England's Antiphon

THE DAWNING

 
  Ah! what time wilt thou come? When shall that cry,
  The Bridegroom's coming, fill the sky?
  Shall it in the evening run
  When our words and works are done?
  Or will thy all-surprising light
  Break at midnight,
  When either sleep or some dark pleasure
  Possesseth mad man without measure?
  Or shail these early, fragrant hours
  Unlock thy bowers,¹⁵¹
  And with their blush of light descry
  Thy locks crowned with eternity?
  Indeed, it is the only time
  That with thy glory doth best chime:
  All now are stirring; every field
  Full hymns doth yield;
  The whole creation shakes off night,
  And for thy shadow looks the light;¹⁵²
  Stars now vanish without number;
  Sleepy planets set and slumber;
  The pursy clouds disband and scatter;—
  All expect some sudden matter;
  Not one beam triumphs, but, from far,
  That morning-star.
 
 
  O, at what time soever thou,
  Unknown to us, the heavens wilt bow,
  And, with thy angels in the van,
  Descend to judge poor careless man,
  Grant I may not like puddle lie
  In a corrupt security,
  Where, if a traveller water crave,
  He finds it dead, and in a grave;
  But as this restless, vocal spring
  All day and night doth run and sing,
  And though here born, yet is acquainted
  Elsewhere, and, flowing, keeps untainted,
  So let me all my busy age
  In thy free services engage;
  And though, while here, of force,¹⁵³ I must
  Have commerce sometimes with poor dust,¹⁵⁴
  And in my flesh, though vile and low,
  As this doth in her channel, flow,
  Yet let my course, my aim, my love,
  And chief acquaintance be above.
  So when that day and hour shall come,
  In which thyself will be the sun,
  Thou'lt find me drest and on my way,
  Watching the break of thy great day.
 

I do not think that description of the dawn has ever been surpassed. The verse "All expect some sudden matter," is wondrously fine. The water "dead and in a grave," because stagnant, is a true fancy; and the "acquainted elsewhere" of the running stream, is a masterly phrase. I need not point out the symbolism of the poem.

I do not know a writer, Wordsworth not excepted, who reveals more delight in the visions of Nature than Henry Vaughan. He is a true forerunner of Wordsworth, inasmuch as the latter sets forth with only greater profundity and more art than he, the relations between Nature and Human Nature; while, on the other hand, he is the forerunner as well of some one that must yet do what Wordsworth has left almost unattempted, namely—set forth the sympathy of Nature with the aspirations of the spirit that is born of God, born again, I mean, in the recognition of the child's relation to the Father. Both Herbert and Vaughan have thus read Nature, the latter turning many leaves which few besides have turned. In this he has struck upon a deeper and richer lode than even Wordsworth, although he has not wrought it with half his skill. In any history of the development of the love of the present age for Nature, Vaughan, although I fear his influence would be found to have been small as yet, must be represented as the Phosphor of coming dawn. Beside him, Thomson is cold, artistic, and gray: although larger in scope, he is not to be compared with him in sympathetic sight. It is this insight that makes Vaughan a mystic. He can see one thing everywhere, and all things the same—yet each with a thousand sides that radiate crossing lights, even as the airy particles around us. For him everything is the expression of, and points back to, some fact in the Divine Thought. Along the line of every ray he looks towards its radiating centre—the heart of the Maker.

I could give many instances of Vaughan's power in reading the heart of Nature, but I may not dwell upon this phase. Almost all the poems I give and have given will afford such.

 
  I walked the other day, to spend my hour,
      Into a field,
  Where I sometimes had seen the soil to yield
      A gallant flower;
  But winter now had ruffled all the bower
      And curious store
    I knew there heretofore.
 
 
  Yet I whose search loved not to peep and peer
      I' th' face of things,
  Thought with myself, there might be other springs
      Besides this here,
  Which, like cold friends, sees us but once a year;
      And so the flower
    Might have some other bower.
 
