Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 77

DESTRUCTION AND RENOVATION OF ALL THINGS.

1 As the seas, Boiling with swelling waves, aloft did rise, And met with mighty showers and pouring rain From heaven's spouts; so the broad flas.h.i.+ng skies, With brimstone thick and clouds of fiery bane, Shall meet with raging Etna's and Vesuvius' flame.

2 The burning bowels of this wasting ball Shall gallup up great flakes of rolling fire, And belch out pitchy flames, till over all Having long raged, Vulcan himself shall tire, And (the earth an ash-heap made) shall then expire: Here Nature, laid asleep in her own urn, With gentle rest right easily will respire, Till to her pristine task she do return As fresh as Phoenix young under the Arabian morn.

3 Oh, happy they that then the first are born, While yet the world is in her vernal pride; For old corruption quite away is worn, As metal pure so is her mould well tried.

Sweet dews, cool-breathing airs, and s.p.a.ces wide Of precious spicery, wafted with soft wind: Fair comely bodies goodly beautified.

4 For all the while her purged ashes rest, These relics dry suck in the heavenly dew, And roscid manna rains upon her breast, And fills with sacred milk, sweet, fresh, and new, Where all take life and doth the world renew; And then renewed with pleasure be yfed.

A green, soft mantle doth her bosom strew With fragrant herbs and flowers embellished, Where without fault or shame all living creatures bed.

A DISTEMPERED FANCY.

1 Then the wild fancy from her horrid womb Will senden forth foul shapes. O dreadful sight!

Overgrown toads, fierce serpents, thence will come, Red-scaled dragons, with deep burning light In their hollow eye-pits: with these she must fight: Then think herself ill wounded, sorely stung.

Old fulsome hags, with scabs and scurf bedight, Foul tarry spittle tumbling with their tongue On their raw leather lips, these near will to her clung,

2 And lovingly salute against her will, Closely embrace, and make her mad with woe: She'd lever thousand times they did her kill, Than force her such vile baseness undergo.

Anon some giant his huge self will show, Gaping with mouth as vast as any cave, With stony, staring eyes, and footing slow: She surely deems him her live, walking grave, From that dern hollow pit knows not herself to save.

3 After a while, tossed on the ocean main, A boundless sea she finds of misery; The fiery snorts of the leviathan, That makes the boiling waves before him fly, She hears, she sees his blazing morn-bright eye: If here she 'scape, deep gulfs and threatening rocks Her frighted self do straightway terrify; Steel-coloured clouds with rattling thunder knocks, With these she is amazed, and thousand such-like mocks.

SOUL COMPARED TO A LANTERN.

1 Like to a light fast locked in lantern dark, Whereby by night our wary steps we guide In slabby streets, and dirty channels mark, Some weaker rays through the black top do glide, And flusher streams perhaps from h.o.r.n.y side.

But when we've pa.s.sed the peril of the way, Arrived at home, and laid that case aside, The naked light how clearly doth it ray, And spread its joyful beams as bright as summer's day.

2 Even so, the soul, in this contracted state, Confined to these strait instruments of sense, More dull and narrowly doth operate.

At this hole hears, the sight must ray from thence, Here tastes, there smells; but when she's gone from hence, Like naked lamp, she is one s.h.i.+ning sphere, And round about has perfect cognoscence Whate'er in her horizon doth appear: She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear.

WILLIAM CHAMBERLAYNE.

Chamberlayne was, during life, a poor man, and, till long after his death, an unappreciated poet. He was a physician at Shaftesbury, Dorsets.h.i.+re; born in 1619, and died in 1689. He appears to have been present among the Royalists at the battle of Newbury. He complains bitterly of his narrow circ.u.mstances, and yet he lived to a long age.

He published, in 1658, a tragic comedy, ent.i.tled 'Love's Victory,' and in 1659, 'Pharonnida,' a heroic poem.

The latter is the main support of his literary reputation. It was discovered to be good by Thomas Campbell, who might say,

'I was the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.'

Silent, however, it continues since, and can never be expected to be thronged by visitors. The story is interesting, and many of the separate thoughts, expressions, and pa.s.sages are beautiful, as, for instance--

'The scholar stews his catholic brains for food;'

and this--

'Harsh poverty, That moth which frets the sacred robe of wit;'

but the style is often elliptical and involved; the story meanders too much, and is too long and intricate; and, on the whole, a few mutilated fragments are all that are likely to remain of an original and highly elaborate poem.

ARGALIA TAKEN PRISONER BY THE TURKS.

* * The Turks had ought Made desperate onslaughts on the isle, but brought Nought back but wounds and infamy; but now, Wearied with toil, they are resolved to bow Their stubborn resolutions with the strength Of not-to-be-resisted want: the length Of the chronical disease extended had To some few months, since to oppress the sad But constant islanders, the army lay, Circling their confines. Whilst this tedious stay From battle rusts the soldier's valour in His tainted cabin, there had often been, With all variety of fortune, fought Brave single combats, whose success had brought Honour's unwithered laurels on the brow Of either party; but the balance, now Forced by the hand of a brave Turk, inclined Wholly to them. Thrice had his valour s.h.i.+ned In victory's refulgent rays, thrice heard The shouts of conquest; thrice on his lance appeared The heads of n.o.ble Rhodians, which had struck A general sorrow 'mongst the knights. All look Who next the lists should enter; each desires The task were his, but honour now requires A spirit more than vulgar, or she dies The next attempt, their valour's sacrifice; To prop whose ruins, chosen by the free Consent of all, Argalia comes to be Their happy champion. Truce proclaimed, until The combat ends, the expecting people fill The s.p.a.cious battlements; the Turks forsake Their tents, of whom the city ladies take A dreadful view, till a more n.o.ble sight Diverts their looks; each part behold their knight With various wishes, whilst in blood and sweat They toil for victory. The conflict's heat Raged in their veins, which honour more inflamed Than burning calentures could do; both blamed The feeble influence of their stars, that gave No speedier conquest; each neglects to save Himself, to seek advantage to offend His eager foe * * * *

