England's Antiphon

THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID

 
  He saves the sheep; the goats he doth not save!
  So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side
  Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried:
  "Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave,
  Who sins, once washed by the baptismal wave!"
  So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sighed,
  The infant Church: of love she felt the tide
  Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave.
  And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs,
  With eye suffused but heart inspired true,
  On those walls subterranean, where she hid
  Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs,
  She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew;
  And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid.
 

Of these writers, Tennyson is the foremost: he has written the poem of the hoping doubters, the poem of our age, the grand minor organ-fugue of In Memoriam. It is the cry of the bereaved Psyche into the dark infinite after the vanished Love. His friend is nowhere in his sight, and God is silent. Death, God's final compulsion to prayer, in its dread, its gloom, its utter stillness, its apparent nothingness, urges the cry. Meanings over the dead are mingled with profoundest questionings of philosophy, the signs of nature, and the story of Jesus, while now and then the star of the morning, bright Phosphor, flashes a few rays through the shifting cloudy dark. And if the sun has not arisen on the close of the book, yet the Aurora of the coming dawn gives light enough to make the onward journey possible and hopeful: who dares say that he walks in the full light? that the counsels of God are to him not a matter of faith, but of vision?

Bewildered in the perplexities of nature's enigmas, and driven by an awful pain of need, Tennyson betakes himself to the God of nature, thus:

LIV

 
  The wish, that of the living whole
    No life may fail beyond the grave;
    Derives it not from what we have
  The likest God within the soul?
 
 
  Are God and Nature then at strife,
    That Nature lends such evil dreams,
    So careful of the type she seems,
  So careless of the single life;
 
 
  That I, considering everywhere
    Her secret meaning in her deeds,
    And finding that of fifty seeds
  She often brings but one to bear;
 
 
  I falter where I firmly trod,
    And falling with my weight of cares
    Upon the great world's altar-stairs
  That slope thro' darkness up to God;
 
 
  I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope,
    And gather dust and chaff, and call
    To what I feel is Lord of all,
  And faintly trust the larger hope.
 

Once more, this is how he uses the gospel-tale: Mary has returned home from the sepulchre, with Lazarus so late its prey, and her sister and Jesus:—

XXXII

 
  Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
    Nor other thought her mind admits
    But, he was dead, and there he sits,
  And he that brought him back is there.
 
 
  Then one deep love doth supersede
    All other, when her ardent gaze
    Roves from the living brother's face,
  And rests upon the Life indeed.
 
 
  All subtle thought, all curious fears,
    Borne down by gladness so complete,
    She bows, she bathes the Saviour's feet
  With costly spikenard and with tears.
 
 
  Thrice blest whose lives are faithful prayers,
    Whose loves in higher love endure;
    What souls possess themselves so pure,
  Or is there blessedness like theirs?
* * * * *
 

I have thus traced—how slightly!—the course of the religious poetry of England, from simple song, lovingly regardful of sacred story and legend, through the chant of philosophy, to the full-toned lyric of adoration. I have shown how the stream sinks in the sands of an evil taste generated by the worship of power and knowledge, and that a new growth of the love of nature—beauty counteracting not contradicting science—has led it by a fair channel back to the simplicities of faith in some, and to a holy questioning in others; the one class having for its faith, the other for its hope, that the heart of the Father is a heart like ours, a heart that will receive into its noon the song that ascends from the twilighted hearts of his children.

Gladly would I have prayed for the voices of many more of the singers of our country's psalms. Especially do I regret the arrival of the hour, because of the voices of living men and women. But the time is over and gone. The twilight has already embrowned the gray glooms of the cathedral arches, and is driving us forth to part at the door.

But the singers will yet sing on to him that hath ears to hear. When he returns to seek them, the shadowy door will open to his touch, the long-drawn aisles receding will guide his eye to the carven choir, and there they still stand, the sweet singers, content to repeat ancient psalm and new song to the prayer of the humblest whose heart would join in England's Antiphon.

THE END