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Content ELEMENTS OP THE OLD TESTAMENT
IN EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLISH POETRY
by
Ben Siegel
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
August 1956
UMI Number: DP23016
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Ph. D E '51 557/
This dissertation, written by
.............BerL.JSiegel.............
under the direction of.hXsGuidance Committee,
and approved by a ll its members, has been pre
sented to and accepted by the Faculty of the
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of the
requirements fo r the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
TP
Dean
^ Q J L
D ate ^Ugvfe^. 1 . 9 5 - 6 . ......
Guidance Committee
Chairman
j FOREWORD
i
t i
I :
i
I This study attempts to trace the Influence of the Old 1
Testament upon the major religious poets of the first half
of "that most Biblical of centuries," the seventeenth. It
! ■
has proved a complex problem, for the "Influence" is often
indirect, suggestive, and subtle, apparent more in a poet's
attitude, tone, general philosophy, or style, than In his
specific imagery. The limitations imposed by the title,
both as to subject matter and chronology, have been inter
preted liberally for the sake of thoroughness. Therefore,
^>ecause the Old Testament gave rise to the New, and the He-
bralc tradition to the Christlan, both the New Testament and
jthe Christian tradition have been carefully considered. The
Sixteenth century has also been discussed to illuminate more
ifully the thinking and events of the seventeenth. Converse-!
| , j
jly, Milton's Paradise Lost, appearing well past the mid
century mark, Is introduced here early, for its materials
I
are rooted not only in the Hebraic/Christian traditions, but'
in the political happenings of the Jacobean and Caroline
!
years as well.
The first two chapters, therefore, provide the Intel
lectual basis for the succeeding five chapters, as descrlb- j
Ing the religious, philosophical, and political conditions
which brought to Renaissance England, in the early years of
r _ „ „. _ ._ ... iv
the sixteenth century, a rapidly developing interest in He
brew studies. The third chapter serves as a bridge between I
these background chapters and the subsequent ones of more
detailed analyses, by explaining the manner in which John
Donne assimilated the Biblical materials, and created a body
r ' ■ ' :
of religious poetry which channeled and molded the poetry of
that small but Important group of early seventeenth century
religious poets Dr. Johnson labeled for posterity "the Meta-
Dhysicals.” ;
Each of the next chapters is devoted to one of the four:
most critically respected of Donne*s poetic followers. Thus;
i
the various ways in which George Herbert, Richard Crashaw,
Henry Vaughan, and Thomas Traherne used the basic Old Testa
ment themes and images provide the subject matter for the
rest of this study.
I
{
I
%
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD.................. .....................
s
Chapter
j I. THE RISE OF SEMITIC STUDIES IN SEVENTEENTH
I CENTURY ENGLAND . .
II. PURITANISM AND THE HEBRAIC TRADITION.......
, III. THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY RELIGIOUS
! MILIEU AND THE POETRY OF JOHN DONNE . . . .
; IV. GEORGE HERBERT’S USE OF OLD TESTAMENT IMAGERY
V. THE RELIGIOUS TRADITION IN THE POEMS OF
j RICHARD CRASHAW.................. . . .
t
| VI. THE PRINCIPAL RELIGIOUS THEMES AND IMAGES
IN THE POETRY OF HENRY VAUGHAN...........
VII. MAN’S RELATIONSHIP TO GOD IN THE POETRY OF
1 THOMAS TRAHERNE ............... . . . .
BIBLIOGRAPHY .....................................
CHAPTER I
THE RISE OF SEMITIC STUDIES
IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND
The seventeenth century was, generally speaking, an age
of transition, an age that saw the founding of the French
Academy and the Royal Society, the internationalizing of ;
knowledge, and the creation of colonial empires. It saw al
so the beginnings of the diary, the periodical, the news
paper, and the periodical essay. It was during this nervous,
turbulent century that men of letters became acutely con
scious of the sobriety and economy of Greek literature and
attempted to pattern European tragedy and lyric, criticism
and satire after the classical masters. It was the seven
teenth century that gave birth to the learned tract and the j
philosophic and political essay. The ancient concepts in
t
astronomy, mathematics, and medicine, as well as in religion
and government, were giving way to that skeptical spirit of
Scientific Investigation which was to form the intellectual ;
basis for modem learning. The very texture of everyday
i
life was changing, with such new articles of food as pota
toes, oranges, tobacco, and later coffee and tea, coming in-
to use from near and distant lands.
.
Seventeenth century England was valiantly attempting to
r----------------- —.— - ...............- ...... — ~tt
(
absorb and fuse these many divergent elements:
The bawdy, changeable, prayerful, narrow-minded, gay,
: agonized, careless England our ancestors quitted, for re-
I llgion's sake, for a king'3 sake, was the England of the
I plague, Vandyck, the smallpox, Lawes, John Hampden, heavy-
! headed pikes, close-shaven polls, Laniere, Inigo Jones,
1 long-haired fighters, Wren's arches, little boys' names
lifted heavily from the Old Testament— Hezekiah, Nehemiah,
Habakkuk, Jubal— songs of Garew, and hymns Intoned through
the nose. It was a varied England. It was the England of
princely Laud and poor "Bishop" Bumyan. It was also the
England becoming mainly London overnight, once the yeoman j
and the forests were cut down at the Restoration time.^ j
^ - •« — «• — » - «•;
Scriptures, the Glassies, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, |
j
and the Reformation. She engaged in a strenuous competition!
for the occupation, possession, and exploitation of those
t
areas of the world placed on the maps by the intrepid ad
venturers of the preceding century. Europe was divided intoj
| two armed camps, [by] the faith that was old in authority
and the one that was new In it; the authority of the medi
aeval "sectaries of the Holy Ghost" put Its head down to
the authority of newly liberated man. (Coffin and Wither-
j spoon, p. vli)
With Spanish military, naval, and economic power on a gradu
al but steady decline after the defeat of the Spanish Armada,
Leland viewed France and Holland, economic as well aa po- !
litlcal adversaries, with greater assurance.
Yet the English domestic situation was Itself far from
tranquil. The enlightened Tudor despotism had been replaced
by the stubborn absolutism of James Stuart, who would brook
^Robert P. T. Coffin and Alexander M. Witherspoon, eds..
Seventeenth Century Prose and Poetry (New York, 19*16), p.
xii........................... ......... ............... .
— . _ — _ ..... . — —
ho parliamentary opposition. In religion, the heavy-handed j
Archbishop Laud gave way to the equally adamant Independents]
The right of individual man to regulate himself— which
was the Renaissance glory and doctrine— came to be a
seventeenth-century fact, with a vengeance. England had
two complete revolutions within fifty years; two kings were
! dethroned, one beheaded; .the Anglican Church was really
built, was overturned, and restored, and half a hundred ;
new sects sprang up, whose main purpose seems to us now to
have been a profound desire to bring down the lightning of
tyranny upon their heads. So Holland filled up with
English Dissenters, then the New England woods filled up
! with Puritans, Maryland filled up with Roman Catholics, i
: Pennsylvania with Quakers, Georgia and Maine with Hugue
nots , and Virginia filled up with Cavaliers. (Coffin and
Witherspoon, p. vill) ;
i
Religious matters Involved everyone: rich and poor,
j
lettered and Ignorant alike took a deep personal interest in
the theological questions of the day. Central to any and
all religious Issues was the Bible. The religious atmos
phere of the seventeenth century had been created by the ag
gregate and liberalizing influences of the Italian Renais
sance. The Renaissance had manifested Itself in many ways, '
Out certainly one of the most significant developments for
i ;
religion had been the introduction into Europe of printing. ;
A . Latin version of the Bible published In 1452 (?) by Johann
Gutenberg was the first of approximately one hundred Spanish,
I '
Italian, French, Dutch, German, and Bohemian editions during;
the latter part of the fifteenth century. But perhaps the
greatest boon to contemporary Biblical scholarship was the I
| I
printing In 1488 of the original Hebrew of the Old j
Testament.2
The humanistic movement appeared in England about the
middle of the sixteenth century, bringing with it a good
! |
keal of Greek learning, or what was taken to be Greek learn-;
I !
ing. But
#
what had been originally Greek had become fused with other
streams of thought from many sources, including Medieval
mysticism, Persian astrology, Arabian philosophy, and the i
Jewish mysticism which centered about the Cabbalah. These
sources had become inextricably intermixed on the east and!
southeastern shores of the Mediterranean and when they
were transferred to the North and West were so interwoven ;
that Ficino (1433~99) in his Platonic, neo-Platonic, and j
neo-Pythagorean translations involved his fellow scholars
not only in Greek study, but in the study of the Semitic
| and Egyptian languages as well.3
i
English humanism, therefore, was characterized not only by
the study of Greek, but also by an intense interest in its
I
1 ■
allied Semitic tongues. Much of this was due to the contri
butions of such continental scholars as Pico della Mirandola^
Jacob Loans, Johann Reuchlin, and a notable group of other
i i
Semitic authorities. As Harris Francis Fletcher points out,
it was due to this new interest in Semitic learning that
Luther, thoroughly familiar with both Hebrew and Greek, was
able to influence considerably the theological thinking of
2Frank Ely Gaebeieln, Down Through the Ages: the Story
of the King James Bible (Newltotic7l925TrpV457
^Harris Francis Fletcher, Milton1a Semitic Studies
(Chicago, 1926), p. 6.
^See G. H. Box, "Hebrew Studies in the Reformation
Period and After," in The Legacy of Israel. ed. Edwyn R.
Bevan and Charles Singer (Oxford, 1927), pp. 315-375.
his day, for his major contribution was the translation of
the Bible from its original tongues (Milton’s Semitic
Studies, p. 6). It is therefore important to note that It
r ,, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "
was this religious element of the Renaissance which was to
have the most telling effect on later English thinking, for
the purely classical humanism
was diverted from its onward flow by the events of the
reign of Queen Mary and the political and ecclesiastical
exigencies of Queen Elizabeth’s reign.5
i ' • ;
i England took to Greek learning slowly in the first
quarter of the sixteenth century, but displayed an ever**
deepening curiosity toward the classics as the century pro
gressed. The English humanists differed from those on the
Continent in that, while they were in definite opposition to
nedleval asceticism and scholasticism and vociferous in
;their criticism of contemporary abuses in the church, they
never suffered a loss of faith in their religious convic
tions. They firmly believed that the most likely means of
achieving human development lay in a happy fusion of the
best of classical culture with Christianity. This belief
accounted for the Renaissance habit of intermingling pagan
i i
j
and Christian elements in many literary works— those of |
Spenser and Milton being the most notable examples. By the
middle of the sixteenth century, the study of Greek and the
!
i
j
| ^poster Watson, "Scholars and Scholarship, 1600-60," in
The Cambridge History of English Literature (New York, 1911)*
yii, Pi.
Semitic languages was enhanced by the growing Protestant
concern for the Scriptures. With the death of Mary Tudor
and the return of the English exiles from Geneva, Frankfort,!
and Strasbourg, there developed the conviction that what was;
I .... ^
needed was a society based upon the intellectual and moral
i ’ i
discipline of the Bible. Thus, the latter part of the six- |
fceenth century gave rise to
the greatest period of linguistic activity in English his-i
tory, an activity which increased for almost exactly a i
century then declined and dissipated itself into more
utilitarian and linguistically secondary channels, but
never completely disappeared. fMilton’s Semitic Studies,
p. 7)
This fusing of linguistic and scriptural interests was j
to culminate in l6ll in the King James Bible* But the di
rect roots for the development of an English Bible go back
at least to 1500; for from this time on, the Protestant
jattltude began more and more to find a haven in England,
particularly under Henry VIII and Elizabeth. An English
Bible thus became inevitable. During Elizabeth's reign, in !
fact, at least one hundred and thirty distinct issues of
Bibles and Testaments were printed, the Geneva version being
by far the most popular "household" edition. Easy to handlej
because of its small size, this version went through at
' ' 6
least ninety issues. This would mean, on the average, that
i
about three editions a year were printed— undoubtedly enough!
^Christopher Anderson, Annals of the English Bible, ed.
Hugh Anderson (London, 1862), pp.353, 360T
j — ' - ." ...... ' 7;
Bibles to supply every English Protestant family. John
Richard Green states that the English, from the middle years
of Elizabeth's reign on, were rapidly to become
the people of a book, and that book was the Bible. It was
as yet the one English book which was familiar to every >
, Englishman; It was read at churches and read at home, and
j everywhere its words, as they fell on ears which custom i
i had not deadened, kindled startling enthusiasm.7
j
England was now thinking and acting In terms of the ]
Bible, drawing Its religious and spiritual strength, as well1
as its political and economic thought, from Scripture.
Green points out that the entire corpus of English prose,
with the possible exception of the little-read tracts of
Wycllf, had developed after the translations by Tyndale and
loverdale. The large majority of English readers were not
even aware of any history, romance, or poetry (except, per
haps, the verse of Chaucer) when the Book began to be read
the crowds that gathered round Bishop Bonner's Bibles in
the nave of St. Paul's or the family group that hung on
the words of the Geneva Bible in the devotional exercises
at home . . . (Short History, p. 460)
While the Bible exerted its influence upon all of J
English society, it had particular significance for the
Puritan. The Scriptures represented for him the principal
authority on all theological matters, and he soon became the.
i !
i
real representative of the Reformation within the Anglican
7Short History of the English People (New York, 1888),
p. 460,
I 8
Church. The Puritan looked upon the English as God's chosen!
people, paralleling their state with that of the ancient
i .
Israelites. Discussing the "Influence of the Old Testament i
L W. B. SeXbie
As time went on and many of the Puritans were forced i
into separation from the Church of their fathers and ulti
mately to take up arms In civil warfare, they found In the
prophetic and apoealyptic writings of the New Testament,
as well as the Old, the best possible expression for their,
hopes and fears, and In the wars of Israel against her |
numerous foes a fitting parallel for their own beleaguered!
position. The Old Testament became to them a book of the I
Wars of the Lord. Their God was Jehovah of Hosts who
would help them to smite Philistines and Amalekltes hip
and thigh. (Legacy of Israel, p. 409)
Thus, while the Puritans were far from neglecting the New
i
I
Testament, it was easy for them to fuse the absolute wad
arbitrary sovereign of Calvin with the relentless and war-
Like Yahweh of so much of the Old Testament. Furthermore,
the Calvinistic doctrine of redemption, derived from Adam's
| i
fall, was best expressed "in terms of Old Testament legal-
Ism," while the New Testament was valued by most Puritans
"more as an armoury of texts for their ecclesiastical con
flicts than as a guide either for theology or ethics" (Sel-
bie, p. 411).
The Anglicans were not so literal-minded where the j
Bible was concerned. They could not accept the doctrine
that |
!
every incidental history, every minute circumstance, was !
Intended by God to be universally and literally binding on
all men. God had Inspired the book in order that the
fundamental and comprehensive truths of religion might be
set down; he had inspired individual men at particular
times and places to write it, and they had written in
their particular dialects and told a great many things
j that were of only temporary importance. The difference
between the Anglican and the Puritan, then, was that the
Puritan thought the Bible, the revealed word of God, was
the word of God from one end to the other, a complete body;
of laws, ah absolute code In everything it touched upon;
i the Anglican thought this a rigid, doctrinaire, and utter
ly unjustifiable extension of the authority of scripture, j
j The Puritan held that the Bible was sufficiently plain and
! explicit so that men with the proper learning, following >
i the proper rules of deduction and interpretation, could
! establish its meaning and Intention on every subject, not j
I only in theology, but in ethics, costume, diplomacy, mill-;,
tary tactics, Inheritances, profits, marriages, and Judi
cial procedure. . . .In so far as scholasticism was a de
fence of the Church of Rome, the Puritans could push it i
aside and set up the Bible.8
The role of the Bible In the transformation of the
English character and way of life during Elisabeth's reign
Was thus a dominant one.
I • •
| The moral effect which is produced now-a-days by the
i religious newspaper, the tract, the essay, the lecture,
» the missionary report, the sermon, was then produced by
the Bible alone; and its effect in this way, however dis- ;
passionately we examine it, was simply amazing. (Green,
Short History, p. 462)
It was virtually impossible for the Crown to curb the
voices urging greater individual freedom. True, Elizabeth
could determine the form and content of the pulpit orations,
■ I
but she could do little to stop the dissemination of the j
ideas of liberty and truth propagated by the book she had !
!
helped to open.
The Bible tended to alter the social view of man that
had been stimulated earlier by the revitalized interest in
®Perry Miller and T. H. Johnson, The Puritans (New
York, 1938), pp. 43, 26.
Greek literature. The Scriptures differed in certain essen
tial points from the Greek brand of Humanism. Greek myth
ology focuses primarily upon the activities of a group of
gods and demigods, with man playing but a secondary role,
!
while the Greek dramatists concentrate on the tragic flaws
in characters of high place. The Bible (and certainly the
Did Testament) centers its attention on both the high and
the low; not man glorified into a remote, godlike creature,
but common, frail, sinning man— generous and selfish, brave
and cowardly, magnanimous and petty. Adam and Eve, given
everything they can wish for, yield to the first temptation
(Genesis iii.6). Abraham, the first Hebrew patriarch, fear-
jful of the lustful Pharaoh, displays cowardice in denying
that Sarah is his wife (Genesis xii.10-13). Jacob sinks to :
trickery to usurp his brother*s birthright (Genesis xxvil.l-l
Joseph, glorying in his power as first minister in
Igypt, revengefully plagues his brothers with eruel Jests
1 '
(Genesis xxxxLi.6-28; xxxxiv.1-13). David, because he lusts
after Uriah * s wife, brings about the death of this brave j
soldier (II Samuel xi.14-17). Solomon, with all his wisdom,
yields to the blandishments of his foreign wives and acceptsj
I
bther religions (I Kings xi.1-8). Almost every major Bibli
cal personage reveals some very human character flaw. Be
cause these figures are presented with such unflagging real
ism, the Elizabethan reader could both sympathize and identl-
!fy with them.
A realistic view of man, reflected also in the concern j
! I
throughout the Scriptures for the poor, the orphaned, the
mistreated,^ was responsible for much of the Puritan view of
the equality of all men before God— at least of all men
i ■ i
within the brotherhood of the elected saints. And while he |
[ !
had little-use for those who bore the taint of worldliness, :
the Puritan, imbued with this sense of religious equality,
; i
tended to do away with "that overpowering sense of social l
I . I
distinctions which characterised the age of Elizabeth”
(Green, Short History, p. 464), for it was the middle and
professional classes which provided the vigor for the new
r •
I
religious movement.
The Interest In Biblical themes, which permeated the
Lntellectual atmosphere of England in the late decades of
the sixteenth and In the early decades of the seventeenth j
Century, becomes easier to understand when the educational
I ' !
curriculum is considered. It should be remembered that the
I
schools of the time were designed to train boys for the
Church of England. And the Church was growing increasingly
aware of the Importance of Biblical linguistics. With the
. . . » |
as St. Paul's, Christ's Hospital, Westminster, and Merchant |
. i
Taylors, most English schoolboys soon had ample opportunity j
j
to learn Hebrew (Box, "Hebrew Studies," pp. 341-342). In
9see, for example, Deuteronomy xv.7-11j xxlv.17-24,
14-15. ____
i --------------------------------------------- - . 12-
fact, the charter* of York school In January of 15^6/7 stipu
lated that the master was to "have understandings in the He-
10
brew, Greek, and Latin tongues.' Most of the other gram-
i "
mar schools seem to have taken up the study of Hebrew after j
j ' ' t
phis date,11 and by the beginning of the seventeenth century,
Hebrew had become an integral part of the grammar school
curriculum.
Charles Hoole, master of the free school at Rotherham
in Yorkshire, gives a particularly detailed account of
beaching methods in the grammar schools of the early seven
teenth century in his book New Discovery of the Old Art of
Teaching School.12 He informs us that the English Bible
served as thepupils* initial textbook; it was studied for
its use of language as well as for its content. In the
fourth form, Hoole replaced the English with a Latin version
and in the sixth, with texts in Greek and Hebrew. The He-
jbraic grammatical exercises consisted of writing the alpha
bet and the "chief rules," and learning the few declensions
j
and the conjugations with their "proper meanings," There
■^A. F. Leach, Schools of Medieval England (London, j
1910), p. 328. |
3-*At about the same time, the universities also became j
Interested in Hebraic studies. Fletcher gives 15^7 as the
Idate of the establishment of the Regius Professorship in He
brew at Cambridge (Milton*s Semitic Studies, p. 9)* Box
states that Henry VIII had provided funds for this chair In
Hebrew as early as 15^0 ("Hebrew Studies," p. 3^1)*
12Ed. Thlselton Mark (Syracuse, 1912). The book was
Ifirst published in 1659.
.**
were also a certain number of roots to be memorized daily
(pp. 214-217).
i Having mastered the rudiments, the student was then ex-
i |
pected to translate various books of the Pentateuch from
I :
English and Latin into Hebrew. He then proceeded to trans
late the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, in that |
order, and to pen orations, verses, and epistles in Hebrew.
In fact, states Hoole, the students at the Westminster
school wrote ©rations and verse not only in Hebrew but
In Arabick and other Oriental Tongues, to the amazement of
their hearers, who are angry at their own Ignorance, be
cause they know not well what is then being said or writ- [
ten. (p. 217)
| The degree to which the Hebrew Scriptures had colored
|
the educational thinking of the time is exemplified in John
pHlton*s "Ad Patrem," a Latin exercise addressed to his
father. Milton discusses his acquisition of "the tongue of l
the Romans" and the "grand speech of the Greeks," and then
expresses his admiration for "the mystic strains which the
Palestine prophet delivers.”*3 And while it is not clear at
what age Milton himself acquired his knowledge of the Mebrewj
tongue, he states many years later that Hebrew should be
acquired before the student completes grammar school, in I
order "that the Scriptures may be read in their own origi
nal"; and then he adds rather off-hamdedly, "whereto it
*%or an interesting discussion of this work by Milton,
see M. B. Crook. The Bible and Its Literary Associations
[(New York, 1937), pp. 284-285.
f . . — ........................... x 4
would be no Impossibility to add the Chaldee, and the Syriac
dialect."14
i
I The growing prestige of Hebrew was further enhanced by
the fact that unlike Greek it did not possess a seeular
literature. Also, seventeenth century philologists had
■j !
evolved the widely accepted hypothesis that Hebrew was the j
toot language for all later tongues; it was also held that |
the culture and nationalities which these languages ex
pressed were in turn derived from Hebrew culture. It was
not until late in the century that the philosopher Leibnitz !
was able to point out the fallacy of this theory.1* * Further
Interest in Hebraic studies, as well as in general Oriental I
Learning and culture, was created by travelers to the Orient)
mho returned with manuscripts, printed books, and considera
ble lore (MiltonSemitic Studies, p. 9).
The England in which Milton was growing up was thus
marked by an increasing theological and religious zeal.
This new moral zeal, increasingly evident in literature, was
spreading throughout English society, enveloping all classes,
manifesting itself in both learning and listening. People j
developed great patience in listening to both preachers and
teachers; they developed a talent for memorizing and
l4,,0f Education," in The Student1 s Milton. ed. Frank
Allen Patterson (New York, 1933), P* 729-
Muller, The Science of Language (New York, 1863),
I, 132-135*
visualizing the stories and heroes of the Bible, and they
crowded into the churches, listening avidly to sermons which
would seem Incredibly long to a modern listener. It was a
period of memorable preaching and preachers: Lancelot
Andrewes, John Donne, Joseph Mall, James Ussher, Thomas i
j ’""".. " . ' : ' ' ' " ' j
Fuller, and Jeremy Taylor were only a few of the eloquent j
pulpit orators. It is rather difficult for the twentieth
i
century to realize the importance of the sermon in the
I
seventeenth. The seventeenth century sermon I
besides its strictly religious function, took in large
measure the place of the journalistic press at the present
day, and enjoyed the enormous influence, reinforced by a
tremendous sanctity of authority, of a modern major broad-
j casting company.1®
|
Roman Catholic scholars, stimulated by the demands of
theological controversy, gave further impetus to the study
of Hebrew and Greek. The English Puritans, who depended
solely on their Bibles--and often on the English versions
alone, soon found themselves no match for the Jesuits, "who
1.....
commanded every resource of Biblical erudition, as well as
of ecclesiastical history, for dlsputational purposes" (Mil
ton^ Semitic Studies, p. 10). The period from 1588 to 1609
■ • ' !
was the greatest in Jesuit scholarship; during these years,
Cardinal Baronlus published his Annales Ecclesiastic! in
|
twelve folios. As Mark Pattlson states:
The whole case of the Romanists, and especially of the See
1%. Fraser Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from
Andrewes to Tillotson (London, 1932), p. 3«
r _ . . 1 6
of Rome, was here set oat In the form of authentic annals.
. . . The Annals transferred to the Catholic party the
: preponderance In the field of learning which ever since
Erasmus had been on the side of the Innovators.17
i
J By the beginning of the seventeenth century, then, re
ligious disputants had to be thoroughly learned in the Latin;
Greek, and Hebrew tongues if they were to hold their own j i
! ' ■ ' . ” ' . I
jbhey had to be familiar with Patristic and Byzantine Greek, I
i -
as well as the Greek of the Hew Testament, and to extend
I ....
their Hebraic studies from the "pointed” text of the Hebrew
j
2anon to all the related tongues of the Semitic language
group, generally referred to under the inclusive heading of ;
"Semitics.” ’ Hie increasing academic importance of Hebrew is
j.
reflected in a funeral sermon delivered in 1605 by Thomas
i - " j
Playfere, at that time Cambridge * s most distinguished pulpit^
— describing Hebrew as tbe Wienbisb, bbe
1
shortest, the plainest of all languages," he adds:
A great part of assiduitie, as Plato aheweth, is the know
ledge of true etymologies. These in other tongues are un-
certaine, in this taking out of the naturall qualities of
everything that is named. For so much as when any man
hath founde out the Hebrew etymology then he neede seeke
no further. . . . Therefore though a man cannot read the
Rabbins, yet unless he can understande handsomely well the
Hebrew text, he is eompted but a maimed, or as it; were but
halfe a divine, especially in this learned age.18
Despite this awareness of the value of Hebrew knowledge,
:§nglish Protestant scholars at the turn of the seventeenth
^Tlsaac Casaubon (Oxford, 1892), pp. 325“326.
l8The Felloitie of the Faithful: A Funeral Sermon
Preached In St. Mary’s. Mav 10.1605 < ( Cambridge. 1621?.
Quoted in Fletcher, Milton^ Semitic Studies, pp. 9~10*
%
^ ........... .......................................— ..................... - .— 17
century found themselves unequal as yet to the task of ade
quately refuting the arguments of Baronius and had to turn
|for assistance to a great continental scholar of classical
languages— Isaac Casaubon, who, with Erasmus and the Scali-
gers, formed for England "the great trilogy of Biblical com-
i -
mentators” fMjlfeon*B Semitic Studies, p. 8).
j The numerous volumes "of controversy and piety" which |
resulted from these disputations, and which "still crowd our
I
older libraries," tended to drive "before them the classical
translations and Italian novelettes of the age of the Ren
aissance" (Green, Short History, p. 462). The medieval in- j
fallibility of Aristotle*s authority was vanishing rapidly
during the last years of the sixteenth century and the first;
years of the seventeenth, to be replaced by the infalliblli-i
fey of Scripture. Even science had not yet achieved that
!
level of respectability whereby it could effectively chal-
i
1
lenge Biblical authority. The entire nation was imbued with
‘ the grand vision of a theocracy on earth" (Watson, p. 366).
. -fence, it fell to the more active representatives of learn
ing and education to conduct the religious controversies of 1
j I
fehe day, buttressed by the findings of the more purely medi-
j
feative scholars who remained in the background.
