England's Antiphon Part 22

THE QUIP.

The merry World did on a day With his train-bands and mates agree To meet together where I lay, And all in sport to jeer at me.

First Beauty crept into a rose; Which when I plucked not--"Sir," said she, "Tell me, I pray, whose hands are those?"[98]

_But thou shall answer, Lord, for me._

Then Money came, and, c.h.i.n.king still-- "What tune is this, poor man?" said he: "I heard in music you had skill."

_But thou shall answer, Lord, for me._

Then came brave Glory puffing by In silks that whistled--who but he?

He scarce allowed me half an eye; _But thou shall answer, Lord, for me._

Then came quick Wit-and-Conversation, And he would needs a comfort be, And, to be short, make an oration: _But thou shalt answer, Lord, for me._

Yet when the hour of thy design To answer these fine things, shall come, Speak not at large--say I am thine; And then they have their answer home.

Here is another instance of his humour. It is the first stanza of a poem to _Death_. He is glorying over Death as personified in a skeleton.

Death, thou wast once an uncouth, hideous thing-- Nothing but bones, The sad effect of sadder groans: Thy mouth was open, but thou couldst not sing.

No writer before him has shown such a love to G.o.d, such a childlike confidence in him. The love is like the love of those whose verses came first in my volume. But the nation had learned to think more, and new difficulties had consequently arisen. These, again, had to be undermined by deeper thought, and the discovery of yet deeper truth had been the reward. Hence, the love itself, if it had not strengthened, had at least grown deeper. And George Herbert had had difficulty enough in himself; for, born of high family, by nature fitted to shine in that society where elegance of mind, person, carriage, and utterance is most appreciated, and having indeed enjoyed something of the life of a courtier, he had forsaken all in obedience to the voice of his higher nature. Hence the struggle between his tastes and his duties would come and come again, augmented probably by such austere notions as every conscientious man must entertain in proportion to his inability to find G.o.d in that in which he might find him. From this inability, inseparable in its varying degrees from the very nature of growth, springs all the asceticism of good men, whose love to G.o.d will be the greater as their growing insight reveals him in his world, and their growing faith approaches to the giving of thanks in everything.

When we have discovered the truth that whatsoever is not of faith is sin, the way to meet it is not to forsake the human law, but so to obey it as to thank G.o.d for it. To leave the world and go into the desert is not thus to give thanks: it may have been the only way for this or that man, in his blameless blindness, to take. The divine mind of George Herbert, however, was in the main bent upon discovering G.o.d everywhere.

The poem I give next, powerfully sets forth the struggle between liking and duty of which I have spoken. It is at the same time an instance of wonderful art in construction, all the force of the germinal thought kept in reserve, to burst forth at the last. He calls it--meaning by the word, _G.o.d's Restraint_--

THE COLLAR.

I struck the board, and cried "No more!-- I will abroad.

What! shall I ever sigh and pine?

My lines and life are free--free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store.

Shall I be still in suit?

Have I no harvest but a thorn To let me blood, and not restore What I have lost with cordial fruit?

Sure there was wine Before my sighs did dry it! There was corn Before my tears did drown it!

Is the year only lost to me?

Have I no bays to crown it?

No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?

All wasted?

Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, And thou hast hands.

Recover all thy sigh-blown age On double pleasures. Leave thy cold dispute Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage, Thy rope of sands, Which petty thoughts have made--and made to thee Good cable, to enforce and draw, And be thy law, While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.

Away! Take heed-- I will abroad.

Call in thy death's-head there. Tie up thy fears.

He that forbears To suit and serve his need, Deserves his load."

But as I raved, and grew more fierce and wild At every word, Methought I heard one calling "_Child!_"

And I replied, "_My Lord!_"

Coming now to speak of his art, let me say something first about his use of homeliest imagery for highest thought. This, I think, is in itself enough to cla.s.s him with the highest _kind_ of poets. If my reader will refer to _The Elixir_, he will see an instance in the third stanza, "You may look at the gla.s.s, or at the sky:" "You may regard your action only, or that action as the will of G.o.d." Again, let him listen to the pathos and simplicity of this one stanza, from a poem he calls _The Flower_. He has been in trouble; his times have been evil; he has felt a spiritual old age creeping upon him; but he is once more awake.

And now in age[99] I bud again; After so many deaths I live and write; I once more smell the dew and rain, And relish versing. O my only light, It cannot be That I am he On whom thy tempests fell all night!

Again:

Some may dream merrily, but when they wake They dress themselves and come to thee.