* * * But now so long The Turks' proud champion had endured the strong a.s.saults of the stout Christian, till his strength Cooled, on the ground, with his blood--he fell at length, Beneath his conquering sword. The barbarous crew O' the villains that did at a distance view Their champion's fall, all bands of truce forgot, Running to succour him, begin a hot And desperate combat with those knights that stand To aid Argalia, by whose conquering hand Whole squadrons of them fall, but here he spent His mighty spirit in vain, their cannons rent His scattered troops.

Argalia lies in chains, ordained to die A sacrifice unto the cruelty Of the fierce bashaw, whose loved favourite in The combat late he slew; yet had not been In that so much unhappy, had not he That honoured then his sword with victory, Half-brother to Ja.n.u.sa been, a bright But cruel lady, whose refined delight Her slave (though husband), Ammurat, durst not Ruffle with discontent; wherefore, to cool that hot Contention of her blood, which he foresaw That heavy news would from her anger draw, To quench with the brave Christian's death, he sent Him living to her, that her anger, spent In flaming torments, might not settle in The dregs of discontent. Staying to win Some Rhodian castles, all the prisoners were Sent with a guard into Sardinia, there To meet their wretched thraldom. From the rest Argalia severed, soon hopes to be bless'd With speedy death, though waited on by all The h.e.l.l-instructed torments that could fall Within invention's reach; but he's not yet Arrived to his period, his unmoved stars sit Thus in their orbs secured. It was the use Of the Turkish pride, which triumphs in the abuse Of suffering Christians, once, before they take The ornaments of nature off, to make Their prisoners public to the view, that all Might mock their miseries: this sight did call Ja.n.u.sa to her palace-window, where, Whilst she beholds them, love resolved to bear Her ruin on her treacherous eye-beams, till Her heart infected grew; their orbs did fill, As the most pleasing object, with the sight Of him whose sword opened a way for the flight Of her loved brother's soul.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

Vaughan was torn in Wales, on the banks of the Uske, in Brecknocks.h.i.+re, in 1614. His father was a gentleman, but, we presume, poor, as his son was bred to a profession. Young Vaughan became first a lawyer, and then a physician; and we suppose, had it not been for his advanced life, he would have become latterly a clergyman, since he grew, when old, exceedingly devout. In life, he was not fortunate, and we find him, like Chamberlayne, complaining bitterly of the poverty of the poetical tribe.

In 1651, he published a volume of verse, in which nascent excellence struggles with dim obscurities, like a young moon with heavy clouds. But his 'Silex Scintillans,' or 'Sacred Poems,' produced in later life, attests at once the depth of his devotion, and the truth and originality of his genius. He died in 1695.

Campbell, always p.r.o.ne to be rather severe on pious poets, and whose taste, too, was finical at times, says of Vaughan--'He is one of the harshest even of the inferior order of the school of conceit; but he has some few scattered thoughts that meet the eye amidst his harsh pages, like wild flowers on a barren heath.' Surely this is rather 'harsh'

judgment. At the same time, it is not a little laughable to find that Campbell has himself appropriated one of these 'wild flowers.' In his beautiful 'Rainbow,' he cries--

'How came the world's gray fathers forth To mark thy sacred sign!'

Vaughan had said--

'How bright wert thou, when Shem's admiring eye, Thy burnished, flaming arch did first descry; When Terah, Nahor, Haran, Abram, Lot, The youthful world's gray fathers in one knot, Did with intentive looks watch every hour For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!'

Indeed, all Campbell's 'Rainbow' is just a reflection of Vaughan's, and reminds you of those faint, pale shadows of the heavenly bow you sometimes see in the darkened and disarranged skies of spring. To steal from, and then strike down the victim, is more suitable to robbers than to poets.

Perhaps the best criticism on Vaughan may be found in the t.i.tle of his own poems, 'Silex Scintillans.' He had a good deal of the dulness and hardness of the flint about his mind, but the influence of poverty and suffering,--for true it is that

'Wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong; They learn in suffering what they teach in song,'--

and latterly the power of a genuine, though somewhat narrow piety, struck out glorious scintillations from the bare but rich rock. He ranks with Crashaw, Quarles, and Herbert, as one of the best of our early religious poets; like them in their faults, and superior to all of them in refinement and beauty, if not in strength of genius.

ON A CHARNEL-HOUSE.

Where are you, sh.o.r.eless thoughts, vast-tentered[1] hope, Ambitious dreams, aims of an endless scope, Whose stretched excess runs on a string too high, And on the rack of self-extension die?

Chameleons of state, air-mongering[2] band, Whose breath, like gunpowder, blows up a land, Come, see your dissolution, and weigh What a loathed nothing you shall be one day.

As the elements by circulation pa.s.s From one to the other, and that which first was Is so again, so 'tis with you. The grave And nature but complete: what the one gave, The other takes. Think, then, that in this bed There sleep the relics of as proud a head, As stern and subtle as your own; that hath Performed or forced as much; whose tempest-wrath Hath levelled kings with slaves; and wisely, then, Calm these high furies, and descend to men.