calling nothing unclean, but
burning everything a thank-offering in the flame of life upon the altar
of absolute devotion to the Father and Saviour of men. We must not throw
away half his gifts, that we may carry the other half in both hands to
his altar.
But sacred fervour is confined to no sect. Here it is of the profoundest,
and uttered with a homely tenderness equal to that of the earliest
writers. Mrs. Browning, the princess of poets, was no partisan. If my
work were mainly critical, I should feel bound to remark upon her false
theory of English rhyme, and her use of strange words. That she is
careless too in her general utterance I cannot deny; but in idea she is
noble, and in phrase magnificent. Some of her sonnets are worthy of being
ranged with the best in our language--those of Milton and Wordsworth.
BEREAVEMENT.
When some Beloveds, 'neath whose eyelids lay
The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one
Did leave me dark before the natural sun,
And I astonied fell, and could not pray,
A thought within me to myself did say,
"Is God less God that _thou_ art left undone?
Rise, worship, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun,
As in that purple!"--But I answer, Nay!
What child his filial heart in words can loose,
If he behold his tender father raise
The hand that chastens sorely? Can he choose
But sob in silence with an upward gaze?
And _my_ great Father, thinking fit to bruise,
Discerns in speechless tears both prayer and praise.
COMFORT.
Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet,
From out the hallelujahs sweet and low,
Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so,
Who art not missed by any that entreat.
Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet--
And if no precious gums my hands bestow,
Let my tears drop like amber, while I go
In reach of thy divinest voice complete
In humanest affection--thus, in sooth
To lose the sense of losing! As a child,
Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore,
Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth;
Till sinking on her breast, love-reconciled,
He sleeps the faster that he wept before.
Gladly would I next give myself to the exposition of several of the poems
of her husband, Robert Browning, especially the _Christmas Eve_ and
_Easter Day_; in the first of which he sets forth in marvellous rhymes
the necessity both for widest sympathy with the varied forms of
Christianity, and for individual choice in regard to communion; in the
latter, what it is to choose the world and lose the life. But this would
take many pages, and would be inconsistent with the plan of my book.
When I have given two precious stanzas, most wise as well as most lyrical
and lovely, from the poems of our honoured Charles Kingsley, I shall turn
to the other of the classes into which the devout thinkers of the day
have divided.
A FAREWELL.
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;
No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey;
Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you
For every day.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;
Do noble things, not dream them, all day long;
And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever
One grand, sweet song.
Surely these last, who have not accepted tradition in the mass, who
believe that we must, as our Lord demanded of the Jews, of our own selves
judge what is right, because therein his spirit works with our
spirit,--worship the Truth not less devotedly than they who rejoice in
holy tyranny over their intellects.