All other days, compared to Thee,
Are but light's weak minority,
They are but veils and cyphers drawn
Like clouds before thy glorious dawn.
O come! arise! shine! do not stay,
Dearly loved day!
The fields are long since white, and I
With earnest groans for freedom cry ;
My fellow-creatures too say, Come!
And stones, though speechless, are not dumb,
When shall we hear that glorious voice
Of life and joys?
That voice, which to each secret bed
Of my Lord's dead
Shall bring true day, and make dust see
The way to immortality!
When shall those first white pilgrims rise,
Whose holy happy histories
Because they sleep so long, some men
Count but the blots of a vain pen?
Dear Lord, make haste!
Sin every day commits more waste :
And Thy old enemy which knows
His time is short, more raging grows.1
LOVE AND DISCIPLINE.
Since in a land not barren, still
(Because Thou dost Thy grace distil)
My lot is fall'n, blest be Thy will!
And since these biting frosts but kill
Some tares in me, which choke or spill
The seed Thou sowest, blest be Thy skill!
Blest be Thy dew, and blest Thy frost ;
And happy I to be so crost
And cared by crosses, at Thy cost.
The dew doth cheer what is distrest,
The frosts ill weeds nip and molest ;
In both Thou work'st unto the best :-
Thus, while Thy several mercies plot
And work on me, now cold, now hot,
The work goes on and slacketh not.
For as Thy hand the weather steers,
So thrive I best 'twixt joys and fears,
And all the years have some green ears.
1 Silex Scintillans, Pt. ii. p. 184.
Sir Edward Sherburne (1618-1702) was a Roman Catholic, joined the King's army during the Civil Wars, and at the defeat of the Royal cause was much plundered and impoverished. All his later years were spent in studious quiet.
This day Eternal Love for me,
Fast nailed unto a curséd tree,
Rending His fleshy veil, did through His side
A way to Paradise provide.
This day Life died, and dying, overthrew
Death, Sin, and Satan too.
O happy day!
May sinners say,
But day can it be said to be,
Wherein we see
The bright sun of celestial light
O'ershadowed with so black a night!1
No one would look for religious verses of any depth in the works of John Dryden (1631-1701). Still his mind was often occupied with the questions which were disputed between Roman Catholics and Protestants, and between Christianity and Deism. His Religio Laici, 1682, is simply an argument in verse on the relation of faith to reason :
How can the less the greater comprehend?
Or finite reason reach Infinity?
For what could fathom God were more than He.
Thus man by his own strength to heaven would soar ;
And would not be obliged to God for more.
Vain wretched creature, how art thou misled
To think thy wit these godlike notions bred,
These truths are not the product of thy mind,
But dropt from heaven, and of a nobler kind.
Reveal'd religion first inform'd thy sight,
And reason saw not, till faith sprung the light.
Most versions of the Veni, Creator Spiritus have more or less merit. Dryden's paraphrase of it is not equal
1 Sir E. Sherburne's Poems, Chalmers's British Poets, vol. vi. p. 633.
to some, but would be thought good if there were not others better. The following is part of it :
Creator Spirit, by whose aid
The world's foundations first were laid,
Come, visit every pious mind;
Come, pour Thy joys on human kind;
From sin and sorrow set us free,
And make Thy temples worthy Thee.
Refine and purge our earthly parts;
But, oh, inflame and fire our hearts!
Our frailties help, our vice control,
Submit the senses to the soul;
And when rebellious they are grown,
Then lay Thy hand, and hold them down,
Chase from our minds th' infernal foe.
And peace, the fruit of love, bestow;
And, lest our feet should step astray,
Protect and guide us in the way.
Make us eternal truths receive,
And practise all that we believe :
Give us Thyself, that we may see
The Father and the Son by Thee.
