Gifts of Genius Part 9

Herbert's poems are full of this sterling sense and philosophical reflection--the mintage of a master mind.

Addison's version of the twenty-third Psalm has entered into every household and penetrated every heart by its sweetness and pathos. There is equal gentleness and sincerity in Herbert's:

"The G.o.d of love my shepherd is, And he that doth me feed.

While he is mine, and I am his, What can I want or need?

"He leads me to the tender gra.s.s, Where I both feed and rest; Then to the streams that gently pa.s.s: In both I have the best.

"Or if I stray, he doth convert, And bring my mind in frame And all this not for my desert, But for his holy name.

"Yea, in death's shady, black abode Well may I walk, not fear: For thou art with me, and thy rod To guide, thy staff to bear.

"Nay, thou dost make me sit and dine, E'en in my en'mies' sight; My head with oil, my cup with wine, Runs over day and night.

"Surely thy sweet and wond'rous love Shall measure all my days: And as it never shall remove, So neither shall my praise."

We might linger long with Herbert, gathering the fruits of wisdom and piety from the abundant orchard of his poems, where many a fruit "hangs amiable;" but we must listen to his brethren.

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Henry Vaughan was the literary offspring of George Herbert. His life, too, might have been written by good Izaak Walton, so gentle was it, full of all pleasant a.s.sociations and quiet n.o.bleness, decorated by the love of nature and letters, intimacies with poets, and with that especial touch of nature which always went to the heart of the Complete Angler, a love of fishing--for Vaughan was wont, at times, to skim the waters of his native rivers.

He was born in Wales; the old Roman name of the country conferring upon him the appellation "Silurist"--for in those days local pride and affection claimed the honor of the bard, as the poet himself first gathered strength from the home, earth and sky which concentrated rather than circ.u.mscribed his genius. His family was of good old lineage, breathing freely for generations in the upper atmosphere of life, warmed and cheered in a genial sunlight of prosperity. It could stir, too, at the call of patriotism, and send soldiers, as it did, to bite the heroic dust at Agincourt. Another time brought other duties. The poet came into the world in the early part of the seventeenth century, when the great awakening of thought and English intellect was to be followed by stirring action. He was not, indeed, to bear any great part in the senate or the field; but all n.o.ble spirits were moved by the issues of the time. To some the voice of the age brought hope and energy; to others, a not ign.o.ble submission. It was perhaps as great a thing to suffer with the Royal Martyr, with all the burning life and traditions of England in the throbbing heart, as to rise from the ruins into the cold ether where the stern soul of Milton could wing its way in self-reliant calmness. Honor is due, as in all great struggles, to both parties. Vaughan's lot was cast with the conquered cause.

His youth was happy, as all poets' should be, and as the genius of all true poets, coupled with that period of life, will go far to make it.

There must be early sunshine far the first nurture of that delicate plant: the storm comes afterward to perfect its life. Vaughan first saw the light in a rural district of great beauty. His songs bear witness to it.

Indeed he is known by his own designation, a fragrant t.i.tle in the sweet fields of English poesy, as the Swan of the Usk, though he veiled the t.i.tle in the thin garb of the Latin, "Olor Isca.n.u.s." Another fortunate circ.u.mstance was the personal character of his education, at the hands of a rural Welsh rector, with whom, his twin brother for a companion, he pa.s.sed the years of youth in what, we have no doubt, were pleasant paths of cla.s.sical literature. How inexhaustible are those old wells of Greek and Roman Letters! The world cannot afford to spare them long. They may be less in fashion at one time than another, but their beauty and life-giving powers are perennial. The Muse of English poesy has always been baptized in their waters.

