England's Antiphon Part 10

Had all the poem been like these stanzas, I should not have spoken so strongly concerning its faults. There are a few more such in it. It closes with a very fantastic use of musical terms, following upon a curious category of the works of nature as praising G.o.d, to which I refer for the sake of one stanza, or rather of one line in the stanza:

To see the greyhound course, the hound in chase, _Whilst little dormouse sleepeth out her eyne;_ The lambs and rabbits sweetly run at base,[68]

Whilst highest trees the little squirrels climb, The crawling worms out creeping in the showers, And how the snails do climb the lofty towers.

What a love of animated nature there is in the lovely lady! I am all but confident, however, that second line came to her from watching her children asleep. She had one child at least: that William Herbert, who is generally, and with weight, believed the W.H. of Shakspere's Sonnets, a grander honour than the earldom of Pembroke, or even the having Philip Sidney to his uncle: I will not say grander than having Mary Sidney to his _mother_.

Let me now turn to Sidney's friend, Sir Fulk Grevill, Lord Brooke, who afterwards wrote his life, "as an intended preface" to all his "Monuments to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney," the said _monuments_ being Lord Brooke's own poems.

My extract is from _A Treatise of Religion_, in which, if the reader do not find much of poetic form, he will find at least some grand spiritual philosophy, the stuff whereof all highest poetry is fas.h.i.+oned. It is one of the first poems in which the philosophy of religion, and not either its doctrine, feeling, or history, predominates. It is, as a whole, poor, chiefly from its being so loosely written. There are men, and men whose thoughts are of great worth, to whom it never seems to occur that they may utter very largely and convey very little; that what is clear to themselves is in their speech obscure as a late twilight. Their utterance is rarely articulate: their spiritual mouth talks with but half-movements of its lips; it does not model their thoughts into clear-cut shapes, such as the spiritual ear can distinguish as they enter it. Of such is Lord Brooke. These few stanzas, however, my readers will be glad to have:

What is the chain which draws us back again, And lifts man up unto his first creation?

Nothing in him his own heart can restrain; His reason lives a captive to temptation; Example is corrupt; precepts are mixed; All fleshly knowledge frail, and never fixed.

It is a light, a gift, a grace inspired; A spark of power, a goodness of the Good; Desire in him, that never is desired; An unity, where desolation stood; In us, not of us, a Spirit not of earth, Fas.h.i.+oning the mortal to immortal birth.

Sense of this G.o.d, by fear, the sensual have, Distressed Nature crying unto Grace; For sovereign reason then becomes a slave, And yields to servile sense her sovereign place, When more or other she affects to be Than seat or shrine of this Eternity.

Yea, Prince of Earth let Man a.s.sume to be, Nay more--of Man let Man himself be G.o.d, Yet without G.o.d, a slave of slaves is he; To others, wonder; to himself, a rod; Restless despair, desire, and desolation; The more secure, the more abomination.

Then by affecting power, we cannot know him.

By knowing all things else, we know him less.

Nature contains him not. Art cannot show him.

Opinions idols, and not G.o.d, express.

Without, in power, we see him everywhere; Within, we rest not, till we find him there.

Then seek we must; that course is natural-- For owned souls to find their owner out.

Our free remorses when our natures fall-- When we do well, our hearts made free from doubt-- Prove service due to one Omnipotence, And Nature of religion to have sense.

Questions again, which in our hearts arise-- Since loving knowledge, not humility-- Though they be curious, G.o.dless, and unwise, Yet prove our nature feels a Deity; For if these strifes rose out of other grounds, Man were to G.o.d as deafness is to sounds.

Yet in this strife, this natural remorse, If we could bend the force of power and wit To work upon the heart, and make divorce There from the evil which preventeth it, In judgment of the truth we should not doubt Good life would find a good religion out.

If a fair proportion of it were equal to this, the poem would be a fine one, not for its poetry, but for its spiritual metaphysics. I think the fourth and fifth of the stanzas I have given, profound in truth, and excellent in utterance. They are worth pondering.

We now descend a decade of the century, to find another group of names within the immediate threshold of the sixties.

CHAPTER VI.

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 workmans.h.i.+p. 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 compa.s.s, heaven, smooth without grain or fold, All set with spangs of glittering stars untold, And striped with golden beams of power unpent, Is raised up for a removing tent Vaulted and arched 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 overflowed all the ma.s.s; 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 a.s.ses 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 gra.s.s 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 G.o.d, 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 s.h.i.+ps plough up the floods; The greater navies look like walking woods; The fishes there far voyages do make, To divers sh.o.r.es 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 G.o.d above Shall ever reign, in mercy and in love; G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 ant.i.thesis, and abounds in conceits and fancies; whence he attributes a mult.i.tude 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_:

t.i.tles 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 G.o.d's, nor yet his own."

"A man?" "Oh, no!" "A beast?" "Much worse." "What creature?"

"A rock." "How called?" "The rock of scandal, Peter."