Biblical scholarship and learning tended to create an
Intellectual and moral atmosphere of "strenuousness, sobrle-
!
ty, and . . . sincerity, probably never so largely sustained;
by book learning, in any age, and rarely in any country"
(Watson, p. 367)* Hugo Grotius describes the England of
1605 as "ruled by theology"; and when Casaubon arrived in
England at King James's invitation, he found an attitude of j
general indifference toward pure letters. "There is a greatj
i ' ' .
abundance of theologians in in gland," he observes; "all
point their studies in that direction" (quoted in Green,
Short History, p. 462). And the contemporary Biblical j
scholars pursued their studies with rare intensity, as the
^following description indicates:
Bishop Horton was at his studies before four o'clock; in
the morning, even after he was 80 years of age. Matthew
, ! Poole rose at three or four o'clock, ate a raw egg at
I eight or nine, another at twelve and continued his studies
till late in the afternoon. Sir Matthew Hale, for many
I years, studied sixteen hours a day. For several years
JOhn Owen did not allow himself more than four hours'
sleep. Feats of memory are as remarkable for their fre
quency as for their comprehensiveness. . . . Moreover, the;
number of references to memory testifies to the conscious j
cultivation of the art. (Watson, pp. 366-367)
It must not be thought, however, that Biblical learning
remained the preoccupation solely of clerics and scholars.
The Bible had become the core of the Protestant movement;
providing the means whereby the individual could come into
kirect contact with the word of God, it materially in-
i
flueneed the thinking of the average Englishman and even
played an important role in fashioning his language. The
Greek and Batin tongues lost a great deal of their universal
appeal in translation; for the most part, the classical
wrltings reached and influenced only the "intelligentsia"—
Binacre, Colet, More, the Florentine Neo-Platonic Academy in
1 9
Italy— and not the average English reader. The Hebrew
tongue, however, lent itself to English translation with
amazing ease. Gfaebeleln maintains that the English of 1600
retained many more of the grammatical and stylistic elements
of Old English than are generally emphasized, and that these
I . . |
elements have a good deal in common with the Hebrew: j
Both are elemental; both are simple. And both, while
capable of vigorous and lyrical utterance are almost in-
capable of expressing abstract ideas. The Old Testament |
imagery derives its strength from nature and the primitive!
emotions. Physical activity is at the root of most Hebrew
words. The vocabulary of the ancient Jew was extraordi
narily weak where the great modern tongues are strongest, !
namely in philosophical, scientific, and general terms,
And Anglo-Saxon partakes of the same characteristics; It
has a real affinity for the Hebrew, The fact that the
English of the Elizabethan period was nearer to the Anglo-
Saxon than the English of today takes on, therefore, a
significance for those who are seeking to explain the
literary supremacy of the King James Bible. Thus we find
Tyndale saying, "And the proplrties of the Hebrue tonge
agreth a thousands tymes moare with the English than with j
the Latyne. The maner of speakynge Is in both one, so
. . .In a thousande places thou neadest not but to trams-i
late it in to , . .English word© for worde." The same
thing, although to a lesser degree, holds true for English
and Greek. "For the Greke tonge," according to Tyndale,
! "agreth moare with English then with the Latyne."
(Gaebelein, pp. 79-8G)
The manner in which Tyndale handled the English lan
guage would seem to Indicate that he wished to produce an
English which would serve as a model for ordinary f&igllshmen.
ie thus adopted a direct, concise, idiomatic style on a
level - l a w ^ween the colloquial and the pedantic. As
Crook points out, Tyndale’s famous statement "about trans-
I
lating for the plowboy must not be taken too seriously" (The
Bible, p. 255)• His real reading target was the intelligent
- — - — 2 0
and Increasingly aggressive middle elass that was destined
soon to become highly influential.
| Tyndale was evidently aware of the fragmentary Anglo-
Saxon scriptural translations, but found them unsatisfactory
jbecause "the tonge that then was in England" had changed so
radically that he felt he had to evolve a new Biblical
phraseology. At the same time, he seems to have been un- j
acquainted with the Wyclif translation: j
I had no man to counterfeit, neither was I helped with
English by any that had interpreted the same or such like
thing in the scripture beforetime.*9
"rook presents what seems to be a plausible explanation of
jiyndale's silence on the Wyclif Bible:
i
Denuded of their prologues, copies of the Wyclif Bible
had survived here and there. Sir Thomas More himself had j
seen them in the houses of his friends, and had failed to j
recognize them for what they were, so completely had the
origin of the fourteenth century English Bible vanished
from the memory of the churchmen of the sixteenth. (The
Bible, p. 256)
rhus, Tyndale, regarding his work as a kind of pioneering
effort, labored diligently to develop a modernized English
idiom. A true artist, he was not easily satisfied with his j
own results? for upon his completion of the New Testament inj
1526, he stated that English is "a thing not having his full
shape, but as it were a thing bom before his time, even as
a thing begun rather than finished" (Doctrinal Treatises, p.
19poctrinal Treatises and Introduction to Different
Portions of the Bible, ed. Henry Walter (Cambridge. l£^8).
P. 390.
_ _ . . _ 21
148). He revised constantly in order to make of English an
adequate medium for an accurate reflection of thought.
Certainly Tyndale was not alone in these efforts, for
many secular prose writers felt that Renaissance England
i
1
merited a language worthy of the country’s achievements.
Such men as Elyot, Mulcaster, Wilson, and Ascham were j
! i
anxious to produce an English which could adequately com-
inunicate the country’s new learning to posterity. The num
ber of books written in Latin decreased. But many English
writers still felt that much remained to be done before
i
j
English would be sufficiently purged of rudeness to attain a
i
level of purity equal to Latin. Thus, many set about "im-
i
proving" the English tongue by introducing rhetorical fig
ures, elaborate structures, and foreign locutions. The
fantastic language experiments of the sixteenth century are
well known— John Lily’s ornate prose works being possibly
the most familiar and most extreme.
This highly decorative and oratorical prose conflicted
jWith the simple, direct, practical style of the scientific
and popular religious writers of the Renaissance. Whereas |
the former prose style was directed at both ear and imagi
nation, the latter style was designed to delight "only the
I
mind to which it conveys essential information or the pious
jheart which it instructs in essential doctrine” (Crook, The
'Bible, p. 311). This second style was in a direct line with
Tyndale's linguistic achievements. Seventy to ninety per
2 0
cent of his vocabulary was of pure English origin. He
j j
kept always in mind that he was
distributing unto his brethren and fellows of one faith
their due and necessary food, so dressing it and seasoning
j it that the weak stomachs may receive it also and be the
better for it. (Doctrinal Treatises, p. 469)
This bare, firm, workmanlike prose of Tyndale helped
establish the model for the translators of the succeeding |
English Bibles, as well as for the scientific theorists from
!3acon to the members of the Royal Society. This pragmatic, i
homely, native style (serving also the purposes of the vig- J
orous polemical writers of the age21) reached an increasing-!
ly larger reading public by meams of a rapidly expanding
i
printing press. The language levels of the scholar and the
people were thus brought together.
j Following the tradition begun by Tyndale, then, the
language of the English Bible was firmly established, by the
jbeginning of the seventeenth century, as "a vernacular
freshly turned to purposes of literature,”22 with all the
20L. H. Wild, "Tyndale*s Linguistic Genius,” in Mac-
ionald Presentation Volume: A Tribute to Duncan Black Mac
donald (Princeton. 1933). pp. 4o2-4o4.
21Milton, for Instance, uses the style with obvious
relish, primarily when attacking political and religious op
ponents: "be not deceived, readers, by men . . . that can
pram a margin with citations. Do but winnow their chaff
from their wheat, ye shall see their great heap shrink and
wax thin, past belief.” (An Apology for Smectvmnuus. in
Student*s Milton, p. 570)
22 j. h . Gardiner, The Bible as English Literature (New
York, 1906), p. 11.
vigor, concreteness, and vividness of a highly colloquial
i
tongue and with a minimum of abstract and learned words.
1
And, although they employed a relatively limited vocabu
lary,^^ the various English translations provided Eliza-
i
bethan and Jacobean writers with a rich vein of imagery and
phraseology. The English Bible formed
i
the [principal] literature which was practically accessi
ble to ordinary Englishmen; and when we recall the number
j of common phrases which we owe to great authors, the bits
j of Shakespeare, or Milton, or Dickens, or Thackeray, which
i unconsciously interweave themselves in our ordinary talk,
! we shall better understand the strange mosaic of Biblical
! words and phrases which coloured English talk two hundred j
! years ago. The mass of picturesque allusion and illus
tration which we borrow from a thousand books, our fathers
were forced to borrow from one; and the borrowing was the
easier and the more natural in that the range of Hebrew
literature fitted it for the expression of every phase of
j feeling. (Green, Short History, p. 46l) |
! The experimenters of the sixteenth century "renaissance*
jln English poetry occupied themselves, to a considerable ex
tent, with metrical renditions of various scriptural seg-
oii
nents — particularly the Psalms and Ecclesiastes. In ad
dition, several of the more prominent sixteenth century
^Compare, for instance, the estimated 6,000 words usedj
by the translators of the King James Bible, with Shakespeareb
vocabulary of approximately 21,000 words and Milton’s, of
approximately 13,000. Albert S. Cook, The Authorized Ver
sion of the Bible and Its Influence (New York, 1910}, p. 47.
I oil
j Israel Baroway points out the existence of an "aes
thetic compulsion on the part of Wyatt, Surrey, Gascoigne,
Sidney, and Chapman, among others, "to shape the mystifying
jrhythms and the exotic imagery of Biblical poetry into fa
miliar Renaissance patterns” ("The Imagery of Spenser and
[the Song of Songs," Journal of English and Germanic Phllolo-
jgy. 33:23, April 193*0''•Both Wyatt and Surrey used Biblical
Verse to experiment with new metrical forms. In his _____
j “ ‘ .. .... . 24
literary critics used "Divine Poetry" as a means of defend
ing all poetry against its detractors. Thomas Lodge, for
i
example, pointed out that since
F
I the framing of common welthes, and defence therof, pro-
: ceedeth from poets, how dare you therfor open your mouth
j against them. . . . God keep© vs from a Plato that should
j expel such men. ... If therefore you will deale in |
things of wisdome, correct the abuse, honor the science, j
renewe your schoole; crye out over Hierusalem wyth the |
prophet the woe that he pronounced . . . tel the house of j
i Jacob theyr Iniquities. . . . Thunder oute wyth the Proph-j
j ete Micha the mesage of the Lord, and wyth him desyre the I
Judges to hear© thee, the Prynces of lacob to hearken to j
thee, and those of the house of Israeli to vnderstand;
. . . shew them that Solomons kingdom© was but for a sea
son, and that aduersitie cometh ere we espye it. These be
the songs of Sion, these be those rebukes which you oughte
to add to abuses . . .25
t
|
Barnaby Googe, in the preface to his translation of a Latin
i
poem Zodiake of Life by Marcellus Stellatus, defends poetry ;
j
with the zeal of a Puritan:
The diuime and notable Prophecies of Esay, the Lamenta
tions of Jeremie, the Songs and Ballades of Solomon, the
Psalter of David, and the Booke of Hiob, were written by
the first auctours in perfect and pleasant hexameter
verses. So that the deuine and canonicall volumes were
garnished and set forth with sweete according tunes and
heauenly soundes of pleasaumt metre. Yet wyll not the
graceless© company of our pernicious hypocrites allow,
j that the Psalmes of Dauld should be translated into
; Englishe metre. (London, 1588)
I . . . :
And Sir John Harington*s "A Brief Apology for Poetry," j
Penitential Psalmes. Wyatt employed both terza rima and ot-
tava rima. metres made famous by Dante and Petrarch j and
half of the eighteen poems which Surrey wrote in the iambic
couplet of alternating twelve and fourteen-syllable lines
(known as "Poulter’s Measure") were devoted to translations
from the Psalms and Ecclesiastes.
^"Defence of Poetry" (1579)i in Elizabethan Critical
Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (Oxford, 1904), I, 77 78.
2 5
prefacing his translation of Orlando Purloso in 1591» takes
a similar and by-this~time probably traditional tone:
? But now for the authorltie of Verse, if it be not suf
ficient to say for them that the greatest Philosophers and
grauest Senatours that euer were haue vsed them both in
their speeches and in their writings . . . let this serue
that some part of the Scripture was written in verse, as
the Psalmes of Dauid. & certain other songs of Deborah, of
Solomon, & others, which the leamedest diuines do affirme
to be verse and find that they are in meeter, though the I
rule of the Hebrew verse they agree not on. Sufflseth it j
me only to proue that by the authorltie of sacred Scrip
tures both parts of Poesie, inuention or imitation and
verse, are allowable, & consequently that great obiection
of lying is quite taken away & refuted. (Elizabethan
Critical Essav3. II, 207)
By the middle of the century, metrical versions of the
I
i
Psalms enjoyed considerable popularity; in 1547, those of
Sternhold and Hopkins were arranged to be sung in church and
in 1562, were even printed in some editions of the Geneva
Bible.26
26Graee W. Landrum, "Spenser’s Dse of the Bible and His
Alleged Puritanism," PMLA. 41:524, September 1926. Spenser*©
knowledge and use of Old Testament materials are also noted 1
by Baroway (see n. 24). These scholars cite many scattered j
References to the Old Testament in Spenser’s poems and point
out his special indebtedness to the Song of Songs. Baroway ;
Contends, in fact, that Spenser, in a version now lost, had
translated the Song of Songs into English verse ("Imagery of
Spenser," p. 24). Miss Landrum, in discussing Spenser's ap
plication of scriptural themes to his own cosmic view,
points out; "The Hebrew imagination is rich in its portray
al of wisdom, the attainment of which by man is the goal of
human endeavor, and a linking of the human with the divine.
It is, then, an easy step for Spenser, building upon his
scheme of love, beauty, heavenly love and heavenly beauty,
influenced by Platonic, and neo-Platonic, but more by thor
oughly Biblical conceptions, entirely to identify Wisdom and
Heavenly Beauty as a second attribute of God the Father, the
first being Love expressed in Christ's redemptive power" (p.
530).
1
In addition, many of the Elizabethan dramatists were
also making use of the older Scriptures.2^ Plays centering
about David and his court were particularly popular.
Peeled David and Bethsabe. for instance, has been described
ks "one of the most sugary romances of the period," contain
ing a copious amount of lush imagery drawn from the Song of
Songs.2® There is also a record of an early interlude en
titled The Two Slnnes of Kina Davyd.2^ and of a play deal- j
ing with the story of Absalom, in which, evidently, Absalom's
i
! !
hanging was elaborately staged; for Thomas Henslowe notes
|that he "pd for poleyes & worckmanshipp for to hange absa-
s
lome . . . xiijd."^0 King Solomon was also featured in the
f
jdrama in a masque, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, presented
I
before King James and the King of Denmark at Theobalds.
j 2^Somewhat earlier, dramatists had made use of Old
Testament stories primarily for purposes of spreading re
ligious or political propaganda. The dramas of John Bale,
'for example, very often contain virulent attacks on the
Catholics. For Bale's use of Old Testament materials, see
particularly A Comedy Concerning Three Laws, of Nature.
Moses, and Christ: A Tragedy or Interlude Manifesting the
Chief Promises of Cod unto Man: and David and Absolom. in
The Dramatic Writings of John Bale, ed. John Stephen Farmer
j ( London, 190?). And an anonymous interlude Godly Queen
Hester (1525“29?) was probably Intended as a satire on Wol-
sey and the court of Henry VIII, according to W. W. Greg in
his introduction to Materialieu (Louvain, 190*0* p. Ix.
| 2®LouIs B. Wright, "The Scriptures and the Elizabethan
Stage." Modern Philology. 26:50, August 1928.
29j. o. Balliwell, Dictionary of Old English Plays
(London, i860), p. 259*
^Opiarv. ed. W. W. Greg (London, 1904), I, 182.
r _— ------------- -------_ ----------------- 27
i
(This performance, according fc o Sir John Harlngton, was fol
lowed by a bacchanalian spree, in which the Danish King
tried to dance with a rather inebriated Queen of Sheba, but j
Was unable to remain upright.)^1 There were also dramatic
versions of the stories of Abraham and Lot and of "heaster &
asheweros,” as well as a series of dramas having to do with ,
i
the pitiable Jephthah, including a popular Bartholomew Fair j
puppet play entitled Jeptha1s Rash Vow (Halllwell. . Diction-
ary. p. 132).
Dramatization of Old Testament stories persisted
throughout the Elizabethan period, with Biblical figures ap
pearing in masques and pageants as well as plays.
! ■ I
j For as godless a lot as their critics made them out, the
! Elizabethan dramatists displayed unexpected interest in
things scriptural and pious. ... In the Bible they found
material not only for plays but often for non-dramatic
work. That some of these dramatists had a pious regard
for the Bible and were well versed in its stories and
teachings is certain. A study of the literary Influence
of the Bible on Elizabethan drama, especially in symbol
ism, phrase, and Imagery, would not prove a barren task.
(Wright, "The Scriptures," pp. 54, 5b)
However, with the coming of the Stuarts to the English
| Slflary Susan Steele, Flays andMasques at Court, Cor
nell Studies in English (New Haven, 1926), p. 151.
j 32por instance, Wright notes the "frequent appearance
of Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabaeus among the Nine
Worthies" in the masques of the day, and he cites as an ex
ample the masque of Middleton and Rowley, The World Tost at
Tennis ("The Scriptures," p. 5*0* Reference to the masque
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba has already been made (p. 26,
aboveV. and Miss Steele»s Plays and Masques at Court (see n.
j31) gives further evidence of the use of scriptural themes
In the masques and pageants of the time.
throne, the voice of Puritanism grew more powerful and the
intellectual climate grew more sober. The Puritans opposed
all stage dramas, and particularly the use of Biblical mat
ter in stage plays j their position is well represented by
!
this lamentation of Henry Crosse:
Must the holy Prophets and Patriarchs be set vponn a
Stage, to be derided, hist, and laught at? or is it fit )
that the infirmities of holy men should be acted on a
Stage, whereby others may be inharted to rush carelessly
forward into vnbrideled libertie?33
As a result of such attacks, Biblical themes virtually dis
appeared in the decades after the death of Elizabeth, and
the theater Itself was soon patronized only by an ever-
dwindling court group.
i
j Yet the England in which Shakespeare grew up and wrote
most of his plays was a country permeated by Biblical
i * !
thought and phrase. It was an England In which slowly but
irrevocably the spirit of the Renaissance was giving way to
j
that of Puritanism, with its sterner view of Protestantism
I
and its high moral seriousness stemming from an Intense
awareness of God.
I
The Bible was superseding Plutarch. The "obstinate ques- j
tlonings" which haunted the finer souls of the Renaseence ;
were being stereotyped into the theological formulas of j
the Puritan. The sense of a divine omnipotence was an- j
nlhllating man. The daring which turned England into a
people of "adventurers," the sense of inexhaustible re
sources, the buoyant freshness of youth, the intoxicating
sense of beauty and Joy, which created Sidney and Marlowe
33yertues Commonwealth: Qr The Highway to Honour (1603) ,
cited bv E. K. Chambers. Elizabethan Stage (Oxford. 1923).
IV,- 247 . _ __ ______ .......... ........... . . . . ______________ _____
and Drake, were passing away before the consciousness of
evil and the craving to order man's life aright before God.
I A new political world, healthier, more really national,
j but less picturesque, less wrapt in the mystery and splen-
! dour which poets love, was rising with the new moral world.
| (Green, Short History, p. 435)
Shakespeare was very much at home with Biblical imagery;
i
and allusion, having been in contact with Scripture probably!
since his childhood. In fact, more than twelve hundred j
references to the Bible have been found in his writings.^ j
1 . !
Although this does not prove that he was "in the full 3ense
a Christian believer, * * his "constant use of the Bible to en
force and illustrate his thoughts argues that he believed at!
i j
least in its literary power” (Work, Bible. p. l60). Much
i
has been written about Shakespeare's use of scriptural ma
terials,^ and even a random selection of examples from the
plays reveals the extent of his Indebtedness at least to the
pid Testament: for Instance, when Shyloek Joyously lauds
'Portia as "A Daniel come to Judgment! Yea, a Daniel. / 0
wise young Judge, how I do honor thee” (Merchant of Venice.
IV.1.223-24); or when Bolingbroke likens the slain Glouces- j
ter's blood to "sacrificing Abel's," which "cries / Even !
!
from the tongueless caverns of the earth / To me for Justice*
i I
and rough chastisement ...” (Richard II. I,i.104-6); or ;
3^e. W. Work, "Shakespeare and the Bible,” in The Bible
in English Literature (Mew York, 1917), p. l*5h.
35see, for instance, Work (above, n. 34); T. R. Eaton,
Shakespeare and the Bible (Norwich, 1857); and Green's chap
ter on the Elizabethan Poets in his Short History.
again when Claudius laments his crime, the murder of hi3
brother, because "It hath the primal eldest curse upon it"
j f Hamlet. Ill.ili.35“37)• Even Falstaff alludes to Scripture
in his apology to Prince Henry: "Dost thou hear, Hal? Thou
|
knowest in the state of innocency Adam fell; and what shouldj
poor Jack Falstaff do in the days of villainy?" (I Henry IV.
XXI.ill.183-87). ;
i , „
Shakespeare also makes more extensive use of Biblical
material: Shylock, in Justifying himself to Antonia, draws j
jfrom Genesis (xxx.32) the account of Jacob, who also col
lected high interest from his care of Laban's sheep (Mer
chant of Venice. 1.111.72-96), And Hamlet ironically uses
the story of Jephthah (II Kings III.27) to make sport of
| .... !
Polontus (II.ii.422-29)• Indeed, when all of Shakespeare's
Biblical allusions are considered, his thorough familiarity j
with the Bible becomes obvious.
A fair outline of Old Testament history is contained In
his writings. The creation, the temptation, the fall, the
story of Gain and Abel, the flood, the patriarchal histo
ries. Job, Pharaoh, Samson, David, Nebuchadnezzar, and
| many other familiar names of Scripture figure in his pages.
From Adam to Jesus and His apostles scarcely an important
character is omitted, while many of the principal inci
dents of Scriptural history are employed. (Work, Bible.
p. 166) |
In addition, all of Shakespeare's tragedies reflect his
concern with the eternal conflict between Good and Evil, and
his tragic heroes act within the Biblical framework of sin,
retribution, and atonement.
It is in this austere conception of a moral equilibrium
disturbed by willful sin and foolish passion that
Shakespeare’s religious sentiments most powerfully dis-
i close themselves. 3<5
Thus, each malefactor, no matter how deep-dyed his villainy,
sooner or later recognizes the inevitability of this retri
bution and the absolute necessity of atonement. Even the i
Llood-begrimed Richard III exclaims pathetically:
j . i
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale, j
And every tale condemns me for a villain,
(V.ill.93-95)
And Claudius admits that although it may occasionally be j
possible to sidestep earthly Justice, ”*tis not so above*1 —
There is no shuffling, there the action lies,
In his true nature, and we ourselves compelled,
I Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
| To give in evidence. (Hamlet. III.ili.61-64)
Shakespeare here expresses a cause-and-effeet concept of the
Universe similar to that of the friends of Job, who main
tain : that all worldly misfortune is a result of sinning,
while all good fortune results from virtue. He also re
flects deep concern for the ethical values to be found In
the Bible. Perhaps no better example of this concern for
conduct may be cited than the words of the fallen Cardinal
Wolsey, perhaps "the most subtle and talented of all Shake- j
speare’s offenders against right and Justice" (Work, Bible.
i
p. 170):
Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition;
By that sin fell the angels; how can man, then,
3^Charles Allen Dlnsmore, Atonement in literature and
tLife (Cambridge, 1924), p. 90. ................ ......
I " " ~.... ~ ....■ ' ■ ~ ~.. 32
I
The image of his Maker, hope to win by’t?
Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee:
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace,
To silent envious tongues. Be Just and fear not:
Let all the ends thou aim*at. at he thy country’s,
Thy God’s and truth’s: then, if thou fall’st O Cromwell,
Thou fall1st a blessed martyr! (Henry VIIJ. Ill.li.440-49)
| j
Even if, as Green maintains (p. 436), Shakespeare remained
aloof from the contemporary political disputes, he did not—
or could not— close his mind to the major Biblical themes
and images which Influenced most of the major thinkers of
i
j f c h e time. In fact, taken as a group, the Elizabethan poets 1
and dramatists were neither atheistic nor amoral in their
writings, for by their interest in and reverence for the
Bible, these worldly men did much to prepare the way for
j
feheir more sober-minded Jacobean successors, both in the
i - ;
drama and in the general field of poetry. Even so thor-
I
Dughly Puritan a poet as John Milton found precedent for his
poetical use of the Bible in the works of such men.
CHAPTER II
PURITANISM AND THE HEBRAIC TRADITION j
4 |
j With the death of Shakespeare, the sovereignty of the j
) :
English stage passed to Ben Jonson. It was an unhappy time j
I
to receive the sceptre, for the social unrest which was soon
I •
j f c o erupt into civil war was already lowering the spirits of
jthe people; confronted with grave political and religious
problems, they found much less time to devote to a theater
Which placed most of its dramatic action In the past. Con
sequently, in their almost mad haste to regain their lost
audiences, Jacobean playwrights cheapened the quality of
English drama by the grossness of their comedy and their re-
l
peated reliance on the horrors of incest and murder. Thus,
the Puritans' hatred of the stage stemmed from more than a
mere desire to revenge themselves for the many Insults di-
i
rected at than by these dramatists; theirs was the righteous!
[indignation of highly moral individuals confronted with j
amoral and in-moral public presentations.
1 The Puritan believed in an earthly existence which
i .
would reflect complete devotion to a Supreme Will, in an ex
istence measured by sobriety, seriousness, and self-
restraint . It was with this disciplined life that he wished
to replace the geniality and delight of the preceding age.
f “ ' ~ 34
I
The Puritan was little concerned with courtly pomp and pres
tige; his was an avowed desire to add to the glory of God.
!
To the two principal means of gaining access to God provided
by traditional theology— the contemplation of natural things
(per speculum creaturarum) and the imitation of Christ— the j
I
f - • • > 1
Puritans added a dogma derived from certain chapters of St, j
Paul, particularly the eighth of Romans:
! Prom this dogma they elaborated a regular drama of salva
tion, which was their living mythology. The drama began
with God's creation of mankind from nothing and proceeded
to the utter depravity of man through the disobedience of
Adam and through man's subsequent failure to follow God's
will as declared in his law. in this process Satan was of
prime importance, since it was he who defeated Adam, the
Old Man, in the Garden. The process was reversed by
Christ, the New Man, and principally when he defeated
Satan in the Wilderness. Out of depraved humanity God by
his grace chose out certain favoured people, the rest be
ing left for damnation. Through the victorious act of
Christ these became more numerous than under the old dis-
pensation. And there was the prospect of Christ and his
Saints triumphing on earth. The holy life was precisely
mapped out in the stages of election, vocation, Justifica
tion, sanctification, glorification; and Puritans de
veloped a novel interest in the minute details of their
souls' health. But though elected and called and so on,
the Saint was never free from sin. He was a fighting, not
an innocent soul.1
The Puritan thus viewed life as a relentless struggle against
f ,
the temptations of Satan. He could not relax for a moment, j
for was there not— as Bunyan was to point out— a gateway to
!
Hell even at the foot of the Heavenly Mountain?
Puritanism held out to the individual the hope of sal
vation for the elect. And since all men were regarded as
^E. M. W. Tillyard, Studies in Milton (London, 19&l)»
pp._i ; .; ______ ___^ ... ..........
Utterly depraved, and God’s choice of His elect was there
for© "arbitrary and unsnobbish," a concept of social ©Quali
fy prevailed (Tillyard, Studies. p. 156), The Puritans
dreamed of a forthcoming earthly community of worthy souls.
As Tillyard suggests, perhaps it was this dream of a holy
community which, in the seventeenth century, brought about
faint stirrings of the idea of human progress (Studies, p.
156). The strength of this communal doctrine— largely the
work of Calvin--lay in its fusion of logic and emotion.
Based upon the emotional apprehension and complete accept
ance of the will of God, Calvinism removed every suggestion
f . I
of human power or goodness. To credit man with ability to
1 !
attain any measure of grace by himself was regarded as
(equivalent to diminishing the moral Integrity of God, who
was under no obligation to pity or even recognize the plight]
j>f the individual. All of God's glory lay in the concept
that everything on earth was a result of His arbitrary will.
|
This will was employed directly, with no earthly mediator
(such as the Catholic Church) to diminish God's authority.
If weak and fallible individuals needed a concrete manifes
tation of this divine guidance, they had only to rely on
Holy Scripture, which was, after all, the revealed word of
God.
