England's Antiphon Part 37

Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers, In mingled clouds to him whose sun exalts, Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.

Ye forests, bend, ye harvests, wave to him; Breathe your still song into the reaper's heart, As home he goes beneath the joyous moon.

Bleat out afresh, ye hills! ye mossy rocks, Retain the sound; the broad responsive low, Ye valleys raise; for the great Shepherd reigns, And his unsuffering kingdom yet will come.

Ye chief, for whom the whole creation smiles, At once the head, the heart, and tongue of all, Crown the great hymn! in swarming cities vast, a.s.sembled men, to the deep organ join The long-resounding voice, oft breaking clear, At solemn pauses, through the swelling base; And, as each mingling flame increases each, In one united ardour rise to heaven.

Should fate command me to the farthest verge Of the green earth, to distant barbarous climes, Rivers unknown to song, where first the sun Gilds Indian mountains, or his setting beam Flames on the Atlantic isles, 'tis nought to me, Since G.o.d is ever present, ever felt, In the void waste as in the city full; And where he vital breathes there must be joy.

The wors.h.i.+p of intellectual power in laws and inventions is the main delight of the song; not the living presence of creative love, which never sings its own praises, but spends itself in giving. Still, although there has pa.s.sed away a glory from the world of song, although the fervour of childlike wors.h.i.+p has vanished for a season, there are signs in these verses of a new dawn of devotion. Even the exclusive and therefore blind wors.h.i.+p of science will, when it has turned the coil of the ascending spiral, result in a new song to "him that made heaven and earth and the sea and the fountains of waters." But first, for a long time, the wors.h.i.+p of power will go on. There is one sonnet by Kirke White, eighty-five years younger than Thomson, which is quite pagan in its mode of glorifying the power of the Deity.

But about the same time when Thomson's _Seasons_ was published, which was in 1730, the third year of George II., that life which had burned on in the hidden corners of the church in spite of the worldliness and sensuality of its rulers, began to show a flame destined to enlarge and spread until it should have lighted up the ma.s.s with an outburst of Christian faith and hope. I refer to the movement called Methodism, in the midst of which, at an early stage of its history, arose the directing energies of John Wesley, a man sent of G.o.d to deepen at once and purify its motive influences. What he and his friends taught, would, I presume, in its essence, amount mainly to this: that acquiescence in the doctrines of the church is no fulfilment of duty--or anything, indeed, short of an obedient recognition of personal relation to G.o.d, who has sent every man the message of present salvation in his Son. A new life began to bud and blossom from the dry stem of the church. The spirit moved upon the waters of feeling, and the new undulation broke on the sh.o.r.es of thought in an outburst of new song. For while John Wesley roused the hearts of the people to sing, his brother Charles put songs in their mouths.

I do not say that many of these songs possess much literary merit, but many of them are real lyrics: they have that essential element, song, in them. The following, however, is a very fine poem. That certain expressions in it may not seem offensive, it is necessary to keep the allegory of Jacob and the Angel in full view--even better in view, perhaps, than the writer does himself.

WRESTLING JACOB.

Come, O thou traveller unknown, Whom still I hold, but cannot see!

My company before is gone, And I am left alone with thee!

With thee all night I mean to stay, And wrestle till the break of day!

I need not tell thee who I am, My misery or sin declare; Thyself hast called me by my name: Look on my hands, and read it there!

But who, I ask thee, who art thou?

Tell me thy name, and tell me now.

In vain thou struggles! to get free: I never will unloose my hold.

Art thou the man that died for me?

The secret of thy love unfold.

Wrestling, I will not let thee go Till I thy name, thy nature know.

What though my sinking flesh complain, And murmur to contend so long!

I rise superior to my pain: When I am weak, then I am strong; And when my all of strength shall fail, I shall with the G.o.d-man prevail.

