Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets Part 37

XX.

But let the Kentish lad,[1] that lately taught His oaten reed the trumpet's silver sound, Young Thyrsilis; and for his music brought The willing spheres from heaven, to lead around The dancing nymphs and swains, that sung, and crowned Eclecta's Hymen with ten thousand flowers Of choicest praise; and hung her heavenly bowers With saffron garlands, dressed for nuptial paramours.

XXI.

Let his shrill trumpet, with her silver blast, Of fair Eclecta, and her spousal bed, Be the sweet pipe, and smooth encomiast: But my green muse, hiding her younger head, Under old Camus' flaggy banks, that spread Their willow locks abroad, and all the day With their own watery shadows wanton play; Dares not those high amours, and love-sick songs a.s.say.

XXII.

Impotent words, weak lines, that strive in vain; In vain, alas, to tell so heavenly sight!

So heavenly sight, as none can greater feign, Feign what he can, that seems of greatest might: Could any yet compare with Infinite?

Infinite sure those joys; my words but light; Light is the palace where she dwells; oh, then, how bright!

[1] The author of 'The Purple Island.'

JOHN DONNE.

John Donne was born in London, in the year 1573. He sprung from a Catholic family, and his mother was related to Sir Thomas More and to Heywood the epigrammatist. He was very early distinguished as a prodigy of boyish acquirement, and was entered, when only eleven, of Harthall, now Hertford College. He was designed for the law, but relinquished the study when he reached nineteen. About the same time, having studied the controversies between the Papists and Protestants, he deliberately went over to the latter. He next accompanied the Earl of Ess.e.x to Cadiz, and looked wistfully over the gulf dividing him from Jerusalem, with all its holy memories, to which his heart had been translated from very boyhood.

He even meditated a journey to the Holy Land, but was discouraged by reports as to the dangers of the way. On his return he was received by the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere into his own house as his secretary. Here he fell in love with Miss More, the daughter of Sir George More, Lord- Lieutenant of the Tower, and the niece of the Chancellor. His pa.s.sion was returned, and the pair were imprudent enough to marry privately.

When the matter became known, the father-in-law became infuriated. He prevailed on Lord Ellesmere to drive Donne out of his service, and had him even for a short time imprisoned. Even when released he continued in a pitiable plight, and but for the kindness of Sir Francis Wooley, a son of Lady Ellesmere by a former marriage, who received the young couple into his family and entertained them for years, they would have perished.

When Donne reached the age of thirty-four, Dr Merton, afterwards Bishop of Durham, urged him to take orders, and offered him a benefice, which he was generously to relinquish in his favour. Donne declined, on account, he said, of some past errors of life, which, 'though repented of and pardoned by G.o.d, might not be forgotten by men, and might cast dishonour on the sacred office.'

When Sir F. Wooley died, Sir Robert Drury became his next protector.

Donne attended him on an emba.s.sy to France, and his wife formed the romantic purpose of accompanying her husband in the disguise of a page.

Here was a wife fit for a poet! In order to restrain her from her purpose, he had to address to her some verses, commencing,

'By our strange and fatal interview.'

Isaak Walton relates how the poet, one evening, as he sat alone in Paris, saw his wife appearing to him in vision, with a dead infant in her arms--a proof at once of the strength of his love and of his imagination. This beloved and admirable woman died in 1617, a few days after giving birth to her twelfth child, and Donne's grief approached distraction.

When he had reached the forty-second year of his age, our poet, at the instance of King James, became a clergyman, and was successively appointed Chaplain to the King, Lecturer to Lincoln's Inn, Dean of St Dunstan's in the West, and Dean of St Paul's. In the pulpit he attracted great attention, particularly from the more thoughtful and intelligent of his auditors. He continued Dean of St Paul's till his death, which took place in 1631, when he was approaching sixty. He died of consumption, a disease which seldom cuts down a man so near his grand climacteric.

'He was buried,' says Campbell, 'in St Paul's, where his figure yet remains in the vault of St Faith's, carved from a painting, for which he sat a few days' (it should be weeks) 'before his death, dressed in his winding-sheet.' He kept this portrait constantly by his bedside to remind him of his mortality.

Donne's Sermons fill a large folio, with which we were familiar in boyhood, but have not seen since. De Quincey says, alluding partly to them, and partly to his poetry,--'Few writers have shewn a more extraordinary compa.s.s of powers than Donne, for he combined--what no other man has ever done--the last sublimation of dialectical subtlety and address with the most impa.s.sioned majesty. Ma.s.sy diamonds compose the very substance of his poem on the 'Metempsychosis,'--thoughts and descriptions which have the fervent and gloomy sublimity of Ezekiel or Aeschylus; while a diamond-dust of rhetorical brilliances is strewed over the whole of his occasional verses and his prose.' We beg leave to differ, in some degree, from De Quincey in his estimate of the 'Metempsychosis,' or 'The Progress of the Soul,' although we have given it entire. It has too many far-fetched conceits and obscure allegories, although redeemed, we admit, by some very precious thoughts, such as

'This soul, to whom Luther and Mahomet were Prisons of flesh.'

Or the following quaint picture of the apple in Eden--

'Prince of the orchard, fair as dawning morn, Fenced with the law, and ripe as soon as born.'