They were to do God's work; to do it, they must know His
will, and that will was laid down in the Bible. Duty the
object of life, and the Bible its rule. That was the key
note of the Puritanism which was to revolutionize England
| ~ .;.' ■.— .. 36
! Q
and found a New England across the ocean.
i
The Puritan thought in terms of the Bible, particularly
the Old Testament. It was from the struggles and wanderings
!
pf the Hebrew tribes that he gained determination; from
their aspirations and beliefs that he gained faith; from j
I ' ^
their misgivings and backslidings that he derived a sense of|
Lin, It was from the Old Testament that he borrowed his
imagery and formed the pattern of his thinking. The story
j
of the Hebrews was applied universally by the Puritan; for
him it was the revelation of God’s relationship with mankind.
Adam was the universal patriarch who had bequeathed to all
men a legacy of life, sin, and ultimate salvation.
The English translation of the Bible had to a very great
degree Judalzed, not the English mind, but the Puritan
temper. Those fierce enthusiasts could more easily find
elbow-room for their consciences in an ideal Israel than
In a practical England. It was convenient to see Amalek
or Phillstia in the men who met them in the field, and one
unintelligible horn or other of the Beast In their the
ological opponents. The spiritual provincialism of the
Jewish race found something congenial In the English
mind.3
The Puritan pamphleteers, conceiving of the civil strife be-
tween P a r e n t and Count as a ap^tua! war between good
; and evil, often expressed themselves in Old Testament phra- j
seology. The Cavaliers were thus usually described as Sons
^Douglas Campbell, The Puritan in Holland. England and
America (New York, 1902), II, 137”138.
3James Bussell Lowell, "Essay on Milton,” in Among My
Bootes (Boston, 1876), p. 273.
of either Satan, Belial, or Darkness.** Even when the Puri- j
tans baptized their children, they employed "the names, not J
of Christian saints, but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors."^
The sternness of the Psalms held a particular fascina
tion for the Paritans. "Blessed be Jehovah my rock, who
teacheth ray hands to war, and my fingers to fight" (cxliv.l-
t ' ■ ■
4) suited their righteous cause. R. E. Prothero has noted
the "power of the Psalms" in Milton*s poetry, in the "mental
i
revolution, the strongest type of the stern religion which
raised him to the summit of fame and fortune. The spirit
that Cromwell read into the Psalms governed his actions at
each supreme crisis of his stormy life: the most striking
stages in his career are marked by quotations from the
Psalms; in his private letters, his public dispatches, his
addresses to Parliament, the imagery, metaphors, and lan
guage of the Psalms drop from his lips, or from his pen,
as if by constant meditation he had made their phraseology
a part of his very life.6
j&t the battle of Dunbar, Cromwell is reputed to have shouted
his cry of triumph in the words of the Psalmist, "Let God
arise, and let his enemies be scattered" (cited by Work,
Bible, p. 177).
John Milton is even more lavish in his praise of the
^George Wesley Whiting, Milton’s Literary Milieu
(Chapel Hill, 1939), PP. 218-2511
-h?. B. Macaulay, "John Milton," in Critical and Histo
rical Essavs (London, 1923), p. 165.
^Psalms in Human Life (London, 1903), p. 228.
alstory of Bunyan," and particularly in the "career of Oil
ver Cromwell,"
the foremost figure in the stirring times of the Puritan
... ..“ ' ..“' ..... 38
Psalms (and such other Old Testament books as Job and the
Song of Songs) than of the epics of Homer, Virgil, and Tasso,
i
and the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides; for while he
Is willing to concede that considerable good might be de
rived from the best of pagan literature, pagan philosophers
had caught but a partial glimpse of the truth. He thus
feels that there is some falsehood in even the greatest of
their works. Only in the books of the Hebrew prophets is
truth untainted to be found.
In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt,
What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so,
What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat. 7
(Paradise Regained. IV.361-63)f
Convinced that no man could be "truly eloquent who is not
withal a good man” and whose life is not in itself "a true
poem," Milton feels that the true function of poetry is
to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of vir
tue and public civility, ... to celebrate in glorious
and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God*s almighti-
ness, .. . to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and
saints, the deeds and triumphs of Just and pious nations
* • • (Reason of Church government, p. 44)
ie thus places much more emphasis on content than on form,
referring to Job as an "epic" because of its heroic theme.
and although Paradise Lost begins with an invocation in the
standard classical manner, Milton does not here seek the aid
of Homer's goddess or Virgil's muse, but that of two other
^All citations from Milton's poetry are taken from The
Poems of John Milton, ed. James Holly Hanford (New York,
193b).
powers. He first addresses the Heavenly Muse (whom he later
calls Urania) and asks her for inspiration similar to that
of the ancient Hebrew poets; he then asks for a revelation
of hidden mystery from the Holy Spirit. In Milton*s eyes,
oach represents "eternal wisdom." He is seeking "both a
- ■ -*a {
prophet's vision and an artist's hand," in order to rise toj
the "height of this great argument" and "Justify the ways of
(Sod to men."
Milton believes in an organic relationship between God
and the created universe, a universe in which all things are]
not only interrelated but completely balanced. His "world
picture" is thus the traditional one held by the Cambridge
I
Platonists in the first half of the seventeenth century, and
also expressed earlier by Hooker, when, In the well-known i
first book of Ecclesiastical Polity (1593), he describes a
world of universal law, divine beauty, and vast harmonious
adversity arranged in an orderly series of hierarchies.
This view might in part explain Milton's fondness for the
psalms and the Book of Job, for each contains numerous pas- j
sages expressing the beauty and order of a universe created
by God. In fact, the song in praise of God, sung by Adam
I
[
and Eve in Book V of Paradise Lost (lines 153-208), is actu
ally a paraphrase of Psalm 148. Milton here manages to run
the gamut of the entire Chain of Being— touching upon each
®E. N. S. Thompson, Essays on Milton (Hew Haven, 1914),
p— 84.___________ -_-___ , ... ......... ...............
1 .— .... -....- --- 40
j
level of existence— and thus points up the organic nature of
creation.
Although Milton is exceedingly respectful of Scripture,
he is never blindly subservient to it; like Thomas Browne,
the Cambridge Platonists, and allegorists generally, he be
lieves that the ultimate truth is often communicated in
figurative form. He does not necessarily limit his concep
tion of the Absolute to the Old Testament delineation of Je
hovah, or even to the "School Divine” of his own Paradise
Lost. As Basil Willey suggests, Milton is able to overcome
i
j I
the problem of scriptural literalness by means of the "lan-
|
guage-of-accommodation” concept and the Neo-Platonists *
t ' •
! - -
theory that all earthly things are mere shadows or reflection^
of heavenly patterns.^ In the second chapter of De Doctrina
Christiana. Milton writes:
Our safest way is to form in our minds such a conception
of God, as shall correspond with his own delineation and
representation of himself in the sacred writings. For
granting that both in the literal and figurative descrip
tions of God, he is exhibited not as he really is, but in
such a manner as may be within the scope of our compre
hension, yet we ought to entertain such a conception of
him, as he, in condescending to accommodate himself to our
capacities, has shown that he desires we should con
ceive.!0
Milton puts this view into poetic form when, In Book V of
Paradise Lost, he has Raphael say to Adam:
^Seventeenth Century Background (New York, 1953)> p. 76.
10In The Student9s Milton. ed. Frank Allen Patterson
(New York, 1933)* P* 932. All citations from Milton's prose
are taken from this edition. .....
“ ...".' ....~ 41
What surmounts the reach
1 Of human sense, I shall delineate so,
By likening spiritual to corporal forms,
As may express them best, though what if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought?
(Lines 571”76)
I
The Bible thus never proves an obstacle to truth for Milton,
at least not in the scientific sense.
Milton had ample precedent for accepting an allegorical
or figurative interpretation of the Biblej attempts to "har
monise1 ’ philosophy and religion may be traced back to the
contact of Hebraic and Hellenistic cultures in Alexandria
during the first and second centuries. At this time,
All the wisdom of the allegorists was vitiated by two as
sumptions, first, that "Scripture” is homogeneous through
out j and secondly, that this homogeneous Scripture is
liberatelv intended, either by its "inspired" writers or
by God himself, as a figurative expression of spiritual
truths. It is hard to say which is the more misleading—
the "fundamentalist” reading which mistakes mythology for
history, or the Alexandrian, which sees allegory where
none was intended. In both there is a lack of capacity to
distinguish between what is "statement” and what is emo
tive speech, a deficiency which not only affected scrip
tural interpretation, but rendered impossible any satis
factory theory of poetry or the imagination for many
centuries. (Willey, Background. p. 71)
Saint Augustine, aligning himself with the allegorists,
evolved the general rule that whatever is not felt to be di
rectly edifying or profitable in Scripture should be con
sidered figurative. And certain medieval mystics considered
it more important to stress the moral than the metaphysical
approach to "truth.” Not until the Renaissance did the
ifirst historical analysis of Biblical texts appear; Erasmus*
critical ^editi.on—of—the,. Greek Testament in 1516 earned him
“ ' ~ ' — .... bz
the title of founder of textual criticism (Willey, Back-
\ . . .
ground, p. 73).
Luther and Hooker also believed that God’s word is em
bodied in the Bible, but not necessarily present in every
word. Hooker, in fact, reacting against the ecclesiastical
dogmatism of both Presbyterians and Catholics, devotes a
good deal of his Ecclesiastical Polity to showing that not
everything in the Bible is necessary to salvation. He dis
agrees with the Puritan system, which rested on the assump
tion that all human action in religious matters should be
j j
guided solely by Scripture, and with the Catholic assertion
i
!
that the Church is the infallible guide. He insists that
there is much to be learned from the historical evolution of
jsocial and political institutions, which represent the con
i c ret e manifestations of human reason. God had taken the
trouble to reveal merely those things not discoverable by
the light of reason; the remainder he had left for our in
telligence and discretion to adapt according to the needs of
time and place. Therefore, the dictates of Old Testament j
i
ritual and ceremonial needed seventeenth century modifies- j
tion (Green, Short History, pp. 469-4-7Q).
Milton *s approach to scriptural interpretation paral
lels Hooker’s. He seeks a liberalizing moral sense of truth
rather than the restrictive truth of the scientist. Scrip
ture is never to be allowed to tyrannize over the unhampered
choice of a free moral agent. Milton expresses his doubts
n ......~ ^3
as to the complete accuracy of the Biblical texts, pointing
put that generations of scribes, editors, and translators
i
iad handled them. He cannot understand the purpose of
providence in handing the holy writings down in so careless
a fashion unless it is
t
i
to teach us by this very circumstance that the Spirit
which is given to us is a more certain guide than Scrip
ture, whom therefore it is our duty to follow. (De Doc-
trina. p. 104l)
In thus refusing to be completely subservient to Scripture,
. ‘ iilton places himself among those who— like the scientific
theorizers, the Cambridge Platonists, and the religious "en
thusiasts"— were forming the chief current of seventeenth
century thinking by their attempts to break with tradition.
j
These men, as the century progressed, increasingly came to
feel that "truth" Is a quality which all men can clearly and
logically conceive, which the moral sense can affirm inward
ly, and which neither nature nor reason can contradict.
They were seeking a principle by which they could break with
the past and establish a basis for a new philosophical sys
tem. (Willey, Background. p. 78).
This Intellectual reassertion of individual responsi
bility is sufficiently broad to Include not only the Cam
bridge Platonists, with their humanistic emphasis on reason,
but many of the mystic and eccentric sects who derived their
motive power from the inner intensity of their religious
fervor, which they termed "Enthusiasm.Since the Pla
tonists upheld reason as the ultimate authority in all mat
ters of faith, they believed that the proper function of
Scripture is to confirm, never to contradict, the dictates
of reason. As Benjamin Whichcote expresses it:
The written word of God is not the first or only discovery
of the duty of Man. , . . Clear principles of truth and
light, affirmed by the natural reason and confirmed by the
law and purpose of the Gospel, are above all particular
examples and texts of Scripture.12
And this same liberal, independent tendency which caused the
Platonists to rely on reason eaused the Quaker George Fox to
reject all forms of external authority and turn to what he
felt to be the true source of divine illumination— the "in- j
ner light." It is true that the emotional fervor or "en
thusiasm” of such dissenting sects as the Quakers, Ranters, ;
and Seekers— as well as the secular theorizing of the scien
tific philosophers— was anathema to the conservative Puri
tans; however, Puritans, Dissenters, Platonists, and even
the "Philosophers" were at one in their demand for a newer
and freer method of interpreting the Scriptures they all
respec ted. Hence,
The "inner light" of the Quaker ranks with the "Reason" of
-^For an interesting study of some of the sources of
religious fervor and "enthusiasm" as manifested in the
sacrificial rites of both Judaism and Christianity, see Hoy
den Keith Yerkes, Sacrifice in Greek and Roman Religions and
Early Judaism (London, 1 9 5 3 ) . i
^Quoted in Frederick J, Powicke, The Cambridge Platon- ;
ists (CambridgeMassachusetts, 1926). pp. 7&-79. 1
r _ _........ — 45
I
! the Platonists, the "clear and distinct ideas" of Des
cartes , or the "common notions" of Lord Herbert of Cher-
> bury, as another of the inward certitudes by means of
i which the century was testing the legacies of antiquity
I and declaring its spiritual independence. (Willey, Back
ground, p. 79)
Even In this age of Increasing scientific enlightenment,
"truth was not only rivaled by "moral edification," but was
often identified with it. However, by the first half of the
century, distinctions between "truth" and "fiction" were be
ing made with considerable energy and precision. This
tended to lower the prestige of poetry, since "truth" was
being linked increasingly with "philosophy"— with pros© as
the proper medium of expression. Poetry was viewed more and
snore as merely a form of entertainment or "delight," con
taining agreeable images usually derived from classical
foythology; and the reader was cautioned not to be "cozened
by the fiction.
The view that poetry is often merely a skilful means of
propagating falsehood had been voiced from classical times
Ly such men as Plato, Glcero, and Augustine, and had re
ceived support from several quarters during the Renals- j
. |
sance.1^ A group known as the "Nihilists," whose most
13John Bryden, "Heroic Poetry and Poetic Licence," in
Essays of John Drvden. ed. W. P, Ker (Oxford, 1926), I, 18*5.
Unless otherwise noted, all citations are taken from this
edition.
I 14
For a comprehensive account of the Renaissance atti
tude toward literature, see Joel E. Splngarn, A History of
(Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York, 1930).
conspicuous member was Henry Cornelius Agrippa, tried to
{deny the value of all arts and learning. In fact, Agrippa1s
The Vanity and Servitude of the Sciences (translated into
English in 1569) attacks not only poetry but history, rheto-j
pic, and drama. A second and more damaging attack, from the
London middle class, was directed primarily against the \
I- ' I
drama, but had many unkind things to say about poetry as 1
well. The chief spokesman here was Stephen dosson, a former
poet, actor, and playwright. His hard-hitting and humorous |
polemic, The School of Abuse (1579)# points to examples of
self-doubt among such poets as Virgil and Ovid, and empha
sizes that poets, intent upon arousing the imagination, in
discriminately mix both good and bad and thus furnish
dangerous models for moral instruction. Finally, although
poetry might have served a useful function in earlier times
by recording events and giving good counsel, there are now
better ways of advancing learning and virtue.
In setting about to refute these charges, Philip Sidney
in his Defense of Poesy (1595), lays down two rather nega- j
;ive lines of defense: first of all, the poet’s "truth" is i
1
lofty and figurative and thus not related to literal "truth";
seeond, since the poet actually "nothing affirmes," he
"therefore never lyeth." Though the poet’s function is to
beach and delight, his work is not to be taken literally.
The distrust of poetry was enhanced by the growing
seventeenth century concern for scientific truth and is best
I ............ — ...--- - .- .... 47
!
reflected In Bishop Sprat’s History of the Roval Society
(1667), which, although it appeared, later in the century,
{describes an attitude crystallizing at this earlier time.
According to Sprat, it was the Society's purpose to purge
the present age of the errors of the past.
And to accomplish this, they have endeavour'd to separate
the knowledge of Nature from the colours of Rhetorick. the
devices of Fancy, or the delightful deceit of Fables.*5
They had determined, as Willey puts it, "to declare war upon
poetry" (Background, p. 211).
Sprat's famous attack on "poetic" language represents a
fusion of Platonic and Baconian regard for truth and the
i
!
jcontemporary distaste for scholastic and metaphysical wit.
i
Speaking on behalf of his age, Sprat goes so far as to de
nounce all forms of poetic expression as mere "ornaments of ;
speech." He then echoes Gosson's sentiments by stating that
while poetic embellishments may have been acceptable, and
even necessary, in the writings of ancient sages, who used
them to communicate moral and philosophical ideas, now
they are changed to worse uses: They make the Fancy dis- j
gust the best things, if they come sound and unadorn'd; 1
they are in open defiance against Reason: professing not j
to hold much correspondence with that, but with its Slaves,
the Passions: they give the mind a motion too changeable,
and bewitching, to consist with right practice.
Anticipating both Johnson and Wordsworth, Sprat then points
^All citations from this work are taken from Critical
Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Joel E. Spingarn
(Oxford,19O0), II, 112-119. See particularly pp. 116-117.
his attack directly at classical literature.
I The Wit of the Fables and Religions of the Antient World
is well-nigh consum'd: They already serv'd the poets long
enough; and it is now high time to dismiss them; especial
ly seeing they have this peculiar imperfection, that they
were only Fictions at first: whereas Truth is never so
well express'd or amplify'd, as by those Ornaments which
are Truth and Real in themselves.
Therefore, the poets of the present age should discard
Classical mythology, which had become inadequate and obso
lete, and put aside the trite and overused body of nature-
" 1 6
imagery which had served the poets of the past centuries.
For these poets had long since “quite devour'd the sweetness
of flowers, fruits and herbs," and had quite "tired out the
Sun, and Moon, and Stars with their Similitudes, more than I
|
they fancy them to be wearied by their daily Journey around j
the Heavens." However, if they still want nature-imagery,
the poets can now find fresh material supplied by the modem,
scientific study of nature.
Even so representative a man of letters as Abraham
Cowley, in discussing his own scriptural epic, the Davideis.
becomes incensed at the manner in which poets have wasted
their talents on meaningless and frivolous topics while
^wiiiiam Davenant expresses an attitude toward classi
cal mythology similar to that of Sprat. In his famous
Epistle to Hobbes, he indicates that in writing Qondibert.
he had tried to present his readers with a perfect picture
bf virtue— something which earlier epic poets, from Homer to
Spenser and Tasso, had not always done— Spingarn, Critical
Essavs. II, 51 ff* See also A. Hamilton Thompson, "Writers
of the Couplet," in Cambridge History of English Literature
(Cambridge, 1911)s VII, 79-81. .
Shamefully neglecting Biblical subjects, which are not only j
Tar more poetical, but also true:
When I consider how this fi.e.. the story of David], and
how many other bright and magnificent subjects of the like
Nature, the Holy Scripture affords and proffers, as it
were, to Poesle. in the wise managing and illustrating
whereof, the Glory of Sod Almighty might be joyned with
the singular utility and noblest delight of Mankind; it Is;
not without Grief and Indignation that I behold that Di
vine Science employing all her inexhaustible riches of Wit
and Eloquence either in the wicked and beggarly Flattery j
of great Persons, or the unmanly Idolizing: of Foolish
Women* or the wretched Affectation of scurril Laughter. or
at best on the confused, antiquated Dreams of senseless
Fables and Metamorphoses.i7
Cowley expresses the view, also put forth by Sprat,
that the classical fables no longer have any true value;
they have served poets long enough, having been "only fic-
|
tions at first." And if they had been of some worth in past
ages, It was only because they had then formed "the whole
Body (or rather Chaos) of the Theologle of those times."
! ^
jBut to an enlightened modern religious poet, the classical
tales "ought to appear no better arguments for verse than
those of their worthy Successors. the Knights Errant" (I,
Ixiv-v). Granted that poetry must deal with wondrous
happenings, does not the Bible, he asks, supply a much
richer source of miraculous events than Greek mythology and
legend? Is not Noah as worthy a subject for poetic treat
ment as Deucalion, or Samson as Hercules?
Why is not Jeotha's Daughter as good a woman as Iphigenia?
And the friendship of David and Jonathan more worthy
•^Works (London, 1710), I, Ixiii.
_ - --_ _.............. — 50
Celebration than that of Theseus and Perithoua? Does not
j the passage of Moses and the Israelites into the Holy Land
i yield incomparably more Poetical Variety than the voyages
°£ HIvases or Aeneas? (I, lxv)
That Cowley's statements sounded both pious and incon
trovertible to seventeenth century ears testifies to the
continuing Influence of the Bible as a literary source, de
spite the attempts of much contemporary science to dismiss
scriptural events as "fabulous." Being a "Christian poet"
In the early seventeenth century implied an act of piety as
well as artistry.
It is hardly surprising, then, that in seeking an epic
theme equal to his lofty poetic purpose, Milton should turn
to the Scriptures as the only true and worthy source for
| -
theme and Imagery in an age which had come to view classical
poetry with grave scientific misgivings. His earlier idea
of an Arthariad no longer suited his purpose, for political
as well as philosophical reasons. During Milton's early
years, James I had antagonized his English subjects by his
claims of divine kingship, causing many scholars to scan
early Saxon law and custom in an attempt to counterbalance
bis pretensions. This research into Anglo-Saxon history
eventually brought about a depreciation of Geoffrey of Mon
mouth's historical authority.18 Geoffrey's History of the
Kings of Great Britain had served the Tudors as the prime
l8E. M. W. Tillyard, The Miltonic Setting. Past and
Present (Cambridge, 1938), p. lSl.
r ” 1 — ...........
authority for linking Henry VII to the wealth of mythology
woven by Welsh bards around the figure of King Arthur. Al-
i
though Henry had never made direct claims to Arthurian de
scent, he shrewdly named his eldest son Arthur and, when he
became king, hired a great many historians and genealogists
i
to trace the Tudor lineage. One of these historians, the
| • f
famous Polydore Virgil, chose to disregard his host's wishes.
| i
In Volume 26 of his . . . Anglicae Historiae. he maintains j
• ■ ' 1
that Arthur himself was sheer myth and that Geoffrey did not)
merit serious consideration as h i s t o r i a n . ^ other scholars
attempted to refute Polydore Virgil, but the damage had been;
done: the critical method had been applied to history. How}-
ever, the Crown was still associated with British tradition,;
and had Milton produced an Arthurian epic, he would have
j j
ifound himself aligned with his political opponents. Fur
thermore, an epic designed along such predominantly cultural
and political lines would have merely continued in the old
1
heroic tradition of arms and men; and Milton— in accordance j
with the temper of the times in which he lived— had become j
aware of a theme even more heroic: the fall of man from
i
| :
jGod's pleasure and the struggle of his soul for salvation
thereafter.
Sad task, yet argument
Not less but more heroic than the wrath
1%ee D. Hay, "The Manuscript of Polydore Vergil's
Anglica Historia." English Historical Review. 54:240-251,
August_1939.______________ 1_t ................ ...........
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage
Of Tuphus for Lavinia disespoused;
Or Neptune’s ire or Juno’s, that so long
Perplexed the Greek and Cytherea * s son;
If answerable style I can obtain
Of my celestial patroness, who deigns
Her nightly visitation unimplored,
And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires
Easy my unpremeditated verse,
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleased me long choosing and beginning later;
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument i
Heroic deemed, chief mastery to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabled knights 1
In battles feigned; the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, imblazoned shields,
impresses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At Joust and tournament; then marshalled feast
Served up In hall with sewers and seneshals,
The skill of artifice or office mean,
Not that which justly gives heroic name
To person or to poem. Me of these
Nor skilled nor studious, higher argument
Remains, sufficient of itself to raise
That name . . . (Paradise Lost. IX.13“47)
In thus turning his back on the romantic trappings of
"fabled knights” and "battles feigned," Milton again, of
necessity, had to turn to the Bible— the only source from
which a thoroughly Protestant, seventeenth century poet
could draw Inspiration and imagery which would be poetic, of
epic stature, and "true." And, as Milton combined the Puri
tan's reverence for Scripture with the intellectual’s re- i
j
fusal to be bound to the letter of the law, he tended to use!
the scriptural writings freely and creatively.
But if Milton chose to discard the "trappings" of the
Renaissance- epic, he still had a high regard for the epic .
' " ~53T
form as a means of glorifying God, England, and himself. As
part of its Renaissance legacy, the seventeenth century had
!
inherited a desire to express intense national patriotism in
j f c h e manner of the ancient epics, particularly the heroic
poems of Homer and Virgil. Poets in every European country i
strove to ” 1 illustrate * their vernaculars by composing in
them works worthy to be set beside the Iliad and the Aeneid",
j ■ i
(Willey, Background. p. 219). Bit only the Italians— Dante,!
I ' |
Ariosto, and Tasso--were generally acknowledged throughout !
Europe as in any way comparable to Homer and Virgil. Since,:
Lt was held, Spenser had failed in his attempt,20 England
iaad not yet produced a first-rate epic in the native tongue;j
it was therefore Milton’s hope
That what the greatest and choicest wits of Athens, Rome
or modem Italy, and those Hebrews of old, did for their
Country, I in ray proportion, with this over and above, of ;
being a Christian, might do for mine; not caring to be
once named abroad, though perhaps I could attain to that, ;
but content with these British islands as my world. (Rea- i
son of Church Government, p. 43)
Milton's desire to write a major English epic was In
creased by another traditional element which had been linked
bo the heroic poem since Horace, the humanistic goal of
[ ’ moral edification.” Spenser stresses this point in his |
famous ’ ’ Letter to Raleigh," and Dryden restates it for his
century in his Dedication of the Aeneis:
The design of it Is to form the mind to heroic virtue by
20See Dryden, "A Discourse Concerning the Original and
Progress of Satire," in Essays. II, 28. ___
example| * tis conveyed In verse, that It may delight,
while it instructs. (Essays. p. 154)
Milton thus aspired to produce a work which would he hoth
' * doctrinal and exemplary to a nation," for, as already men
tioned, he agreed that the obligation of true poetic genius !
was "to imbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of t
virtue and public civility, . . , through all the instances !
of example" (Reason of Church Government. p. 44). !
While Milton considered ancient mythology and history
valuable for the limited truths they reveal, he believed ■
that only in the Bible could a completely truthful history
of the human race be found, The Hebrews, as the chosen
I
{ ;
people of God, exemplify the general types of man; and the
divine favor enjoyed by them was destined for the English
nation sometime in the future. It was thus essential that
the English use the Bible to determine life's essential
verities (Thompson, Essays. p. 133)* Furthermore, some of
the Important works published in the early seventeenth cen
tury centered upon Biblical themes which had become highly
popular during the Middle Ages: Du Bartas' Divine Weeks and
Works (translated into English by Joshua Sylvester in 1605)
retells the story of Creation, uniting the medieval strain
of Biblical narrative (exemplified in Cursor Mundi) and the
encyclopedic approach of the medieval "Mirror" literature^ ;
21See George Coffin Taylor, Milton's Dse of Du Bartas
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1934), pp. 9”12.
Thomas Heywood's Troia Britannlca (1609) demonstrates a medi
eval Interest in universal history; and in Phineas Fletcher's
Parole Island (161Q), an elaborate twelve-book allegory,
Satan and the Vices— in medieval tradition— wage a bitter
mt futile battle with the forces of Virtue for the soul of !
j
man. And, of course, Spenser’s Faerie Queene (Books I and
.. . . j
II) had described allegorically asoul's pilgrimage through
life. j
1
?
While Milton never makes direct reference to these
!
sources except for Spenser, he must have been aware of them,
jfor in choosing the Fall as the subject of his epic, he was :
able to combine all these themes. The Creation provided him;
With a basic theme of universal significance; the dramatic
situation of Satan and Christ warring over Everyman and
Everywoman, in the persons of Adam and Eve, parallels the
iasic pattern of medieval allegory; and his Adam and Eve,
when driven from Paradise, are forced to undertake an
'earthly quest for a mental paradise, in the manner of
Spenser" (Tillyard, Miltonic Setting, pp. 201-203)• In ad
dition, the similarity between Satan's character and travels
and those of Odysseus in the Odyssey indicates the continu
ing influence of the heroic epic on Milton. Whether con- j
sciously or not, then, Milton united many seventeenth cen-
i
bury, Renaissance, and medieval elements in Paradise host.
t
Milton's philosophical interpretation of the Scriptures
was exceedingly liberal; in Paradise Lost, therefore, he j
stresses the moral significance of the many ancient Biblical
nyths, rather than their literal acceptance.