My strength is gone; my nature dies; I sink beneath thy weighty hand: Faint to revive, and fall to rise; I fall, and yet by faith I stand-- I stand, and will not let thee go Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Yield to me now, for I am weak, But confident in self-despair; Speak to my heart, in blessings speak; Be conquered by my instant[161] prayer.

Speak, or thou never hence shalt move, And tell me if thy name is Love.

'Tis Love! 'tis Love! Thou diedst for me!

I hear thy whisper in my heart!

The morning breaks; the shadows flee: Pure universal Love thou art!

To me, to all, thy bowels move: Thy nature and thy name is Love!

My prayer hath power with G.o.d; the grace Unspeakable I now receive; Through faith I see thee face to face-- I see thee face to face, and live: In vain I have not wept and strove; Thy nature and thy name is Love.

I know thee, Saviour--who thou art-- Jesus, the feeble sinner's friend!

Nor wilt thou with the night depart, But stay and love me to the end!

Thy mercies never shall remove: Thy nature and thy name is Love!

Contented now, upon my thigh I halt till life's short journey end; All helplessness, all weakness, I On thee alone for strength depend; Nor have I power from thee to move: Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey; h.e.l.l, earth, and sin, with ease o'ercome; I leap for joy, pursue my way, And as a bounding hart fly home; Through all eternity to prove Thy nature and thy name is Love.

It seems to me that the art with which his very difficult end in the management of the allegory is reached, is admirable. I have omitted three stanzas.

I cannot give much from William Cowper. His poems--graceful always, and often devout even when playful--have few amongst them that are expressly religious, while the best of his hymns are known to every reader of such.

Born in 1731, he was greatly influenced by the narrow theology that prevailed in his circle; and most of his hymns are marred by the exclusiveness which belonged to the system and not to the man. There is little of it in the following:--

Far from the world, O Lord, I flee, From strife and tumult far; From scenes where Satan wages still His most successful war.

The calm retreat, the silent shade, With prayer and praise agree, And seem by thy sweet bounty made For those who follow thee.

There if thy spirit touch the soul, And grace her mean abode, Oh with what peace, and joy, and love, She communes with her G.o.d!

There, like the nightingale, she pours Her solitary lays, Nor asks a witness of her song, Nor thirsts for human praise.

Author and guardian of my life, Sweet source of light divine, And--all harmonious names in one-- My Saviour, thou art mine!

What thanks I owe thee, and what love-- A boundless, endless store-- Shall echo through the realms above When time shall be no more.

Sad as was Cowper's history, with the vapours of a low insanity, if not always filling his garden, yet ever brooding on the hill-tops of his horizon, he was, through his faith in G.o.d, however darkened by the introversions of a neat, poverty-stricken theology, yet able to lead his life to the end. It is delightful to discover that, when science, which is the anatomy of nature, had poisoned the theology of the country, in creating a demand for clean-cut theory in infinite affairs, the loveliness and truth of the countenance of living nature could calm the mind which this theology had irritated to the very borders of madness, and give a peace and hope which the man was altogether right in attributing to the Spirit of G.o.d. How many have been thus comforted, who knew not, like Wordsworth, the immediate channel of their comfort; or even, with Cowper, recognized its source! G.o.d gives while men sleep.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE NEW VISION.

William Blake, the painter of many strange and fantastic but often powerful--sometimes very beautiful pictures--wrote poems of an equally remarkable kind. Some of them are as lovely as they are careless, while many present a curious contrast in the apparent incoherence of the simplest language. He was born in 1757, towards the close of the reign of George II. Possibly if he had been sent to an age more capable of understanding him, his genius would not have been tempted to utter itself with such a wildness as appears to indicate hopeless indifference to being understood. We cannot tell sometimes whether to attribute the bewilderment the poems cause in us to a mysticism run wild, or to regard it as the reflex of madness in the writer. Here is a lyrical gem, however, although not cut with mathematical precision.

DAYBREAK.

To find the western path, Right through the gates of wrath I urge my way; Sweet morning leads me on: With soft repentant moan, I see the break of day