England's Antiphon Part 31

From the heights of Henry Vaughan's verse, I look across a stony region, with a few feeble oases scattered over it, and a hazy green in the distance. It does not soften the dreariness that its stones are all laid in order, that the s.p.a.ces which should be meadows are skilfully paved.

Henry Vaughan belongs to the mystical school, but his poetry rules his theories. You find no more of the mystic than the poet can easily govern; in fact, scarcely more than is necessary to the highest poetry. He develops his mysticism upwards, with relation to his higher nature alone: it blossoms into poetry. His twin-brother Thomas developed his mysticism downwards in the direction of the material sciences--a true effort still, but one in which the danger of ceasing to be true increases with increasing ratio the further it is carried.

They were born in South Wales in the year 1621. Thomas was a clergyman; Henry a doctor of medicine. Both were Royalists, and both suffered in the cause--Thomas by expulsion from his living, Henry by imprisonment. Thomas died soon after the Restoration; Henry outlived the Revolution.

Henry Vaughan was then nearly thirty years younger than George Herbert, whom he consciously and intentionally imitates. His art is not comparable to that of Herbert: hence Herbert remains the master; for it is not the thought that makes the poet; it is the utterance of that thought in worthy presence of speech. He is careless and somewhat rugged. If he can get his thought dressed, and thus made visible, he does not mind the dress fitting awkwardly, or even being a little out at elbows. And yet he has grander lines and phrases than any in Herbert. He has occasionally a daring success that strikes one with astonishment. In a word, he says more splendid things than Herbert, though he writes inferior poems. His thought is profound and just; the harmonies in his soul are true; its artistic and musical ear is defective. His movements are sometimes grand, sometimes awkward. Herbert is always gracious--I use the word as meaning much more than _graceful_.

The following poem will instance Vaughan's fine mysticism and odd embodiment:

c.o.c.k-CROWING.

Father of lights! what sunny seed, What glance of day hast thou confined Into this bird? To all the breed This busy ray thou hast a.s.signed; Their magnetism works all night, And dreams of Paradise and light.

Their eyes watch for the morning hue; Their little grain,[143] expelling night, So s.h.i.+nes and sings, as if it knew The path unto the house of light: It seems their candle, howe'er done, Was tined[144] and lighted at the sun.

If such a tincture, such a touch, So firm a longing can empower, Shall thy own image think it much To watch for thy appearing hour?

If a mere blast so fill the sail, Shall not the breath of G.o.d prevail?

O thou immortal Light and Heat, Whose hand so s.h.i.+nes through all this frame, That by the beauty of the seat, We plainly see who made the same!

Seeing thy seed abides in me, Dwell thou in it, and I in thee.

To sleep without thee is to die; Yea, 'tis a death partakes of h.e.l.l; For where thou dost not close the eye, It never opens, I can tell: In such a dark, Egyptian border The shades of death dwell and disorder

Its joys and hopes and earnest throws, And hearts whose pulse beats still for light, Are given to birds, who but thee knows A love-sick soul's exalted flight?

Can souls be tracked by any eye But his who gave them wings to fly?

Only this veil, which thou hast broke, And must be broken yet in me; This veil, I say, is all the cloak And cloud which shadows me from thee.

This veil thy full-eyed love denies, And only gleams and fractions spies.

O take it off. Make no delay, But brush me with thy light, that I May s.h.i.+ne unto a perfect day, And warm me at thy glorious eye.

O take it off; or, till it flee, Though with no lily, stay with me.

I have no room for poems often quoted, therefore not for that lovely one beginning "They are all gone into the world of light;" but I must not omit _The Retreat_, for besides its worth, I have another reason for presenting it.

THE RETREAT.

Happy those early days when I s.h.i.+ned in my angel-infancy!

Before I understood this place Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy ought But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walked above A mile or two from my first love, And, looking back, at that short s.p.a.ce Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A several sin to every sense; But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track!

That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train, From whence the enlightened spirit sees That shady city of palm-trees.

But ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way!

Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came return.

Let any one who is well acquainted with Wordsworth's grand ode--that on the _Intimations of Immortality_--turn his mind to a comparison between that and this: he will find the resemblance remarkable. Whether _The Retreat_ suggested the form of the _Ode_ is not of much consequence, for the _Ode_ is the outcome at once and essence of all Wordsworth's theories; and whatever he may have drawn from _The Retreat_ is glorified in the _Ode_. Still it is interesting to compare them. Vaughan believes with Wordsworth and some other great men that this is not our first stage of existence; that we are haunted by dim memories of a former state. This belief is not necessary, however, to sympathy with the poem, for whether the present be our first life or no, we have come from G.o.d, and bring from him conscience and a thousand G.o.dlike gifts.--"Happy those early days," Vaughan begins: "There was a time," begins Wordsworth, "when the earth seemed apparelled in celestial light." "Before I understood this place," continues Vaughan: "Blank misgivings of a creature moving about in worlds not realized," says Wordsworth. "A white celestial thought,"

says Vaughan: "Heaven lies about us in our infancy," says Wordsworth. "A mile or two off, I could see his face," says Vaughan: "Trailing clouds of glory do we come," says Wordsworth. "On some gilded cloud or flower, my gazing soul would dwell an hour," says Vaughan: "The hour of splendour in the gra.s.s, of glory in the flower," says Wordsworth.

