Gifts of Genius Part 8

SEA-WEED.

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Not always unimpeded can I pray, Nor, pitying saint, thine intercession claim: Too closely clings the burden of the day, And all the mint and anise that I pay But swells my debt and deepens my self-blame.

Shall I less patience have than Thou, who know That Thou revisit'st all who wait for Thee, Nor only fill'st the unsounded depths below But dost refresh with measured overflow The rifts where unregarded mosses be?

The drooping sea-weed hears, in night abyssed, Far and more far the waves' receding shocks, Nor doubts, through all the darkness and the mist That the pale shepherdess will keep her tryst, And sh.o.r.eward lead once more her foam-fleeced flocks.

For the same wave that laps the Carib sh.o.r.e With momentary curves of pearl and gold, Goes hurrying thence to gladden with its roar The lorn sh.e.l.ls camped on rocks of Labrador, By love divine on that glad errand rolled.

And, though Thy healing waters far withdraw, I, too, can wait and feed on hopes of Thee, And of the dear recurrence of thy Law, Sure that the parting grace which morning saw, Abides its time to come in search of me.

TREFOIL.

BY EVERT A. DUYCKINCK.

"Hope, by the ancients, was drawn in the form of a sweet and beautiful child, standing upon tiptoes, and a trefoil or three-leaved gra.s.s in her hand."

_Citation from old Peacham in Dr. Johnson's Dictionary._

Three names, cl.u.s.tered together in more than one marked a.s.sociation, have a pleasant fragrance in English literature. A triple-leaved clover in a field thickly studded with floral beauties, the modest merits of HERBERT, VAUGHAN and CRASHAW

"Smell sweet and blossom in the dust"--

endeared to us not merely by the claim of intellect, but by the warmer appeal to the heart, of kindred sympathy and suffering. True poets, they have placed in their spiritual alembic the common woes and sorrows of life, and extracted from them "by force of their so potent art," a cordial for the race.

Has it ever occurred to the reader to reflect how much the world owes to the poets in the alleviation of sorrow? It is much to hear the simple voice of sympathy in its plainest utterances from the companions around us; it is something to listen to the same burden from the good of former generations, as the universal experience of humanity; but we owe the greatest debt to those who by the graces of intellect and the pains of a profounder pa.s.sion, have triumphed over affliction, and given eloquence to sorrow.

There is a common phrase, which some poet must first have invented--"the luxury of woe." Poets certainly have found their most constant themes in suffering. When the late Edgar Poe, who prided himself on reducing literature to an art, sat down to write a poem which should attain the height of popularity, he said sorrow must be its theme, and wrote "The Raven." Tragedy will always have a deeper hold upon the public than comedy; it appeals to deeper principles, stirs more powerful emotions, imparts an a.s.sured sense of strength, is more intimate with our nature, or certainly it would not be tolerated. There is no delight in the exhibition of misery as such, it is only painful and repulsive; we discard all vulgar horrors utterly, and keep no place for them in the mind. Let, however, a poet touch the string, and there is another response when he brings before us pictures of regal grief, and gives grandeur to humiliation and penalty.

Nor is it only in the higher walks of tragedy, with its pomp and circ.u.mstances of action, that the poet here serves us. His humbler minstrelsy has soothed many an English heart from the tale of "Lycidas" to the elegiac verse of Tennyson. George Herbert still speaks to this generation as two centuries ago he spoke to his own. His quaint verses gather new beauties from time as they come to us redolent with the prayers and aspirations of many successions of the wives, mothers and daughters of England and America; bedewed with the tears of orphans and parents; an incitement to youth, a solace to age, a consolation for humanity to all time.

These have been costly gifts to our benefactors. "I honor," says Vaughan, "that temper which can lay by the garland when he might keep it on; which can pa.s.s by a rosebud and bid it grow when he is invited to crop it." This is the spirit of self-devotion in every worthy action, and especially of the pains and penalties by which poets have enriched our daily life. We are indebted to the poets, too, for something more than the alleviation of sorrow. Perhaps it is, upon the whole, a rarer gift to improve prosperity. Joy, commonly, is less of a positive feeling than grief, and is more apt to slip by us unconsciously. Few people, says the proverb, know when they are well off. It is the poet's vocation to teach the world this--

--"to be possess'd with double pomp, To guard a t.i.tle that was rich before, To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet."

The poet lifts our eyes to the beauties of external nature, educates us to a keener partic.i.p.ation in the sweet joys of affection, to the loveliness and grace of woman, to the honor and strength of manhood. His ideal world thus becomes an actual one, as the creations of imagination first borrowed from sense, alight from the book, the picture or the statue once again to live and walk among us.

The resemblances which have induced us to bring together our sacred triumvirate of poets, are the common period in which they lived, their similar training in youth, a congenial bond of learning, a certain generous family condition, the inspiration of the old mother church out of which they sprung, the familiar discipline of sorrow, the early years in which they severally wrote.

A brief glance at their respective lives may indicate still further these similarities and point a moral which needs not many words to express--which seems to us almost too sacred to be loudly or long dwelt upon.

