England's Antiphon Part 12

This man is free from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands And having nothing, yet hath all.

Some of my readers will observe that in many places I have given a reading different from that in the best-known copy of the poem. I have followed a ma.n.u.script in the handwriting of Ben Jonson.[70] I cannot tell whether Jonson has put the master's hand to the amateur's work, but in every case I find his reading the best.

Sir John Davies must have been about fifteen years younger than Sir Fulk Grevill. He was born in 1570, was bred a barrister, and rose to high position through the favour of James I.--gained, it is said, by the poem which the author called _Nosce Teipsum_,[71] but which is generally ent.i.tled _On the Immortality of the Soul_, intending by _immortality_ the spiritual nature of the soul, resulting in continuity of existence. It is a wonderful instance of what can be done for metaphysics in verse, and by means of imagination or poetic embodiment generally. Argumentation cannot of course naturally belong to the region of poetry, however well it may comport itself when there naturalized; and consequently, although there are most poetic no less than profound pa.s.sages in the treatise, a light scruple arises whether its const.i.tuent matter can properly be called poetry. At all events, however, certain of the more prosaic measures and stanzas lend themselves readily, and with much favour, to some of the more complex of logical necessities. And it must be remembered that in human speech, as in the human mind, there are no absolute divisions: power shades off into feeling; and the driest logic may find the heroic couplet render it good service.

Sir John Davies's treatise is not only far more poetic in image and utterance than that of Lord Brooke, but is far more clear in argument and firm in expression as well. Here is a fine invocation:

O Light, which mak'st the light which makes the day!

Which sett'st the eye without, and mind within; Lighten my spirit with one clear heavenly ray, Which now to view itself doth first begin.

Thou, like the sun, dost, with an equal ray, Into the palace and the cottage s.h.i.+ne; And show'st the soul both to the clerk and lay, _learned and By the clear lamp of th' oracle divine. [unlearned_

He is puzzled enough to get the theology of his time into harmony with his philosophy, and I cannot say that he is always triumphant in the attempt; but here at least is good argument in justification of the freedom of man to sin.

If by His word he had the current stayed Of Adam's will, which was by nature free, It had been one as if his word had said, "I will henceforth that Man no Man shall be."

For what is Man without a moving mind, Which hath a judging wit, and choosing will?

Now, if G.o.d's pow'r should her election bind, Her motions then would cease, and stand all still.

So that if Man would be unvariable, He must be G.o.d, or like a rock or tree; For ev'n the perfect angels were not stable, But had a fall more desperate than we.

The poem contains much excellent argument in mental science as well as in religion and metaphysics; but with that department I have nothing to do.

I shall now give an outlook from the highest peak of the poem--to any who are willing to take the trouble necessary for seeing what another would show them.

The section from which I have gathered the following stanzas is devoted to the more immediate proof of the soul's immortality.

Her only end is never-ending bliss, Which is the eternal face of G.o.d to see, Who last of ends and first of causes is; And to do this, she must eternal be.

Again, how can she but immortal be, When with the motions of both will and wit, She still aspireth to eternity, And never rests till she attains to it?

Water in conduit-pipes can rise no higher Than the well-head from whence it first doth spring; Then since to eternal G.o.d she doth aspire, She cannot but be an eternal thing.

At first her mother-earth she holdeth dear, And doth embrace the world and worldly things; She flies close by the ground, and hovers here, And mounts not up with her celestial wings.

Yet under heaven she cannot light on ought That with her heavenly nature doth agree She cannot rest, she cannot fix her thought, She cannot in this world contented be.

For who did ever yet, in honour, wealth, Or pleasure of the sense, contentment find?

Whoever ceased to wish, when he had health Or having wisdom, was not vexed in mind

Then as a bee, which among weeds doth fall, Which seem sweet flowers, with l.u.s.tre fresh and gay-- She lights on that, and this, and tasteth all, But, pleased with none, doth rise, and soar away;

So, when the soul finds here no true content, And, like Noah's dove, can no sure footing take, She doth return from whence she first was sent, And flies to him that first her wings did make.

Wit, seeking truth, from cause to cause ascends, And never rests till it the first attain; Will, seeking good, finds many middle ends, But never stays till it the last do gain.

Now G.o.d the truth, and first of causes is; G.o.d is the last good end, which lasteth still; Being Alpha and Omega named for this: Alpha to wit, Omega to the will.

Since then her heavenly kind she doth display In that to G.o.d she doth directly move, And on no mortal thing can make her stay, She cannot be from hence, but from above.

One pa.s.sage more, the conclusion and practical summing up of the whole:

O ignorant poor man! what dost thou bear, Locked up within the casket of thy breast?

What jewels and what riches hast thou there!

What heavenly treasure in so weak a chest!

Think of her worth, and think that G.o.d did mean This worthy mind should worthy things embrace: Blot not her beauties with thy thoughts unclean, Nor her dishonour with thy pa.s.sion base.

Kill not her quickening power with surfeitings; Mar not her sense with sensuality; Cast not her serious wit on idle things; Make not her free-will slave to vanity.

And when thou think'st of her eternity, Think not that death against our nature is; Think it a birth; and when thou go'st to die, Sing like a swan, as if thou went'st to bliss.

And if thou, like a child, didst fear before, Being in the dark where thou didst nothing see; Now I have brought thee torch-light, fear no more; Now when thou diest thou canst not hood-wink'd be.