Milton, like so many of his contemporaries, was in the
rather peculiar position of being able to hold advanced
speculative views and yet at the same time to "believe" in
the traditional imagery of a Christianity . . . which
grafted an Aristotelian or Platonic theology upon a stock !
of Hebrew mythology. (Willey, Background. p. 234) i
Hilton, it must be emphasized, never asserts "that God is In
fashion like unto man in all his parts and members,” but
that "as far as we are concerned to know, he is of that form
i
which he attributes to himself . . (De Doctrine, p. 924)J
Phis "language-of-accommodation" theory is certainly not
original with Milton, but goes back to classical times. He
was probably exposed to it at St. Paul's School, where its
founder, John Colet, had used it in his exposition of the
first chapters of Genesis.22
Milton thus takes the view that, in the Biblical ac
counts of God and His actions, God is "exhibited not as he
really is, but in such a manner as may be within the scope
of our comprehension" (De Doctrina. p. 923). The theologi
cally intricate process of Creation is presented in the
Bible, states Milton, in such a way that "earthly notion can
conceive" it, although actually, the act of Creation was in-!
stantaneous:
Immediate are the acts of God, more swift
Than time or motion, but to human ears 1
|
^Frederic Seebohm, The Oxford Reformers (London, 1896) ;
pp. 47-60. j
— 57
Cannot without process of speech be told,
So told as earthly notion can receive.
(Paradise Lost. VII.176-79)
Therefore, when Raphael explains to Adam
What surmounts the reach
Of human sense I shall delineate so, ;
By llk’ning spiritual to corporal forms, i
As may express them best, 1
(Paradise Lost. V.571-74)
Kilton undoubtedly believed that he was putting into poetic ;
i
practice the very technique of scriptural narration. He was
i
able, in this way, to satisfy the essentially Protestant :
cast of his mind: if Biblical allegory often concealed the
j
complete truth, it yet contained no falsehood and provided
I 1
i i
man with his-surest guide (see Willey, Background. p. 235). 1
This attitude was given farther reassurance by the specu
lations of the seventeenth century Neo-Platonlsts, who
viewed the material world as a mere shadowing-forth of the
spiritual realm* Milton apparently found this idea congeni
al, for he asks,
What if Earth
Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein
Each to other like, more than on earth is thought? i
(Paradise Lost. V.574-76)
Because Milton Is Interested primarily in basic truths,
t
le is not afraid to use his source materials with considera
ble freedom. He Intermixes not only Old and Hew Testament !
themes and images, but pagan elements as well. He follows
the scriptural story of Adam and Eve only because it seems j
jthe most dramatic manner of depicting the eternal struggle ;
between good and evilj he has no qualms about adding a __
58
wealth of non-Biblical elements, and succeeds In transmuting
these disparate elements into symbolic Biblical truths *
t
Reading the Bible as poet and philosopher, he is inspired
principally by the Creation them© found in the Old Testa-
I
nent's Psalms and Job, and in the New Testament's accounts
cf the Apocalypse and Jude. He amplifies the important epi
sodes of Paradise Lost with considerable detail from the j
exegeses of the early church fathers and the general Bibll- '
sal tradition. To the skeletal outline of the Temptation :
i
and Pall, he adds Lucifer's fall, gleaned from scattered
I .
!
references in the Prophets and the New Testament (Thompson,
Essavs. p. 115).
L... .
| The early Hebrews had attributed all acts, good or bad,
to Jehovah, the sole ruling spirit; mention of Satan and de
mons appears only in the books of the Babylonian exilic
period. Even in Job, Satan is depicted as a loyal follower
of God, whose function is to "test” the worthiness of the
aero. Not until the later Old Testament writings— probably
influenced by the dualistic philosophy of the Persians and
Babylonians— is the spirit of evil personified in the figure
af Satan. In fact, even such comparatively late books as
Zecharlah (iii.2) and the first Chronicles (xxi.l ff.) do
i
not consider the spirit of evil as independent of God. And
only in certain New Testament passages do the opposing !
forces, in the persons of Christ and Satan, break into open
warfare (Thompson, Essays. p. 116). For example, Luke
states, "And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning [
fall from heaven” (x.l8). Peter Is even more explicit:
God spared not the angels that sinned, hut cast them down
to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be
reserved into judgment. (11.4)
And two verses of the Apocalypse are particularly signifi-
|
cant:
I
And there was war In heaven: Michael and his angels |
fought against the dragon: and the dragon fought and
his angels. (Revelation xli.7)
And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent,
ealled the ©evil, and Satan, which deeeiveth the whole ;
world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels
were cast out with him. (xli.9)
By the seventeenth century, theologians had blended the ser
pent of Genesis with Satan; Milton links this idea with the
iualistic concepts acquired by the Hebrews during their ex-
/ * ■
lie.
Milton also does not hesitate to augment scriptural de
tail with detail from the Apocrypha and pagan literature,
particularly in depleting the angelic hosts. Only Michael,
Gabriel, and the Seven Angels who “run to and fro through
the whole earth" are mentioned in the canonical books (Zech-
iriah, ©aniel, and Revelation); Raphael and Uriel are named I
!
In the Apocrypha. And a good deal of comment has centered !
about Milton’s identification of the fallen angels with the I
pagan idols of the Fertile Crescent and the various gods of
Ireek mythology (see Whiting, Milieu. pp. 177~217). j
i
But Milton’s prime source of poetic Inspiration is the i
i
iible Itself, particularly the Old Testament. ____ J
From the first words of Genesis to the last of Revelation,)
there is hardly a great Biblical passage which does not
have its echo in the Miltonic poems. He knows no barrier I
of time or place. He takes as now to Palestine, now to
Bethlehem; he lets us see the "Eastern road" over which
the Wise Men hasten to the manger, or the "secret top of
Oreb” or of Sinai; he leads us to Jordan in the time of
the Baptist, or to the prison in which Samson labored, j
"eyeless in Gaza.” The great vision which the Angel shows1
to Adam, indeed, covers the whole sweep of Biblical histo-l
ry as Milton had seen it. (Crook, Bible, p. 295)
Almost every important Old Testament figure, and many ob- j
t
5 cure ones, are mentioned somewhere in Milton's poetry.
They form a steady procession behind Adam and Eve: Cain and;
i
Abel; Jubal and Tubal Cain, the "instructor of every artifi
cer in brass and iron"; the many descendants of Seth; Enoch,
"rising eminent in wise deport"; Noah, "the one Just man
i
alive"; Nimrod, "a mightle hunter"; and Abraham, "the one
faithful man." Milton mentions too the "royal Stock of
David"— providing the ancestry for the Messiah prophesied in
the Old Testament and present in the New. He also alludes
i
to memorable Old Testament Incidents: the making of the
golden calf; the attempt to build the Tower of Babel; the
Babylonian captivity. His synthesizing imagination fuses
diverse Biblical images and Incidents, and combines classi
cal with Biblical incidents. Thus, the fallen Adam and Eve j
remind him of another pair of scriptural lovers:
S
So rose the Danite strong,
Herculean Samson, from the harlot-lap
Of Philistean Dalilah, and waked
Shorn of his strength, they destitute and bare
Of all their virtue. (Paradise Lost. XX.1059-63)
And the army of defeated angels lie not only "thick as j
autumnal leaves that strow the brooks in Vallambrosa," but
also like the "scattered sedge" of the Red Sea f Paradise
.tost, 1.302-304). Even Moses and Satan are Joined1 for when;
the fallen angels are lifted to their feet by the sound of
their commander's voice, It is
As when the potent rod
Of Amram's son in Egypt's evil day,
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy cloud
Of locusts . . . (Paradise Lost. 1.338-41) !
!
Milton paraphrases complete passages from the Bible.
Adam and Eve's morning praise of God (V. 153*208) is de- |
jcribed as spontaneous and varied with each delivery:
each morning, duly paid
In various style, for neither various style
Nor holy rapture wanted they to praise
Their Maker, in fit strains pronounced or sung
Unmedlbated, such prompt eloquence
Flowed from their lips, in prose or numerous verse
Yet, despite its "prompt eloquence," the song Is actually a ;
rephrasing of Psalm 148. And when Christ rides forth to do j
battle with Satan (VI.749*74), the picture presented bears
distinct resemblance to Ezekiel's vision of the whirlwind,
with the accompanying four living creatures and the chariot
wheels (Crook, Bible, p. 297).
Milton also makes repeated use of certain favorite !
3ibllcal Images: the "helmed Cherubim" and "sworded Sera- |
shim" of the "Nativity Ode” appear frequently in Paradise j
tosts and the figure of Dagon apparently captivated Milton j
and grew in his Imagination. Referred to Indirectly as that
"twice battered God of Palestine" In the "Nativity Ode," _
Dagon recurs as a personage of considerably more importance
i 1
in the long catalogue of fallen angels in Book I of Paradise
j
Lost:'
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark
Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off
In his own temple, on the grunsel edge, i
Where he fell flat, and shamed his worshippers; j
Dagon his name, sea monster, upward man
And downward fish. (Lines 458-63)23
Dagon is given even greater stature in Samson Agonistes.
where he has developed into a redoubtable adversary of God—
I
the "sea-idol of the Philistines.” j
Milton*s concern with "light”— which in the Bible
usually denotes the presence of God— has often been pointed
out; no single Image appears more frequently in his poetry. !
!9e blends it with the act of Creation as early as the "Na
tivity Ode”:
While the Creator great
His constellations set,
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung,
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
(Lines 100-24)
3od is here described as "That glorious form, that light un-
jufferable, / And that far-beaming blaze of majesty” (lines ,
9-10). And in Book V of Paradise Lost. Raphael describes ;
iod speaking "as from a flaming mount whose top / Brightness!
sad made invisible" (lines §98-99) and warns of the "utter
^^For Biblical references to the figure of Dagon, see
Judges xvi.21,23; I Samuel v.1-7; I Chronicles x.IG. In the
Apocrypha, see I Maccabees x.84j xl.4.
idarkness” waiting for those who disobey Him. Again, Milton's
apotheosis to light, opening Book III of Paradise Lost, Is
particularly noteworthy:
Hall holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born,
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblamed? since God is light,
And never but In unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
In Samson Agonistes. he alludes to light as representing
Jod's final creation, the light of human understanding.
With the possible exception of the early chapters of
Genesis, no single Biblical book exerted a more persistent
influence upon Milton's poetry than the Book of Job. The
Intellectual Satan of Paradise Regained, as well as Adam and
Samson when they raise impassioned queries about God's
treatment of the individual, seems to echo the tragic man of
'3z. And the similarity In dramatic structure of both Samson
Agonistes and Paradise Regained to the Book of Job is obvi
ous enough to draw repeated comment. Milton blends the ele
ments of Greek drama and of scriptural tale in Samson
Agonistes. for Samson*s friends extend their sympathy and ’
criticism in a manner as reminiscent of Job's friends as of 1
a Greek chorus. In Job, Milton found the combination of
\
epic theme and dramatic form (the long dialogues--introduced^
concluded, and linked by narrative passages— and the psy
chological revelation of the central character's successive ;
states of mind) an ideal model for his brief epic of
oil !
Paradise Regained. ^
While Milton owes a great deal to ancient learning, he j
Ls very much a man of his own age: no other poet Is able to:
fuse past and present with such artistic effectiveness. |
After the epic struggle between Michael and Satan in Book II
of Paradise Lost. there follows the famous council In Hell,
vhich sounds undeniable overtones of the seventeenth century
i
Protestant-Catholic political disputes. The angels— gleaned!
originally from many primitive literatures, as well as from
the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha— engage In a
series of activities reflecting a few of the sources exert-
!
Ing their Influence upon Milton: some engage in contests of
i :
strength, as In the epic "funeral games”5 others intersect
an almost contemporary note In setting out to explore and
chart unknown areas in the venturesome spirit of the Elisa-
bethan and early seventeenth century voyagers; many are
satisfied merely to sing of their downfall and to dispute
the matter philosophically, thus bringing traditional Stoi
cal and Protestant themes to the fore (Crook, Bible. p. 302).
If Milton shows little hesitancy in mixing Biblical and
classical materials, he states clearly which of the two he
feels to be the more worthy source of poetic inspiration:
Our Hebrew songs and harps in Babylon, ,
That pleased so well our victors* ear, declare !
That rather Greece from us these arts derived;
111 imitated, while they loudest sing
Shilton here (1.146-155) draws a direct parallel be-
tweeh-Satan’s tempting of Job and of Christ. ___
i
The vices of their deities, and their own,
In fable, hymn, or song, so personating
Their gods ridiculous, and themselves past shame.
Remove their swelling epithets thick laid
As varnish on a harlot’s cheek, the rest,
Thin sown with aught of profit or delight,
Will far be found unworthy to compare
With Sion's songs, to all true tastes excelling,
Where God is praised aright, and godlike men,
The Holiest of Holies, and his saints;
Such are from God inspired, not such from thee;
Unless where moral virtue is expressed
By light of Nature, not in all quite lost. •
Their Orators thou then extoll'st, as those i
The top of eloquence, statists Indeed, I
And lovers of their country, as may seem;
But herein to our prophets far beneath, ;
As men divinely taught, and better teaching 1
The solid rules of civil government
In their majestic unaffected style
Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome.
(Paradise Regained. IV.336-60)
Milton's stay at Cambridge had brought him into contact
with some of the greatest patristic and Semitic scholars of
the time, and exposed him to the lore of the Talmud, the
writings of the Church Fathers, and the commentaries of a
great many of the medieval rabbinical welters. This wide
religious knowledge is reflected in his prose as well as in ;
iais poetry. In his divorce tracts, for example, he is able
to array text after text in support of his case against the
scriptural arguments advanced by his opponents. Even more
impressive is his familiarity with the religious commenta
tors of many ages, revealed In Be Doctrlna Christiana. But I
M s ability to draw upon a vast and diverse number of
sources, and to use them creatively, ls most clearly Indi
cated In his account of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden
and his narration of their subsequent downfall. He provides
;be theme of his great epic in the opening lines;
Of manfs first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heavenly Muse.
!
Ae thus sets the stage for the momentous struggle between
igood and evil by expressing the Hebrew-Puritan view that it
was this disobedient yielding to temptation that inflicted
. . . . . . . j
evil upon mankind. Me is eager to determine
What cause
Moved our grand parents in that happy state,
Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off
From their Creator, and transgress his will . . .
( 1. 28-31)
) £ilton indicates that the answer is linked to an act which
precedes man’s disobedience, to the act of a powerful angel,:
who
With ambitious aim
Against the throne and monarchy of God,
Raised impious war in Heaven and battle proud
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky.
(1.41-45)
In paralleling man's Fall to that of an angel, he Joins the
lurnan and heavenly acts of rebellion.
However, he does not present this angelic precedent as ,
justification for man's act, for he shares with many Renais
sance humanists and the Cambridge Platonlsts an unfaltering ;
•faith in the natural integrity and dignity of man— provided 1
iaan exerts the discipline of the God-given gift of reason to;
«»..... j
_ 67
relieve in the depravity of the natural man— such as the
Oalvinists and, later, Pascal or Blake— and those who, like
Rousseau, believe in man's innate goodness* Milton believes
that God has fashioned the universe, not of "nothing," but
of Himself (Paradise Lost. X.743-801). All matter, there
fore, embodies the divine principle and must be good (Willey,
Background, p. 233)* But if man thus encompasses goodness,
ie possesses also the unique responsibility of moral choice.
Man manifests goodness, therefore, only when he succeeds in
choosing wisely— in other words, in accord with deity.
"Reason also is choice" (Paradise Lost. 111.108), Milton
states, and amplifies this view in the final book of Para
dise Lost;
Reason in Man obscured, or not obeyed,
immediately Inordinate desires
And upstart passions catch the government
From reason, and to servitude reduce
Man till then free. (86-90)
$11ton, then, is at one with the Cambridge Platonists in
stressing reason as a means of moral control rather than of
Intellectual enlightenment (Willey, Background. p. 239). He
oakes the same point in De Doctrina Christiana: ,
The existence of God is further proved by that feeling, {
whether we term it conscience, or right reason, which even
.in the worst of characters, ls not altogether extin
guished. (p. 923) j
Because God has thus chosen to Implant himself in man, there:
remains a spark of goodness even after the Fall: "Some rem
nants of the divine image still exist in us, not wholly ex
tinguished by this spiritual death" (p. 999). Milton had__
separated himself from the Calvinist!c view of man's innate
ly evil nature, evolving Instead a determined humanistic
conviction of ”a godlike principle in Man,*1 and a belief
that "that principle is to be found in the Reason or Under- j
I
standing, and the Will” (Willey, Background. p. 240).
i
SHI toil's recognition of human dignity places him not
only in the humanistic movement of the Renaissance, but in
accord with a medieval rabbinical tradition— a tradition
adequately summarized by the seventeenth century scholar
Joseph Meade:
Spirits, good or bad, might appear to man, as the Old
Testament plentifully records, at almost any time and
under almost any conditions, but before the Pall, evil
spirits or Satan might not appear In human shape for man
as yet preserved his integrity, and therefore Satan, be
cause he was a Spirit fallen from his first glorious per
fection, might only appear in some shape as might argue
his imperfection and abasement, which was in the shape of
a being Inferior to man.25
] Hilton employs several aspects of this tradition in bringing
Satan in contact with Adam and Eve. Satan, leaving the
Council of fallen angels, Journeys to earth and enters the
Garden of Eden.
Thence up he flew, and on the Tree of life,
The middle tree and highest there that grew,
Sat like a cormorant. (XV.194-96)
25works, ed. John Worthington (Cambridge (?], 1663-64),;
] > . 224. See also Grant McColley, Paradise Lost: The Birth i
of an Epic (Chicago, 1940). McColley discusses in some de- ;
tail Milton's Indebtedness to the hexameral tradition, the
name given to the religious Interpretations of the Creation i
by the early Church Fathers. The value of McColley's work
Is limited by the author's failure to deal with medieval
Semitic learning.
ie is thus able to examine the human pair unobserved. He
then decides to move closer:
i
Down he alights among the sportful herd
Of those four-footed kinds, himself now one,
Now other, as their shape served best his end
Nearer to view hi© prey, and Unespied
To mark what of their state he more might learn
By word or action marked. About them round
A lion now he stalks with fiery glare j
Then as a tiger, who by chance hath spied
In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play,
Straight couches close, then rising, changes oft i
His couehant watch, as one who chose his ground
Whence rushing he might surest seize them both i
Griped in each paw. (IV.396-408)
Rabbinical lore had concerned itself with tales of
Satan's transformation into a series of animal forms. One
version appeared early In the Middle Ages in the Midrash
("Definition"), a book compiled long before even the Talmud
and recognized as perhaps the richest source of Biblical
folklore (see Fletcher, Milton's Hebraic Studies, pp. 126-
28). Tales centering about Important Biblical characters
and events, such as the Creation, the Deluge, the Exodus,
Esther, the Psalms, and Ecclesiastes were added throughout
the Middle Ages. In a twelfth century Book of Adam. Satan;
attempts to persuade the Peacock to allow him to use its
Lody to approach Adam and Eve. The Peacock refuses but in- ,
Produces Satan to the Serpent, who accedes to his request.
2^See Joseph Gaer, The Lore of the Old Testament (Bos
ton, 1952), pp. 337“338• Gaer here sets the completion date!
of the Babylonian Talmud at about 500 A.D. He states that
the Midrash began to appear long before this date and con
tinued to be written for several centuries after.
TO
(The description here of the Serpent Is rather vague— it ap
pears to resemble a camel *) Satan enters the mouth of this i
four-footed Serpent and speaks to Eve from between the crea
ture^ teeth.®7
' ' !
I
Milton shows an awareness of this tradition of animal
disguises when he has Satan take several different animal
forms.
So varied he, and of his tortuous train
Curled many a wanton wreath in sight of Eve, ! .
To lure her eye; she, busied, heard the sound
Of rustling leaves, but minded not, as used
To such disport before her through the field,
From every beast. (IX.§16-21)
|
Satan is then in a position to overhear Adam inform Eve of
the restriction against tasting of the fruit of the Tree of j
Knowledge. Milton here also parallels rabblnieal tradition,
for there had been considerable commentary as to how Satan
aad learned of the mandate against the Tree of Knowledge.
The Book of the Bee contains a thirteenth century form of
the tradition:
After Eve was created, Adam told her the story of the tree,
and Satan overheard it, and by his envy it became the oc
casion and cause of their being to sin, and being expelled
from Paradise.2o
tfhen Satan soliloquizes, he demonstrates Milton's fusion of ;
this rabbinical tradition with a humanistic reverence for
knowledge:
27S. schechter, Mldrasch Hag-gadol (Cambridge, 1902),
pp. 86 ff.
?®In Anecdota Qxoniensla (Oxford, 1882), p. 21._______
.......... ...- ?r
Let me mot forget what I have gained
Prom their own mouths. All is not theirs/It seems
One fatal tree there stands, of Knowledge called,
Forbidden them to taste. Knowledge forbidden?
Suspicious, reasonless. Why should their Lord
Envy them that? can It be sin to know,
Can it be death? and do they only stand
By Ignorance, is that their happy state,
The proof of their obedience and their faith?
(IV. 512-20)
When Satan thus marvels that it can "be sin to know”
and that Adam and Eve depend on Ignorance for "their happy
state,” he is, of course, giving diabolic utterance to an
opinion endorsed by Milton elsewhere— for Instance, in the
Second Defense of the People of England:
God himself is truth; in propagating which, as men display
a greater integrity and zeal, they approach nearer to the
similitude of God, and possess a greater portion of his
love. We cannot suppose the Deity envious of truth, or
unwilling that it should be freely communicated to man
kind. (p. 926)
And In the famous passage from f Areooagitlca:
Good and evil we know in the field of this world grew
up together almost Inseparably ... It was from out the
rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and
evil, as twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the
world. ...
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue un-
exerolsed, and unbreathed, that never sallies out and
seeks her adversary . . . That virtue therefore which is
but a youngling in the contemplation of evil, and knows
not the utmost that vice promises to her followers, and
rejects It, is but a blank virtue, not a pure. (p. 108)
For Milton, then, virtue "consists in the *111*3 doing what I
Ls right in full knowledge of the issues.Therefore, the
act of disobedience by Adam and Eve represents the
29e. M. W. Tillyard, Milton (London, 1930), p. 54.
subjugation of reason to passion, with the resultant
\ loss, or at least . . . the obscuration to a great extent j
of that right reason which enabled man to discern the
chief good, and In which consisted as it were the life of
the understanding. (Be Doetrlna. p. 999)•
Why, then, it ha® been asked, did Milton— believing as
ie did in “Knowledge," "Reason,” and the "choice of good by j
a free agent cognisant of evil"--choose for the subject of
iais poem a Hebrew myth "which represents the acquisition of i
t
those very things as the source of all our woe?" (Willey, !
' ■ - !
[ Background, p. 244). Bat Milton handles this apparent para*!
dox by disregarding that part of the Hebraic myth which era-
todies the magical properties of prohibited knowledge in the;
forbidden fruit Itself and shifting his emphasis to the act
!.
of disobedience. Because it was necessary for man to face
ihe test of temptation, (Sod placed the taboo upon the Tree
of Knowledge and His prohibition thus became a "positive
law"; to taste of the fruit, then, was not wrong because it ;
would lead to the acquisition of knowledge (an idea repug
nant to Milton), but because it was expressly forbidden
fWilley. Background, p. 246).
It was necessary that something should be forbidden or
commanded as a test of fidelity, and that an act In its ;
own nature Indifferent, in order that man's obedience !
might be thereby manifested^ (De Doctrina. p. 966)
[*o knowledge, thus, was derived from the fruit itself, and
man was not punished for acquiring wisdom. He was punished
for an act of arbitrary will, of disobedience, of falling
victim to the cardinal sin of allowing his desires to rule
his reason. The tree did not teach man the difference be-
tween "good and evil"; it was so named from the event, for
I #
by this act man came to know "good lost, and evil got."
(Perhaps no other single example illustrates so well Milton's!
i
intellectual adroitness in merging disparate elements of his
!
lebralo sources and humanistic convictions. !
!
numerous other parallels to rabbinical tradition appear
in Paradise Lost. Rabbinical lore, for Instance, offers the
following description of the Serpent as he talks to Eve:
Now the serpent was at first the queen of all beasts.
Her head was like rubies, and her eyes like emerald.
Her skin shone like a mirror of various hues.
Her hair was soft like that of a noble virgin;
and her form resembled the stately camel;
her breath was like sweet musk and amber:
and all her words were songs of praise.36
itfilton's portrait bears a distinct, if perhaps indirect, re
semblance:
So spake the Enemy of mankind, enclosed
In serpent, Inmate bad, and toward Eve
Addressed his way, not with indented wave.
Prone on the ground, as since, but on his rear.
Circular base of rising folds, that towered
Fold above fold a surging maze; his head
Crested aloft, and carbuncle his eyes; |
With burnished neck of verdant gold, erect
Amidst his circling spires, that on the grass
Floated redundant. Pleasing was his shape,
And lovely, never since of serpent kind
Lovelier. (IX.494-503)
Probably rabbinical in origin also is the Jealousy-motive in
Eve's desire to have Adam also partake of the forbidden
3GQu8tav Weil, The Bible, the Koran, andthe Talmud: or
Biblical Legends of the Mussulmans (London. 1&4€>). p. 9.
i _J
fruit. This motive, which does not appear In any of the
;
harden-of-Eden literature commonly supposed to have been
used by Milton (see MeColley, Paradise Lost, pp. 1-18), is
expressed In the Zohar ("Splendor”), a mystical commentary
. . . (
on the Pentateuch which served as the basic text for the
Jabbalists t
The woman touched the tree. Then she saw the Angel of
Death coming toward her, and thought: Perhaps I shall die
and the Holy One, Blessed be He, will make another woman
and give her to Adam. This must not happen. And she gave
the fruit to her husband that he should eat it also.31
Hilton's expression of this idea would certainly seem to be
in obvious echo:
But what if God have seen
And death ensue? then shall 1 be no more,
And Adam wedded to another Eve
Shall live with her enjoying, I extinct;
A death to think. Confirmed then I resolve,
Adam shall share with me in bliss or woe.
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
1 could endure, without him live no life.
(IX.826-33)
Eve's Jealousy is also mentioned in the Josippon. or Yosip-
Lon. a work of Jewish history covering the period from the
|
Creation to the Maccabean succession, and known throughout
the Middle Ages as the Pseudo-Josephus t
Therefore, on seeing that the fruit was beautiful, she de
sired it, and ate of it. As soon as she had eaten thereof;
her teeth was set on edge, and she saw the angel of death i
with drawn sword standing before her. She then said in I
3lQuoted from Zohar in Denis Saurat, Milton: Man and
Thinker (Hew York, 1925), p. 283. The Zohar is now believed
jbo be the work of a Spanish Jew, Moses de Leon (c. 1250-
1305), rather than the first century Rabbi Simon Ben Jochai.i
I her heart, "Woe tinto me that I have eaten of this death,
! for now I will die; and Adam, my husband, who has not
i eaten of It will live forever, and (Sod will couple him
with another woman. It Is better that we die together,
for Qod has created us together even unto death.** So when
her husband came she gave him of the fruit to taste.32
4ilton1s source for his conception of the Jealousy theme,
then, seems to have been rabbinical, and reflects Milton's
r 11" " ~ *“ c“ “ “ “
ture as well as the great wealth of Semitic commentary stem
i t ! ng from it. 1
i
i
j
i
32Qu©ted m Fletcher, Semitic Studies, p. 135*
Fletcher gives the dates of the first printed edition of
[this work as 1476-79*
CHAPTER III
THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY RELIGIOUS MILIEU
ANB THE POETRY OP JOHN BONNE I
!
The intellectual revolt of the first half of the seven
teenth century, as has been Indicated, expressed Itself in a
growing distrust of conventional authority in political, In
scientific, and— perhaps most strikingly— In religious mat- ■
ters. This revolt from, or reappraisal of, authority in re
ligion gave rise to Puritanism, to diverse varieties of
rationalism, to numerous Protestant sects, and to a growing
emphasis on individual interpretation of the Bible. Inevi
tably, this removal of authority— which had at least pro
moted some amount of certainty— produced uncertainty and
ioufot in many minds. Such apprehensions were increased by
the seventeenth century "world picture,” in part Inherited
:
and in part created by "new Science." The familiar "decay-
of-the-world" concept, inherited from the Middle Ages and
extending back to classical antiquity, caused particular ,
alarm and melancholy at this time:
the world was decaying, running down like a clock .. .
the seasons were becoming more and more unfavourable, and <
men . . . smaller in stature, weaker in health, more
wicked In their ways. . . . The times were out of Joint,
and to many It seemed obvious that the world was rapidly
accelerating In its process of degeneration and
------- -— “77)
1 1
I decomposition as it approached the end of its course,
i !