 
  Then taking up what I could nearest spy,
      I digged about
  That place where I had seen him to grow out;
      And by and by
  I saw the warm recluse alone to lie,
      Where fresh and green
    He lived of us unseen.
 
 
  Many a question intricate and rare
      Did I there strow;
  But all I could extort was, that he now
      Did there repair
  Such losses as befell him in this air,
      And would ere long
    Come forth most fair and young.
 
 
  This past, I threw the clothes quite o'er his head;
      And, stung with fear
  Of my own frailty, dropped down many a tear
      Upon his bed;
  Then sighing, whispered, Happy are the dead!
      What peace doth now
    Rock him asleep below!
 
 
  And yet, how few believe such doctrine springs
      From a poor root
  Which all the winter sleeps here under foot,
      And hath no wings
  To raise it to the truth and light of things,
      But is still trod
    By every wandering clod!
 
 
  O thou, whose spirit did at first inflame
      And warm the dead!
  And by a sacred incubation fed
      With life this frame,
  Which once had neither being, form, nor name!
      Grant I may so
    Thy steps track here below,
 
 
  That in these masks and shadows I may see
      Thy sacred way;
  And by those hid ascents climb to that day
      Which breaks from thee,
  Who art in all things, though invisibly:
      Show me thy peace,
    Thy mercy, love, and ease.
 
 
  And from this care, where dreams and sorrows reign,
      Lead me above,
  Where light, joy, leisure, and true comforts move
      Without all pain:
  There, hid in thee, show me his life again
      At whose dumb urn
    Thus all the year I mourn.
 

There are several amongst his poems lamenting, like this, the death of some dear friend—perhaps his twin-brother, whom he outlived thirty years.

According to what a man is capable of seeing in nature, he becomes either a man of appliance, a man of science, a mystic, or a poet.

I must now give two that are simple in thought, construction, and music. The latter ought to be popular, from the nature of its rhythmic movement, and the holy merriment it carries. But in the former, note how the major key of gladness changes in the third stanza to the minor key of aspiration, which has always some sadness in it; a sadness which deepens to grief in the next stanza at the consciousness of unfitness for Christ's company, but is lifted by hope almost again to gladness in the last.

CHRIST'S NATIVITY

 
  Awake, glad heart! Get up, and sing!
  It is the birthday of thy king!
      Awake! awake!
      The sun doth shake
  Light from his locks, and, all the way
  Breathing perfumes, doth spice the day.
 
 
  Awake! awake! Hark how the wood rings
  Winds whisper, and the busy springs
      A concert make:
      Awake! awake!
  Man is their high-priest, and should rise
  To offer up the sacrifice.
 
 
  I would I were some bird or star,
  Fluttering in woods, or lifted far
      Above this inn
      And road of sin!
  Then either star or bird should be
  Shining or singing still to thee.
 
 
  I would I had in my best part
  Fit rooms for thee! or that my heart
      Were so clean as
      Thy manger was!
  But I am all filth, and obscene;
  Yet, if thou wilt, thou canst make clean.
 
 
  Sweet Jesu! will then. Let no more
  This leper haunt and soil thy door.
      Cure him, ease him;
      O release him!
  And let once more, by mystic birth,
  The Lord of life be born in earth.
 
 
The fitting companion to this is his
 

EASTER HYMN

 
  Death and darkness, get you packing:
  Nothing now to man is lacking.
  All your triumphs now are ended,
  And what Adam marred is mended.
  Graves are beds now for the weary;
  Death a nap, to wake more merry;
  Youth now, full of pious duty,
  Seeks in thee for perfect beauty;
  The weak and aged, tired with length
  Of days, from thee look for new strength;
  And infants with thy pangs contest,
  As pleasant as if with the breast.
 
 
  Then unto him who thus hath thrown
  Even to contempt thy kingdom down,
  And by his blood did us advance
  Unto his own inheritance—
  To him be glory, power, praise,
  From this unto the last of days!
 

