England's Antiphon Part 35

"How weak the prison is where I dwell!

Flesh but a tottering wall!

The breaches cheerfully foretell The house must shortly fall.

"No more, my friends, shall I complain, Though all my heart-strings ache; Welcome disease, and every pain That makes the cottage shake!

"Now let the tempest blow all round, Now swell the surges high, And beat this house of bondage down To let the stranger fly!

"I have a mansion built above By the eternal hand; And should the earth's old basis move, My heavenly house must stand.

"Yes, for 'tis there my Saviour reigns-- I long to see the G.o.d-- And his immortal strength sustains The courts that cost him blood.

"Hark! from on high my Saviour calls: I come, my Lord, my Love!

Devotion breaks the prison-walls, And speeds my last remove."

His psalms and hymns are immeasurably better than his lyrics. Dreadful some of them are; and I doubt if there is one from which we would not wish stanzas, lines, and words absent. But some are very fine. The man who could write such verses as these ought not to have written as he has written:--

Had I a glance of thee, my G.o.d, Kingdoms and men would vanish soon; Vanish as though I saw them not, As a dim candle dies at noon.

Then they might fight and rage and rave: I should perceive the noise no more Than we can hear a shaking leaf While rattling thunders round us roar.

Some of his hymns will be sung, I fancy, so long as men praise G.o.d together; for most heartily do I grant that of all hymns I know he has produced the best for public use; but these bear a very small proportion indeed to the ma.s.s of his labour. We cannot help wishing that he had written about the twentieth part. We could not have too much of his best, such as this:

Be earth with all her scenes withdrawn; Let noise and vanity begone: In secret silence of the mind My heaven, and there my G.o.d, I find;

but there is no occasion for the best to be so plentiful: a little of it will go a great way. And as our best moments are so few, how could any man write six hundred religious poems, and produce quality in proportion to quant.i.ty save in an inverse ratio?

Dr. Thomas Parnell, the well-known poet, a clergyman, born in Dublin in 1679, has written a few religious verses. The following have a certain touch of imagination and consequent grace, which distinguishes them above the swampy level of the time.

HYMN FOR EVENING.

The beam-repelling mists arise, And evening spreads obscurer skies; The twilight will the night forerun, And night itself be soon begun.

Upon thy knees devoutly bow, And pray the Lord of glory now To fill thy breast, or deadly sin May cause a blinder night within.

And whether pleasing vapours rise, Which gently dim the closing eyes, Which make the weary members blest With sweet refreshment in their rest; Or whether spirits[158] in the brain Dispel their soft embrace again, And on my watchful bed I stay, Forsook by sleep, and waiting day; Be G.o.d for ever in my view, And never he forsake me too; But still as day concludes in night, To break again with new-born light, His wondrous bounty let me find With still a more enlightened mind.

Thou that hast thy palace far Above the moon and every star; Thou that sittest on a throne To which the night was never known, Regard my voice, and make me blest By kindly granting its request.

If thoughts on thee my soul employ, My darkness will afford me joy, Till thou shalt call and I shall soar, And part with darkness evermore.

Many long and elaborate religious poems I have not even mentioned, because I cannot favour extracts, especially in heroic couplets or blank verse. They would only make my book heavy, and destroy the song-idea. I must here pa.s.s by one of the best of such poems, _The Complaint, or Night Thoughts_ of Dr. Young; nor is there anything else of his I care to quote.

I must give just one poem of Pope, born in 1688, the year of the Revolution. The flamboyant style of his _Messiah_ is to me detestable: nothing can be more unlike the simplicity of Christianity. All such, equally with those by whatever hand that would be religious by being miserable, I reject at once, along with all that are merely commonplace religious exercises. But this at least is very unlike the rest of Pope's compositions: it is as simple in utterance as it is large in scope and practical in bearing. The name _Jove_ may be unpleasant to some ears: it is to mine--not because it is the name given to their deity by men who had had little outward revelation, but because of the a.s.sociations which the wanton poets, not the good philosophers, have gathered about it. Here let it stand, as Pope meant it, for one of the names of the Unknown G.o.d.