The brothers left for Oxford at the mature age--not a whit too late for any minds--of seventeen or eighteen. At the University there were other words than the songs of Apollo. The Great Revolution was already on the carpet, and it was to be fought out with weapons not found in the logical armory of Aristotle. The brothers were royalists, of course; and Henry, before the drama was played out, like many good men and true, tasted the inside of a prison--doubtless, like Lovelace and Wither, singing his heartfelt minstrelsy behind the wires of his cage. He was not a fighting man. Poets rarely are. More than one lyrist--as Archilochus and Horace may bear witness--has thrown away his shield on the field of battle. Vaughan wisely retired to his native Wales. Jeremy Taylor, too, it may be remembered, was locking up the treasures of his richly-furnished mind and pa.s.sionate feeling within the walls of those same Welsh hills. Nature, alone, however, is inadequate to the production of a true poet. Even Wordsworth, the most patient, absorbed of recluses, had his share of education in London and travel in foreign cities. Vaughan, too, early found his way, in visits, to the metropolis, where he heard at the Globe Tavern the last echoes of that burst of wit and knowledge which had spoken from the tongue and kindled in the eye of Shakspeare, Spenser and Raleigh.

Ben Jonson was still alive, and the young poets who flocked to him, as a later age worshipped Dryden, were all "sealed of the tribe of Ben."

Randolph and Cartwright were his friends.

Under these early inspirations of youth, nature, learning, witty companionship, Vaughan published his first verses--breathing a love of his art and its pleasures of imagination, paying his tribute to his paternal books in "Englishing," the "Tenth Satyre of Juvenal," and not forgetting, of course, the lovely "Amoret." A young poet without a lady in his verse is a solecism which nature abhors. All this, however, as his biographer remarks, "though fine in the way of poetic speculation, would not do for every-day practice." Of course not; and the young "swan" turned his wary feet from the glittering stream to the solid land. The poet became a physician. It was a n.o.ble art for such a spirit to practise, and not a very rude progress from youthful poesy if he felt and thought aright.

There was a sterner change in store, however, and it came to him with the monition, "Physician, heal thyself!" He was prostrated by severe bodily disease, and thenceforth his spirit was bowed to the claims of the unseen world. The "light amorist" found a higher inspiration. He turned his footsteps to the Temple and worshipped at the holy altar of Herbert. His poetry becomes religious. "Sparks from the Flint" is the t.i.tle which he gives his new verses, "Silex Scintillans." After that pledge to holiness given to the world, he survived nearly half a century, dying at the mature age of seventy-three--a happy subject of contemplation in the bosom of his Welsh retirement, pa.s.sing quietly down the vale of life, feeding his spirit on the early-gathered harvest of wit, learning, taste, feeling, fancy, benevolence and piety.

Of such threads was the life of our poet spun.

His verse is light, airy, flying with the lark to heaven. Hear him with "his singing robes" about him:

"I would I were some bird or star, Flutt'ring in woods, or lifted far Above this inn And road of sin!

Then either star or bird should be Shining or singing still to thee."

In this song of "Peace"--

"My soul, there is a country Afar beyond the stars, Where stands a winged sentry All skillful in the wars.

There, above noise and danger, Sweet peace sits crown'd with smiles, And one born in a manger Commands the beauteous files.

He is thy gracious friend, And (oh, my soul awake!) Did in pure love descend, To die here for thy sake.

If thou canst get but thither, There grows the flower of peace, The rose that cannot wither, Thy fortress and thy ease.

Leave, then, thy foolish ranges; For none can thee secure, But one, who never changes-- Thy G.o.d, thy Life, thy Cure."

Or in that kindred ode, full of "intimations of immortality received in childhood," ent.i.tled, "The Retreat:"

"Happy those early days, when I Shin'd in my angel infancy!

Before I understood this place, Appointed for my second race, Or taught my soul to fancy aught But a white, celestial thought; When yet I had not walkt above A mile or two from my first love, And looking back, at that short s.p.a.ce, Could see a glimpse of his bright face; When on some gilded cloud or flower My gazing soul would dwell an hour, And in those weaker glories spy Some shadows of eternity; Before I taught my tongue to wound My conscience with a sinful sound, Or had the black art to dispense A sev'ral sin to ev'ry sense, But felt through all this fleshly dress Bright shoots of everlastingness.

Oh how I long to travel back, And tread again that ancient track!

That I might once more reach that plain Where first I left my glorious train; From whence th' enlight'ned spirit sees That shady city of palm-trees.

But, ah! my soul with too much stay Is drunk, and staggers in the way!

Some men a forward motion love, But I by backward steps would move; And when this dust falls to the urn, In that state I came, return."

Here is a picture of the angel-visited world of Eden, not altogether destroyed by the Fall, when

"Each day The valley or the mountain Afforded visits, and still Paradise lay In some green shade or fountain.