We must now descend from this height of true utterance into the Valley of Humiliation, and cannot do better than console ourselves by listening to the boy in mean clothes, of the fresh and well-favoured countenance, whom Christiana and her fellow-pilgrims hear singing in that valley.

 
  He that is down, needs fear no fall;
    He that is low, no pride;
  He that is humble ever shall
    Have God to be his guide.
 
 
  I am content with what I have,
    Little be it or much;
  And, Lord, contentment still I crave,
    Because thou savest¹⁵⁵ such.
 
 
  Fulness to such a burden is
    That go on pilgrimage;
  Here little, and hereafter bliss,
    Is best from age to age.
 

I could not have my book without one word in it of John Bunyan, the tinker, probably the gipsy, who although born only and not made a poet, like his great brother, John Milton, has uttered in prose a wealth of poetic thought. He was born in 1628, twenty years after Milton. I must not, however, remark on this noble Bohemian of literature and prophecy; but leaving at length these flowery hills and meadows behind me, step on my way across the desert.—England had now fallen under the influence of France instead of Italy, and that influence has never been for good to our literature, at least. Thence its chief aim grew to be a desirable trimness of speech and logical arrangement of matter—good external qualities purchased at a fearful price with the loss of all that makes poetry precious. The poets of England, with John Dryden at their head, ceased almost for a time to deal with the truths of humanity, and gave themselves to the facts and relations of society. The nation which could recall the family of the Stuarts must necessarily fall into such a decay of spiritual life as should render its literature only respectable at the best, and its religious utterances essentially vulgar. But the decay is gradual.

Bishop Ken, born in 1637, is known chiefly by his hymns for the morning and evening, deservedly popular. He has, however, written a great many besides—too many, indeed, for variety or excellence. He seems to have set himself to write them as acts of worship. They present many signs of a perversion of taste which, though not in them so remarkable, rose to a height before long. He annoys us besides by the constant recurrence of certain phrases, one or two of which are not admirable, and by using, in the midst of a simple style, odd Latin words. Here are portions of, I think, one of his best, and good it is.

FIRST SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS

 
* * * * *
  Lord, 'tis thyself who hast impressed
  In native light on human breast,
    That their Creator all
    Mankind should Father call:
  A father's love all mortals know,
  And the love filial which they owe.
 
 
  Our Father gives us heavenly light,
  And to be happy, ghostly sight;
    He blesses, guides, sustains;
    He eases us in pains;
  Abatements for our weakness makes,
  And never a true child forsakes.
 
 
  He waits till the hard heart relents;
  Our self-damnation he laments;
    He sweetly them invites
    To share in heaven's delights;
  His arms he opens to receive
  All who for past transgressions grieve.
 
 
  My Father! O that name is sweet
  To sinners mourning in retreat.
    God's heart paternal yearns
    When he a change discerns;
  He to his favour them restores;
  He heals their most inveterate sores.
* * * * *
  Religious honour, humble awe;
  Obedience to our Father's law;
    A lively grateful sense
    Of tenderness immense;
  Full trust on God's paternal cares;
  Submission which chastisement bears;
 
 
  Grief, when his goodness we offend;
  Zeal, to his likeness to ascend;
    Will, from the world refined,
    To his sole will resigned:
  These graces in God's children shine,
  Reflections of the love divine.
* * * * *
  God's Son co-equal taught us all
  In prayer his Father ours to call:
    With confidence in need,
    We to our Father speed:
  Of his own Son the language dear
  Intenerates the Father's ear. makes tender.
 
 
  Thou Father art, though to my shame,
  I often forfeit that dear name;
    But since for sin I grieve,
    Me father-like receive;
  O melt me into filial tears,
  To pay of love my vast arrears.
* * * * *
  O Spirit of Adoption! spread
  Thy wings enamouring o'er my head;
    O Filial love immense!
    Raise me to love intense;
  O Father, source of love divine,
  My powers to love and hymn incline!
 
 
  While God my Father I revere,
  Nor all hell powers, nor death I fear;
    I am my Father's care;
    His succours present are.
  All comes from my loved Father's will,
  And that sweet name intends no ill.
 
