England's Antiphon Part 21

Humble we must be, if to heaven we go; High is the roof there, but the gate is low.

G.o.d who's in heaven, will hear from thence, If not to the sound, yet to the sense.

The same who crowns the conqueror, will be A coadjutor in the agony.

G.o.d is so potent, as his power can _that._ Draw out of bad a sovereign good to man.

Paradise is, as from the learn'd I gather, A choir of blest souls circling in the Father.

Heaven is not given for our good works here; Yet it is given to the labourer.

One more for the sake of Martha, smiled at by so many because they are incapable either of her blame or her sister's praise.

The repet.i.tion of the name, made known No other than Christ's full affection.

And so farewell to the very lovable Robert Herrick.

Francis Quarles was born in 1592. I have not much to say about him, popular as he was in his own day, for a large portion of his writing takes the shape of satire, which I consider only an active form of negation. I doubt much if mere opposition to the false is of any benefit.

Convince a man by argument that the thing he has been taught is false, and you leave his house empty, swept, and garnished; but the expulsion of the falsehood is no protection against its re-entrance in another mask, with seven worse than itself in its company. The right effort of the teacher is to give the positive--to present, as he may, the vision of reality, for the perception of which, and not for the discovery of falsehood, is man created. This will not only cast out the demon, but so people the house that he will not dare return. If a man might disprove all the untruths in creation, he would hardly be a hair's breadth nearer the end of his own making. It is better to hold honestly one fragment of truth in the midst of immeasurable error, than to sit alone, if that were possible, in the midst of an absolute vision, clear as the hyaline, but only repellent of falsehood, not receptive of truth. It is the positive by which a man shall live. Truth is his life. The refusal of the false is not the reception of the true. A man may deny himself into a spiritual lethargy, without denying one truth, simply by spending his strength for that which is not bread, until he has none left wherewith to search for the truth, which alone can feed him. Only when subjected to the positive does the negative find its true vocation.

I am jealous of the living force cast into the slough of satire. No doubt, either indignant or loving rebuke has its end and does its work, but I fear that wit, while rousing the admiration of the spiteful or the like witty, comes in only to destroy its dignity. At the same time, I am not sure whether there might not be such a judicious combination of the elements as to render my remarks inapplicable.

At all events, poetry favours the positive, and from the _Emblems_ named of Quarles I shall choose one in which it fully predominates. There is something in it remarkably fine.

PHOSPHOR, BRING THE DAY.

Will't ne'er be morning? Will that promised light Ne'er break, and clear those clouds of night?

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day, Whose conquering ray May chase these fogs: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

How long, how long shall these benighted eyes Languish in shades, like feeble flies Expecting spring? How long shall darkness soil The face of earth, and thus beguile Our souls of sprightful action? When, when will day Begin to dawn, whose new-born ray May gild the weatherc.o.c.ks of our devotion, And give our unsouled souls new motion?

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day: The light will fray These horrid mists: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

Let those whose eyes, like owls, abhor the light-- Let those have night that love the night: Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

How sad delay Afflicts dull hopes! Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

Alas! my light-in-vain-expecting eyes Can find no objects but what rise From this poor mortal blaze, a dying spark Of Vulcan's forge, whose flames are dark,-- A dangerous, dull, blue-burning light, As melancholy as the night: Here's all the suns that glister in the sphere Of earth: Ah me! what comfort's here!

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

Haste, haste away Heaven's loitering lamp: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

Blow, Ignorance. O thou, whose idle knee Rocks earth into a lethargy, And with thy sooty fingers hast benight The world's fair cheeks, blow, blow thy spite; Since thou hast puffed our greater taper, do Puff on, and out the lesser too.

If e'er that breath-exiled flame return, Thou hast not blown as it will burn.

Sweet Phosphor, bring the day: Light will repay The wrongs of night: sweet Phosphor, bring the day.

With honoured, thrice honoured George Herbert waiting at the door, I cannot ask Francis Quarles to remain longer: I can part with him without regret, worthy man and fair poet as he is.

CHAPTER XIII.

GEORGE HERBERT.

But, with my hand on the lock, I shrink from opening the door. Here comes a poet indeed! and how am I to show him due honour? With his book humbly, doubtfully offered, with the ashes of the poems of his youth fluttering in the wind of his priestly garments, he crosses the threshold. Or rather, for I had forgotten the symbol of my book, let us all go from our chapel to the choir, and humbly ask him to sing that he may make us worthy of his song.

In George Herbert there is poetry enough and to spare: it is the household bread of his being. If I begin with that which first in the nature of things ought to be demanded of a poet, namely, Truth, Revelation--George Herbert offers us measure pressed down and running over. But let me speak first of that which first in time or order of appearance we demand of a poet, namely music. For inasmuch as verse is for the ear, not for the eye, we demand a good hearing first. Let no one undervalue it. The heart of poetry is indeed truth, but its garments are music, and the garments come first in the process of revelation. The music of a poem is its meaning in sound as distinguished from word--its meaning in solution, as it were, uncrystallized by articulation. The music goes before the fuller revelation, preparing its way. The sound of a verse is the harbinger of the truth contained therein. If it be a right poem, this will be true. Herein Herbert excels. It will be found impossible to separate the music of his words from the music of the thought which takes shape in their sound.

I got me flowers to strow thy way, I got me boughs off many a tree; But thou wast up by break of day, And brought'st thy sweets along with thee.

And the gift it enwraps at once and reveals is, I have said, truth of the deepest. Hear this song of divine service. In every song he sings a spiritual fact will be found its fundamental life, although I may quote this or that merely to ill.u.s.trate some peculiarity of mode.

_The Elixir_ was an imagined liquid sought by the old physical investigators, in order that by its means they might turn every common metal into gold, a pursuit not quite so absurd as it has since appeared.

They called this something, when regarded as a solid, _the Philosopher's Stone_. In the poem it is also called a _tincture_.

THE ELIXIR.

Teach me, my G.o.d and King, In all things thee to see; And what I do in anything, To do it as for thee;

Not rudely, as a beast, To run into an action; But still to make thee prepossest, And give it his perfection. _its._

A man that looks on gla.s.s, On it may stay his eye; Or, if he pleaseth, through it pa.s.s, And then the heaven spy.

All may of thee partake: Nothing can be so mean, Which with his tincture--_for thy sake_-- _its._ Will not grow bright and clean.

A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine: Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, Makes that and the action fine.

This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold; For that which G.o.d doth touch and own Cannot for less be told.

With a conscience tender as a child's, almost diseased in its tenderness, and a heart loving as a woman's, his intellect is none the less powerful.

Its movements are as the sword-play of an alert, poised, well-knit, strong-wristed fencer with the rapier, in which the skill impresses one more than the force, while without the force the skill would be valueless, even hurtful, to its possessor. There is a graceful humour with it occasionally, even in his most serious poems adding much to their charm. To ill.u.s.trate all this, take the following, the t.i.tle of which means _The Retort_.