Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 87

1 Oh, come away, Make no delay, Come while my heart is clean and steady!

While faith and grace Adorn the place, Making dust and ashes ready!

2 No bliss here lent Is permanent, Such triumphs poor flesh cannot merit; Short sips and sights Endear delights: Who seeks for more he would inherit.

3 Come then, true bread, Quickening the dead, Whose eater shall not, cannot die!

Come, antedate On me that state, Which brings poor dust the victory.

4 Aye victory, Which from thine eye Breaks as the day doth from the east, When the spilt dew Like tears doth shew The sad world wept to be released.

5 Spring up, O wine, And springing s.h.i.+ne With some glad message from his heart, Who did, when slain, These means ordain For me to have in him a part!

6 Such a sure part In his blest heart, The well where living waters spring, That, with it fed, Poor dust, though dead, Shall rise again, and live, and sing.

7 O drink and bread, Which strikes death dead, The food of man's immortal being!

Under veils here Thou art my cheer, Present and sure without my seeing.

8 How dost thou fly And search and pry Through all my parts, and, like a quick And knowing lamp, Hunt out each damp, Whose shadow makes me sad or sick!

9 O what high joys!

The turtle's voice And songs I hear! O quickening showers Of my Lord's blood, You make rocks bud, And crown dry hills with wells and flowers!

10 For this true ease, This healing peace, For this [brief] taste of living glory, My soul and all, Kneel down and fall, And sing his sad victorious story!

11 O th.o.r.n.y crown, More soft than down!

O painful cross, my bed of rest!

O spear, the key Opening the way!

O thy worst state, my only best!

12 O all thy griefs Are my reliefs, As all my sins thy sorrows were!

And what can I, To this reply?

What, O G.o.d! but a silent tear?

13 Some toil and sow That wealth may flow, And dress this earth for next year's meat: But let me heed Why thou didst bleed, And what in the next world to eat.

'Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.'--Rev. xix. 9.

THE WATERFALL.

With what deep murmurs, through time's silent stealth, Does thy transparent, cool, and watery wealth Here flowing fall, And chide and call, As if his liquid, loose retinue staid Lingering, and were of this steep place afraid; The common pa.s.s, Where, clear as gla.s.s, All must descend, Not to an end, But quickened by this deep and rocky grave, Rise to a longer course more bright and brave.

Dear stream! dear bank! where often I Have sat, and pleased my pensive eye; Why, since each drop of thy quick store Runs thither whence it flowed before, Should poor souls fear a shade or night, Who came (sure) from a sea of light?

Or, since those drops are all sent back So sure to thee that none doth lack, Why should frail flesh doubt any more That what G.o.d takes he'll not restore?

O useful element and clear!

My sacred wash and cleanser here; My first consigner unto those Fountains of life, where the Lamb goes!

What sublime truths and wholesome themes Lodge in thy mystical, deep streams!

Such as dull man can never find, Unless that Spirit lead his mind, Which first upon thy face did move And hatched all with his quickening love.

As this loud brook's incessant fall In streaming rings re-stagnates all, Which reach by course the bank, and then Are no more seen: just so pa.s.s men.

O my invisible estate, My glorious liberty, still late!

Thou art the channel my soul seeks, Not this with cataracts and creeks.

DR JOSEPH BEAUMONT.

This writer, though little known, appears to us to stand as high almost as any name in the present volume, and we are proud to reprint here some considerable specimens of his magnificent poetry.

Joseph Beaumont was sprung from a collateral branch of the ancient family of the Beaumonts, that family from which sprung Sir John Beaumont, the author of 'Bosworth Field,' and Francis Beaumont, the celebrated dramatist. He was born at Hadleigh, in Suffolk. Of his early life nothing is known. He received his education at Cambridge, where, during the Civil War, he was fellow and tutor of Peterhouse. Ejected by the Republicans from his offices, he retired to Hadleigh, and spent his time in the com- position of his _magnum opus_, 'Psyche.' This poem appeared in 1648; and in 1702, three years after the author's death, his son published a second edition, with numerous corrections, and the addition of four cantos by the author. Beaumont also wrote several minor pieces in English and Latin, a controversial tract in reply to Henry More's 'Mystery of G.o.dliness,' and several theological works which are still in MS., according to a provision in his will to that effect. Peace and perpetuity to their slumbers!

After the Restoration, our author was not only reinstated in his former situations, but received from his patron, Bishop Wren, several valuable pieces of preferment besides. Afterwards, he exercised successively the offices of Master of Jesus and of Peterhouse, and was King's Professor of Divinity from 1670 to 1699. In the latter year he died.

