England's Antiphon Part 40

Dear Lord! my heart is sick Of this perpetual lapsing time, So slow in grief, in joy so quick, Yet ever casting shadows so sublime: Time of all creatures is least like to Thee, And yet it is our share of Thine eternity.

Oh change and time are storms For lives so thin and frail as ours; For change the work of grace deforms With love that soils, and help that overpowers; And time is strong, and, like some chafing sea, It seems to fret the sh.o.r.es of Thine eternity.

Weak, weak, for ever weak!

We cannot hold what we possess; Youth cannot find, age will not seek,-- Oh weakness is the heart's worst weariness: But weakest hearts can lift their thoughts to Thee; It makes us strong to think of Thine eternity.

Thou hadst no youth, great G.o.d!

An Unbeginning End Thou art; Thy glory in itself abode, And still abides in its own tranquil heart: No age can heap its outward years on Thee: Dear G.o.d! Thou art Thyself Thine own eternity!

Without an end or bound Thy life lies all outspread in light; Our lives feel Thy life all around, Making our weakness strong, our darkness bright; Yet is it neither wilderness nor sea, But the calm gladness of a full eternity.

Oh Thou art very great To set Thyself so far above!

But we partake of Thine estate, Established in Thy strength and in Thy love: That love hath made eternal room for me In the sweet vastness of its own eternity.

Oh Thou art very meek To overshade Thy creatures thus!

Thy grandeur is the shade we seek; To be eternal is Thy use to us: Ah, Blessed G.o.d! what joy it is to me To lose all thought of self in Thine eternity.

Self-wearied, Lord! I come; For I have lived my life too fast: Now that years bring me nearer home Grace must be slowly used to make it last; When my heart beats too quick I think of Thee, And of the leisure of Thy long eternity.

Farewell, vain joys of earth!

Farewell, all love that it not His!

Dear G.o.d! be Thou my only mirth, Thy majesty my single timid bliss!

Oh in the bosom of eternity Thou dost not weary of Thyself, nor we of Thee!

How easily his words flow, even when he is saying the deepest things!

The poem is full of the elements of the finest mystical metaphysics, and yet there is no effort in their expression. The tendency to find G.o.d beyond, rather than in our daily human conditions, is discernible; but only as a tendency.

What a pity that the sects are so slow to become acquainted with the grand best in each other!

I do not find in Dr. Newman either a depth or a precision equal to that of Dr. Faber. His earlier poems indicate a less healthy condition of mind. His _Dream of Gerontius_ is, however, a finer, as more ambitious poem than any of Faber's. In my judgment there are weak pa.s.sages in it, with others of real grandeur. But I am perfectly aware of the difficulty, almost impossibility, of doing justice to men from some of whose forms of thought I am greatly repelled, who creep from the suns.h.i.+ne into every ruined archway, attracted by the brilliance with which the light from its loophole glows in its caverned gloom, and the hope of discovering within it the first steps of a stair winding up into the blue heaven. I apologize for the unavoidable rudeness of a critic who would fain be honest if he might; and I humbly thank all such as Dr. Newman, whose verses, revealing their saints.h.i.+p, make us long to be holier men.

Of his, as of Faber's, I have room for no more than one. It was written off Sardinia.

DESOLATION.

O say not thou art left of G.o.d, Because His tokens in the sky Thou canst not read: this earth He trod To teach thee He was ever nigh.

He sees, beneath the fig-tree green, Nathaniel con His sacred lore; Shouldst thou thy chamber seek, unseen He enters through the unopened door.

And when thou liest, by slumber bound, Outwearied in the Christian fight, In glory, girt with saints around, He stands above thee through the night.

When friends to Emmaus bend their course, He joins, although He holds their eyes: Or, shouldst thou feel some fever's force, He takes thy hand, He bids thee rise.

Or on a voyage, when calms prevail, And prison thee upon the sea, He walks the waves, He wings the sail, The sh.o.r.e is gained, and thou art free.

Sir Aubrey de Vere is a poet profound in feeling, and gracefully tender in utterance. I give one short poem and one sonnet.

REALITY.

Love thy G.o.d, and love Him only: And thy breast will ne'er be lonely.

In that one great Spirit meet All things mighty, grave, and sweet.

Vainly strives the soul to mingle With a being of our kind: Vainly hearts with hearts are twined: For the deepest still is single.