Half a century after the death of George Herbert, the tiny parish church of Bemerton again had its pulpit occupied by a rector whose name will ever stand high in the roll of English sacred poets. John Norris was born in 1657, and educated at Winchester, and Exeter College, Oxford. In 1680 he was elected Fellow of All Souls. In 1684 he published his Poems. In 1689 he was presented to the Rectory of St. Loe, in Somersetshire, and in 1691 was transferred to that of Bemerton, Wilts. It was there that he published his sermons, essays, and philosophical works. He died there in 1711, and on his tomb are the appropriate and suggestive words, 'Bene latuit.' Norris was one of the chief ornaments of that noble school of Christian Platonists, which about the same period numbered among its English adherents the names of Cudworth, Henry More, John Smith, Benjamin Whichcot, Widrington, and Wilkins. His religious poems are of a wholly different kind from those of his illustrious predecessor at Bemer
ton. Their charm chiefly consists in the expression
they give to the yearnings and aspirations of the human
soul for ideals of beauty and perfectness, not to be
realised here in the flesh, but which it believes with a
firm hope will be attainable in the fuller life of eternity
If it be said, and that with truth, that his thought is
somewhat enveloped in a sort of golden haze, yet this
is an atmosphere not unsuited to the region of hope
and undefined wistfulness in which a pure and philo-
sophic mind, trained in a lofty creed, looks forward into
the mystic future. The frequent fault of his verses is
one very common in his age—an artificial striving after
sublimity of language, as distinguished from that of
thought. The style of Pindar's odes had a fascination.
for verse-writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries which was prejudicial in the extreme to simple
purity of diction. Even the success which it now and
then attained to was misleading. A majestic combina-
tion of words, or a really grand figure of speech, might
easily tempt the poet, or his imitators, to a soaring
flight which could not be sustained, and which quickly
degenerated into inflation and mannerism. Norris is
not nearly so liable to this imputation as some of his
contemporaries and successors; but he is not free from it.
The following little poem is entitled The Aspiration :-
How long, great God, how long must I
Immured in this dark prison lie!
Where at the grates and avenues of sense
My soul must watch to have intelligence;
Where but faint gleams of Thee salute my sight,
Like doubtful moonshine in a cloudy night.
When shall I leave this magic sphere,
And be all mind, all eye, all ear?
How cold this clime! and yet my sense
Perceives even here Thy influence.
Even here Thy strong magnetic charms I feel,
And pant and tremble like the amorous steel.
To lower good, and beauties less divine,
Sometimes my erroneous needle does decline;
But yet--so strong the sympathy-
It turns, and points again to Thee.
I long to see this excellence
Which at such distance strikes my sense;
My impatient soul struggles to disengage
Her wings from the confinement of her cage.
To Thee, Thou only fair, my soul aspires
With holy breathings, languishing desires.
To Thee my enamoured, panting heart does move
By efforts of ecstatic love.
How do Thy glorious streams of light
Refresh my intellectual sight!
Though broken, and strained through a screen
Of envious flesh that stands between !
When shall my imprisoned soul be free,
That she Thy native uncorrected light may see,
And gaze upon Thy beatific face to all eternity?1
The great problem, the solemn mystery of death, possessed a great fascination for his mind. He often alludes to it, as for example
What a strange moment will that be,
My soul, how full of curiosity,
When wing'd, and ready for thy eternal flight,
On the utmost edges of the tottering day,
Hovering, and wishing longer stay,
Thou shalt advance and have Eternity in sight;
Would'st Thou, great Love, this prisoner once set free,
How would she hasten to be link'd with Thee.
She'd for no angel's conduct stay,
But fly, and love on all the way.2
FROM 'SERAPHIC LOVE.'
Through Contemplation's optics I have seen
Him who is fairer than the sons of men,-
The Source of good, the Light archetypal,
Beauty in the original,
The fairest of ten thousand He,
Proportion all and Harmony,
All mortal beauty's but a ray
Of His bright, ever-shining day-
A little, feeble, twinkling star,
Which, now the sun's in place, must disappear.
There is but One that's good, but One that's fair.
When just about to try that unknown sea,
What a strange moment will that be!
1 Norris's Poems, Grosart iii. 174.
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