Angels lay lieger here: each bush and cell, Each oak and highway knew them; Walk but the fields, or sit down at some well, And he was sure to view them."

Vaughan's birds and flowers gleam with light from the spirit land. This is the opening of a little piece ent.i.tled "The Bird:"

"Hither thou com'st. The busy wind all night Blew through thy lodging, where thy own warm wing Thy pillow was. Many a sullen storm, For which coa.r.s.e man seems much the fitter born, Rain'd on thy bed And harmless head; And now, as fresh and cheerful as the light, Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing Unto that Providence, whose unseen arm Curb'd them, and cloth'd thee well and warm."

How softly the image of the little bird again tempers the thought of death in his ode to the memory of the departed:

"He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know At first sight if the bird be flown; But what fair dell or grove he sings in now, That is to him unknown."

But we must leave this fair garden of the poet's fancies. The reader will find there many a flower yet untouched.

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Richard Crashaw was the contemporary of the early years of Vaughan; for, alas! he died young--though not till he had transcribed for the world the hopes, the aspirations, the sorrows of his troubled life. He lived but thirty-four years--the volume of his verses is not less nor more than the kindred books of the brother poets with whom we are now a.s.sociating his memory. A small body of verse will hold much life; for the poet gives us a concentrated essence, an elixir, a skillful confection of humanity, which, diluted with the commonplaces of every-day thought and living, may cover whole shelves of libraries. The secret of the whole of one life may be expressed in a song or a sonnet. The little books of the world are not the least.

Crashaw, also, was a scholar. The son of a clergy-man, he was educated at the famed Charter-house and afterward at Cambridge. The Revolution, too, overtook him. He refused the oath of the covenant, was ejected from his fellowship, became a Roman Catholic, and took refuge in Paris, where he ate the bread of exile with Cowley and others, cheered by the n.o.ble sympathy--it could not be much more--of Queen Henrietta Maria. She recommended him to Rome, and the sensitive poet carried his joys and sorrows to the bosom of the church. He lived a few years, and died canon of Loretto, at the age of thirty-four.

Though the son of a zealous opponent of the Roman church, Crashaw was born with an instinct and heart for its service. There runs through all his poetry that sensuousness of feeling which seeks the repose and luxury of faith which Rome always offers to her ardent votaries. It is profitable to compare the sentiment of Crashaw with the more intellectual development of Herbert. What in the former is the paramount, constant exhibition, in the latter is accepted, and holds its place subordinate to other claims.

Without a portion of it there could be no deep religious life--with it, in excess, we fear for the weakness of a partial development. There is so much gain, however, to the poet, that we have no disposition to take exception to the single string of Crashaw. The beauty of the Venus was made up from the charms of many models. So, in our libraries, as in life, we must be content with parcel-work, and take one man's wisdom and another's sentiment, looking out that we get something of each to enrich our multifarious life.

Crashaw's poetry is one musical echo and aspiration. He finds his theme and ill.u.s.tration constantly in music. His amorous descant never fails him: his lute is always by his side. Following the "Steps of the Temple," a graceful tribute to Herbert, we have the congenial t.i.tle, "The Delights of the Muses," opening with that exquisite composition:

"Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony,"

"Music's Duel." It is the story--a favorite one to the ears of our forefathers two centuries ago--of the nightingale and the musician contending with voice and instrument in alternate melodies, till the sweet songstress of the grove falls and dies upon the lute of her rapt rival. It is something more than a pretty tale. Ford, the dramatist, introduced it briefly in happy lines in "The Lover's Melancholy," but Crashaw's verses inspire the very sweetness and lingering pleasure of the contest. It is high noon when the "sweet lute's master" seeks retirement from the heat, "on the scene of a green plat, under protection of an oak," by the bank of the Tiber. The "light-foot lady,"

"The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,"

"entertains the music's soft report," which begins with a flying prelude, to which the lady of the tree "carves out her dainty voice" with "quick volumes of wild notes."

"His nimble hand's instinct then taught each string, A cap'ring cheerfulness; and made them sing To their own dance."

She

"Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note Through the sleek pa.s.sage of her open throat: A clear, unwrinkled song."