He has an exquisite feeling of lyrical art. Not only does he keep to one idea in it, but he finishes the poem like a cameo. Here is an instance wherein he outdoes the elaboration of a Norman trouvere; for not merely does each line in each stanza end with the same sound as the corresponding line in every other stanza, but it ends with the very same word. I shall hardly care to defend this if my reader chooses to call it a whim; but I do say that a large degree of the peculiar musical effect of the poem--subservient to the thought, keeping it dimly chiming in the head until it breaks out clear and triumphant like a silver bell in the last--is owing to this use of the same column of words at the line-ends of every stanza. Let him who doubts it, read the poem aloud.

AARON.

Holiness on the head; Light and perfections on the breast; Harmonious bells below, raising the dead, To lead them unto life and rest-- Thus are true Aarons drest.

Profaneness in my head; Defects and darkness in my breast; A noise of pa.s.sions ringing me for dead Unto a place where is no rest-- Poor priest, thus am I drest!

Only another head I have, another heart and breast, Another music, making live, not dead, Without whom I could have no rest-- In him I am well drest.

Christ is my only head, My alone only heart and breast, My only music, striking me even dead, That to the old man I may rest, And be in him new drest.

So, holy in my head, Perfect and light in my dear breast, My doctrine turned by Christ, who is not dead, But lives in me while I do rest-- Come, people: Aaron's drest.

Note the flow and the ebb of the lines of each stanza--from six to eight to ten syllables, and back through eight to six, the number of stanzas corresponding to the number of lines in each; only the poem itself begins with the ebb, and ends with a full spring-flow of energy. Note also the perfect ant.i.thesis in their parts between the first and second stanzas, and how the last line of the poem clenches the whole in revealing its idea--that for the sake of which it was written. In a word, note the _unity_.

Born in 1593, notwithstanding his exquisite art, he could not escape being influenced by the faulty tendencies of his age, borne in upon his youth by the example of his mother's friend, Dr. Donne. A man must be a giant like Shakspere or Milton to cast off his age's faults. Indeed no man has more of the "quips and cranks and wanton wiles" of the poetic spirit of his time than George Herbert, but with this difference from the rest of Dr. Donne's school, that such is the indwelling potency that it causes even these to shine with a radiance such that we wish them still to burn and not be consumed. His muse is seldom other than graceful, even when her motions are grotesque, and he is always a gentleman, which cannot be said of his master. We could not bear to part with his most fantastic oddities, they are so interpenetrated with his genius as well as his art.

In relation to the use he makes of these faulty forms, and to show that even herein he has exercised a refraining judgment, though indeed fancying he has quite discarded in only somewhat reforming it, I recommend the study of two poems, each of which he calls _Jordan_, though why I have not yet with certainty discovered.

It is possible that not many of his readers have observed the following instances of the freakish in his rhyming art, which however result well.

When I say so, I would not be supposed to approve of the freak, but only to acknowledge the success of the poet in his immediate intent. They are related to a certain tendency to mechanical contrivance not seldom a.s.sociated with a love of art: it is art operating in the physical understanding. In the poem called _Home_, every stanza is perfectly finished till the last: in it, with an access of art or artfulness, he destroys the rhyme. I shall not quarrel with my reader if he calls it the latter, and regards it as art run to seed. And yet--and yet--I confess I have a latent liking for the trick. I shall give one or two stanzas out of the rather long poem, to lead up to the change in the last.

Come, Lord; my head doth burn, my heart is sick, While thou dost ever, ever stay; Thy long deferrings wound me to the quick; My spirit gaspeth night and day.

O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee.

Nothing but drought and dearth, but bush and brake, Which way soe'er I look I see: Some may dream merrily, but when they wake They dress themselves and come to thee.

O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee.

Come, dearest Lord, pa.s.s not this holy season, My flesh and bones and joints do pray; And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason The word is _stay_,[100] says ever _come_.

O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee.

Balancing this, my second instance is of the converse. In all the stanzas but the last, the last line in each hangs unrhymed: in the last the rhyming is fulfilled. The poem is called _Denial_. I give only a part of it.

When my devotions could not pierce Thy silent ears, Then was my heart broken as was my verse; My breast was full of fears And disorder.

O that thou shouldst give dust a tongue To cry to thee, And then not hear it crying! All day long My heart was in my knee: But no hearing!

Therefore my soul lay out of sight, Untuned, unstrung; My feeble spirit, unable to look right, Like a nipt blossom, hung Discontented.

O cheer and tune my heartless breast-- Defer no time; That so thy favours granting my request, They and my mind may chime, And mend my rhyme.