The effect of such a concept on the minds and emotions of
seventeenth century men is illustrated by the poetry of John:
Donne, who was particularly mindful of and disturbed by the
religious implications of the various intellectual concepts
of the age:
Then, as mankinds, so is the worlds whole frame
Quite out of joynt, almost created lame: i
For, before God had made up all the rest, :
Corruption entered, and deprav*d the best: i
It seis'd the Angels, and then first of all
The world did in her cradle take a fall,
And turn'd her braines, and tooke a general1 maime,
Wronging each joynt of th* universall frame.
The noblest part, man, felt it first; and then
Both beasts and plants, curst in the curse of man.
So did the world from the first houre, decay,
That evening was beginning of the day;
And now the Springs and Sommers which we see,
Like sonnes of women after flftle bee.2
In addition, as a result of "new Science," man and his
earth were losing status as the center of things. Renais~
sanoe cosmology, as scholars have pointed out, was basically!
Ptolemaic; and, while the theories of Copernicus were be-
loming more familiar and accepted, the general pattern of
astronomical imagery and thought remained Ptolemaic even in
the seventeenth century. In fact, so Ingrained was the old
view of a carefully patterned universe that it often \
^J. B. Leishman, The Monarch of Wit: An Analytical and i
Comparative Study of the Poetry of John Bonne (London. 19*51);
p. 241.
2"The First Anniversary," 191-204. Citations of Donne's
poetry in my text are from The Poems of John Donne, ed. H.
'J. C. Grierson (London, 1929)• !
appeared metaphorically in poems dealing with the freshly
discovered facts of the new science. Thus, John Donne can
draw on Copemican theories in such poems as "The First
Anniversary” and "Devotions: Meditation 21" and even mix
■Ptolemaic and Copernican ideas in "Hymn to Cod, My God, in
My Sickness."^ And John Milton can balance the Ptolemaic !
against the Copernican astronomy in Paradise Lost♦ and ob
serve that it is impossible for man to detemine with cer-
I '
tainty which of these accounts gives a factually accurate
physical description of the universe (VIII.15~38#66-1T@);
yet, he inevitably concludes that the Ptolemaic picture is a
nore satisfactory poetic symbol, reflecting the perfect
order and reasonableness of God's world and man's place of
central Importance in it, as well as a scheme of upward pro
gression from earth's imperfection to the perfection of
i . .
heaven.
I '
f On the whole, then, the early seventeenth century poets
--reven John Donne, who was perhaps most sensitive to the
j
implications of the new philosophy— still based their
jthought and imagery upon the concept of an orderly, hier
archical universe, which
consisted of a number of planes, arranged one below an- !
other in order of dignity but connected by an Immense net i
of correspondences.... The different planes were the
divine and angelic, the universe or macrocosm, the common-!
wealth or body politic, man or the microcosm, and the
%ee Clay Hunt, Donne's Poetry: Essays in Literary j
Analysis (New Haven, 195*0, PP* 94-117.________________ ___J
lower creation. . . . This resolution to find correspond
ences everywhere was a large part of the great medieval
; striving after unity; It was pushed to extreme lengths by
Paracelsus and his like; and it survived in its main out-
j lines past the age of Elizabeth.^
The nodal point in this linked existence was man, who com-
| j
prised the inanimate, vegetative, and sensitive classes be- i
i
low him and served as a link between these lower orders and ;
i
the heavenly hierarchy which ranged above him. Thus, man, a
i l
"little world," served as symbol for the whole physical
! J
world. And, as the universe was divided into sublunary and ,
f • |
supralunary--with one subject to decay, the other eternal— |
iso was man's body and soul. Anatomical correspondences were
also drawn out in detail: man was upright; hence, his head !
was among the stars; his heart corresponded to the sun; his
sexual organs and feet, lowest and farthest from God corre- ;
i ;
sponded to earth. The extent to which seventeenth century
( ■ :
literature drew upon this doctrine of correspondences has
I
been illustrated by Fferjorie Mieolson's The Breaking of the
Circle (Evanston, 1950). John Donne uses it with particular:
originality and ingenuity: :
Man is the World, and death th» Ocean, j
To which God gives the lower parts of man. ...
Our waters, then, above our firmament, ;
(Teares which our Soule doth for her sins let fall)
Take all a brackish tast, and Funerall,
And even these teares, which should wash sin, are sin.
("Elegie on the Lady Marckham," 1-2, 8-11)
j The universe, like man, was viewed as a dynamic
M. W. Tillyard, The Elizabethan World Picture
(London, 19^3), pp. 35, 56-57, 1 0 4 7 ”
organism with a soul or "living force" fanima mundi) corre- i
| ‘
Spending to the life quality in man. But, again like man,
the physical universe— originally benevolent and rational—
was altered by the Fall.^ Thus, the change of seasons, "the
season's difference," was held to be "the penalty of Adam,"
i
and "therefore a symbol of the fleshly corruption and imper
fection of man's life on earth" (Hunt, Bonne's Poetry, p.
331).
John Bonne and the other major "metaphysical" poets
were acutely aware of the organic nature of the world and
the human personality, and often demonstrated this inter
relationship by combining cosmological with religious and
1
!
Biblical concepts, In order to express the Old Testament
sonvlction that all things stem from a God who is the Su
preme Good with which all seek to be reunited. God, as
!
"First Mover," had created the world in order to communicate
Himself more graphically to man; impelling all living things
to desire Him, he thus made Love the "deepest spring of all
sausality." He provided eternal laws to perpetuate His
f .
handiwork, and He gave to all living creatures a "nature" or
j"form" by which they were to fulfil their proper earthly
function (see Willey, Background. p. 22). In his sermons, !
1 ‘ ■ I
as well as in his poetry, John Bonne repeatedly stresses
this organic relationship of God, His universe, and man:
|
^See Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundation of Mod-1 ,
em Physical Science (London, 1925)>PP• 2 9 0 - 2 9 1 . j
— 81]
"all the world Is God's cabinet,” he says in an Easter-
evening sermon at St. Paul's (1623), "and water, and earth, j
and fire, and air, are the proper boxes, In which God lays
up our bodies for the resurrection. And, in another
Easter-evening sermon (1626):
I
When a man's buried flesh hath brought forth grasse, and
that grasse fed beasts, and these beasts fed men, and
those men fed other men, God that knows in which Boxe of
his Cabinet all this seed-Pearl lies, in what corner of !
the world every atome, every gralne of man's dust sleeps, !
shall recollect this dust, and then recompact the body, I
and then reinanimate that man, and that is the accomplish-!
ment of all. '
The famous Image of the circle, made by a pair of compasses
in "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," appears again in an-
I
f j
other sermon (1627) to emphasize the cyclic nature of life
and death:
First then, Christ established a Resurrection, A Resurrec-
tion there shall be, for, that makes up Gods circle. The I
Body of Man was the first point that the foot of God's
Compasse was upon: First, he created the body of Adam:
and then he carries his Compasse round, and shuts up where
he began, he ends with the Body of man againe In the
glorification thereof in the Resurrection. (Preached at
the Earl of Bridgewater's House)
Even in his erotic poems> Donne retains this awareness of
the interrelationship of time, space, and eternity. Though
he often takes a somewhat jocular or even mocking tone when (
treating the themes of the secular world, he repeatedly
Interjects a serious undertone to relate this experience to
^Citations from the sermons in my text are taken from
The Sermons of John Donne. ed. E. M. Simpson and G. R.
'Potter (Berkeley, 195*0, unless otherwise Indicated.
kn essentially religious universe.
As indicated above, although Donne made repeated poetic;
use of the "old Science," he was very much aware of the
changes being forced upon accepted thought by the astrono
mers. In this awareness and consequent apprehension, he
stood virtually alone among his contemporaries.^ The often-
quoted passage from "The First Anniversary," of course, most
memorably expresses this awareness:
And new Philosophy calls all in doubt,
The Element of fire is quite put outj
The Sun is lost, and th' earth, and no man's wit
Can well direct him where to look for it.
And freely men confess© that this world's spent,
When In the Planets, and the Firmament
They seeke so many new; they see that this
Is crumbled out againe to his Atomies.
'Tis all In peeces, all cohaerence gone;
All just supply, and all Relation. (lines 205-14)
find in the same poem, he prophesies the disintegrating ef-
1
feet of science on simple sense:
For the worlds beauty is decai’d, or gone,
Beauty, that's colour, and proportion.
We thinke the heavens enjoy their Spherical!,
Their round proportion embracing all.
But yet their various and perplexed course
Observ'd In divers ages, doth enforce
Men to flnde out so many Eccentrique parts,
Such divers downe-right lines, such overthwarts.
As disproportion that pure forme: It teares
The Firmament in eight and forty shelres,
And In these Constellations then arise
New Starres, and old doe vanish from our eyes:
As though heav’n suffered earthquakes ...
I
i
7see Evelyn M. Simpson, "Paradoxes and Problems," in A i
Sarland for John Donne. 16^1-lQ^l. ed. Theodore Spencer
(Cambridge, 193l)V PP* 41-42. Miss Simpson notes particu
larly that none of the major Elizabethan dramatists seem to
have been rauCh impressed by the new science.
Man hath weav'd out a net, and this net throwne
i Upon the Heavens, and now they are his owne.
; (lines 249-62, 279-So) !
And elsewhere, in poetry and sermons, Donne repeatedly ex
presses his conviction that this license of speculation
tends to Jeopardize faith. In the ‘ ’ Progresse of the Soule,”
Ae likens the fruit which the serpent gave to Eve to an ex- |
cess of speculation, such as gave rise to the fantasies of j
Aereticsj and he wonders !
' i
Why plowing, building, ruling and the rest,
Or most of those arts, whence our lives are blest,
By cursed Cains race Invented be,
And blest Seth vext us with Astronomle.
(lines 513-17)
The spheres and the functions of reason and faith be
came more sharply divided as the century progressed. In one
of his Divine Poems. Donne expresses his awareness of this
.growing dichotomy:
And let thy PatrIarches Desire
(Those great Grandfathers of thy Church, which saw
More in the cloud, then wee in fire,
Whom Nature clear'd more, then us Grace and Law,
And now in Heaven still pray, that wee
May use our new helpes right,)
Be satisfy*d, and fructifle in mee;
Let not my minde be blinder by more light
Nor Paith, by Reason added, lose her sight.
("The Litanie," 55-63)
It is hardly surprising, then, that in such an uneasy !
i
intellectual atmosphere the youthful exuberance of the Ren- j
aissance— along with the burst of lyricism produced by that 1
exuberance— could no longer flourish, and that science and
rationalistic philosophy began to gain ascendancy over both i
I
poetry and revealed religion: 1
After Descartes, poets were inevitably writing with the
j sense that their constructions were not time . . . Even in
j the seventeenth century . . . even in that most Biblical
of centuries,.the very Scriptures were coming to seem a
potential obstacle to truth on account of the "vulgar and
illustrative" manner often adopted by the Inspired writers!
— who wrote, said John Smith, the Platonist, for the "most
Idiotical sort of men in the most Idiotical way." No 1
wonder, then, that other poetry should still more decisive-f
ly be felt as misrepresentation, or at least as fiction. :
(Willey, Background. pp. 93~9-*0
The seventeenth century "intellectual revolt," then,
i
oroduced a particular kind of Biblical criticism. For the
. !
belief that every Biblical statement, narrative, psalm, j
orophecy, parable, vision, or exhortation pointed through
j ■
jits literal sense to a "spiritual truth" was not congenial
bo an age increasingly conscious of simple and logical rea-
(
3on, clear and distinct ideas, and mathematical precision.
However, since the Bible did in some way represent the "word
j
bf God," it could not be denied or ignored; it could only be:
"reinterpreted" and the current "misrepresentations" con
futed. Thus, for example, the Cambridge Platonists sought
bo "restore" the Bible by reconstructing traditional beliefs
within the framework of the new knowledge.
But although the Bible was, by scientists and rational
ists, considered an object for repudiation or reinterpreta- j
tion, literary men continued to turn to it for inspiration
j 1
and imagery. Foremost among them, John Donne--though aware
Lf rationalist criticisms and the endangered status of
j i
simple faith and revealed religion in his age— consistently
j
enriched his prose and poetry with Biblical allusions, j
r 85
Biblical phraseology, and Biblical thought. In fact, in his
preoccupation with God and his own relationship to Him,
Donne is particularly akin to the Hebrew poet-prophets, who,;
In trying to explain Jehovah to their pagein audiences, had
sought to answer the question, “What is God like and unto j
i
what will ye liken him?" by formulating comparisons or simi
les, metaphors and allegories, drawn from the wonders of
a
nature and creation, human relationships, or Hebrew history.^
i
In both his poetry and his prose, Donne asks the same ques- ;
bion, and draws heavily from the Hebrew writers in formu
lating his own answers.
In the fourth of his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions j
[possibly patterned after the holy meditations of King Heze-
ciah), Donne seeks the example of Job, and likens his own
physical suffering to that of Job: "I have not the right-
eousnesse of Job, but I have the desire of Job: I would
speak to the Almightie and I would reason with God.1 * And he
: lopes, like Job, for a Joyful resurrection:
The devouring sword, the consuming fire, the winds from
the wilderness, the diseases of the body, all that af
flicted Job, were from the hand of Satan: it is not thou.
It is thou1 Thou my God, who hast led mee so continually
with thy hand, from the hand of my Nuree, as that I know, ;
thou wilt not correct mee, but with thine own hand. My
parents would not give mee ouer to a Seruants correction, i
nor my God, to Satans. I am fallen into the handes of i
God, with David, and with David I see that his Mercies are
great.°
In the ninth of his Holy Sonnets, he similarly ponders the
9see P. C. Sands, Literary Genius of the Old Testament
[Oxford, 1926), pp. 50-51. J
reason for his sufferings:
i
; If poysonous mineralls, and if that tree,
j Whose fruit threw death on else immortall us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damn’d; Alas; why should I bee?
Why should Intent or reason, borne in mee,
Make sinnes, else ©quail, in mee more heinous?
And mercy being easie, and glorious
To God; in his sterne wrath, why threatens hee?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee
0 God? Oh! of thine onely worthy blood,
And my teares, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drowne In it my sinnes black memorie;
That thou remember them, some claime as debt, !
1 thinke it mercy, if thou wilt forget.
Jlany of his sermons are filled, therefore, with the most
minute and detailed dissections of sin:
If a man had been made impeccable, that he could not have i
sinned, he had not been so happy; for then, he could onely
have enjoyed that state in which he was created, and not
have risen to any better: because that better estate, is a
reward of our willing obedience to God, in such things, as
we might have disobeyed him In. (Sermon Preached at Lin
coln’s Inn, 1618)
And on another occasion, concerned with the relationship be
tween good and evil, he writes:
So loseph sales to his Bretheren, You thought evill
against me. but God meant it unto good: which is not
onely good to loseph. who was no partaker In the evill,
but good even to them who meant nothing but evill. (Ser
mon Preached at White-Hall', March 4, 1624)
:ie is bothered also by the intrusion of the physical upon
t
the mental. He finds that even a fly can distract him from
i
liis prayers, that his mind will wander while he delivers a !
isermon— allowing thoughts unsuitable to a servant of God:
Nay even the Prophet Hosea’s soirltus fornicatlonum. en- ;
ters into me, The spirit of fornication, that is, some re
membrance of the wantonnesse of my youth, some misinter
pretation of a word in my prayer, that may beare an ill
sense., some unclean spirit, some power or principality___
1 o
j hath depraved my prayer and slackened my zeale.
i
His agonized state of mind is particularly reflected in the
first of the Holy Sonnets, which he wrote after his wife*s
death:
Thou hast made me, And shall thy worke decay? j
Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste, I
I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;
I dare not move my dirame eyes any way,
Despaire behind, and death before doth cast
Such terrour, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sinne in it, which it t*wards hell doth weigh;
Onely thou art above, and when towards thee
By thy leave I ean looke, I rise again;
But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,
That not one houre my self I can sustains;
Thy Grace may wing me to prevent this art,
And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.
Bonne is concerned also with the physical phenomenon of
Life in relation to the mystery of reproduction, the paradox
of the flesh and spirit. He also laments repeatedly the
ruin wrought in his soul by wantonness and lust:
In mine Idolatry what showres of ralne
Mine eyes did waste? what griefs my heart did rent?
That sufferance was my sinne; now I repent;
'Cause I did suffer I must suffer paine.
Th' hydroptique drunkard, and night-scouting thiefe,
The itchy Lecher, and selfe tickling proud
Have the remembrance of past joyes, for reliefe
Of comming 1113. To (poore) me is allow'd
No ease; for long, yet vehement griefe hath beene
Th' effect and cause, the punishment and sinne.
fHolv Sonnets III.5-14)
and in another Instance: 1
I am a little world made cunningly
Of Elements, and an Angelike spright,
^0LXXX Sermons Preached by That Learned and Reverend
Divine, lolm Donne (London. 1640). 45.452-453.
88!
But black sinne hath betraid to endlesse night
My worlds both parts, and (oh) both parts must die.
You which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found hew sphears, and of new lands can write,
Powre new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drowne my world with my weeping earnestly,.
Or wash it, if it must be drown’d no more:11
But oh it must be burnt! alas the fire
Of lust and envie have burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; Let their flames retire, j
And burne me 0 Lord, with a nfiery zeale1* *
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heale.
(Holy Sonnets V) ;
I
In analyzing either the holiness of the body, the "lust? 1
I
of the Holy Spirit, or the marriage of heaven and earth, j
Donne turns to the Bible to make his point:
Solomon, whose disposition was anourous and excessive in
the love of women, when he turned to Go, he departed not
utterly from his old phrase and language, but having put a
new and a spiritual tincture and form and habit in all his
thoughts and words, he conveys all his loving approaches
and applications to God and all God’s gracious answers to
his amourous soul into songs and epithalamiums and medi
tations upon contracts and marriages between God and his
church and between God and his soul.
With Solomon as example, Donne thus has no qualms in
employing religious Imagery In his encouragement to one of
bis mistresses to hasten her undressing:
Off with that girdle, like heavens zone glittering, j
But a far fairer world lncompassing. . . .
Now off with those shooes, and then safely tread
In this loves hallow'd temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes, heavens Angels us'd to be ;
Receav'd by men; Thou Angel bringst with thee
A heaven like Mahomets Paradise; and though
11Thls may be a reference to the Divine promise (Gene- i
sis 9:11) that the earth will not again be destroyed by a i
flood.
-^Compare Psalm lxix.9: "For the zeal of thine house j
bath eaten me up." 1
! Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know,
By this these Angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, hut these our flesh upright.
fEIegle XIX: "Going to Bed," 5-6, 17-24)
Donne refused to accept the duallstic view of mind and
body formulated hy medieval theology. He did not consider
< I
the body completely evil, the spirit good, sense a mere cor
rupter and misleader, and the soul pure and aspiring toward
heaven {Grierson, Poems of Donne, p. xxiil). Man is both
body and soul and Is incomplete without either; to separate
them is heresy alike in love and religion:
Love*s not so pure and abstract as they use
To say which have no mistress but the Muse;
But as all else being elemented too,
Love would sometimes contemplate, sometimes do.
His deep sense of the underlying unity of all things, and
the consequent analogy between the spiritual and the physi
cal worlds, enabled Donne to see the "occult resemblances
between things apparently unlike," which Samuel Johnson
Indicated to be the distinctive feature of the metaphysical *
poets. Whether Donne is speaking of Solomon or anyone else,
be is probing his own thoughts and feelings, his pulpit
often serving as an operating table for anatomizing himself
pad his listeners. This was the pattern of the age— a pat- j
tern to be found in the vast "Anatomy" of Burton and in the
poetry of Herbert, Vaughan, and Crashaw, many of whose ‘
Lyrics are impassioned dissections of the soul.
Perhaps also at least partly Biblical In origin Is the
generally low opinion of womankind expressed by Donne and
-------------- 9 0
many of bis contemporaries:
That loving wretch that sweares,
»Tis not the bodies marry, but the mindes,
; Which he in her Angelique findes,
Would sweare as justly, that he heares,
In that dayes rude hoarse minstralsey, the spheares.
Hope not for minde in women; at their best
Sweetness© and wit, they are but Mummy, possest.
1 ("Loves Alchymie," 18-24) i
•• - • • I
jDonne is at one with the Cavalier poets in decrying those ]
f ;
"Which think to stablish dangerous constancy," for woman is j
■ J
in general acceptable only for the purpose of an illicit amdi
i i
transient adventurer. Bonne feels only derision for those !
"poor heretics in love," heretics because they are going
against th© solemn truths revealed by the Old Testament
about women:
i How happy were our Syres in ancient times,
i Who held plurality of loves no crime! . . .
Women were then no sooner asked then won,
And what they did was honest and well done. . . .
but
The golden laws of nature are repeal*d,
Which our first Fathers in such reverence held.
(Elegie x m . 38-9, 44-5, 48-9)
Were not the treacheries and deceits of Delilah, Jezebel,
and Bathsheba surpassed only by the primary sin of Eve? Was
i !
it not Eve who was responsible for the evil which fell upon ;
man?
j That apple grew, which this Soule did enlive,
Till the then climbing serpent, that now creeps
For that offence, for which all mankind© weepes,
Took© It, and t'her whom the first man did wive
(Whom and her race, only forblddlngs drive)
He gave It, she t’her husband, both did eate;
So perished the eaters, and the raeate: I
And wee (for treason taints the blood) thence die j
("The Progresse of the Soule," 81-90)_______________ _I
Donne points up the inherent irony in woman's being the
cause of man's fall:
How witty*s ruine! how importunate
Upon mankinde! it labour'd to frustrate
Even Gods purpose; and made woman, sent
For mans relief©, cause of his languishment.
They were to good ends, and they are so still,
But accessory, and principal in ill;
For that first marriage was our funerall:
One woman at one blow, then kill'd us all,
And singly, one by one, they kill us now.
("The First Anniversary,” 99*107)
Again and again, he repeats this "daughters-of-Eve" analogy ;
— a dominant theme in many early seventeenth century erotic
poems:
The mother poison'd the well-head,
The daughters here corrupt us, Rivolets;
No smalness scapes, no greatness breaks their nets;
She thrust us out, and by them we are led
Astray, from turning to whence we are fled.
Were prisoners Judges, 'twould seeme rigorous,
Shee slnn'd, we beare; part of our palne is, thus
To love them, whose fault to this painfull love
yoak'd us.
("The Progresse of the Soule," 91*100)
Donne extends his disdain for women to Include even
Queen Elizabeth: he proclaims that it is his purpose in
’ The Progresse of the Soule" to trace the soul of heresy In
its progress through all the great bad men it inhabited—
Luther, Mahomet, Galvin— to its present abode in
The great soul which here amongst us now
Doth dwell, and moves that hand, and tongue, and brow, j
Which, as the Moone the sea, moves us. (lines 61-3)
Only man, Donne contends, can achieve both sincerity and
i
curity in love:
Then as an Angell, face, and wings
Of aire, not pure as it, yet pure doth weare,
So thy love may be my loves spheare;
Just such disparitle
As Is twixt Aire and Angells puritie,
'Twixt womens love, and mens will ever bee*
(Songs and Sonets; "Aire and Angels," 23“28)
On those occasions when he chooses to praise or flatter:
in individual woman, Donne can, of course, reverse himself;
and here too the Old Testament furnishes him with analogies.■
Sis favored women are often compared to angels: ,
Women are all like Angels; the falre be
Like those which fell to worse, but such as shee, !
Like to good Angels, nothing can impaire:
'Tis lesse griefe to be foule, then to have been faire.
(Eleeie II: "The Anagram," 29~32)
or to such venerated Biblical Images as the "burning bush":
Her heart was that strange bush, where sacred fire,
Religion, did not consume, but Inspire
Such piety, so chast use of Gods day,
That what we tume to feast. she turn'd to pray.
And did prefigure here, in devout tast,
The rest of her high Sabaoth, which shall last.
(Enlcedes and Obsequies: "Death," 45-50)
or the Torah itself:
Shee rather was two soules,
Or like to full on both sides written Rols,
Where eyes might reade upon the outward skin,
As strong Records for God, as ralndes within.
("The Second Anniversary," 503“506)
rhus, in dealing with either the strengths or weaknesses of
nan or woman, with humanity or with himself, John Donne I
turns, as if instinctively, to the Hebrew writers for his
I
imagery and for his inspiration. !
He employs his characteristically subjective interpre- !
j
tatlon of the Old Testament in a series of prose exercises
entitled Essavs in Divinity* in which he selects the first t
J
-verses of Genesis and Exodus as his chief topics for medi
tation.1^ He here compares the Bible to God’s other "books,*!
the Book of Life— the knowledge of which is sealed from man
— and the Book of Creatures, or Nature— an idea which he in
serts into his poetry:
As man Is of the world, the heart of man
Is an epitome of Gods great booke
Of creatures, and man need no farther looke.
("Eclogue," 50-53)
Donne holds that while philosophy teaches us the Unity of
I
1
j t f a e Godhead, only the Bible shows us the Trinity. He eom-
pares the Bible with philosophy, the Koran, and the Talmud,
knd decides that the Bible is "the only legible book of
j
life." He then proceeds to a consideration of Moses as the
first author whose writings we possess; of Pico della Mlran-
dola’s possible error in wringing a summary of the Christian
religion from the first verse of Genesis; of the names and
lumbers of the Israelites who came Into Egypt; of the pro
nunciation of the Name of God; and of the plural form of
Elohim as possible proof of the Trinity. He ends his medi
tations by considering the Judgments of God, first in a J
general sense, and then as expressed in the Law. The giving
of the Law (Torah) was a blessing to the Jews, he feels, 1
j
since it In some measure restored them to the first light ofi
Mature, and also prepared them for the coming of Christ:
13gee Evelyn M. Simpson, A Study of the Prose Work of
John Donne (Oxford, 1924), pp. 192-250*
We are brought neerer home, and set In a fairer way than
the Jewsj though their and our Law differ not as diverse
in speeies; but as a perfect and grown thing from an un
perfect and growing. (Cited by Simpson, Prose Work, p.
213)
The Old Testament always represents for Donne God's
Initial message to man; in explaining his fondness for the
Psalms he states:
Almost every man . . . knows what dish he would choose, for
1 his first, and for his second course. We have often the
same disposition in our splrituall Diet: a man may have a
particular love towards such or such a book of Scripture,
and in such an affection, I acknowledge, that my spirituall
appetite carries me still, upon the Psalms of David, for a
first course, for the Scriptures of the Old Testament; and
upon the Epistles of St. Paul, for a second course, for
the New: and my meditations even for these oublike exer
cises to Gods church, returne oftenest to these two.
(Sermon Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1618) ;
3e also proclaims in verse this admiration for the Psalms:
The songs are these , which heavens high holy Muse
Whisper'd to David. David to the Jewes:
And Davids Successors, in holy zeale,
In formes of Joy and art doe re-reveale
To us so sweetly and sincerely too,
That I must not rejoyce as I would doe
When I behold that these Psalmes are become
So well attyr'd abroad, so 111 at home,
So well in Chambers, in thy Church so ill,
As I can scarce call that reform'd untill
This be reform’d. (”Upon the Translation of the
Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney . . . , 31-41)
In his Interpretation of Scripture in his sermons,
Donne depended heavily upon the allegorical method which the
i
medieval divines had inherited from Clement of Alexander andj
the Christian Platonists (see Simpson, Prose Work, p. 250). j
This method, which found a symbolical, in addition to liter
al, meaning in Old Testament history, was being superseded j
In Donne's time by the historical exegesis introduced by j
Colet in his treatment of St. Paul’s epistles early in the
sixteenth century* Bat Donne had within him a good deal of i
1 ■ !
the mystic; he viewed all material phenomena as symbols of
an inner reality. Thus, despite his intellectual preference
i
for plain historical Interpretation of Scripture, he re
peatedly fell back, in his sermons and essays, upon the
allegorical method. Thus, his "Fallen Man" is not Adam, but
John Donne and those about him, who have fallen from the in-
hoc ence of childhood to the depravity of manhood. The wan- ;
i
derings of the Israelites in the wilderness are the wander-
|
ings of all men through the desert of this world,
j Carried over into his religious poetry, this concern
with "self" makes Donne the devotee, rather than God the
Mvlnity, the center of interest. Donne speaks here in his
human or lay capacity, not as a priest— there is nothing
’social" or "official" in these outpourings of his soul; he
i
is thinking only of himself and his relationship to God, as
he argues with himself, strives to reassure himself, or
cries to God for mercy, and in happier moments thanks God
for his patience. Most of these qualities are found in the
Well-known "A Hymn to God the Father":
Wilt thou forgive that sinne where I begunne,
Which was my sin, though it were done before? j
Wilt thou forgive that sinne; through which I runne,
And do run still: though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sinne which I have wonne !
