England's Antiphon by George MacDonald (best fantasy books to read txt) 📕

Oh, punishment!
Then he that patiently want's burden bears,
No burden bears, but is a king, a king!
Oh, sweet content!
Chorus .-Work apace, apace, apace, apace;
Honest labour bears a lovely face.

It is a song of the poor in spirit, whose is the kingdom of heaven. But if my co-listeners prefer, we will call it the voice, not of one who sings in the choir, but of one who "tunes his instrument at the door."


CHAPTER X.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT AND DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.


Sir John Beaumont, born in 1582, elder brother to the dramatist who wrote along with Fletcher, has left amongst his poems a few fine religious ones. From them I choose the following:


OF THE EPIPHANY.

Fair eastern star, that art ordained to run
Before the sages, to the rising sun,
Here cease thy course, and wonder that the cloud
Of this poor stable can thy Maker shroud:
Ye, heavenly bodies, glory to be bright,
And are esteemed as ye are rich in light;
But here on earth is taught a different way,
Since under this low roof the highest lay.
Jerusalem erects her stately towers,
Displays her windows, and adorns her bowers;
Yet there thou must not cast a trembling spark:
Let Herod's palace still continue dark;
Each school and synagogue thy force repels,
There Pride, enthroned in misty errors, dwells;
The temple, where the priests maintain their choir,
Shall taste no beam of thy celestial fire,
While this weak cottage all thy splendour takes:
A joyful gate of every chink it makes.
Here shines no golden roof, no ivory stair,
No king exalted in a stately chair,
Girt with attendants, or by heralds styled,
But straw and hay enwrap a speechless child;
Yet Sabae's lords before this babe unfold
Their treasures, offering incense, myrrh, and gold.
The crib becomes an altar: therefore dies
No ox nor sheep; for in their fodder lies
The Prince of Peace, who, thankful for his bed,
Destroys those rites in which their blood was shed:
The quintessence of earth he takes and[87] fees,
And precious gums distilled from weeping trees;
Rich metals and sweet odours now declare
The glorious blessings which his laws prepare,
To clear us from the base and loathsome flood
Of sense, and make us fit for angels' food,
Who lift to God for us the holy smoke
Of fervent prayers with which we him invoke,
And try our actions in that searching fire,
By which the seraphims our lips inspire:
No muddy dross pure minerals shall infect,
We shall exhale our vapours up direct:
No storms shall cross, nor glittering lights deface
Perpetual sighs which seek a happy place.

The creatures, no longer offered on his altar, standing around the Prince of Life, to whom they have given a bed, is a lovely idea. The end is hardly worthy of the rest, though there is fine thought involved in it.

The following contains an utterance of personal experience, the truth of which will be recognized by all to whom heavenly aspiration and needful disappointment are not unknown.


IN DESOLATION.

O thou who sweetly bend'st my stubborn will,
Who send'st thy stripes to teach and not to kill!
Thy cheerful face from me no longer hide;
Withdraw these clouds, the scourges of my pride;
I sink to hell, if I be lower thrown:
I see what man is, being left alone.
My substance, which from nothing did begin,
Is worse than nothing by the weight of sin:
I see myself in such a wretched state
As neither thoughts conceive, nor words relate.
How great a distance parts us! for in thee
Is endless good, and boundless ill in me.
All creatures prove me abject, but how low
Thou only know'st, and teachest me to know.
To paint this baseness, nature is too base;
This darkness yields not but to beams of grace.
Where shall I then this piercing splendour find?
Or found, how shall it guide me, being blind?
Grace is a taste of bliss, a glorious gift,
Which can the soul to heavenly comforts lift:
It will not shine to me, whose mind is drowned
In sorrows, and with worldly troubles bound;
It will not deign within that house to dwell,
Where dryness reigns, and proud distractions swell.
Perhaps it sought me in those lightsome days
Of my first fervour, when few winds did raise
The waves, and ere they could full strength obtain,
Some whispering gale straight charmed them down again;
When all seemed calm, and yet the Virgin's child
On my devotions in his manger smiled;
While then I simply walked, nor heed could take
Of complacence, that sly, deceitful snake;
When yet I had not dangerously refused
So many calls to virtue, nor abused
The spring of life, which I so oft enjoyed,
Nor made so many good intentions void,
Deserving thus that grace should quite depart,
And dreadful hardness should possess my heart:
Yet in that state this only good I found,
That fewer spots did then my conscience wound;
Though who can censure whether, in those times, judg
The want of feeling seemed the want of crimes?
If solid virtues dwell not but in pain,
I will not wish that golden age again
Because it flowed with sensible delights
Of heavenly things: God hath created nights
As well as days, to deck the varied globe;
Grace comes as oft clad in the dusky robe
Of desolation, as in white attire,
Which better fits the bright celestial choir.
Some in foul seasons perish through despair,
But more through boldness when the days are fair.
This then must be the medicine for my woes-
To yield to what my Saviour shall dispose;
To glory in my baseness; to rejoice
In mine afflictions; to obey his voice,
As well when threatenings my defects reprove,
As when I cherished am with words of love;
To say to him, in every time and place,
"Withdraw thy comforts, so thou leave thy grace."