And thou, my soul, which turn'st with curious eye To view the beams of thine own form divine, Know, that thou canst know nothing perfectly, While thou art clouded with this flesh of mine.

Take heed of over-weening, and compare Thy peac.o.c.k's feet with thy gay peac.o.c.k's train: Study the best and highest things that are, But of thyself an humble thought retain.

Cast down thyself, and only strive to raise The story of thy Maker's sacred name: Use all thy powers that blessed Power to praise, Which gives the power to be, and use the same.

In looking back over our path from the point we have now reached, the first thought that suggests itself is--How much the reflective has supplanted the emotional! I do not mean for a moment that the earliest poems were without thought, or that the latest are without emotion; but in the former there is more of the skin, as it were--in the latter, more of the bones of wors.h.i.+p; not that in the one the wors.h.i.+p is but skin-deep, or that in the other the bones are dry.

To look at the change a little more closely: we find in the earliest time, feeling working on historic fact and on what was received as such, and the result simple aspiration after goodness. The next stage is good _doctrine_--I use the word, as St. Paul uses it, for instruction in righteousness--chiefly by means of allegory, all attempts at a.n.a.lysis being made through personification of qualities. Here the general form is frequently more poetic than the matter. After this we have a period princ.i.p.ally of imitation, sometimes good, sometimes indifferent. Next, with the Reformation and the revival of literature together, come more of art and more of philosophy, to the detriment of the lyrical expression.

People cannot think and sing: they can only feel and sing. But the philosophy goes farther in this direction, even to the putting in abeyance of that from which song takes its rise,--namely, feeling itself.

As to the former, amongst the verse of the period I have given, there is hardly anything to be called song but Sir Philip Sidney's Psalms, and for them we are more indebted to King David than to Sir Philip. As to the latter, even in the case of that most mournful poem of the Countess of Pembroke, it is, to quite an unhealthy degree, occupied with the attempt to work upon her own feelings by the contemplation of them, instead of with the utterance of those aroused by the contemplation of truth. In her case the metaphysics have begun to prey upon and consume the emotions.

Besides, that age was essentially a dramatic age, as even its command of language, especially as shown in the pranks it plays with it, would almost indicate; and the dramatic impulse is less favourable, though not at all opposed, to lyrical utterance. In the cases of Sir Fulk Grevill and Sir John Davies, the feeling is a.s.suredly profound; but in form and expression the philosophy has quite the upper hand.

We must not therefore suppose, however, that the cause of religious poetry has been a losing one. The last wave must sink that the next may rise, and the whole tide flow sh.o.r.ewards. The man must awake through all his soul, all his strength, all his mind, that he may wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in unity, in the one harmonious utterance of his being: his heart must be united to fear his name. And for this final perfection of the individual the race must awake. At this season and that season, this power or that power must be chiefly developed in her elect; and for its sake the growth of others must for a season be delayed. But the next generation will inherit all that has gone before; and its elect, if they be themselves pure in heart, and individual, that is original, in mind, will, more or less thoroughly, embody the result, in subservience to some new development, essential in its turn to further progress. Even the fallow times, which we are so ready to call barren, must have their share in working the one needful work. They may be to the nation that which sickness so often is to the man--a time of refres.h.i.+ng from the Lord. A nation's life does not lie in its utterance any more than in the things which it possesses: it lies in its action. The utterance is a result, and therefore a sign, of life; but there may be life without any _such_ sign.

To do justice, to love mercy, to walk humbly with G.o.d, is the highest life of a nation as of an individual; and when the time for speech comes, it will be such life alone that causes the speech to be strong at once and harmonious. When at last there are not ten righteous men in Sodom, Sodom can neither think, act, nor say, and her destruction is at hand.

While the wave of the dramatic was sinking, the wave of the lyric was growing in force and rising in height. Especially as regards religious poetry we are as yet only approaching the lyrical jubilee. Fact and faith, self-consciousness and metaphysics, all are needful to the lyric of love. Modesty and art find their grandest, simplest labour in rightly subordinating each of those to the others. How could we have a George Herbert without metaphysics? In those poems I have just given, the way of metaphysics was prepared for him. That which overcolours one age to the injury of its harmony, will, in the next or the next, fall into its own place in the seven-chorded rainbow of truth.

CHAPTER VII.

DR. DONNE.

We now come to Dr. John Donne, a man of justly great respect and authority, who, born in the year 1573, the fifteenth of Queen Elizabeth, died Dean of St. Paul's in the year 1636. But, although even Ben Jonson addresses him as "the delight of Phoebus and each Muse," we are too far beyond the power of his social presence and the influence of his public utterances to feel that admiration of his poems which was so largely expressed during his lifetime. Of many of those that were written in his youth, Izaak Walton says Dr. Donne "wished that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals." Faulty as they are, however, they are not the less the work of a great and earnest man.

Bred to the law, but never having practised it, he lost his secretarys.h.i.+p to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere through the revenge of Sir George More, whose daughter Donne had married in secret because of her father's opposition. Dependent thereafter for years on the generous kindness of unrelated friends, he yet for conscience' sake refused to take orders when a good living was offered him; and it was only after prolonged thought that he yielded to the importunity of King James, who was so convinced of his surpa.s.sing fitness for the church that he would speed him towards no other goal. When at length he dared hope that G.o.d might have called him to the high office, never man gave himself to its duties with more of whole-heartedness and devotion, and none have proved themselves more clean of the sacrilege of serving at the altar for the sake of the things offered thereon.