Others to sinne? and, made my sinne their doore?
Wilt thou forgive that slime which I did shunne j
I 96
I
A yeare, or two: but wallowed in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sinne of feare, that when I have spunne
My last thred, I shall perish on the shore;
But sweare by thy selfe, that at my death thy sonne
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that,fhou hast done,
I feare no more, (lines 1-18)
Donne could woo God's favor with a self-debasement similar
bo that which he employed toward wealthy patrons, or he
\
could express his love for God with the same baffled sensu
ality, or "holy amourousness," which he directed at his
various mistresses. ’ This similarity is found also in his
i •
tortured analysis of the flaws in his devotion.
It has been said that Donne’s sermons center about the !
i i t
themes of sin, death, and God ; the same is true of his re
ligious poetry--with major emphasis upon sin. For Donne, as
for most of his orthodox Christian contemporaries, sin con- :
sists of a rebellion against God and the divine values (see
folv Sonnet XI), and the acceptance of false values, or
"idolatry,” in the daily struggle between the body and the
30ul. He states his view clearly in "The Litanie":
When senses, which thy souldlers are
Wee arme against thee, and they fight for sinne,
When want, sent but to tame, doth warre
And worke despaire a breach to enter in, %
When plenty, Gods Image, and seale
Makes us Idolatrous,
And love it, not him, whom It should reveale,
When wee are mov'd to seeme religious I
^^Donne’s Sermons. Selected Passages, with an Essay by
Logan Pearsall Smith (Oxford. 1Q12) . pp. xxv-xxvil.
Only to vent wit, Lord deliver us. (lines 181-89)
j
Since he is thoroughly Imbued with a heavy sense of sin, it
is not surprising that Donne*s conception of God bears a
distinct resemblance to the austere deity of much of the Old
Testament. God is defined for Donne, as for most men of his
time, in terms of power and will; His righteous wrath, an
ever-present terror. "What extraction of wormwood," Donne
can be so bitter, what exaltation of fire can be so raging,
what multiplying of talents can be so heavy, what stiff
ness of destiny can be so inevitable, what confection of
knowing worms, of gnashing teeth, of howling cries, of
scalding brimstone, of palpable darkness, can be so, so
insupportable, so inexpressible, so unimaginable, as the
curse and malediction of God?
or, as he expresses it in verses
In prayers, and flattering speeches I court God:
To morrow I quake with true feare of his rod.
So my devout fitts come and go away
Like a fantastique Ague: save that here
Those are my best dayes, when I shake with feare.
(Holy Sonnets. XIX, 9~lk)
Yet, Donne*s God is not all darkness, pain, and anger. I
He can also be— as in the Psalms, Isaiah, or Hosea— a God of
mercy, the "Father" of the New Testament, a beneficent,
creative spirit which considers man, however fallen and sin-
By thee, and for thee, and when I was decay’d
Thy blood bought that, the which before was thine;
I am thy sonne, made with thy selfe to shine,
Thy servant, whose paines thou hast still repaid,
Thy sheep©, thine Image, and, till I betray'd
My self, a temple of thy Spirit divine.
- -(Holy Sonnets. II, 2-8)
cries
Today
bemired, as after all his own temple:
0 God, first I was made
or, in another instance:
Wilt thorn love God, as he thee! then digest,
My Soule; this wholesome meditation,
How God the Spirit, by Angels waited on
In heaven, doth make his Temple in thy brest. ...
•Twas much, that man was made like God before,
But, that God should be made like man, much more.
fHolv Sonnets. XV, 1-4, 13-14) !
!
In fact, the sinner has always the last recourse of a direct
appeal to God, his surest means of salvation— as witness the
case of Job: !
j
Heare us, 0 heare us Lord; to thee
A sinner is more rausique, when he prayes,
Then spheares, or Angels praises bee,
In Panegyrique AlleluJaes;
Heare us, for till thou heare us, Lord
We know not what to say;
Thine eare to our sightes, fceares, thoughts gives
voice and word.
0 Thou who Satan heard'st in Jobs sicke day,
Heare thy selfe now, for thou in us dost pray.
("The Litanie," 199“20T)
This urgent personal quality stamps the poetry of Donne
as representative of his time, for one of the most charac
teristic efforts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth!
centuries was to deepen the inner life of the believer. The!
Renaissance had wrought, and the Reformation had reinforced,
i great shift of attention from God to man. The authority ;
of the medieval church had been replaced for most Protes- ’
bants by that of the Bible, and the Bible was highly access!-"
ale as a personal guide. As a consequence, the Protestant
sects endeavored to strike new life into the individual con
sciousness. It was this release of personal spiritual ener
gy which launched the mystical revival of sixteenth century
Spain and early seventeenth century Prance, and the passion
ate concern for the "inner light" among the German religious
i
enthusiasts* It was this movement which found its counter
part in the Englishman's effort to make sure of the grounds
of his salvation.1®
The Individual thus carried the burden of his own sal-
sration. Given free will and a clear-cut guide for his moral
[ " i
i
and spiritual behavior, the Individual himself offered tangi
ble evidence of his religious health. Hence, Donne and many
af his contemporaries seem to have shared the Old Testament
onviction that physical disease is an external sign of In
ner guilt. Job's friends had expressed the belief that in a
j
btrietly cause-and-effect universe, all suffering was a form
|
of punishment, all good fortune a sign of God's favor; that
the spirit and body were so Interrelated that spiritual
faults were transcribed upon the body. And Donne's was cer
tainly a unified sensibility, reflecting this organic way of
I l6
jthinking. In his elegy for a forgotten little girl who
bied young, he underlines his view that there is no division
between flesh and spirit, that all is one substance created
by the One Deity: j
! , of whose soule, If wee may say, *twas Gold,
Her body was th' Electrura, and did hold
i->See Helen C. White, The Metaphysical Poets. A Study
in Religious Experience (Hew York, 1936)> pp. 124-125♦
l%ee George Williamson, "The Nature of the Donne Tra
dition,” Studies In Philology. 25:434, April 1928. ______
Many degrees of that; wee understood
j Her by her sight; her pure and eloquent blood
Spoke in her cheekes, and so distinctly wrought,
That one might almost say, her body thought.
("The Second Anniversary,” 241-46)
Donne applies this organic relationship of form and spirit
to angels as well as humans:
I So in the first falne angels, resteth still
Wisdoms and knowledge; but, 'tis turn * d to ill:
As these should doe good works; and should provide
Necessities; but now must nurse thy pride.
And they are still bad angels; Mine are none;
For, forme gives being, and their forme is gone.
fElegle XI. "The Bracelet," 71-76) j
t
i
Bonne created a very effective English idiom for trans
muting religious emotion Into poetry--
an idiom in which secular imagery may be raised to reli
gious significance, and religious abstractions and symbols5
may be reduced to metaphor.17
It was his attempt to resolve emotional tension by means of ;
intellectual equivalents which terminated in the senses, or j
possessed the quality of sensation, that gave rise to meta- j
l i f t
physical poetry. w Because of his need to find a spiritual
parallel for every material fact, to pen sermons and poems
17gee George Williamson, "Donne and the Poetry of To
day," in A Garland for John Donne, p. 166.
L
*®T. S. Eliot’s statement of this idea has become well !
own: "The only way of expressing emotion In the form of
art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words,
a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall
be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when
the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experi
ence, are given, the emotion Is Immediately evoked." "Ham- I
let and His Problems," in Critiques and Essays in Criticism.
»d. R. W. Stallman (New York, 1949), P* 387♦
6n a compass or on the analogy of the world to a sea, to de-|
i i
tect correspondences in all things under (and above) the
sun, to illustrate concretely all abstract statements, Donne;
is generally accepted as the fountainhead of seventeenth
| i
century metaphysical poetry.
I
Donne, an astute literary craftsman, was aware that the
way to men's hearts was through the emotions and that the
key to the emotions was figurative language. He thus viewed
Jnetaphor and paradox as vital components of effective lan- j
| i
guage rather than as mere adornments. But awareness of a
Ifcruth was insufficient in the seventeenth century; precedent:
! I
was needed. Donne turns naturally to Holy Writ to authenti-j
cate his persistent reliance upon elaborate figures of
speech:
The Holy Ghost in penning the Scriptures delights himself,
not only with a propriety but with a delicacy and harmony
and melody of language, with height of metaphors and other
figures which may work greater Impressions upon the
readers. . . . There are not in all the world so eloquent
books as the Scriptures. . . . If we could take all these
figures and tropes which are collected out of secular
poets and orators, we may give higher and livelier ex
amples of every one of those figures out of the Scriptures
than out of all the Greek and Latin poets and orators.
!
Another time, Donne describes the Scriptures as
|
such a height of figures, such voyages, such peregrina
tions to fetch remote and precious metaphors, such exten- j
sions, such spreadings, such curtains of allegories, such i
third heavens of hyperboles, so harmonious elocutions, so i
retired and so reserved expressions, so commanding per- ;
suasions, so persuading commandments, such sinews even in
thy milk, and such things in thy words as all profane
authors seem of the seed of the serpent that creeps, thou
art the dove that flies.
I
f i e would certainly have agreed with George Herbert's J
conviction, expressed in “The Forerunners,” that rich and
figurative language should be employed by writers of sacred I
themes:
Sweet phrases, lovely metaphors,
But will you leave me thus? When you before
©f stews and brothels only knew the doors,
Then did I wash you with my tears, and more, j
Brought you to church well-dresst and clad.
My God must have my best, evrn all 1 had.
I Lovely, enchanting language, sugar-cane,
Honey of roses, whither wilt thou fly?
Hath some fond lover 'tieed thee to thy bane?
And wilt thou leave the church, and love a sty?
(lines 13-22)
Certainly the Bible Itself offered many examples of
liomely, striking, and even surprising figures of speech. A
random sampling of colorful similes from the Old Testament
reveals why Bonne might very well feel that he was acting
according to Biblical precedent in his figurative handling
[ i
of language:
Remember, 1 beseech thee, that thou hast fashioned me as
clay. Hast thou not poured me out as milk and curdled me I
like cheese? (Job x.10)
God shall wipe Jerusalem as a dish, turning it upside
down. (II Kings xxi.13)
How shall this multitude lick up all that is round about
us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field.
(numbers xxii.4) I
As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my j
soul after thee, 0 God. (Psalms xlii.2)
Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art
gone up. (Genesis xlix.9)
Bonne's poetry shocks the eye and ear with its sharp
contrasting of homely and colloquial phrases and learned
words. He roughens his lines and plays havoc with tra
ditional caesuras; he employs crabbed dissonances and broken;
rhythms. Most tellingly of all, he Introduces into poetry a
whole new vocabulary of scientific, professional, and eol-
Loquial terms. Both his love songs and divine poems are !
I
marked by such colloquial phrasing as "For God’s sake hold
your tongue,1 1 or "And we said nothing all the day," and
"What will I say, I will not tell thee now"; and such homely
words as "whining," "rags," "snorted," and "itchy." Bonne
intermixes with these, such learned words as "interlnani-
i ■
mates," "hydroptlque," "sublunary," "trepidation." His
Words and phrases range from the simple and realistic to the;
! ;
fantastic and bizarre; this range is almost encompassed in
Goe, and eatehe a falling starre.
Get with child a mandrake roote,
Tell me, where all past yeares are,
Or who cleft the Divels foot,
Teaeh me to heare Mermaldes singing,
Or to keep off envies stinging,
And finde
What winde
Serves to advance an honest minde.
("Song," 1-9)
with its rollicking exaggeration and high-splrltedness, and
its highly colloquial diction which subordinates verse-
pattern and metrical accent to the emphasis and Intensity ofJ
i natural speech-rhythm (see Williamson, "Nature of Bonne I
Tradition," p. 431).
With all his strange verbal combinations, Bonne, when
le so desired, was complete master of a strong and colorful ;
iiction, appropriate equally to his prose and verse and very
. 104
similar to the simple, concrete, and specific language of
the Bible. He brought to poetry an eye for hard, physical
fact, a precise and brilliant analytical mind, and a lively j
imagination. Bonne buttressed these qualities with wide
learning in the fields of abstract thought, a strong sense
of the dramatic and theatrical, a deeply personal concern
with religious experience, and a decided gift for psychologi-
i 1
cal analysis. ;
Yet, while Bonne may have set the poetic patterns for
such seventeenth century poets as Herbert, Vaughan, Crashaw,
and Traherne, he was not the "founder” of a new type of
i
poetry. As T. S. Eliot has pointed out, metaphysical poetry
i
was not a unique and isolated phenomenon of the early seven
teenth century, but very much in the tradition of English
poetry:
The poetry of Bonne (to whom Marvell and Bishop King are
sometimes nearer than any of the other authors) is late
Elizabethan, its feeling often very close to that of Chap
man . . . as is the devotional verse of Herbert, Vaughan,
and Crashaw . . .*9
j
Kathleen Lea has suggested that just as the Elizabethan con
ceit was heavily indebted to the Italian conceit— due to the
Elizabethan practice of skimming over Italian poetry and
taking up striking figures and ideas without reference to j
fche context— so the metaphysical comparison was really a !
19MThe Metaphysical Poets," in Critiques and Essays in
Criticism, p. 47-
development of Elizabethan exuberance in the use of the
simile.20 The "Metaphysicals" had the decided advantage ©f
inheriting the Elizabethan innovations in language and meter,
but this inheritance forced them to develop fresh shapes and
i
colors and new degrees of suggestion and metaphor. The
poetry which delights and stimulates one generation by the
I
unpredictable and exciting manner in which it communicates
f - - 1
i i
luman experience, may well prove worn and prosaic for the
next. Poetry*s value lies in the numerous ways in which it :
communicates: by the richness of its connotation, by the
physical appeal of harmony, by the width and depth of its
ambiguity. Its very meaning often depends upon associations
and symbols. When these associations and symbols become
stale by repeated use and thus no longer kindle the imagi
nation, one generation of poets has come to an end.21
As the sixteenth century ended, English poets found
that changes were needed in the various means of poetic ex- :
oression, for the Elizabethan poetic idiom had evolved into
a welter of metaphors, with countless variations of the same
notion. The Metaphysicals, however, were probably no more
conscious of intellectual variation when they put to a new
use the figures which they had inherited than the j
I
^"Conceits," Modern Language Review. 20s391, December
L925 •
21See Robert L. Sharp, "Observations on Metaphysical
imagery," Sewanee Review. 43:468, Oetober-December 1935 •
Elizabethans had been when they transmuted their own lan
guage into metaphor, the new style appeared In the fifteen-;
\ \
nineties in the poetry of Chapman, Donne, and Ralegh, among
others; in the prose of Bacon; in the plays of Shakespeare
and Jonson. It was the style of "So, so, break off this
last lamenting kiss," of "Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle;
she died young." It represented a loosening of rhythm, a
i
closer approximation to the diction of common life, and a 1
rejection of copiousness and elaborate word-schemes. These ,
!
changes made possible the concentrated imagery of Donne's
love poems, of Bacon's prose, and of the dramatic verse of
Shakespeare, Webster, and Middleton.22 Thus, if the Meta-
i :
physicals were elliptical in the intellectual and figurative
structure of their poetry, it was because they could safely
»
1
assume that their readers were well acquainted with the
ideas of Elizabethan poetry (see Sharp, "Observations," p.
477)* For example, the idea that sleep is the counterpart
of death had been so expanded and reiterated in countless
Elizabethan sonnets that Donne can use it with swift effect
jrhen he states that a condemned man "Doth practice dying by
a little sleepe" ("Obsequies to the Lord Harington," 24), orj
when he employs it in his poem "The Storme"s
! i
Jonas. I pitty thee, and curse those men,
Who when the storm rag'd most, did wake thee then;
22Prank Percy Wilson, Elizabethan and Jacobean (Oxford,
1945), p. 26.
Sleepe is paines easiest salve, and doth fullfill
! All offices of death, except to kill, (lines 33*“36)
Expressing Holy Writ by means of poetry was of the ut- i
nost significance to Bonne and the other metaphysical poets.
Like Milton and Sprat, they believed the Scriptures a much
worthier source of poetic inspiration than the pagan clas
sics. Sir Walter Halegh, in his History of the World (1614),
set the pattern for the succeeding age with his contention
j
that the ©reeks and other ancient nations "by fabulous in-
! i
ventions" had tried to conceal the fact that their fables
i
were "borrowed or stolen out of the Books of God" (Edinburgh,
|
1820, I, 178)* Halegh further gives a detailed account of
the similarities between Biblical characters and events and
those of the Greek myths, stressing, of course, the indebt
edness of the latter to the Hebraic legends; he maintains,
for example, that Adam was the first Saturn and Gain the
first Jupiter; that Jubal, Tubal, and Tubalcain were, re
spectively, Mercury, Vulcan, and Apollo; that Naamath, the
sister of Tubalcain, was the first Venus; that the fable of
^he division of the world among the three sons of Saturn
arose from the true story of the dividing of the earth among
i;he three sons of Noah; and that the fiction of the golden
apples kept by a dragon came from the scriptural narrative j
1 ' !
of the Serpent that tempted Eve (I, 181-85). He then pro
ceeds to trace the indebtedness of the Greek classics to the
Hew Testament.
It is not surprising then that while Bonne may have
ransacked the philosophic thought of classical times for
congenial themes, only in Ovid's Amores and in Martial and
j f c h e Latin satirists did he find Ideas to his liking (see
Hunt, Donne's Poetry, p. 126). On the whole, he displays
juttle ©f that joyful affinity with classical antiquity re
flected so wholeheartedly by Spenser and Sidney, Marlowe and
Shakespeare, and Jonson and Milton. In fact, Donne shows no
i
compunction in dismissing three venerated poets heavily im
bued with the classical tradition with so scathing a parody
* 3 l S 2
Here sleep's house by famous Ariosto,
By silver-tongued Ovid and many moe
j — Perhaps by golden-mouthed Spenser too, pardie
; Which bullded was some dozen stories high,
I had repair'd, but that it was so rotten,
{ As sleep awaked by rats from thence was gotten.
i
He expresses more deference, however, for the "heavenly
|
Poets"j
Thy Eagle-sighted Prophets too,
Which were thy Churches Organs, and did sound
That harmony, which made of two
One law, and did unite, but not confound;
Those heavenly Poets which did see
Thy will, and it express©
In rythmique feet, in common pray for me,
That I by them excuse not my excess
In seeking secrets, or Poetiquenesse.
(Divine Poemsi "The Litanie," 64-72) j
ait while Donne and the other early seventeenth century!
religious poets possessed in the Hebrew antiquities a store
of materials relatively free of destructive criticism, their
position was not entirely free of paradox. Both Judaism and
Christianity had undergone some blending with Greek I
philosophy during their historic development. Many Ideas
basic to Christian dogma had filtered in during the Middle
kges, when Scholasticism had worked feverishly to absorb as
much of the pagan learning as possible. Thus, in the seven
teenth century, Christianity was not only in possession of a
Hellenic God who wee the Absolute of theology, but also of a
Hebrew Jehovah who manifested personality and behavior
traits similar to "the gods" of antiquity.
Seventeenth century religious poets were also con-
ronted with the paradoxical task of translating a Cod who
I
was "omnipotent, Immutable, inaaortal, infinite" (Paradise
Lost. 111.372) into poetic form, a form which could proceed
1
effectively only by being specific, concrete, and graphic
(see Willey, Background, p. 231). Perhaps that is why a
3
good deal of the religious verse of the time reflects uncer-
i
tainty and a decided lack of inspiration. While the early
seventeenth century was an age of religious poetry, much of
this poetry is undistinguished; for it was also a period of
religious controversies, hatreds, and wax's; and many poets
1
involved in these disputes never progressed beyond the pure
ly historical, biographical, or theological aspects of re
ligious verse. There was thus considerable Biblical para
phrase , with no poet so poor but he could turn portions of
the Bible into stanza!c form.
The most notable paraphrases are those of Francis
Quarles, who began his literary career in 1620 with a
paraphrase of the Book of Jonah entitled A Feast for Worms. ;
i ■ :
Set Porth in a Poem of Jonah. Employing the pentameter
leouplet, Quarles followed with similar Biblical narratives
of Hadassa. or the History of Queen Ester. Job Militant, and
the History of Samson. Quarles drew his poems out to eon-
I i
siderable length by Interpolating pious "meditations" be-
I . •
tween brief sections of narrative.^ in 1624, he published
Sion’s Elegies, a poetical paraphrase of the prophet Jere
miah; and in 1625, Sion’s Sonnets, a version of the Song of .
Songs. Another Biblical paraphraser worthy of mention is
!
George Sandys, who, in 1636, published a version of the
Psalms of David, which Henry Dawes set to music. In 1638,
! !
Sandys issued a long version of the Book of Job. He also
i
paraphrased Ecclesiastes, the Lamentations of Jeremiah, and
I Oil
a collection of songs out of the Old and New Testaments.
I
! The religious poetry was not the monopoly of any party,
sect, or faction within the Christian church. As Miss White
points outs
i
; It says much for the universality of religious feeling and
the currency of good poetry that here the boundaries of
party and creed, however implicit, seem not to have re
stricted either the movement or the appreciation of the
best religious poetry of the time. (Metaphysical Poets,
p. 49) 1
23gee Divine Poems . . . by Francis Quarles (London,
,; also, F. E. Hutchinson, The Sacred Poets, in Gam- !
bridge History of English Literature (Cambridge, 1911), VII,
| 2^See A Paraphrase vnon the Divine Poems. By George
Sandys (London, 1638).
It must be admitted, however, that the Puritans and "Enthusif
asts" had In their view of the world certain elements which ;
many have considered antithetical to poetry. But the ster- j
eotyped depiction of the Puritan as an embittered middle-
class fanatic hating the amusements and enjoyments of his
neighbors has been greatly exaggerated. Many of the Puri
tans, such as Milton, were lovers of learning and beauty.
The Puritan's basic weakness in the arts would seem to have
Centered about his confining himself to the printed page;
passionately desirous of truth, he tended to be highly
I ;
literal and self-sufficient and disdainful of everything
! i
that was not plain and undecorated, habits which may have
weakened his imaginative powers and sensibility. Perhaps,
then, it is not too surprising that, with the exception of
i
Milton, the noteworthy religious poets, especially those of
a mystical and devotional bent, came out of the relatively
moderate and central tradition of the Ihgll&h Church. Bonne,
i
i
Herbert, Crashaw, Vaughan, and Traherne may be said to have
derived their poetic impetus from this "middle tradition."
With the exception of the physician Vaughan, all were cler-
j
I
gymen. Crashaw, though he later moved into Catholicism,
i
wrote much of his poetry while still a member of the Angli- :
can Church. These men may be grouped by their sense of
I
('moderation," or perhaps of "reason" and "measure." They
i
considered themselves as taking a theological position half-!
way between Home and Geneva, avoiding the extremes, but
deriving strength from both (see White, Metaphysical Poets.
p. 54).
j The middle position of these poets was anything but
unique. 'Hie Elizabethan Settlement of the English Church
represented an attempt to deal logically and reasonably with
a highly emotional situation. And the poetry which the
major Anglican poets produced reflects the dominance of the
| f
logical faculty over feeling and imagination. As Herbert
Read puts it,
Metaphysical poetry is determined logically: its emotion
is a Joy that comes with the triumph of the reason and not
a simple instinctive ecstasy.
The poetry of the Metaphysicals, as a highly intellec-
f ’ 1 !
i
tual and yet emotion-evoking poetry, is truly representative
pf an age which was basically intellectual in its approach
bo religion (see White, Metaphysical Poets, p. 87). The
central purpose of Donne's poetry would seem to have been
the expression of thought rather than the rich diversity of
the creative fancy, the thought that there existed an organ
ic relationship between the many separate identities that
make up the world. Convinced of the reality of the soul and
3od, he saw in the material world the ladder to the splritu-;
al. He extended thought and expression to their utmost
i ' i
Limits in a valiant attempt to express that whleh was beyond
25MThe Nature of Metaphysical Poetry," Criterion. 1:26%
1923. See also Williamson, "Donne and the Poetry of Today,";
in A garland for John Donne, pp. 158, 1?6. j
I . . J
both thought and expression. Thus, if his poetic works are I
ward intellectual analysis and to his giving too large a
Imagination (see Simpson, Prose of Bonne, p. 130)* In. fact,
m u x o (;i.n a v j.u ii m ay u a a p u x y a p p x j.a u . w w i u m . m tu A « c x » ji-
l
man points out that he applied to poetry
something of the formal and syllogistic logic of theologi-
j cal argument and academic debate. There is scarcely one
1 of Bonne's poems of which a clear prose analysis could not
be given; in almost every one of them there is some kind
of argument, an argument which is sometimes conducted in
almost rigidly syllogistic form. ... In Bonne's best
poetry there is always a balance of elements: an intel
lectual Or logical structure which could be clearly and
completely conveyed by a prose analysis. (The Monarch of i
Wit, pp. 221-22)
Bonne reflects in his poetry the fundamental conflict
in the English Church between the emotional enthusiast and
the man of balance, the man of varied Interest and the one
i i
of concentrated devotion. Large sections of English society
took piety for granted at this time and applied a pletistic
! i
code strenuously; yet this religious fervor was nullified to.
i
some degree by over-definition and controversy. The
J. C. Grierson, The Background of English Lltera- 1
tare and Other Collected Essays and Addresses (London. 1925).
p. id.See also Mario Praa, "Bonne's Relation to the poetry
of His Time,” in A Garland for John Bonne, pp. 58-61.
bften marred by flaws, harsh discords, and elliptical ex
pressions, the cause may be attributed to his tendency to
place to the discursive reason and too little to the pure
Grierson's comment
114'
religious poets were thus forced to achieve freshness and
variety of expression, accent, and style.
The elaborate medieval apparatus that had so well served
Dante and the other religious poets of the Middle Ages had
been rejected by the Reformation. The familiar symbols of
the world after death, the human intermediation of the
saints, expressed in a thousand legends of this world and
the next, the symbolism and pageantry of church rite and
festival, with all the accumulated imaginative and emotion
al values that had gathered about them for fifteen hundred
years, these things had for the most part been rejected.
The figure of Mary the Virgin and Mother, though not en-
I tirely excluded from the thought of the time, was under
i suspicion. Iconoclasm with its fear of idolatry and its
resolution against superstition was at the door of the ;
Protestant consciousness, and much of what had given food
to the Christian imagination for centuries was shut with-
| out. Even the human life of Christ had lost some of its
j direct imaginative appeal in the prevailing theological
i preoccupations. The Old Testament held its own fairly
i well in parallel and illustration, and those portions of
j the New dealing with the organization and customs of the
j early Church were in the center of contemporary controver
sy. Moreover, the large part played by the Psalms in the
literary life of the time must never be forgotten. But,
again, it is the revelatory and authoritarian aspects of
the Bible rather than its imaginative richness and sug-
?
estiveness that dominate the general consciousness.
White, Metaphysical Poets, pp. 88-89)
I The early seventeenth century thus emerges as a period i
kevoted to the re-evaluation of religious beliefs and char
acterized by Intense soul-searching and self-doubt. With
the Bible as his principal guide, and with a profound sense
of the sin of man as a result of the Fall, the devout indi- ,
vidual aspired to re-establish his relationship with God.