Surely this is as genuine an utterance, whatever its merits as a poem-and those I judge not small-as ever flowed from Christian heart!

Chiefly for the sake of its beauty, I give the last passage of a poem written upon occasion of the feasts of the Annunciation and the Resurrection falling on the same day.

Let faithful souls this double feast attend
In two processions. Let the first descend
The temple's stairs, and with a downcast eye
Upon the lowest pavement prostrate lie:
In creeping violets, white lilies, shine
Their humble thoughts and every pure design.
The other troop shall climb, with sacred heat,
The rich degrees of Solomon's bright seat: steps

In glowing roses fervent zeal they bear,
And in the azure flower-de-lis appear
Celestial contemplations, which aspire
Above the sky, up to the immortal choir.

William Drummond of Hawthornden, a Scotchman, born in 1585, may almost be looked upon as the harbinger of a fresh outburst of word-music. No doubt all the great poets have now and then broken forth in lyrical jubilation. Ponderous Ben Jonson himself, when he takes to song, will sing in the joy of the very sound; but great men have always so much graver work to do, that they comparatively seldom indulge in this kind of melody. Drummond excels in madrigals, or canzonets-baby-odes or songs-which have more of wing and less of thought than sonnets. Through the greater part of his verse we hear a certain muffled tone of the sweetest, like the music that ever threatens to break out clear from the brook, from the pines, from the rain-shower,-never does break out clear, but remains a suggested, etherially vanishing tone. His is a voix voilée , or veiled voice of song. It is true that in the time we are now approaching far more attention was paid not merely to the smoothness but to the melody of verse than any except the great masters had paid before; but some are at the door, who, not being great masters, yet do their inferior part nearly as well as they their higher, uttering a music of marvellous and individual sweetness, which no mere musical care could secure, but which springs essentially from music in the thought gathering to itself musical words in melodious division, and thus fashioning for itself a fitting body. The melody of their verse is all their own-as original as the greatest art-forms of the masters. Of Drummond, then, here are two sonnets on the Nativity; the first spoken by the angels, the second by the shepherds.


The Angels .

Run, shepherds, run where Bethlehem blest appears.
We bring the best of news; be not dismayed:
A Saviour there is born more old than years,
Amidst heaven's rolling height this earth who stayed.
In a poor cottage inned, a virgin maid
A weakling did him bear, who all upbears;
There is he poorly swaddled, in manger laid,
To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres:
Run, shepherds, run, and solemnize his birth.
This is that night-no, day, grown great with bliss,
In which the power of Satan broken is:
In heaven be glory, peace unto the earth!
Thus singing, through the air the angels swam,
And cope of stars re-echoëd the same.


The Shepherds .

O than the fairest day, thrice fairer night!
Night to best days, in which a sun doth rise
Of which that golden eye which clears the skies
Is but a sparkling ray, a shadow-light!
And blessed ye, in silly pastors' sight, simple.