THE UNIVERSAL PRAYER.

Father of all! in every age, In every clime adored, By saint, by savage, and by sage, Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!

Thou great First Cause, least understood!

Who all my sense confined To know but this, that thou art good, And that myself am blind

Yet gave me, in this dark estate, To see the good from ill; And, binding Nature fast in Fate, Left free the human will:

What Conscience dictates to be done, Or warns me not to do-- This, teach me more than h.e.l.l to shun, That, more than heaven pursue.

What blessings thy free bounty gives, Let me not cast away; For G.o.d is paid when man receives: To enjoy is to obey.

Yet not to earth's contracted span Thy goodness let me bound, Or think thee Lord alone of man, When thousand worlds are round.

Let not this weak, unknowing hand Presume thy bolts to throw, And deal d.a.m.nation round the land On each I judge thy foe.

If I am right, thy grace impart Still in the right to stay; If I am wrong, O teach my heart To find that better way.

Save me alike from foolish pride Or impious discontent, At aught thy wisdom has denied, Or aught thy goodness lent.

Teach me to feel another's woe, To hide the fault I see: That mercy I to others show, That mercy show to me.

Mean though I am--not wholly so, Since quickened by thy breath:-- O lead me wheresoe'er I go, Through this day's life or death.

This day, be bread and peace my lot: All else beneath the sun Thou know'st if best bestowed or not, And let thy will be done.

To thee, whose temple is all s.p.a.ce, Whose altar, earth, sea, skies, One chorus let all being raise!

All Nature's incense rise!

And now we come upon a strange little well in the desert. Few flowers indeed shine upon its brink, and it flows with a somewhat unmusical ripple: it is a well of the water of life notwithstanding, for its song tells of the love and truth which are the grand power of G.o.d.

John Byrom, born in Manchester in the year 1691, a man whose strength of thought and perception of truth greatly surpa.s.sed his poetic gifts, yet delighted so entirely in the poetic form that he wrote much and chiefly in it. After leaving Cambridge, he gained his livelihood for some time by teaching a shorthand of his own invention, but was so distinguished as a man of learning generally that he was chosen an F.R.S. in 1723. Coming under the influence, probably through William Law, of the writings of Jacob Bohme, the marvellous shoemaker of Gorlitz in Silesia, who lived in the time of our Shakspere, and heartily adopting many of his views, he has left us a number of religious poems, which are seldom so sweet in music as they are profound in the metaphysics of religion. Here we have yet again a mystical thread running radiant athwart both warp and woof of our poetic web: the mystical thinker will ever be found the reviver of religious poetry; and although some of the seed had come from afar both in time and s.p.a.ce, Byrom's verse is of indigenous growth. Much of the thought of the present day will be found in his verses. Here is a specimen of his metrical argumentation. It is taken from a series of _Meditations for every Day in Pa.s.sion Week_.

WEDNESDAY.

_Christ satisfieth the justice of G.o.d by fulfilling all righteousness._

Justice demandeth satisfaction--yes; And ought to have it where injustice is: But there is none in G.o.d--it cannot mean Demand of justice where it has full reign: To dwell in man it rightfully demands, Such as he came from his Creator's hands.

Man had departed from a righteous state, Which he at first must have, if G.o.d create: 'Tis therefore called G.o.d's righteousness, and must Be satisfied by man's becoming just; Must exercise good vengeance upon men, Till it regain its rights in them again.

This was the justice for which Christ became A man to satisfy its righteous claim; Became Redeemer of the human race, That sin in them to justice might give place: To satisfy a just and righteous will, Is neither more nor less than to fulfil.

Here are two stanzas of one of more mystical reflection:

A PENITENTIAL SOLILOQUY.

What though no objects strike upon the sight!