* * * * *

Herbert was the oldest of the band, having been born near the close of the sixteenth century, in the days of James, who was an intelligent patron of the family. The poet's brother, the learned Lord Herbert of Cherbury, whose "Autobiography" breathes the fresh manly spirit of the best days of chivalry, was the king's amba.s.sador to France. George Herbert, too, was in a fair way to this court patronage, when his hopes were checked by the death of the monarch. It is a circ.u.mstance, this court favor, worth considering in the poet's life, as the antecedent to his manifold spirit of piety. Nothing is more noticeable than the wide, liberal culture of the old English poets; they were first, men, often skilled in affairs, with ample experience in life, and then--poets.

Herbert's education was all that care and affection could devise. "He spent," says his amiable biographer, Izaak Walton, "much of his childhood in a sweet content under the eye and care of his prudent mother, and the tuition of a chaplain or tutor to him and two of his brothers in her own family." At Cambridge he became orator to the University, gained the applause of the court by his Latin orations, and what is more, secured the friendship of such men as Bishop Andrews, Dr. Donne, and the model diplomatist of his age, Sir Henry Wotton. The completion of his studies and the failure of court expectations were followed by a pa.s.sage of rural retirement--a first pause of the soul previous to the deeper conflicts of life. His solitariness was increased by sickness, a period of meditation and devotional feeling, a.s.sisted by the intimations of a keen spirit in a feeble body--and out of the furnace came forth Herbert the priest and saint. All that knowledge can inspire, all that tenderness can endear, centres about that picture of the beauty of holiness, his brief pastoral career--as we read it in his prose writings and his poems, and the pages of Walton--at the little village of Bemerton. He died at the age of thirty-nine--his gentle spirit spared the approaching conflicts of his country, which pressed so heavily upon the Church which he loved.

The poems of Herbert are now read throughout the world; no longer confined to that Church which inspired them. They are echoed at times in the pulpits of all denominations, while their practical lines are, if we remember rightly, scattered among the sage aphorisms of Poor Richard, and their wide philosophy commends itself to the genius of Emerson.

It is pleasant in these old poets to admire what has been admired by others--to read the old verses with the indors.e.m.e.nt of genius. The name adds value to the bond. Coleridge, for instance, whose "paper," in a mercantile sense, would have been, on "change," the worst in England, has given us many of these notable "securities." They live in his still echoing "Table-Talk," and are sprinkled generously over his writings--while what record is there of the "good," the best financial names of the day? One sonnet of Herbert was an especial favorite with Coleridge. It was that heart-searching, sympathizing epitome of spiritual life, ent.i.tled

SIN.

"Lord, with what care hast thou begirt us round!

Parents first season us; then school-masters Deliver us to laws; they send us bound To rules of reason, holy messengers.

"Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow d.o.g.g.i.ng sin, Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes, Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in, Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.

"Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness.

The sound of Glory ringing in our ears: Without, our shame; within, our consciences: Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.

"Yet all these fences and their whole array, One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away."

These poems, it should be remembered, are private devotional heart-confessions, not written for sale, for pay or reputation; they were not printed at all during the author's life, but were brought forth by faithful friends from the sacred coffer of his dying-room, in order that posterity might know the secret of that honorable life and its cheerful end. Izaak Walton has given a beautiful setting to one stanza from the eloquent ode "Sunday." "The Sunday before his death," his biographer tells us, "he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of his instruments, took it into his hand, and said:

"'My G.o.d, my G.o.d My music shall find thee, And every string Shall have his attribute to sing.

And having tuned it, he played and sung:

"'The Sundays of man's life, Threaded together on time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King.

On Sundays, heaven's door stands ope; Blessings are plentiful and rife; More plentiful than hope.'

"Thus he sung on earth such hymns and anthems as the angels and he, and Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven."

As we have fallen upon this personal, biographical vein, and as the best key to a man's poetry is to know the man and what he may have encountered, we may cite the poem ent.i.tled "The Pearl." It is compact of life and experience: we see the courtier and the scholar ripening into the saint; the world not forgotten or ignored, but its best pursuits calmly weighed, fondly enumerated and left behind, as steps of the celestial ladder.

THE PEARL.

"I know the ways of learning; both the head And pipes that feed the press, and make it run; What reason hath from nature borrowed, Or of itself, like a good housewife, spun In laws and policy; what the stars conspire; What willing nature speaks, what forc'd by fire; Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas; The stock and surplus, cause and history: All these stand open, or I have the keys: Yet I love thee.

"I know the ways of honor, what maintains The quick returns of courtesy and wit: In vies of favor whether party gains, When glory swells the heart and mouldeth it To all expressions both of hand and eye, Which on the world a true-love knot may tie, And bear the bundle, wheresoe'er it goes: How many drams of spirits there must be To sell my life unto my friends or foes: Yet I love thee.

"I know the ways of pleasure, the sweet strains, The lullings and the relishes of it; The propositions of hot blood and brains; What mirth and music mean; what love and wit Have done these twenty hundred years, and more; I know the projects of unbridled store: My stuff is flesh, not gra.s.s; my senses live, And grumble oft, that they have more in me Than he that curbs them, being but one to five: Yet I love thee.

"I know all these, and have them in my hand; Therefore not sealed, but with open eyes I fly to thee, and fully understand Both the main sale, and the commodities; And at what rate and price I have thy love; With all the circ.u.mstances that may move: Yet through the labyrinths, not my grovelling wit, But thy silk-twist let down from heav'n to me, Did both conduct and teach me, how, by it, To climb to thee."

A splendid retrospect this of a short life: and with what accurate knowledge of art, science, policy, literature, of powers of body and mind.