Wordsworth's poem is the profounder in its philosophy, as well as far the grander and lovelier in its poetry; but in the moral relation, Vaughan's poem is the more definite of the two, and gives us in its close, poor as that is compared with the rest of it, just what we feel is wanting in Wordsworth's--the hope of return to the bliss of childhood. We may be comforted for what we lose by what we gain; but that is not a recompense large enough to be divine: we want both. Vaughan will be a child again.

For the movements of man's life are in spirals: we go back whence we came, ever returning on our former traces, only upon a higher level, on the next upward coil of the spiral, so that it is a going back and a going forward ever and both at once. Life is, as it were, a constant repentance, or thinking of it again: the childhood of the kingdom takes the place of the childhood of the brain, but comprises all that was lovely in the former delight. The heavenly children will subdue kingdoms, work righteousness, wax valiant in fight, rout the armies of the aliens, merry of heart as when in the nursery of this world they fought their fancied frigates, and defended their toy-battlements.

Here are the beginning and end of another of similar purport:

CHILDHOOD.

I cannot reach it; and my striving eye Dazzles at it, as at eternity.

Were now that chronicle alive, Those white designs which children drive, And the thoughts of each harmless hour, With their content too in my power, Quickly would I make my path even, And by mere playing go to heaven.

An age of mysteries! which he Must live twice that would G.o.d's face see; Which angels guard, and with it play-- Angels which foul men drive away.

How do I study now, and scan Thee more than e'er I studied man, And only see, through a long night, Thy edges and thy bordering light!

O for thy centre and mid-day!

For sure that is the narrow way!

Many a true thought comes out by the help of a fancy or half-playful exercise of the thinking power. There is a good deal of such fancy in the following poem, but in the end it rises to the height of the purest and best mysticism. We must not forget that the deepest man can utter, will be but the type or symbol of a something deeper yet, of which he can perceive only a doubtful glimmer. This will serve for general remark upon the mystical mode, as well as for comment explanatory of the close of the poem.

THE NIGHT.

JOHN iii. 2.

Through that pure virgin-shrine, That sacred veil[145] drawn o'er thy glorious noon, That men might look and live, as glowworms s.h.i.+ne, And face the moon, Wise Nicodemus saw such light As made him know his G.o.d by night.

Most blest believer he, Who in that land of darkness and blind eyes, Thy long-expected healing wings could see When thou didst rise!

And, what can never more be done, Did at midnight speak with the sun!

O who will tell me where He found thee at that dead and silent hour?

What hallowed solitary ground did bear So rare a flower, Within whose sacred leaves did lie The fulness of the Deity?

No mercy-seat of gold, No dead and dusty cherub, nor carved stone, But his own living works did my Lord hold And lodge alone, Where trees and herbs did watch and peep And wonder, while the Jews did sleep.

Dear night! this world's defeat; The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb, The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb!

Christ's progress, and his prayer time,[146]

The hours to which high heaven doth chime![147]

G.o.d's silent, searching flight;[148]

When my Lord's head is filled with dew, and all His locks are wet with the clear drops of night, His still, soft call; His knocking time;[149] the soul's dumb watch, When spirits their fair kindred catch.

Were all my loud, evil[150] days Calm and unhaunted as is thy dark tent, Whose peace but by some angel's wing or voice Is seldom rent, Then I in heaven all the long year Would keep, and never wander here.

But living where the sun Doth all things wake, and where all mix and tire Themselves and others, I consent and run To every mire; And by this world's ill guiding light, Err more than I can do by night

There is in G.o.d, some say, A deep but dazzling darkness; as men here Say it is late and dusky, because they See not all clear: O for that night! where I in him Might live invisible and dim!

This is glorious; and its lesson of quiet and retirement we need more than ever in these hurried days upon which we have fallen. If men would but be still enough in themselves to hear, through all the noises of the busy light, the voice that is ever talking on in the dusky chambers of their hearts! Look at his love for Nature, too; and read the fourth stanza in connexion with my previous remarks upon symbolism. I think this poem _grander_ than any of George Herbert's. I use the word with intended precision.

Here is one, the end of which is not so good, poetically considered, as the magnificent beginning, but which contains striking lines throughout:--