 
  God's Son his soul, when life he closed,
  In his dear Father's hands reposed:
    I'll, when my last I breathe,
    My soul to God bequeath;
  And panting for the joys on high,
  Invoking Love Paternal, die.
 

Born in 1657, one of the later English Platonists, John Norris, who, with how many incumbents between I do not know, succeeded George Herbert in the cure of Bemerton, has left a few poems, which would have been better if he had not been possessed with the common admiration for the rough-shod rhythms of Abraham Cowley.

Here is one in which the peculiarities of his theories show themselves very prominently. There is a constant tendency in such to wander into the region half-spiritual, half-material.

THE ASPIRATION

 
      How long, great God, how long must I
      Immured in this dark prison lie;
  My soul must watch to have intelligence;
  Where at the grates and avenues of sense
  Where but faint gleams of thee salute my sight,
  Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night?
      When shall I leave this magic sphere,
      And be all mind, all eye, all ear?
 
 
      How cold this clime! And yet my sense
      Perceives even here thy influence.
  Even here thy strong magnetic charms I feel,
  And pant and tremble like the amorous steel.
  To lower good, and beauties less divine,
  Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline,
      But yet, so strong the sympathy,
      It turns, and points again to thee.
 
 
      I long to see this excellence
      Which at such distance strikes my sense.
  My impatient soul struggles to disengage
  Her wings from the confinement of her cage.
  Wouldst thou, great Love, this prisoner once set free,
  How would she hasten to be linked to thee!
      She'd for no angels' conduct stay,
      But fly, and love on all the way.
 

THE RETURN

 
  Dear Contemplation! my divinest joy!
      When I thy sacred mount ascend,
      What heavenly sweets my soul employ!
  Why can't I there my days for ever spend?
  When I have conquered thy steep heights with pain,
  What pity 'tis that I must down again!
 
 
  And yet I must: my passions would rebel
      Should I too long continue here:
      No, here I must not think to dwell,
  But mind the duties of my proper sphere.
  So angels, though they heaven's glories know,
  Forget not to attend their charge below.
 

The old hermits thought to overcome their impulses by retiring from the world: our Platonist has discovered for himself that the world of duty is the only sphere in which they can be combated. Never perhaps is a saint more in danger of giving way to impulse, let it be anger or what it may, than in the moment when he has just descended from this mount of contemplation.

We find ourselves now in the zone of hymn-writing. From this period, that is, from towards the close of the seventeenth century, a large amount of the fervour of the country finds vent in hymns: they are innumerable. With them the scope of my book would not permit me to deal, even had I inclination thitherward, and knowledge enough to undertake their history. But I am not therefore precluded from presenting any hymn whose literary excellence makes it worthy.

It is with especial pleasure that I refer to a little book which was once a household treasure in a multitude of families,¹⁵⁶ the Spiritual Songs of John Mason, a clergyman in the county of Buckingham. The date of his birth does not appear to be known, but the first edition of these songs¹⁵⁷ was published in 1683. Dr. Watts was very fond of them: would that he had written with similar modesty of style! A few of them are still popular in congregational singing. Here is the first in the book:

A GENERAL SONG OF PRAISE TO ALMIGHTY GOD

 
  How shall I sing that Majesty
    Which angels do admire?
  Let dust in dust and silence lie;
    Sing, sing, ye heavenly choir.
  Thousands of thousands stand around
    Thy throne, O God most high;
  Ten thousand times ten thousand sound
    Thy praise; but who am I?
 
 
  Thy brightness unto them appears,
    Whilst I thy footsteps trace;
  A sound of God comes to my ears;
    But they behold thy face.
  They sing because thou art their sun:
    Lord, send a beam on me;
  For where heaven is but once begun,
    There hallelujahs be.
 
 
  Enlighten with faith's light my heart;
    Enflame it with love's fire;
  Then shall I sing and bear a part
    With that celestial choir.
  I shall, I fear, be dark and cold,
    With all my fire and light;
  Yet when thou dost accept their gold,
    Lord, treasure up my mite.
 
