England's Antiphon Part 39

Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!

Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?

Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?

Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!

Who called you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns called you forth,[166]

Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks, For ever shattered, and the same for ever?

Who gave you your invulnerable life, Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?

And who commanded--and the silence came-- Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?[167]

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amain-- Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!-- Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?-- _G.o.d!_ let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, _G.o.d!_ _G.o.d!_ sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!

Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!

And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow, And in their perilous fall shall thunder, _G.o.d!_ Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!

Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!

Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!

Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!

Ye signs and wonders of the element!

Utter forth G.o.d, and fill the hills with praise.

Thou too, h.o.a.r Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Oft from whose[168] feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast-- Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low In adoration--upward from thy base Slow-travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears-- Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud, To rise before me! rise, O ever rise; Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!

Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills!

Thou dread amba.s.sador from earth to heaven!

Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky, And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun, Earth, with her thousand voices, praises G.o.d.

Here is one little poem I think most valuable, both from its fulness of meaning, and the form, as clear as condensed, in which that is embodied.

ON AN INFANT

_Which died before baptism._

"_Be_ rather than _be called_ a child of G.o.d,"

Death whispered. With a.s.senting nod, Its head upon its mother's breast The baby bowed without demur-- Of the kingdom of the blest Possessor, not inheritor.

Next the father let me place the gifted son, Hartley Coleridge. He was born in 1796, and died in 1849. Strange, wayward, and in one respect faulty, as his life was, his poetry--strange, and exceedingly wayward too--is often very lovely. The following sonnet is all I can find room for:--

"SHE LOVED MUCH."

She sat and wept beside his feet. The weight Of sin oppressed her heart; for all the blame, And the poor malice of the worldly shame, To her was past, extinct, and out of date; Only the _sin_ remained--the leprous state.

She would be melted by the heat of love, By fires far fiercer than are blown to prove And purge the silver ore adulterate.

She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair Still wiped the feet she was so blest to touch; And he wiped off the soiling of despair From her sweet soul, because she loved so much.

I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears: Make me a humble thing of love and tears.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE FERVOUR OF THE IMPLICIT. INSIGHT OF THE HEART.

The late Dean Milman, born in 1791, best known by his very valuable labours in history, may be taken as representing a cla.s.s of writers in whom the poetic fire is ever on the point, and only on the point, of breaking into a flame. His composition is admirable--refined, scholarly, sometimes rich and even gorgeous in expression--yet lacking that radiance of the unutterable to which the loftiest words owe their grandest power.

Perhaps the best representative of his style is the hymn on the Incarnation, in his dramatic poem, _The Fall of Jerusulem_. But as an extract it is tolerably known. I prefer giving one from his few _Hymns for Church Service_.

EIGHTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

When G.o.d came down from heaven--the living G.o.d-- What signs and wonders marked his stately way?

Brake out the winds in music where he trod?

Shone o'er the heavens a brighter, softer day?

The dumb began to speak, the blind to see, And the lame leaped, and pain and paleness fled; The mourner's sunken eye grew bright with glee, And from the tomb awoke the wondering dead.

When G.o.d went back to heaven--the living G.o.d-- Rode he the heavens upon a fiery car?

Waved seraph-wings along his glorious road?

Stood still to wonder each bright wandering star?

Upon the cross he hung, and bowed his head, And prayed for them that smote, and them that curst; And, drop by drop, his slow life-blood was shed, And his last hour of suffering was his worst.

_The Christian Year_ of the Rev. John Keble (born in 1800) is perhaps better known in England than any other work of similar church character.

I must confess I have never been able to enter into the enthusiasm of its admirers. Excellent, both in regard of their literary and religious merits, true in feeling and thorough in finish, the poems always remind me of Berlin work in iron--hard and delicate. Here is a portion of one of the best of them.

ST. MATTHEW.

Ye hermits blest, ye holy maids, The nearest heaven on earth, Who talk with G.o.d in shadowy glades, Free from rude care and mirth; To whom some viewless teacher brings The secret lore of rural things, The moral of each fleeting cloud and gale, The whispers from above, that haunt the twilight vale:

Say, when in pity ye have gazed On the wreath'd smoke afar, That o'er some town, like mist upraised, Hung hiding sun and star; Then as ye turned your weary eye To the green earth and open sky, Were ye not fain to doubt how Faith could dwell Amid that dreary glare, in this world's citadel?

But Love's a flower that will not die For lack of leafy screen, And Christian Hope can cheer the eye That ne'er saw vernal green: Then be ye sure that Love can bless Even in this crowded loneliness, Where ever-moving myriads seem to say, Go--thou art nought to us, nor we to thee--away!

There are in this loud stunning tide Of human care and crime, With whom the melodies abide Of the everlasting chime; Who carry music in their heart Through dusky lane and wrangling mart, Plying their daily task with busier feet, Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.

There are here some indications of that strong reaction of the present century towards ancient forms of church life. This reaction seems to me a further consequence of that admiration of power of which I have spoken.

