England's Antiphon by George MacDonald (best way to read e books TXT) 📖

, is a thunderous organ-blast of praise. The repetition of words in the beginning of the second stanza produces a remarkably fine effect.


PSALM XCIII.

Clothed with state, and girt with might,
Monarch-like Jehovah reigns;
He who earth's foundation pight- pitched.
Pight at first, and yet sustains;
He whose stable throne disdains
Motion's shock and age's flight;
He who endless one remains
One, the same, in changeless plight.

Rivers-yea, though rivers roar,
Roaring though sea-billows rise,
Vex the deep, and break the shore-
Stronger art thou, Lord of skies!
Firm and true thy promise lies
Now and still as heretofore:
Holy worship never dies
In thy house where we adore.

I close my selections from Sidney with one which I consider the best of all: it is the first half of Lord, thou hast searched me.


PSALM CXXXIX.

O Lord, in me there lieth nought
But to thy search revealed lies;
For when I sit
Thou markest it;
No less thou notest when I rise:
Yea, closest closet of my thought
Hath open windows to thine eyes.

Thou walkest with me when I walk
When to my bed for rest I go,
I find thee there,
And every where:
Not youngest thought in me doth grow,
No, not one word I cast to talk
But, yet unuttered, thou dost know.

If forth I march, thou goest before;
If back I turn, thou com'st behind:
So forth nor back
Thy guard I lack;
Nay, on me too thy hand I find.
Well I thy wisdom may adore,
But never reach with earthy mind.

To shun thy notice, leave thine eye,
O whither might I take my way?
To starry sphere?
Thy throne is there.
To dead men's undelightsome stay?
There is thy walk, and there to lie
Unknown, in vain I should assay.

O sun, whom light nor flight can match!
Suppose thy lightful flightful wings
Thou lend to me,
And I could flee
As far as thee the evening brings:
Ev'n led to west he would me catch,
Nor should I lurk with western things.

Do thou thy best, O secret night,
In sable veil to cover me:
Thy sable veil
Shall vainly fail:
With day unmasked my night shall be;
For night is day, and darkness light,
O father of all lights, to thee.

Note the most musical play with the words light and flight in the fifth stanza. There is hardly a line that is not delightful.

They were a wonderful family those Sidneys. Mary, for whom Philip wrote his chief work, thence called "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, " was a woman of rare gifts. The chief poem known to be hers is called Our Saviour's Passion . It is full of the faults of the age. Sir Philip's sport with words is so graceful and ordered as to subserve the utterance of the thought: his sister's fanciful convolutions appear to be there for their own sake-certainly are there to the obscuration of the sense. The difficulty of the poem arises in part, I believe, from corruption, but chiefly from a certain fantastic way of dealing with thought as well as word of which I shall have occasion to say more when we descend a little further. It is, in the main, a lamentation over our Saviour's sufferings, in which the countess is largely guilty of the very feminine fault of seeking to convey the intensity of her emotions by forcing words, accumulating forms, and exaggerating descriptions. This may indeed convince as to the presence of feeling, but cannot communicate the feeling itself. The right word will at once generate a sympathy of which all agonies of utterance will only render the willing mind more and more incapable.

The poem is likewise very diffuse-again a common fault with women of power; for indeed the faculty of compressing thought into crystalline form is one of the rarest gifts of artistic genius. It consists of a hundred and ten stanzas, from which I shall gather and arrange a few.

He placed all rest, and had no resting place;
He healed each pain, yet lived in sore distress;
Deserved all good, yet lived in great disgrace;
Gave all hearts joy, himself in heaviness;
Suffered them live, by whom himself was slain:
Lord, who can live to see such love again?

Whose mansion heaven, yet lay within a manger;
Who gave all food, yet sucked a virgin's breast;
Who could have killed, yet fled a threatening danger;
Who sought all quiet by his own unrest;
Who died for them that highly did offend him,
And lives for them that cannot comprehend him.

Who came no further than his Father sent him,
And did fulfil but what he did command him;
Who prayed for them that proudly did torment him
For telling truly of what they did demand him;
Who did all good that humbly did intreat him,
And bare their blows, that did unkindly beat him.

Had I but seen him as his servants did,
At sea, at land, in city, or in field,
Though in himself he had his glory hid,
That in his grace the light of glory held,
Then might my sorrow somewhat be appeaséd,
That once my soul had in his sight been pleaséd.

No! I have run the way of wickedness,
Forgetting what my faith should follow most;
I did not think upon thy holiness,
Nor by my sins what sweetness I have lost.
Oh sin! for sin hath compassed me about,
That, Lord, I know not where to find thee out.

Where he that sits on the supernal throne,
In majesty most glorious to behold,
And holds the sceptre of the world alone,
Hath not his garments of imbroidered gold,
But he is clothed with truth and righteousness,
Where angels all do sing with joyfulness,

Where heavenly love is cause of holy life,
And holy life increaseth heavenly love;
Where peace established without fear or strife,
Doth prove the blessing of the soul's behove;[67]
Where thirst nor hunger, grief nor sorrow dwelleth,
But peace in joy, and joy in peace excelleth.

Had all the poem been like these stanzas, I should not have spoken so strongly concerning its faults. There are a few more such in it. It closes with a very fantastic use of musical terms, following upon a curious category of the works of nature as praising God, to which I refer for the sake of one stanza, or rather of one line in the stanza:

To see the greyhound course, the hound in chase,
Whilst little dormouse sleepeth out her eyne;
The lambs and rabbits sweetly run at base,[68]
Whilst highest trees the little squirrels climb,
The crawling worms out creeping in the showers,
And how the snails do climb the lofty towers.

What a love of animated nature there is in the lovely lady! I am all but confident, however, that second line came to her from watching her children asleep. She had one child at least: that William Herbert, who is generally, and with weight, believed the W.H. of Shakspere's Sonnets, a grander honour than the earldom of Pembroke, or even the having Philip Sidney to his uncle: I will not say grander than having Mary Sidney to his mother .

Let me now turn to Sidney's friend, Sir Fulk Grevill, Lord Brooke, who afterwards wrote his life, "as an intended preface" to all his "Monuments to the memory of Sir Philip Sidney," the said monuments being Lord Brooke's own poems.

My extract is from A Treatise of Religion , in which, if the reader do not find much of poetic form, he will find at least some grand spiritual philosophy, the stuff whereof all highest poetry is fashioned. It is one of the first poems in which the philosophy of religion, and not either its doctrine, feeling, or history, predominates. It is, as a whole, poor, chiefly from its being so loosely written. There are men, and men whose thoughts are of great worth, to whom it never seems to occur that they may utter very largely and convey very little; that what is clear to themselves is in their speech obscure as a late twilight. Their utterance is rarely articulate: their spiritual mouth talks with but half-movements of its lips; it does not model their thoughts into clear-cut shapes, such as the spiritual ear can distinguish as they enter it. Of such is Lord Brooke. These few stanzas, however, my readers will be glad to have:

What is the chain which draws us back again,
And lifts man up unto his first creation?
Nothing in him his own heart can restrain;
His reason lives a captive to temptation;