It is this new religious rapport that the religious poets f
attempted to articulate in their own idiom. Thus, while
Donne might have a thorough knowledge of medieval scholasti-j
cism and theology, of Dante and French literature, and of
physics and the scientific findings of Copernicus, Galileo,
and Bacon, he refused to be restricted by the thought of any
one tradition or age. None of the Metaphysicals, in fact,
i
were content merely to repeat Renaissance ideas or the
Elizabethan poetic idiom; they sought to make old ideas into
new ones, to keep poetry alive, vigorous, and communicative.;
I
While the experimental scientists, the practitioners and ex
ponents of the "new philosophy," were able to remain cheer
ful and confident, these poets, together with many of their
contemporaries, became increasingly aware that the new dis- i
i
coveries in astronomy and the other sciences added to rather
I 1
than decreased their skepticism as to the possible attain-
jnents of human knowledge. As much of what they had labor!-
ously learned in the past had proved to be false, might not
a good many of the new discoveries prove with time to be
equally invalid? (See Leishman, Monarch of Wit, pp. 239~bO.)
i • .
Donne's personal doubts are aptly summed up in his Second
Anniversary":
| What hope have wee to know our selves, when wee
i Know not the least things, which for our use be?
j Wee see in Authors, too stiffe to recant,
A hundred controversies of an Ant;
And yet one watches, starves, freeses, and sweats,
To know but Catechismes and Alphabets
Of unconcerning things, matters of fact;
How others on our stage their parts did Act; !
What Caesar did, yea, and what Cicero said.
Why grasse is greene, or why our blood is red,
Are mysteries which none have reach'd unto. I
^?See Williamson, "Nature of the Donne Tradition," p.
■ In this low forme, poore soule, what wilt thou doe?
i When wilt thou shake off this Pedantery,
• Of being taught by sense, and Fantasie?
i Thou look*st through spectacles; small things seeme great
i Below; But up unto the watch-towre get,
I And see all things desploy'd of fallacies:
Thou shalt not peepe through lattices of eyes,
Nor heare through labyrinths of eares, nor leame
By circuit, or collections to diseeme.
In heaven thou straight know1st all, concerning it,
And what coneernes it not, shalt straight forget.
(lines 279-300)
bonne insisted repeatedly, as had the Hebrew Prophets, that i
is is impossible for a man to escape from the hand of God by!
kny kind of diversion or distraction, and that only by be
lieving wholeheartedly in God would man find forgiveness and
peace. The fervor, sincerity, and originality with which he
expressed this conviction made him a major poetic force in
i
both the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
1
C H A P T E R I V
GEORGE HERBERT*S USE OF OLD TESTAMENT IMAGERY
i
Virtually all English religious thought in the early
years of the seventeenth century centered about a devastate
ing sense of sin. The aberrations of the pagan Renaissance,
the fanaticism of the Christian reaction, and the thorough
confusion of a period of religious revolutions joined to
create a rigor of mood and grimness of temper which made the
Individual acutely aware of the state of his soul and his
relationship to God. Some found the path of least spiritual
resistance in a complete acceptance of the ordinances and
i
authority of the Anglican Church. Such a man was George
Herbert. Having had the good fortune to be bom and bred In
it at a time when it was enjoying a spell of rare equilibri-
I
um, Herbert seemed to feel little strain in placing his
Paith in a church authority which was well able to answer
the needs of devout men and women who did not wish to re- 1
iounee either the entire Catholic heritage or their own in
tellectual liberty. Herbert found Its via media well suited
I
to his taste. Perhaps his glad adherence to the Anglican
Church limited his poetic range in some respects, but it
provided him with the compensatory strength of a man who
found himself happy and at peace in his spiritual home.
Whereas John Donne was by nature a skeptic, Herbert was
a natural believer. Thus, while skepticism was in the air—
with his own brother, Edward Herbert, laying the philosophi
cal foundations of eighteenth century Deism— Herbert ac
cepted unguestioningly the traditional theology and cosmogra
phy that had persisted for many centuries. Like most of his
contemporaries, he saw the universe as a divinely estab-
|
lished structure In which every created thing played a sig
aifleant part:
All things are busy; only I
Neither bring honey with the bees,
Nor flowers to make that, nor the husbandry
To water these.
But all my company Is a weed.
Lord, place me in Thy concert; give one strain
To my poor need.1
In his poetry, Herbert also makes full use of another commonr
My body is all symmetry,
Full of proportions, one limb to another,
And all to all the world besides:
Each part may call the farthest, brother;
For head with foot hath private amity,
And both with moons and tides.
Nothing hath got so far,
But Man hath caught and kept it, as his prey.
His eyes dismount the highest star;
1"Employment," I, 17-24. Citations from Herbert's
poetry are from The Works of George Herbert, ed. F. E-
I am no link of Thy great chain,
place of medieval thought which lasted well into the seven
jfceenth century— the notion that the human constitution re
flects, In little, the organization of the cosmos itself:
iutchlnson (Oxford, 1941).
He is in little all the sphere.
Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
; Find their acquaintance there.
("Man," lines 13~24)
However, Herbert’s acceptance of traditional ecclesi
astical and philosophical doctrines did not mitigate his j
jawareness of conflicts within the individual soul. His poem
"Confession" vividly illustrates his consciousness of God's
i
wrath as well as of His pity and tenderness: "No screw, no
piercer can / Into a piece of timber work and wind, / As
Isod's afflictions into man, / When He a torture hath de- J
signed'.' (lines 7-10). And '"The Glance" demonstrates his
awareness of God's Justice and will as well as His closeness!
!
and love:
When first Thy sweet and gracious eye
Vouchsafed e'en in the midst of youth and night
’ To look upon me, who before did lie
j Weltering in sin,
I felt a sugared strange delight.
Passing all cordials made by any art,
Bedew, embalm, and overrun my heart,
And take it in.
Since that time many a bitter storm
My soul hath felt, e'en able to destroy,
Had the malicious and ill meaning harm
His swing and sway;
But still. Thy sweet original joy
Sprung from Thine eye, did work within my soul,
And surging griefs, when they grew bold, control, j
And got the day.
Wone of his contemporaries comprehended more fully the order
and power of God than did this gentle Anglican clergyman.
Herbert reflected endlessly upon God, both in himself and in
the world. While much seventeenth century religious thought
i
occupied itself principally with the law and word of God, he;
|— --- 120:
!
like Donne and the other metaphysical poets, was imbued with
a profound sense of God's immanence. He saw, as did the en-
i
lightened Job, the essence of God's providence in the embodi-
Lent of Himself in the world He had created. Thus he re-
i i
1
peatedly enumerates the marvels and divine economy of God in!
i ;
sustaining this world; ;
Thou art in small things great, not small in any;
1 Thy even praise can neither rise nor fall. <
Thou art in all things one, in each thing many,
For Thou art infinite in one and all. '
("Providence,” lines 45-48).
I All of Herbert’s poems, even the most disheartened, end
with the steady reassurance of God's presence. Although he
may not always be able to perceive God's light behind the
i i
i
darkness shed by temporary events, he never long falters in
his confidence that it is really there. In "The Method,"
for instance, he accounts for God's apparent Indifference to
his prayers by recognizing that perhaps his prayers have
been indifferent to God; and in "Unkindness," he contrasts
jfche courtesy he extends to human friends with his neglect of
jfche "Friend to all." This confidence forms one of the most
i ■
persistent and central themes in his verse. And one of the
i
most distinctive elements of Herbert's God Is His continual 1
yearning for man. This in itself, of course, does not set
Herbert apart, for even in their most severe adherence to
eternal decrees and their most arduous self-examinations (to
try to determine whether or not they really possessed saving
■faith), seventeenth century writers never forgot— as Helen
White substantially demonstrates— that God had so loved man-;
1 :
dnd that He had given His only begotten Son to save mankind
from itself (Metaphysical Poets, p. l8i). However, Herbert's
contemporaries--John Milton, for one— did not address God
with quite the humility, compassion, and responsiveness to
His love that Herbert consistently displays in his poetry.
For this reason, perhaps, they were often less successful ;
I t
than he in poetically and dramatically conceiving of God as •
a warm and compassionate Being. For this reason also, Her-
I ' -
bert, in pursuing his "Heart-work and Heaven-work," can
conceive of God and address God in terms of uniquely poig-
■ j ......................
hant intimacy: "Ah, my dear God, though I am clean forgot,
/ Let me not love Thee, if I love Thee not" ("Affliction,"
lines 65*66).
Although, then, Herbert possesses the same undivided
consciousness of the universality of all things as his con-
!" ■ ' "
temporaries, his homeliness of spirit and the peculiar inti
macy of hl3 apprehension of the divine serve to naturalise
and familiarize all that his mind touches. His adoration of
f°d 18 lntensely lndlvldual “ a addressed to a personal
deity eapable of appreciating and understanding the special j
j . . .
sacrifices of his devoted servant. In fact, as Grierson has
i
i
observed, The Temple is actually a series of metaphysical
Love poems centering about the personal relationship entered!
^Richard Baxter, Preface to Poetical Fragments (l68l). j
Cited by Hutchinson, Works. p. xliv. j
i n t o b y G o d a n d m a n :
; It is a record of God's wooing of the soul of Herbert re-
I corded in the Christian story and the seasons and symbols
i of the Church, and Herbert's wooing of God, a record of
I conflict and fluctuating moods, and expostulations with
God and himself.3 I
i
But although the idea of God's sustaining love and
Christ's redemptive love pervades his poetry, Herbert— like
Bonne— deplores and Is constantly oppressed by man's ingrati-r
tude, expressed by his propensity to sin. In the concluding
lines of "Decay," he shows that God's wrath can triumph over;
His love:
I see the world grows old, when as the heat
Of Thy great love once spread, as in an urn,
Doth closet up Itself, and still retreat,
Cold sin still forcing it, till It return
And calling Justice, all things burn.
t
Herbert Is deeply concerned with the continual conflict be
tween the forces of sin and love, and with the destined
victory of love— in spite of some expressed premonitions
that sin might conquer. He presents this theme effectively
in "The Agony":
j Philosophers have measured mountains,
Fathomed the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walked with a staff to heaven, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove;
Yet few there are that sound them,--Sin and Love.
i
I
Who would know Sin, let him repair ;
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see ■
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
j His skin, his garments bloody be.
I 3cross Currents in English Literature of the Seven
teenth'" Century (London. 1929). p. 2l6,
Sin is the press and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruel food through every vein.
i
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that Juice which on the cross a pike
©id set again a broach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor, sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine.
Herbert, though to a lesser extent than Donne, was Inter- j
ested in man's rapidly increasing scientific knowledge. Yet
he felt that the moral forces in human life, such as sin and®
' I *
love, are of more consequence to man's self-understanding ;
and to the management of his life, but less easily under
stood. Hence, his poems take the form either of colloquies I
of the soul with God or of self-communings in which he ana- l
1 ■ . I
lyzes unsparingly his own complex personality.
i Thus, the staple element of a good deal of his poetry
!' "
i I
is ”the many spiritual Conflicts that have past betwixt God i
and my Soul.” Herbert seldom directly addresses the reader,!
but either God or himself. And as the experiences of the
soul are not communicable by bare statement— requiring,
rather, a large use of comparison, metaphorical language,
and pictorial description— his command of imagery serves him
well. He does not find It necessary to go so far afield for;
his analogies as Donne, but derives most of his metaphors j
ifrom common experience, showing no hesitancy to employ home-;
ly instances without poetic associations. Not all of his
poetic attempts are successful. Some of his conceits or
t ■ .... •
hyperboles offend sober taste, or at best leave his verse i
grabbed and obscure. But his poetry is seldom flat, re-
1 ;
{fleeting always the sincere passion and original thinking
behind the workings of his mind and imagination. He does
not reflect the dreary scriptural paraphrases and obvious
moralizings of the Elizabethan religious lyrics, but the |
• i
higher standards set for subsequent religious poets by the
I i i
frequently reprinted religious lyrics of Robert Southwell^
and the Divine Poems of John Donne. While Herbert is not i
.... ' ■ ‘ 1 i
I !
the originator of the English religious lyric, he contrib- j
uted a highly personal and unique way of expressing that
blend of religious thought and passion which characterizes
the poetry of the metaphysical poets.
i
j Herbert attains this intimacy of consciousness by the
I
peculiar homeliness of the* terms in which he tries to convey
his sense of the divine. Donne also, as has been demon
strated, made effective use of homely and everyday terms,
sut Herbert does very different things with his materials:
whereas Donne used the details of everyday life to startle
and shock his reader into far regions, Herbert employs them
to domesticate wonder, to bring the remote home, to give to
the general the sharp dimensions of the particular (see j
I I
Helen White, Metaphysical Poets. p. 196). Thus, the differ-;
ences of approach carefully formulated by Wordsworth and
Coleridge In the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and
i
^See C. M. Hood, The Book of Robert Southwell (Oxford,
Biographia Literaria were anticipated more than one hundred
and fifty years by Herbert and Donne. Despite these impor
tant differences, however, Herbert often attains effects
that can be described only as ’ ’ within the sphere of Donne,” ;
» the iaet stanza of "Virtue" de^nstrates, »Only a sweet I
knd virtuous soul, / Like seasoned timber, never gives; /
i .
Bat though the whole world turn to coal, / Then chiefly
lives”; or the sprightly beginning of "Doomsday”:
Gome away, !
Make no delay.
Summon all the dust to rise,
Till It stir, and rub the eyes;
; While this member ^ogs the other,
j Each one whispering, "Live you, brother?"
I
| Despite this homeliness, however, there is nothing dull
Jcr prosaic in Herbert's expression of his devotion. The
easy assurance of his style reminds us that he had culti-
i
I
yated "the pliant mind, whose gentle measure / Complies and
suits with all estates" ("Content,” lines 13**l4). His skil
ful craftsmanship— possibly the result of his classical
studies— is also very apparent:
His avoidance of allusions to pagan mythology is of course
deliberate; but behind his highly developed literary dls- ;
crimination lie years of familiarity with writers who ex
alted decorum, elegance and sobriety; years, too, of prac-j
tice in the writing of Latin and Greek verse.5 j
But the intricacies of thought and melody in his poems are
reminiscent more of the Proven9al poets than the classical
writers. He employs approximately 140 different stanzaic
5|*iargaret Bottrall, George Herbert (London, 1954), p. 4|
patterns In Ms 169 poems, and 116 of these patterns, only
bnce.^ Yet, even in such flagrantly ’ ’ pictorial" poems as
I ' ' !
' ’ Easter Wings" and "The Altar," Herbert achieves a delicate :
balance between rhythmic form and emotion and thought-
content. His art always conceals itself, even when his
poetic form appears almost over-deliberate, as in "Sins
■ ■ ‘ ■ ■ 1 |
lound." Here, the punning title gives an Indication of the |
!
form; each stanza’s concluding line is identical with the
first, so that not only does the sense come full circle, but^
the movement is like that of a musical round. Yet, as Her
bert’s point is the continual repetition of sin, the form
becomes highly appropriate to its subject. And because he j
abjures sonorousness and strives for homeliness of language
hmd emotional Intensity, his poems often appear simple or
even naive, as does the following passage from "The Flower":
And now in age I bud again,
After so many deaths I live and write j
I once more smell the dew and rain,
And relish versing: 0 my only light,
It cannot be
That I am he
On whom Thy tempests fell at night.
These are Thy wonders, lord of love,
To make us see we are but flowers that glide;
Which when we once can find and prove I
Thou hast a garden for us where to bide,
Who would be more, I
Swelling through store, j
Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.
(lines 36-49)
^See G. H. Palmer, "The Style and Technique;" In
English Works of George Herbert (New York, 1915), I, 123-167.
See also A. McH. Hayes,"Counterpoint in Herbert," Studies |
in Philology. 35:43-60, 1938. I
Herbert's Imagery always grows naturally from the Idea |
of the poem, and many examples could be cited of the effec-
♦
tlve manner in which he relates atmosphere and imagery to
subject matter. In "Christmas," for Instance, he blends the
winter tone with hunting metaphors, and In "Easter," he I
manages to convey a sense of the airy freshness of a spring
morning. He achieves a rapid momentum both In the hurrying j
Lines of "The Collar" and by the many suggestions of the j
street ("feet," "trample," "steps," "tread") in "Mary Magda
lene." And in "Church Monuments," he attains a decidedly
musty quality by the constant repetition of "dust" and
i
"dusty.
| Herbert has an unusually strong sense of construction.
He quickly and clearly defines a poem’s leading idea, knits
| ;
it together by the related imagery, and brings it to an ef- j
h 1 " * * “ • — “ “ “
abrupt question or provocative phrase— after the manner of
Lonne--so that the basic problem is stated at the outset:
"What is this strange and uncouth thing?" "Who says that j
i
fictions only and false hair become a verse?" "Kill me not j
every day." "I struck the board and cried, 'No more! I
will abroad!'" Yet he does not become so addicted to this
method that it becomes a tell-tale mannerism. Many of his
7gee P. E. Hutchinson, "George Herbert," in Seventeenth
Senturv Studies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson (Oxford.
1938), p. 156.
poems are introduced In a leisurely or conversational manner?
"As I one evening sat before my cell." "I made a posy,
while the day ran by." He launches one of his few long
poems with, "Dear Friend, sit down, the tale is long and
. . . . i
sad.” And on a few rare occasions, he might strike a quite j
i
3tately beginning pose: "Immortal Love, author of this
great frame."
1 j
j He often successfully concludes a poem with a couplet
j ' ,
or a single line which clinches the idea firmly and many |
i '
times unexpectedly, as in the wonderful climax of "The
Collar," or in the culminating paradox of the first "Afflic-!
bion": "Let me not love thee, if I love thee not." He j
carefully selects verse-forms which match his poetic sub
jects, and while he employs iambic principally, with only an
occasional use of trochaic, he continually varies the inci
dence of the rhymes and length of the lines *
| Herbert possesses the happy faculty of using his homely
knd plain words with great dignity, as was recognized by
1
Coleridge, who, in a note to "Essay VI" of the first volume |
of The Friend, speaks of his diction as "pure, manly and
unaffected." While this gift is apparent in almost all of j
Herbert’s poems, it Is particularly obvious in "Easter Vir- j
hue" and "Love Bade Me Welcome." He also displays his J
j
awareness of the poetic value of alliteration and assonance |
Py his sparing but effective use of them. The peculiarly
tender and intimate tone of his poetic colloquies with God
r ....... — 1 2 9
!
Is greatly enhanced by the general simplicity of his lan
guage, He often approaches the brink of over-farailiarity,
as in "Love Bade Me Welcome,’ * but manages to avoid irrever
ence by his fine sense and breeding, and probably also be
cause of his familiarity with the Psalms* While the in
fluence of the Psalms cannot be accurately measured by the j
notation of echoes, it can be made evident--or at least j
! ■
plausible--when one notes the ease with which he embarks up-l
| ‘ 1
bn his colloquies with the Lord. His dally reading of the !
i " I
Psalms, obligatory for an Anglican priest, surely must have
jfcaught him the art of opening his heart to God, no matter
Uat his mood might be. And as many of the Psalms are col-
!
loquies in which the soul pleads or remonstrates with God,
ae conceivably could have absorbed their structure into his j
poetic consciousness.
Herbert shares with the other metaphysical poets the
ability to Invest a familiar object with a multiplex of
!
symbolic meanings. In selecting the temple as a vehicle for*
Ms poetic and religious expression, he chose a symbol which
might be used for the actual church building, for its ;
ordering, its furnishing, its implications . . . It might '
be used for that Mystical Body of the Lord, the Church, !
with its foundation Scripture; its indwelling Spirit, Its
rites and ordinances, Its feasts, Its intercessions, its
mighty commemorations, and it'might be used for that recog
nized temple of the Holy Ghost, the spirit of the indi
vidual Christian In its struggles and its Illuminations,
its repentances and Its confidences. (White, Metaphysical1
Poets. p. 168) !
Yet, The Temple does not give the impression of a completed
book. Although the arrangement of some of the poems seems
£o suggest a deliberate structure, the total organization is
rather elusive and the poems tend to fall into small groups,
often with little apparent relation between them,
Herbert begins The Temple in a very business-like
jfashion with "The Dedication," "The Church Porch," "Perir-
fhanterium" (the utensil for sprinkling holy water), "Super-
Liminare" (the lintel or upper doorpost)} he then advances
into the church proper. Inside, in "The Altar," he focuses
on the essential object for a man of his ecclesiastical be
liefs. In his next poem, "The Sacrifice," he shifts his
point of view, although the connection is, of course, obvi-
{ ' ' ■ ' - ’
ous. "The Sacrifice" prepares the ground for the next group
I ' !
f :
of poems, which center about the general idea of the Passion:
"The Thanksgiving" and "The Reprisal," followed by "The
Agony" and "The Sinner." Each of these poems is linked more
strongly to the preceding one than to the entire series.
The poems in the next group treat chronologically aspects of
I
jthe Resurrection: "Good-Priday," "Redemption," "Sepulchre,";
i"Easter" (with its pendant, "The Song"), and "Easter Wings."
I But from this point on— In such poems as "Nature,"
|"SIn," "Affliction," "Repentance," "Faith," "Prayer," and j
"The Holy Communion," he tends to express his religious con-
I
jvlctions in a more general philosophical tone, despite a !
certain amount of personal detail. He later continues his i
1 I
journey around the church with poems on "Church Monuments," !
I !
"Church Lock and Key," "The Church Floor," and "The Windows/1
r 131
i
He obviously also intended to celebrate the Christian year
i
with poems on the major feasts and recurring seasons; how-
i
ever, he completed poems only on Christmas, Lent, Good Fri
day, Easter, and Whit Sunday, Trinity Sunday, and the feast
I ft
of St. Mary Magdalene.
i 1
Yet, to grasp fully the many implications of Herbert*s |
religious symbolism, an awareness of his heavy reliance on
!
the imagery of the Old and New Testaments (as passed down i
-
graphic medieval works of art--glass, illumination, wood-
sarving, enamels, painting, and book illustration) is neees-
i " ' ' ■ ' I
sary. As Margaret BottraU points out:
t ‘
| Only a loving study of the New Testament could have en
gendered this trustful, ardent, childlike approach to God;:
but Herbert’s poems also show at every turn that he knew
the Old Testament intimately and valued it dearly. In
evitably, he considered it as historically true as well as;
divinely Inspired; but he read it with poetic understand- j
J Ing, allegorically, in the same way that Spenser and Mil- ;
ton and Blake read the Bible. All were alive to its
symbolism and «julck to perceive analogies between the Jew~i
ish story and human experience, whether recorded or under
gone In their own persons. fGeorge Herbert. p. 92)
And Rosemond Tuve*s detailed study of Herbert*s use of medi
eval iconographic materials, which were derived from the 01d |
Testament and then heavily enriched with overtones of mean- j
^Evidently the deficiencies in both of Herbert's struc
tural schemes caused Christopher Harvey, a devoted admirer
of Herbert, to publish The Synagogue. or The Shadow of The
Temple, in Imitation of Mr. George Herbert (London. 1640).
In which complete schemes of a church building and the
Christian year are presented. This work has often been In
cluded in editions of The Temple.
ing acquired through centuries of employment by the Church, I
j f i t a s shed considerable light on both the method and meaning
of much of Herbert*s poetry.^ In the seventeenth century,
Anglicans continued the medieval practice of associating
Certain Jewish "types” (events in the Old Testament pre- ;
| i
figuring parallel events in the New) with Christian revela-
| ’ i
tion: the Ark, for example, was considered a prefiguration ;
i
of the Christian church, Just as Abraham’s sacrifice of |
i •
Isaac prefigured God’s sacrifice of His son. Of particular :
| . ■ - i
interest to Herbert were the numerous conceits whioh elus- '
I . . :
i ^
tered about the ancient symbol of Christ as the miraculous
grape-bunch% this parallel, figuring forth the Inheritance
|
of the Hebrews crossing over Jordan into the Promised Land, I
was one of the oldest of the Old Testament "types," dating
from the eleventh or twelfth century (see Tuve, Heading of
jferbert, p. 112). Herbert employs this symbol in "Love-Joy":
As on a window late I cast mine eye,
I saw a vine drop grapes with J and C
Annealed on every bunch. One standing by
Asked what it meant. I (who am never loth
To spend my Judgment) said, it seemed to me j
To be the body and the letters both
of Joy and Charity. "Sir, you have not missed,"
The man replied5 "it figures JESUS CHRIST."
and in "The Bunch of Grapes": !
Joy, I did lock thee up; but some bad man
Hath let thee out again;
And now, methinks, I am where I began
Seven years ago: one vogue and vein, i
One air of thoughts usurps my brain.
^A Reading of George Herbert (Chicago, 1952).
r
133
I did towards Canaan draw; but now I am
j Brought back to the Red Sea, the sea of shame.
i
i For as the Jews of old by Cod's command
Travelled, and saw no town;
So now each Christian hath his Journeys spanned:
Their story pens and sets us down.
A single deed in small renown.
God's works are wide, and let in future times;
His ancient Justice overflows our crimes.
10 i
Then have we too our guardian fires and clouds;
Our Scripture dew drops fast: j
I We have our sands and serpents, tents and shrouds:
j Alas! our murraurings come not last. !
But where's the cluster? Where's the taste
Of mine inheritance?!! Lord, if I must borrow,
Let me as well take up their Joy as sorrow.
But can he want the grape who hath the wine?
I have their fruit and more.
| Blessed be God, who prospered Noah's vine,
| And made it bring forth grapes good store.
But much more Him I must adore 1
Who of the law's sour Juice sweet wine did make,
E'en God Himself, being pressed for my sake.12
’The Bunch of Grapes” is of particular interest because
it has as one side of its poetic subject a description of
the very workings of typology, that is, of the readings of
the Old Testament as filled with symbolical types to be
fulfilled in the New.” (Tuve, Reading of Herbert, p. 113)
The concepts that "God's works are wide, and let in future
times,” and that the story of the Jews "pens and sets us
down" were to Herbert more than merely academic, so that in
’The Bunch of Grapes," he can apply an Old Testament "type" j
l°Ailudes to the march of the Israelites through the
desert.
l^-The grapes brought from Canaan by the spies (Numbers
kill.23).
l^iaaiah lxiii-3-
134
not only to the Hew Testament and Christ, but to himself as
an individual Christian. The poem is a moving record of his
own state of mind--his approach to Canaan, his inability to
distance himself from "the Red Sea, the sea of shame," his
s
veary, rebellious murmuring. As an individual Christian, he
' |
tentatively questions the nature of "mine Inheritance": has
j
de inherited only the "sands and serpents, tents and shrouds"
of the Israelites and none of "their Joy"? But he is able J
to conclude affirmatively, "I have their fruit and more," (
' i
irhen he contrasts the "sour Juice" of Old Testament law with
the "sweet wine" which symbolizes Christ. He again asserts j
the triumph of the New Testament in his poem to "The Jews": I
] • - • I
1 i
Poor nation, whose sweet sap and Juice
Our scions have purloined and left you dry;
, Whose streams we got by the Apostles* sluice,
And use in baptism, while ye pine and die;
Who by not keeping once became a debtor,
And now by keeping lose the letter.
0 that ray prayers!— mine, alas!-- '
0 that some angel might a trumpet sound,
At which the Church, falling upon her face,
Should cry so loud until the trump were drowned,
And by that cry of her dear Lord obtain
That your sweet sap might come again.
The "sweet sap" mentioned here, as well as the previous
reference to the prospering of "Noah’s vine," illustrates j
the manner in which Herbert makes use of typology; for Noah’ b
1 a i
vine--from which the entire earth was to be replenished
13«And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto
them, ’Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.*"
"Genesis ix.l).
flourished finally in the vine of Engaddy, which ultimately |
(in the traditional liturgical and patristic allegorizations
pf the Song of Solomon) became a symbol for the Virgin (see
fiive, Reading of Herbert, p. 114). Thus, although Herbert
expressed his devotion to the Cfod of the Old Testament, the j
full measure of his religious love is directed at Christ, j
who made out of the Old Dispensation the sweet wine of the j
! i
New, the Nine of the Communion, that Blood pressed out in i
pain, and who embodied in himself the promised inheritance j
and thus became that cluster of grapes which provided a j
1
saving drink to all nations.