For, finding the progress of discovery in the laws of nature constantly bring an a.s.surance most satisfactory to the intellect, men began to demand a similar a.s.surance in other matters; and whatever department of human thought could not be subjected to experiment or did not admit of logical proof began to be regarded with suspicion. The highest realms of human thought--where indeed only grand conviction, and that the result not of research, but of obedience to the voice within, can be had--came to be by such regarded as regions where, no scientific a.s.surance being procurable, it was only to his loss that a man should go wandering: the whole affair was unworthy of him. And if there be no guide of humanity but the intellect, and nothing worthy of its regard but what that intellect can isolate and describe in the forms peculiar to its operations,--that is, if a man has relations to nothing beyond his definition, is not a creature of the immeasurable,--then these men are right. But there have appeared along with them other thinkers who could not thus be satisfied--men who had in their souls a hunger which the neatest laws of nature could not content, who could not live on chemistry, or mathematics, or even on geology, without the primal law of _their_ many dim-dawning wonders--that is, the Being, if such there might be, who thought their laws first and then embodied them in a world of aeonian growth. These indeed seek law likewise, but a perfect law--a law they can believe perfect beyond the comprehension of powers of whose imperfection they are too painfully conscious. They feel in their highest moments a helplessness that drives them to search after some Power with a heart deeper than his power, who cares for the troubled creatures he has made. But still under the influence of that faithless hunger for intellectual certainty, they look about and divide into two parties: both would gladly receive the reported revelation in Jesus, the one if they could have evidence enough from without, the other if they could only get rid of the difficulties it raises within. I am aware that I distinguish in the ma.s.s, and that both sides would be found more or less influenced by the same difficulties--but _more_ and _less_, and therefore thus cla.s.sified by the driving predominance. Those of the one party, then, finding no proof to be had but that in testimony, and anxious to have all they can--delighting too in a certain holy wilfulness of intellectual self-immolation, accept the testimony in the ma.s.s, and become Roman Catholics. Nor is it difficult to see how they then find rest. It is not the dogma, but the contact with Christ the truth, with Christ the man, which the dogma, in pacifying the troubles of the intellect--if only by a soporific, has aided them in reaching, that gives them peace: it is the truth itself that makes them free.

The wors.h.i.+ppers of science will themselves allow, that when they cannot gain observations enough to satisfy them upon any point in which a law of nature is involved, they must, if possible, inst.i.tute experiments. I say therefore to those whose observation has not satisfied them concerning the phenomenon Christianity,--"Where is your experiment? Why do you not thus try the utterance claiming to be the law of life? Call it a hypothesis, and experiment upon it. Carry into practice, well justified of your conscience, the words which the Man spoke, for therein he says himself lies the possibility of your acceptance of his mission; and if, after reasonable time thus spent, you are not yet convinced enough to give testimony--I will not annoy you by saying _to facts_, but--to conviction, I think neither will you be ready to abandon the continuous experiment." These Roman Catholics have thus met with Jesus, come into personal contact with him: by the doing of what he tells us, and by nothing else, are they blessed. What if their theories show to me like a burning of the temple and a looking for the G.o.d in the ashes? They know in whom they have believed. And if some of us think we have a more excellent way, we shall be blessed indeed if the result be no less excellent than in such men as Faber, Newman, and Aubrey de Vere. No man needs be afraid that to speak the truth concerning such will hasten the dominance of alien and oppressive powers; the truth is free, and to be just is to be strong. Should the time come again when Liberty is in danger, those who have defended the truth even in her adversaries, if such there be, will be found the readiest to draw the sword for her, and, hating not, yet smite for the liberty to do even them justice. To give the justice we claim for ourselves is, if there be a Christ, the law of Christ, to obey which is eternally better than truest theory.

I should like to give many of the hymns of Dr. Faber. Some of them are grand, others very lovely, and some, of course, to my mind considerably repulsive. He seems to me to go wrong nowhere in originating--he produces nothing unworthy except when he reproduces what he never could have entertained but for the pressure of acknowledged authority. Even such things, however, he has enclosed in pearls, as the oyster its incommoding sand-grains.

His hymn on _The Greatness of G.o.d_ is profound; that on _The Will of G.o.d_ is very wise; that to _The G.o.d of my Childhood_ is full of quite womanly tenderness: all are most simple in speech, reminding us in this respect of John Mason. In him, no doubt, as in all of his cla.s.s, we find traces of that sentimentalism in the use of epithets--small words, as distinguished from homely, applied to great things--of which I have spoken more than once; but criticism is not to be indulged in the reception of great gifts--of such a gift as this, for instance:--

THE ETERNITY OF G.o.d.

O Lord! my heart is sick, Sick of this everlasting change; And life runs tediously quick Through its unresting race and varied range: Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee, And wakes no echo in Thy mute eternity.