While praising the genius of Beaumont, we are far from commending his 'Psyche,' either as an artistic whole, or as a readable book. It is, sooth to say, a dull allegory, in twenty-four immense cantos, studded with the rarest beauties. It is considerably longer than the 'Faery Queen,' nearly four times the length of the 'Paradise Lost,' and five or six times as long as the 'Excursion.' To read it through now-a-days were to perform a purgatorial penance. But the imagination and fancy are Spenserian, his colouring is often t.i.tianesque in gorgeousness, and his pictures of shadows, abstractions, and all fantastic forms, are so forcible as to seem to start from the canvas. In painting the beautiful, his verse becomes careless and flowing as a loosened zone; in painting the frightful and the infernal, his language, like his feeling, seems to curdle and stiffen in horror, as where, speaking of Satan, he says--

'His tawny teeth Were ragged grown, by endless _gnas.h.i.+ng at The dismal riddle of his living death._'

The 'Psyche' may be compared to a palace of Fairyland, where successive doors fly open to the visitor--one revealing a banqueting-room filled with the materials of exuberant mirth; another, an enchanted garden, with streams stealing from grottos, and nymphs gliding through groves; a third conducting you to a dungeon full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness; a fourth, to a pit which seems the mouth of h.e.l.l, and whence cries of torture come up, shaking the smoke that ascendeth up for ever and ever; and a fifth, to the open roof, over which the stars are seen bending, and the far-off heavens are opening in glory; and of these doors there is no end. We saw, when lately in Copenhagen, the famous tower of the Trinity Church, remarkable for the grand view commanded from the summit, and for the broad spiral ascent winding within it almost to the top, up which it is said Peter the Great, in 1716, used to drive himself and his Empress in a coach-and-four. It was curious to feel ourselves ascending on a path nearly level, and without the slightest perspiration or fatigue; and here, we thought, is the desiderated 'royal road' to difficulties fairly found. Large poems should be constructed on the same principle; their quiet, broad interest should beguile their readers alike to their length and their loftiness.

It is exactly the reverse with 'Psyche.' But if any reader is wearied of some of the extracts we have given, such as his verses on 'Eve,' on 'Paradise,' on 'End,' on 'The Death of his Wife,' and on 'Imperial Rome,' we shall be very much disposed to question his capacity for appreciating true poetry.

h.e.l.l.

1 h.e.l.l's court is built deep in a gloomy vale, High walled with strong d.a.m.nation, moated round With flaming brimstone: full against the hall Roars a burnt bridge of bra.s.s: the yards abound With all envenomed herbs and trees, more rank And fruitless than on Asphalt.i.te's bank.

2 The gate, where Fire and Smoke the porters be, Stands always ope with gaping greedy jaws.

Hither flocked all the states of misery; As younger snakes, when their old serpent draws Them by a summoning hiss, haste down her throat Of patent poison their awed selves to shoot.

3 The hall was roofed with everlasting pride, Deep paved with despair, checkered with spite, And hanged round with torments far and wide: The front displayed a goodly-dreadful sight, Great Satan's arms stamped on an iron s.h.i.+eld, A crowned dragon, gules, in sable field.

4 There on's immortal throne of death they see Their mounted lord; whose left hand proudly held His globe, (for all the world he claims to be His proper realm,) whose b.l.o.o.d.y right did wield His mace, on which ten thousand serpents knit, With restless madness gnawed themselves and it.

5 His awful horns above his crown did rise, And force his fiends to shrink in theirs: his face Was triply-plated impudence: his eyes Were h.e.l.l reflected in a double gla.s.s, Two comets staring in their b.l.o.o.d.y stream, Two beacons boiling in their pitch and flame.

6 His mouth in breadth vied with his palace gate And conquered it in soot: his tawny teeth Were ragged grown, by endless gnas.h.i.+ng at The dismal riddle of his living death: His grizzly beard a singed confession made What fiery breath through his black lips did trade.

7 Which as he oped, the centre, on whose back His chair of ever-fretting pain was set, Frighted beside itself, began to quake: Throughout all h.e.l.l the barking hydras shut Their awed mouths: the silent peers, in fear, Hung down their tails, and on their lord did stare.

JOSEPH'S DREAM.

1 When this last night had sealed up mine eyes, And opened heaven's, whose countenance now was clear, And trimmed with every star; on his soft wing A nimble vision me did thither bring.

2 Quite through the storehouse of the air I pa.s.sed Where choice of every weather treasured lies: Here, rain is bottled up; there, hail is cast In candied heaps: here, banks of snow do rise; There, furnaces of lightning burn, and those Long-bearded stars which light us to our woes.

3 Hence towered I to a dainty world: the air Was sweet and calm, and in my memory Waked my serener mother's looks: this fair Canaan now fled from my discerning eye; The earth was shrunk so small, methought I read, By that due prospect, what it was indeed.