 
  How great a being, Lord, is thine.
    Which doth all beings keep!
  Thy knowledge is the only line
    To sound so vast a deep.
  Thou art a sea without a shore,
    A sun without a sphere;
  Thy time is now and evermore,
    Thy place is everywhere.
 
 
  How good art thou, whose goodness is
    Our parent, nurse, and guide!
  Whose streams do water Paradise,
    And all the earth beside!
  Thine upper and thy nether springs
    Make both thy worlds to thrive;
  Under thy warm and sheltering wings
    Thou keep'st two broods alive.
 
 
  Thy arm of might, most mighty king
    Both rocks and hearts doth break:
  My God, thou canst do everything
    But what should show thee weak.
  Thou canst not cross thyself, or be
    Less than thyself, or poor;
  But whatsoever pleaseth thee,
    That canst thou do, and more.
 
 
  Who would not fear thy searching eye,
    Witness to all that's true!
  Dark Hell, and deep Hypocrisy
    Lie plain before its view.
  Motions and thoughts before they grow,
    Thy knowledge doth espy;
  What unborn ages are to do,
    Is done before thine eye.
 
 
  Thy wisdom which both makes and mends,
    We ever much admire:
  Creation all our wit transcends;
    Redemption rises higher.
  Thy wisdom guides strayed sinners home,
    'Twill make the dead world rise,
  And bring those prisoners to their doom:
    Its paths are mysteries.
 
 
  Great is thy truth, and shall prevail
    To unbelievers' shame:
  Thy truth and years do never fail;
    Thou ever art the same.
  Unbelief is a raging wave
    Dashing against a rock:
  If God doth not his Israel save,
    Then let Egyptians mock.
 
 
  Most pure and holy are thine eyes,
    Most holy is thy name;
  Thy saints, and laws, and penalties,
    Thy holiness proclaim.
  This is the devil's scourge and sting,
    This is the angels' song,
  Who holy, holy, holy sing,
    In heavenly Canaan's tongue.
 
 
  Mercy, that shining attribute,
    The sinner's hope and plea!
  Huge hosts of sins in their pursuit,
    Are drowned in thy Red Sea.
  Mercy is God's memorial,
    And in all ages praised:
  My God, thine only Son did fall,
    That Mercy might be raised.
 
 
  Thy bright back-parts, O God of grace,
    I humbly here adore:
  Show me thy glory and thy face,
    That I may praise thee more.
  Since none can see thy face and live,
    For me to die is best:
  Through Jordan's streams who would not dive,
    To land at Canaan's rest?
 

To these Songs of Praise is appended another series called Penitential Cries, by the Rev. Thomas Shepherd, who, for a short time a clergyman in Buckinghamshire, became the minister of the Congregational church at Northampton, afterwards under the care of Doddridge. Although he was an imitator of Mason, some of his hymns are admirable. The following I think one of the best:—

FOR COMMUNION WITH GOD

 
  Alas, my God, that we should be
    Such strangers to each other!
  O that as friends we might agree,
    And walk and talk together!
 
 
  Thou know'st my soul does dearly love
    The place of thine abode;
  No music drops so sweet a sound
    As these two words, My God.
* * * * *
  May I taste that communion, Lord,
    Thy people have with thee?
  Thy spirit daily talks with them,
    O let it talk with me!
  Like Enoch, let me walk with God,
    And thus walk out my day,
  Attended with the heavenly guards,
    Upon the king's highway.
 
 
  When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?
    O come, my Lord most dear!
  Come near, come nearer, nearer still:
    I'm well when thou art near.
* * * * *
  When wilt thou come unto me, Lord?
    For, till thou dost appear,
  I count each moment for a day,
    Each minute for a year.
* * * * *
  There's no such thing as pleasure here;
    My Jesus is my all:
  As thou dost shine or disappear,
    My pleasures rise and fall.
  Come, spread thy savour on my frame—
    No sweetness is so sweet;
  Till I get up to sing thy name
    Where all thy singers meet.
 