An impalpable resistance Holds like natures still at distance.

Mortal! love that Holy One!

Or dwell for aye alone.

I respond most heartily to the last two lines; but I venture to add, with regard to the preceding six, "Love that holy One, and the impalpable resistance will vanish; for when thou seest him enter to sup with thy neighbour, thou wilt love that neighbour as thyself."

SONNET.

Ye praise the humble: of the meek ye say, "Happy they live among their lowly bowers; "The mountains, and the mountain-storms are ours."

Thus, self-deceivers, filled with pride alway, Reluctant homage to the good ye pay, Mingled with scorn like poison sucked from flowers-- Revere the humble; G.o.dlike are their powers: No mendicants for praise of men are they.

The child who prays in faith "Thy will be done"

Is blended with that Will Supreme which moves A wilderness of worlds by Thought untrod; He shares the starry sceptre, and the throne: The man who as himself his neighbour loves Looks down on all things with the eyes of G.o.d!

Is it a fancy that, in the midst of all this devotion and lovely thought, I hear the mingled mournful tone of such as have cut off a right hand and plucked out a right eye, which had _not_ caused them to offend? This is tenfold better than to have spared offending members; but the true Christian ambition is to fill the divine scheme of humanity--abridging nothing, ignoring nothing, denying nothing, calling nothing unclean, but burning everything a thank-offering in the flame of life upon the altar of absolute devotion to the Father and Saviour of men. We must not throw away half his gifts, that we may carry the other half in both hands to his altar.

But sacred fervour is confined to no sect. Here it is of the profoundest, and uttered with a homely tenderness equal to that of the earliest writers. Mrs. Browning, the princess of poets, was no partisan. If my work were mainly critical, I should feel bound to remark upon her false theory of English rhyme, and her use of strange words. That she is careless too in her general utterance I cannot deny; but in idea she is n.o.ble, and in phrase magnificent. Some of her sonnets are worthy of being ranged with the best in our language--those of Milton and Wordsworth.

BEREAVEMENT.

When some Beloveds, 'neath whose eyelids lay The sweet lights of my childhood, one by one Did leave me dark before the natural sun, And I astonied fell, and could not pray, A thought within me to myself did say, "Is G.o.d less G.o.d that _thou_ art left undone?

Rise, wors.h.i.+p, bless Him! in this sackcloth spun, As in that purple!"--But I answer, Nay!

What child his filial heart in words can loose, If he behold his tender father raise The hand that chastens sorely? Can he choose But sob in silence with an upward gaze?

And _my_ great Father, thinking fit to bruise, Discerns in speechless tears both prayer and praise.

COMFORT.

Speak low to me, my Saviour, low and sweet, From out the hallelujahs sweet and low, Lest I should fear and fall, and miss thee so, Who art not missed by any that entreat.

Speak to me as to Mary at thy feet-- And if no precious gums my hands bestow, Let my tears drop like amber, while I go In reach of thy divinest voice complete In humanest affection--thus, in sooth To lose the sense of losing! As a child, Whose song-bird seeks the wood for evermore, Is sung to in its stead by mother's mouth; Till sinking on her breast, love-reconciled, He sleeps the faster that he wept before.

Gladly would I next give myself to the exposition of several of the poems of her husband, Robert Browning, especially the _Christmas Eve_ and _Easter Day_; in the first of which he sets forth in marvellous rhymes the necessity both for widest sympathy with the varied forms of Christianity, and for individual choice in regard to communion; in the latter, what it is to choose the world and lose the life. But this would take many pages, and would be inconsistent with the plan of my book.

When I have given two precious stanzas, most wise as well as most lyrical and lovely, from the poems of our honoured Charles Kingsley, I shall turn to the other of the cla.s.ses into which the devout thinkers of the day have divided.

A FAREWELL.

My fairest child, I have no song to give you; No lark could pipe to skies so dull and grey; Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you For every day.

Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; Do n.o.ble things, not dream them, all day long; And so make life, death, and that vast for-ever One grand, sweet song.

Surely these last, who have not accepted tradition in the ma.s.s, who believe that we must, as our Lord demanded of the Jews, of our own selves judge what is right, because therein his spirit works with our spirit,--wors.h.i.+p the Truth not less devotedly than they who rejoice in holy tyranny over their intellects.