Or this--

'Nature hath no jail, though she hath law.'

If our readers, however, can admire the account the poet gives of Abel and his b.i.t.c.h, or see any resemblance to the severe and simple grandeur of Aeschylus and Ezekiel in the description of the soul informing a body, made of a '_female fish's sandy roe' 'newly leavened with the male's jelly_,' we shall say no more.

Donne, altogether, gives us the impression of a great genius ruined by a false system. He is a charioteer run away with by his own pampered steeds. He begins generally well, but long ere the close, quibbles, conceits, and the temptation of shewing off recondite learning, prove too strong for him, and he who commenced following a serene star, ends pursuing a will-o'-wisp into a bottomless mora.s.s. Compare, for instance, the ingenious nonsense which abounds in the middle and the close of his 'Progress of the Soul' with the dark, but magnificent stanzas which are the first in the poem.

In no writings in the language is there more spilt treasure--a more lavish loss of beautiful, original, and striking things than in the poems of Donne. Every second line, indeed, is either bad, or unintelligible, or twisted into unnatural distortion, but even the worst pa.s.sages discover a great, though trammelled and tasteless mind; and we question if Dr Johnson himself, who has, in his 'Life of Cowley,' criticised the school of poets to which Donne belonged so severely, and in some points so justly, possessed a t.i.the of the rich fancy, the sublime intuition, and the lofty spirituality of Donne. How characteristic of the difference between these two great men, that, while the one shrank from the slightest footprint of death, Donne deliberately placed the image of his dead self before his eyes, and became familiar with the shadow ere the grim reality arrived!

Donne's Satires shew, in addition to the high ideal qualities, the rugged versification, the fantastic paradox, and the perverted taste of their author, great strength and clearness of judgment, and a deep, although somewhat jaundiced, view of human nature. That there must have been something morbid in the structure of his mind is proved by the fact that he wrote an elaborate treatise, which was not published till after his death, ent.i.tled, 'Biathanatos,' to prove that suicide was not necessarily sinful.

HOLY SONNETS.

I.

Thou hast made me, and shall thy work decay?

Repair me now, for now mine end doth haste; I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday.

I dare not move my dim eyes any way; Despair behind, and death before, doth cast Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste By sin in it, which it towards h.e.l.l doth weigh, Only thou art above, and when towards thee By thy leave I can look, I rise again; But our old subtle foe so tempteth me, That not one hour myself I can sustain: Thy grace may wing me to prevent his art, And thou, like adamant, draw mine iron heart.

II.

As due by many t.i.tles, I resign Myself to thee, O G.o.d! First I was made By thee, and for thee; and when I was decayed Thy blood bought that, the which before was thine.

I am thy son, made with thyself to shine, Thy servant, whose pains thou hast still repaid, Thy sheep, thine image; and, till I betrayed Myself, a temple of thy Spirit divine.

Why doth the devil then usurp on me?

Why doth he steal, nay, ravish, that's thy right?

Except thou rise, and for thine own work fight, Oh! I shall soon despair, when I shall see That thou lov'st mankind well, yet wilt not choose me, And Satan hates me, yet is loth to lose me.

III.

Oh! might these sighs and tears return again Into my breast and eyes which I have spent, That I might, in this holy discontent, Mourn with some fruit, as I have mourned in vain!

In mine idolatry what showers of rain Mine eyes did waste! what griefs my heart did rent!

That sufferance was my sin I now repent; 'Cause I did suffer, I must suffer pain.

The hydroptic drunkard, and night-scouting thief, The itchy lecher, and self-tickling proud, Have th' remembrance of past joys for relief Of coming ills. To poor me is allow'd No ease; for long yet vehement grief hath been The effect and cause, the punishment and sin.

IV.

Oh! my black soul! now thou art summoned By sickness, death's herald and champion, Thou 'rt like a pilgrim which abroad hath done Treason, and durst not turn to whence he is fled; Or like a thief, which, till death's doom be read, Wisheth himself delivered from prison; But d.a.m.n'd, and haul'd to execution, Wisheth that still he might be imprisoned: Yet grace, if thou repent, thou canst not lack; But who shall give thee that grace to begin?

Oh! make thyself with holy mourning black, And red with blushing, as thou art with sin; Or wash thee in Christ's blood, which hath this might, That, being red, it dyes red souls to white.

V.

I am a little world, made cunningly Of elements and an angelic sprite; But black sin hath betrayed to endless night My world's both parts, and oh! both parts must die.

You, which beyond that heaven, which was most high, Have found new spheres, and of new land can write, Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might Drown my world with my weeping earnestly, Or wash it, if it must be drowned no more: But oh! it must be burnt; alas! the fire Of l.u.s.t and envy burnt it heretofore, And made it fouler; let their flames retire, And burn me, O Lord! with a fiery zeal Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.

VI.

This is my play's last scene; here Heavens appoint My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race, Idly yet quickly run, hath this last pace, My span's last inch, my minute's latest point, And gluttonous Death will instantly unjoint My body and soul, and I shall sleep a s.p.a.ce: But my ever-waking part shall see that face Whose fear already shakes my every joint.

Then as my soul to heaven, her first seat, takes flight, And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell, So fall my sins, that all may have their right, To where they're bred, and would press me to h.e.l.l.

Impute me righteous; thus purged of evil, For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.