In the writings of both we recognize a straight-forwardness of expression equal to that of Wither, and a quaint simplicity of thought and form like that of Herrick; while the very charm of some of the best lines is their spontaneity. The men have just enough mysticism to afford them homeliest figures for deepest feelings.

I turn to the accomplished Joseph Addison.

He was born in 1672. His religious poems are so well known, and are for the greater part so ordinary in everything but their simplicity of composition, that I should hardly have cared to choose one, had it not been that we owe him much gratitude for what he did, in the reigns of Anne and George I., to purify the moral taste of the English people at a time when the influence of the clergy was not for elevation, and to teach the love of a higher literature when Milton was little known and less esteemed. Especially are we indebted to him for his modest and admirable criticism of the Paradise Lost in the Spectator.

Of those few poems to which I have referred, I choose the best known, because it is the best. It has to me a charm for which I can hardly account.

Yet I imagine I see in it a sign of the poetic times: a flatness of spirit, arising from the evanishment of the mystical element, begins to result in a worship of power. Neither power nor wisdom, though infinite both, could constitute a God worthy of the worship of a human soul; and the worship of such a God must sink to the level of that fancied divinity. Small wonder is it then that the lyric should now droop its wings and moult the feathers of its praise. I do not say that God's more glorious attributes are already forgotten, but that the tendency of the Christian lyric is now to laudation of power—and knowledge, a form of the same—as the essential of Godhead. This indicates no recalling of metaphysical questions, such as we have met in foregoing verse, but a decline towards system; a rising passion—if anything so cold may be called a passion—for the reduction of all things to the forms of the understanding, a declension which has prepared the way for the present worship of science, and its refusal, if not denial, of all that cannot be proved in forms of the intellect.

The hymn which has led to these remarks is still good, although, like the loveliness of the red and lowering west, it gives sign of a gray and cheerless dawn, under whose dreariness the child will first doubt if his father loves him, and next doubt if he has a father at all, and is not a mere foundling that Nature has lifted from her path.

 
  The spacious firmament on high,
  With all the blue etherial sky,
  And spangled heavens, a shining frame,
  Their great Original proclaim.
  The unwearied sun from day to day
  Does his Creator's power display;
  And publishes to every land
  The work of an almighty hand.
 
 
  Soon as the evening shades prevail,
  The moon takes up the wondrous tale;
  And nightly to the listening earth
  Repeats the story of her birth;
  Whilst all the stars that round her burn,
  And all the planets, in their turn,
  Confirm the tidings as they roll,
  And spread the truth from pole to pole.
 
 
  What though in solemn silence all
  Move round the dark terrestrial ball?
  What though no real voice nor sound
  Amidst their radiant orbs be found?
  In reason's ear they all rejoice,
  And utter forth a glorious voice,
  For ever singing as they shine:
  "The hand that made us is divine."
 

The very use of the words spangled and frame seems—to my fancy only, it may be—to indicate a tendency towards the unworthy and theatrical. Yet the second stanza is lovely beyond a doubt; and the whole is most artistic, although after a tame fashion. Whether indeed the heavenly bodies teach what he says, or whether we should read divinity worthy of the name in them at all, without the human revelation which healed men, I doubt much. That divinity is there—Yes; that we could read it there without having seen the face of the Son of Man first, I think—No. I do not therefore dare imagine that no revelation dimly leading towards such result glimmered in the hearts of God's chosen amongst Jews and Gentiles before he came. What I say is, that power and order, although of God, and preparing the way for him, are not his revealers unto men. No doubt King David compares the perfection of God's law to the glory of the heavens, but he did not learn that perfection from the heavens, but from the law itself, revealed in his own heart through the life-teaching of God. When he had learned it he saw that the heavens were like it.

To unveil God, only manhood like our own will serve. And he has taken the form of man that he might reveal the manhood in him from awful eternity.