The first stanza of "The Jews" makes it apparent that
lerbert was familiar with a number of medieval and early
Renaissance illustrations which related the wells of salva
tion and the purifying waters of Isaiah (xii.3) and Ezekiel I
i
(xxxvl.25) to the baptismal water and therefore to the water:
from Christ’s side. These Illustrations further linked
Christ’s delivery of man from original sin to the ancient
delivery through the Red Sea (that "sea of shame"). They j
.. j
also connected the Israelites’ first crossing of the Jordan,'
to fetch the cluster of grapes, with that other crossing, |
I i
which is each Christian's entrance into the kingdom of I
! ' ' ‘ I
heaven. After all, this Is accomplished figuratively when j
| t
the good Christian is signed with the water of baptism— that)
water which was prefigured and promised to man by Cod on the
jday when He would come among them, for on that day there
... 136
would be wa fountain opened for the house of David and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem to eleanse them from sin and un-
i
cleanness“ (Zechariah xiii.l).
I Two great popular compendia— the Biblia Pauperum and
i
the Speculum Humanae Salvationls— served as major sources
I . !
for the ieonographical convention® of the late Middle Ages j
and the early Renaissance. The Speculum provides a series j
of more than forty typological comparisons between the Old ;
1 )
and New Testaments, each comparison consisting of four pic
tures— three Old Testament types and a New Testament anti
type, often drawn from legend {see Tuve, Reading of Herbert.
p. 121). The wine press conceit, used so often by Herbert,
appears twice in the Speculum: it appears first in an ex
planation of the spiritual meaning of the vine in the dream I
of Pharoah's butler, Which is a type of the Nativity, as are!
the flowering rod of Aaron and the legendary Tlburtine
Sibyl's vision of a virgin and child. In other words, after
mankind had suffered for a considerable length of time, a
!
vine Jesus had sprung from the earth Mary (when Christ was
born, the vines of Engaddy flourished) and the wine of
f 1
Christ's blood having been pressed in the Cross, man's free-j
I i
dom was sealed on the third day. The conceit of Christ as a
grape-bunch appears pictorially in the second wine press !
1 I
Comparison in the Speculum. Here, the botrus. or miraculous]
j
igrape-bunch, is shown being carried, huge and triangular up-
|on its pole, by two men. The two other types are little
L -
I 137
I
Isaac with the wood for M s own sacrifice and the slaying of
i -
the vineyard-owners son) the anti-type completing the set
is that of Christ carrying His Cross. The pictures are ac
companied by one hundred rhymed lines which make up a text
jonnecting the grape-bunch with the vine which figured forth
the nation of Israel, the wine press, and the sacrificial
I
blood. Thus, Herbert*s "the taste of mine inheritance” be-
I !
comes much more meaningful with an awareness of the liturgl-
j
cal tradition behind It. i
!
This relationship, indicated by the typological materi-;
als and the allegorical glosses between the Old Dispensation
and the Hew, forms a dominant theme in Herbert * s poetry,
kuch early scholars as Isidore and Rabanus Maurus had identi
fied the two men who carry the bunch of grapes on a pole be-:
tween them as the Jews and the Gentiles, and this identifi- j
cation had spread through such compendia as the Glossa Ordl-
naria and the Protestant imitations of these Catholic works,
such as the many versions of the ”Q,ueen Elizabeth*s Prayer- ;
books" (see Tuve, Reading of Herbert, p. 123). This reali- |
sation of Herbert * s concern with Ecclesia and her great pro-;
totype, Synagogue, clarifies many of his poems. This under-j
lying theme is to be found in "Whit-Sunday," in most of the
Priesthood poems, in "Aaron," "The Jews," "Sion," and the
Jordan poems. In fact, this great ancient contrast produces
in "The Jews" a poem of penitence) this poem not only con-
| !
tains the vine conceit but was probably meant to be a poem
1 5 8 '
for Good Friday, the day when the Church as one body offers
:ier corporate prayer for the Jews in Imitation of Christ*s
orayer on the Gross. Undoubtedly, Herbert was particularly |
moved by Christ*s passion because he was convinced that
:nan1s perversity perpetually wounds the eternal Christ. I
1
»
Thus, in this poem he seems to feel only an ironic compas
sion for the Jews who rejected Christ, since he and his j
| ' ;
fellow-Christians share their guilt. Thus, the irony of the
I ' ....■ : ' ■ ■ - i
Christians* "purloined” salvation is emphasized by the use !
j ’ _ !
of the symbol of Israel as the vine whose "sweet sap and
[juice" the Gentiles received, all undeserving, by the
i I
"Apostles * sluice":
i
Poor nation, whose sweet sap and juice
Our scions have purloined and left you dry;
Whose streams we got by the Apostles* sluice,
And use in baptism, while ye pine and die.
In "Sion," Herbert again expresses (as he does in "The
Buneb of Crapes") his conviction that love, not law, is the !
final fruit of the vine:
Lord, with what glory wast Thou served of old,
When Solomon’s Temple stood and flourished! j
Where most things were of purest gold;
The wood was all embellished j
With flowers and carvings, mystical and rare:
All showed the builders *, craved the seer * s care.
Yet all this glory, all this pomp and state,
Did not affect Thee much— was not thy aim;
Something there was that sowed debate; j
Wherefore Thou quittest Thy ancient claim: [
And now thy architecture meets with sin-- !
For all Thy frame and fabric is within. I
There Thou art struggling with a peevish heart,
Which sometimes crosseth Thee, Thou sometimes it J
The fight; Is hard on either part,
j Great God doth fight--he doth submit.
All Solomon's sea of brassand world of stone
Is not so dear to Thee as one good groan.
And, truly, brass and stones are heavy things,
Tombs for the dead, not temples fit for Thee;
ait groans are quick, and full of wings, j
And all their motions upward be; ;
And ever as they mount, like larks they sing: j
The note Is sad, yet music for a King. ;
Thus, a poem ostensibly about Solomon's temple emerges actu-
|. . . ....... . . . . . . . . , . j
ally as a poem about Sion (Zion), the faithful people or 1
I i
ehureh of God at any time. Herbert here reiterates his con-j
viction that God quit his "ancient claim" of external rite
and law for a temple within the human heart— "For all Thy
! "
frame and fabric Is within"— a church transmuted by Christ
into an expression of indwelling love.3^ And the image by
which he concisely states his point-”"All Solomon's sea of
brass and world of stone / Is not so dear to Thee as one
good groan"--would seem to refer back to the ornate brass
laver standing upon the twelve oxen, whieh had become famil
iar In medieval iconography as a prefiguring of Christian
baptism and of the twelve apostles (see Tuve, Reading of
Herbert. p. 125)* The difference here between the Old ,
! ■ ■ ■ ;
Testament type and the Christian anti-type, which it was j
supposed to prefigure, is that between letter and spirit. a
difference of vital import to Herbert In "Sion." The
^See I Kings vii.23.
^■%or the Old Testament view of this concept of "in- j
wardness," see Jeremiah xxxi.31-34. I
Speculum similarly contrasts the large brass laver with the
"new baptism of a repentance,” and also emphasizes this dif
ference between letter and law when it depicts John calling
the Pharisees a generation of vipers because they would ap- ■
}■ 1 ■ ■ . .. . . . . . j
proach baptism without contrition. And as baptism repre-
| ’ |
Sents the spiritual entrance into the Church, the Speculum |
relates Christfs baptism to two other types of baptism--the j
i
Ark carried through the divided Jordan and Naaman purified
of his leprosy by bathing in Jordan's waters. Thus, Her
bert's "All Solomon's sea of brass and world of stone / Is
not so dear to Thee as one good groan” receives an added
commentary.
These iconographic types help to illuminate not only
scattered images In Herbert's poetry, but also a definite
group of poems, of which the two chief and key poems are
l
auzzlingly entitled "Jordan." These two poems appear to
bave nothing to do with the crossing of the Hebrews into
Canaan and become truly meaningful only when Herbert's ideas;
about sacred and profane love are Interpreted In the light ;
of Christian symbolism and related to his persistent pre
occupation with the New Dispensation and its doctrine of j
I t
self-abnegating love as embodied in the figure of Christ.
. . . . . . . .
The crossing of the Jordan, which already served as a symbol
Lf redemption in the Old Testament, became a yet more power-!
L _ > „ « . ~ « . - . . . . i « * — > * « *
deepened its significance. Like other water symbols, the
! ' T41
i
I
Jordan was basically a symbol of purification from sin, but
i
it came to have other implications as well: the Chosen
i
People, who form the Church of God, enter heaven and eternalj
life through the waters of Jordanj and the single soul,
which when wedded to Christ becomes His temple, enters *
i
through its waters the Joy of His eternal presence. Thus,
the water symbol takes the form of the waters of baptism j
| j
that flowed from Christ’s side and have regenerating and 1
| t
I i
fructifying powers. Christ's Baptism and Epiphany were !
j , i
paralleled and equated with the wedding of Christ to His
j I
Church or to the soul. With these correspondences in mind, ;
I
Herbert’s two "Jordan" poems take on an added meaning:
j
Who says that fictions only and false hair
Become a verse? Is#there in truth no beauty?
Is all good structure in a winding stair?
Hay no lines pass, except they do their duty
Not to a true, but painted chair?
| Is it not verse, except enchanted groves
| And sudden arbours shadow coarse-spun lines?
Must purling streams refresh a lover's loves?
Must all be veiled, while he that reads, divines,
Catching the sens© at two removes?
Shepherds are honest people; let them sing:
Riddle who list, for me, and pull for prime: j
I envy no man's nightingale or spring;
Nor let them punish me with loss of rhyme
Who plainly say, "My God, my KingI" j
i
Se here renounces the artificial conventions and images of
I
poetry to proclaim openly his religious adoration, thus
feeling himself at one with his God and King. He repeats
this theme of spiritual purgation in his second "Jordan"
i
poem, again relating it to the writing of his own verse: 1
When first my lines of heavenly joys made mention,
i Such was their lustre, they did so excel,
That 1 sought out quaint words and trim Invention;
My thoughts began to burnish, sprout, and swell,
Gurling with metaphors a plain intention,
Decking the sense, as if it were to sell.
! Thousands of notions in my brain did run, j
I Off ring their service, if I were not sped:
! I often blotted what I had begun;— !
This was not quick enough, and that was dead. j
Nothing could seem too rich to clothe the sun, ;
Much less those joys which trample on his head. j
i
As flames do work and wind when they ascend, |
So did I weave myself into the sense. !
But while I bustled, I might hear a friend
Whisper, "How wide is all this long pretence!
There is in love a sweetness ready penned:
Copy out only that, and save expense.”
Thus, Herbert uses the ieonographie symbol of "Jordan1 * to
•emphasize explicitly the "purification" of his poetry and
i :
implicitly the purification of his own soul through the
sacrament of Baptism, with its promise of an entrance into
s ■
i ;
Jstemal life; he also implies spiritual regeneration,
Cleansing, dedication, redemption, and salvation.
i i
j He again expresses this idea in "’ Hie Altar." The cen
tral metaphor of this poem is probably taken from an impres
sive passage in Deuteronomy in which Moses proclaims to all
Israel, "This day thou art become the people of the Lord thy
God," and in which he carefully describes an altar which is
to be built to honor God:
And it shall be on the day when ye shall pass over the
Jordan unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee,
that thou shalt set thee up great stones, and plaster them
with plaster. . . . And there shalt thou build an altar
unto the Lord thy God, an altar of stones; thou shalt lift
up no iron tool upon them. Thou shalt build the altar of
the.Lord, thy God of unhewn stones; and thou shalt offer
" T 4 3 "
burnt-ofrerings thereon unto the Lord thy God. (xxvii.2,
4-7)
The altar is also described in a passage from Exodus forbid
ding idolatry:
And if thou make Me an altar of stone, thou shalt not
build it of hewn stones; for if thou lift up thy tool upon;
it, thou hast profaned it. Neither shalt thou go up by j
steps unto Mine altar, that thy nakedness be not uncovered,
thereon. (xx.22-23) j
Herbert’s "stone*1 is his own heart: |
I A Broken Altar, Lord, Thy servant rears, |
Made of a heart, and cemented with tears; !
Whose parts are as Thy hand did frame;
No workman*s tool hath touched the same.
A heart alone
j Is such a stone,
As nothing but
Thy power doth cut.
Wherefore each part !
Of my hard heart
Meets in this frame,
To praise Thy name;
That, if I chance to hold my peace,
These stones to praise Thee may not cease.
G let Thy blessed SACRIFICE be mine,
And sanctify this ALTAR to be thine.
Thus, the human heart is the true altar to bear the offer
ings made for the fulfillment of God*s promise that the
t ;
i
Chosen People should attain salvation upon their spiritual
entrance into the promised land. Only by offering his love,:
as an expression of his gratitude for Christ's sacrifice,
i
idoes one truly cross over the Jordan into God's grace. This
Is for Herbert the real fulfillment of Moses' behest, rather
than the historical fulfillment related by the Bible;
Then Joshua built an altar unto the Lord, the God of
Israel, in mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord j
commanded the children of Israel, as it is written in the
book of the law of Moses, an altar of unhewn stones, upon
X W
which no man had lifted up any iron; and they offered
i thereon burnt-offerings unto the Lord, and sacrificed
< peace-offerings. (viii.30-31)
Herbert rather logically follows "The Altar" with "The I
Sacrifice," which Miss Bottrall considers his "most powerful!
poem." As in so many medieval poems of a similar type, the i
speaker is Christ on the Cross, who relates all of the epi- j
jsodes of his passion, from the agony in the garden to a pre
monition of the spear piercing his side. The central para- J
! i
■
dox of the narrative is derived from the ironic tragedy thatj
this Man of Sorrows is actually God; the narrative is there-
j . ’ ;
fore not merely the story of a good man wronged, but the
terribly "ironic drama of the giver of all good gifts abused
by the takers— the maker of all things flouted by his crea- ;
sures--almighty God at the mercy of mortal Man" (Bottrall,
lerbert. p. 90), This "ironic drama" is stressed in much of
the anonymous Latin literature— composed of hymns, vernacu
lar treatments of the Passion, legendary amplifications, and
Biblical commentary— which became incorporated into the
stream of devotional literature of the sixteenth and seven- I
teenth centuries. I
!
Herbert's debt to these traditional materials, particu-j
Larly to the Good Friday "Reproaches" and to the liturgy of j
3oly Week, is considerable. The "Reproaches" employ sorrow-)
Ll and accusatory contrasts: j
j
I gave thee to drink wholesome water . . . from the rock:
and thou hast given me gall and vinegar.
Because 1 led thee through the wilderness forty years, and
I fed thee with manna, and brought thee into a land suf
ficiently good, thou hast prepared a cross for thy Saviour.
; What could I have done more unto thee that I have not done?
I planted thee indeed, 0 my vineyard, with fair fruit, and
thou art become very bitter unto me; for thou gavest me to
drink in my thirst vinegar mingled with gall, and
piercedst thy Saviour's side with a s p e a r . j
!
Herbert's "The Sacrifice" makes similar contrasts: j
1 j
They gave me vinegar mingled with gall,
But more with malice; yet, when they did call, j
With manna, angels* food, I fed them all; i
Was ever grief like mine? (lines 239"42)
I
Then on my head a crown of thorns I wear;
For these are all the grapes Sion doth bear,
Though I ray vine planted and watered there;
Was ever grief like mine? (lines l63~66)
Again, the traditional Reproach, "G my people, what have I
i
S
done to thee? or in what have I afflicted thee?" is paral
leled by Herbert's
Betwixt two thieves I spend my utmost breath,
As he that for some robbery suffereth,
Alas I what have I stolen from you?— death:
Was ever grief like mine? (lines 231-34}
In discussing "The Sacrifice," Miss Tuve particularly
1 7
repudiates William Empson's interpretation of the poem, 1
taking him to task for-what she feels to be a misreading,
kue to his lack of familiarity with medieval iconography. >
Specifically, she criticizes his interpretation of the lines
Why, Caesar is their only king, not I:
He clave the stony rock when they were dry;
But surely not their hearts, as I well try:
•^Passages cited by Miss Tuve, Reading of Herbert♦ pp.
27 * 37.
-k^In seven Types of Ambiguity (London, 1930), p. 240.
| ".... T45"
Was ever grief like mine? (lines 123~26)
According to Empson, Christ is here identifying Caesar "with
Hoses as the chosen leader of Israel" in the bitterness of
ils "apology" or "defense." Miss Tuve considers this inter
pretation much too narrow and states that for a broader
| ' i
interpretation it is necessary to be conscious of the litur-
| j
gical and patristic identification of Moses with Christ, as
well as of the legendary and iconographic identification of
i !
Moses* rod with the wood of the cross. Hence, the phrase j
"clearing the stony rock" is far more than a mere allusion
| ;
to Moses the chosen leader, for no seventeenth century
I
I
sleric as liturgically and typologically literate as George
Herbert could mention this act of Moses without thinking al
so of the water flowing from the side of the living rock,
phrist: "They strike my head, the rock from whence all
store / Of heavenly blessings issue evermore" ("The Sacri
fice," 172-73)* He would also Instinctively recall the
mystical, regenerative power of water, stressed, for example],
in the services for Easter Evening (see Tuve, Reading of
Herbert. pp. 27-28). The ultimate connections here are, of
!
course, to Moses, the Biblical eulture-hero who gave his
people life-giving water in the wilderness of the dry rock,
18
a land arid and waste because of communal guilt. But to
anyone familiar with the illustrated books of the
i
1^This idea has a long Biblical history. See Psalm L,
Ezekiel.xlvii, and Revelations xxii. _______
i “ 147
l
Renaissance, the piercing of Christ’s side becomes almost
synonymous with Moses’ striking of the rock to bring forth
the stream of saving water, merely through familiarity with {
the parallel vignettes of those scenes in the Biblia
Pauperum and in the margins of the illustrated Books of |
i
: jours (see Tuve, p. 29)* Several other stanzas of ’ ’ The (
Sacrifice” seem to allude to the ieonographic commonplace of
i
Jtoses as a type of Christ--as, for example: t
i
Without me each one who doth now me brave I
Had to this day been an Egyptian slave. !
They use that power against me which I gave;
Was ever grief like mine? (lines 9“12)
My face they cover though it be divine,—
i As Moses* face was veiled, so is mine,
I Lest on their double dark souls either shine:
! Was ever grief like mine? (lines 139-42)
j
i '
j Herbert makes use of another well-known and generally
accepted figure from traditional typology in lines from "The
i
Sacrifice”;
Weep not, dear friends, since I for both have wept,
When all my tears were blood, the while you slept;
Your tears for your own fortunes should be kept.
Was ever grief like mine? (lines 151-54)
These lines may very well reflect the traditional comparison!
i '
of Christ’s weeping to the Lamentations of the Old Testament!
For centuries, the lamentations of Jeremiah and Isaiah over !
| i
the destruction of Jerusalem had been considered as antici- 1
cations of Christ’s weeping over the "rasing” of Jerusalem
— both the temporal fall and the ultimate spiritual death of
Bis people. Portions of Lamentations were read on the last
three days of Holy Week; Bonne had emphasized its _______ J
1 " " .... m s
significance by his English versification of the entire
book; and— in sueh popular iconographic series as the Blblia
I
Pauoerum. the various illustrated Books of Hours, the books
of Christian prayer, and the widely translated Speculum—
ijeremiah, Isaiah, and Christ weep in parallel vignettes;
!
The tears of Jeremiah, of Christ entering Jerusalem, of \
Christ at Gethsemane when His friends could not wake with t
Him one hour, of the daughters of Jerusalem to whom Christ
(bearing His Cross) said the "weep not" quoted by Herbert |
— these were all one stream, and to both Herbert and his 1
readers the lament penned by Jeremiah was not only fitly !
but Inevitably Christ's own utterance. (Tuve, Reading of !
Herbert. p. 35)
Clearly, then, "The Sacrifice" is built upon various
foypes of contrasts, most of them ironic; and perhaps the
i
most obvious of these types is the series of antitheses be
tween man's actions toward God and God's actions toward man;
man had stolen the fruit, but Christ pays the penalty of a
i
jbhief's death on the Gross; He had fed them with manna, but
they now feed Him with vinegar and gall; He had brought
forth " a1:er for thera from the 8tony rook* now they 8trike
His head— the "rock whence the store of blessings issues
i ;
’ evermore"; He had given them freedom, and now they hold Him ;
I
captive. There is actual tragedy in their failure to per- (
seive the relationship between themselves and their Creator,j
so that they can unthinkingly inflict humiliation and suf- j
fering on their own Redeemer; the Sufferer, however, under- !
jstands this relationship and all of its Implications— hence,!
His terrible grief. His complaint takes the form of a mono-!
Ilogue,- which enables Him to embody the many Biblical forms
and emphasizes the poignancy of His position. This poignant
irony is particularly apparent in the lines
Some said that I the Temple to the floor
In three days razed, and raised as before.
; Why, He that built the world can do much more:
i Was ever grief like mine?
i
! Then they condemn me all with that same breath, j
Which I do give them daily, unto death. |
Thus Adam my first breathing rendereth: J
Was ever grief like mine? (lines 66-73)
Herbert here emphasizes the paradox between Christ-s actual j
4 I
omnipotent power and the specific indignities He suffers, !
1 I
conceiving of Him as the Jehovah of Exodus, as First Cause,
and as the Creator who "built a world and rendered unto Adam
his first breath.” Thus, it is with the very breath that
j
Christ gave man that man condemns Him. These ironic con
trasts were very much a part of the medieval liturgical and ;
poetic tradition, appearing in the various "Complaints of
Christ," contained, for instance, in the Towneley Cruci
fixion Play.1^ Herbert, then, makes use of almost all of
•the elements of the traditional monologue spoken by Christ—
i
the symbolic Old Testament refrain, the special mingling of !
i ;
contradictory emotions in the speaker, and the general po- |
i «
I
etic tone of the whole; yet he is able to make them pecul- j
iarly his own.
j In thus contrasting the actions of God for man with the
3 - 9The Towneley Plays. ed. George England and Alfred W.
Pollard, Early English Text Society (London, 1897), LXXI,
238-278.
actions of man against God, Herbert emphasizes man’s rejec
tion of Christ not only as Redeemer but also as "high
priest"; by this rejection, he implies, man destroys the j
peace and harmony of the divine order of the universe. Her
bert makes frequent use of the image of the priest. In the j
i
poem "Peace," he describes his own search for peace and his j
incounter with j
! i
a reverend good old man; !
Whom when for Peace '
I did demand, he thus began: !
"There was a Prince of old J
At Salem dwelt, who lived with good increase
Of flock and fold." (lines 20-25)
The old man tells him that after the death of this "Prince
( . :
of old," "twelve stalks of wheat" (the Apostles) sprang out i
i
i
of his grave; these were dispersed throughout the earth, and;
some of them now grow in his garden. He offers some of this!
grain (the Gospel) to the poet:
i
| Take of this grain, which in my garden grows,
I And grows for you:
Make bread of it; and that repose
And peace, which everywhere
With so much earnestness you do pursue |
Is only there, (lines 38-43) J
This Prince of Salem (peace) is Melchisedie, the Priest-King;
who fed Abraham after the letter’s return from a victorious j
Dattle against the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah:
And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and j
wine; and he was priest of God the Most High. And he !
blessed him, and said: "Blessed be Abram of God Most !
High, Maker of heaven and earth; and blessed be God the |
Most High, who hath delivered thine enemies into thy ;
hand." And he gave him a tenth of all. (Genesis xiv.l8-
20)
j I5T
In thus giving bread and wine to Abraham, Melehlsedic became
In medieval iconography the Old Testament prefiguring of
Christ feeding His Church; through this parallel, Christ be
came the God who nourishes, the Priest who officiates, and
the King who rules, as well as the sacrifice (the Body,
Bread, Blood-Wlne of the Eucharist) which is eaten. |
In both the Blblia Paunerum and the Speculum . . . the
conventional picturing of the Lord's Supper with the dis- i
ciples is flanked by a picture of Melehlsedic as priest
(bishop) with chalice ministering to Abraham (a knight, I
and often kneeling), and by a picture of the manna ... j
dropping from heaven like little round coins upon the j
Chosen People. (Tuve, Reading of Herbert, p. 162) j
In several other poems, Herbert identifies the priest-
ilmage with an even more traditional symbol of priesthood,
|
Aaron--Moses' brother and spokesman, and God’s first official
tiigh-prlest. In the moving poem "Aaron," Herbert allego
rizes the priest’s vestments, using the passage from Exodus I
which describes Aaron’s clothing:
And Aaron shall bear the names of the children of
Israel in the breastplate of judgment upon his heart, when!
he goeth in into the holy place, for a memorial before the
Lord continually. . . . and Aaron shall bear the judgment ;
of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord j
continually. j
And thou shalt make the robe of the ephod all of blue.
. . . And upon the skirts of it thou shalt make pomegran- I
ates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about
the skirts thereof; and bells of gold between them round
about: . . . And it shall be upon Aaron to minister; and
the sound thereof shall be heard when he goeth in into the
holy place before the Lord, and when he cometh out, that
he die not.
And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and engrave
upon it, like the engraving of a signet: HOLY TO THE 1
LORD. . . . And it shall be upon Aaron's forehead, and I
Aaron shall bear the iniquity committed in the holy things!,
which the children of Israel shall hallow, even In all
| their holy gifts; and it shall be always upon his fore-
; head, that they may be accepted before the Lord, (xxviii.
| 29-38)
Herbert blends this description with another Inherited con- !
I :
yention, that of man as Christ*s music— an image also used ;
by Bonne In "Byrane to God My God, In My Sicknesse" (lines 1-|
5). "Aaron" begins: !
Holiness on the head, J
Light and perfection on the breast, j
Harmonious bells below raising the dead |
To lead them unto life and rest.
} Thus are true Aarons drest.
But instead of the "Holiness to the Lord" upon Aaron’s fore
head, Herbert finds only "Profaneness" on his own head; and |
Instead of the light of doctrine and the perfection of truth;
jthere is in his breast only darkness and defects. The bells
bn the garment hem, which were to sound as Aaron moved
|
("that he die not") and by which Herbert as priest should
sail others to life and rest, have become a mere noise of
passions, proclaiming him dead to his priesthood: "Poor
priesti thus am I drest." However, he is then struck by
the joyous realization that he has "another head," as well
i j
as "another heart and breast, / Another music, making live, ;
I
lot dead" (lines 12-13)* Christ is his head, his new ‘
Oreast-plate of judgment; Christ Is his music and lives in
I
lim to be sounded out to others. Now the bells can ring, |
I
the people gather: "Come People; Aaron's drest." j
In "Decay," Herbert again uses "great Aaron’s bell" as
a symbol of the priest sounding forth God’s presence. The
theme here is conversely related to that of "Aaron," as it
treats of God’s previous accessibility:
. . . Thou didst lodge with Lot
Struggle with Jacob, sit with Gideon,
Advise with Abraham ...
One might have sought and found Thee presently j
At some fair oak, or bush, or cave, or well. i
(lines 1-3, 6-7) j
i ;
feut now,
i Thou dost Thyself immure and close 1
j In some one comer of a feeble heart;
| Where yet both Sin and Satan, Thy old foes, j
Do pinch and straiten Thee, and use much art i
To gain Thy thirds and little part. i
(lines 11-15)
Thus, love, which once walked about freely and openly,
> ■
Doth closet up itself, and still retreat, I
Gold sin still forcing it, till it return
And calling Justice, all things burn.
(lines 18-20)
Hence, Herbert was not always certain of the success of Love
j |
(Christ) in gaining dominion over the heart. The same ele
ment of doubt assails him when he considers his own worth!- j
:iess to enter Aaron*s priesthood:
Blest Order, which in power doth so excel,
That with the one hand thou liftest to the sky, j
And with the other throwest down to hell
In thy Just censures; fain would I draw nigh; j
Fain put thee on, exchanging my lay sword
For that of th* Holy Word.
But thou art fire, sacred and hallowed fire;
And I but earth and clay: should I presume
To wear thy habit, the severe attire
My slender compositions might consume.
I am both foul and brittle, much unfit
To deal in Holy Writ.
("The Priesthood")
Herbert*s allegorizations of Aaron’s priestly garments
are somewhat similar to the traditional iconographic treat-
\
ment of Joseph*s malt!-colored coat. Next to Moses, Joseph
was perhaps the most familiar of the general types for
Christ, especially In the graphic arts of the Middle Ages.
i ' !
Two very common iconographic parallels depict Christ in the |
i
tomb (Joseph in the cisterna) and the tunica shown to the
I
father, bearing the inscription "Wild beasts have devoured j
him” (see Tuve, Reading of Herbert, p. 176). The typologi- |
eal windows at King,s College, Cambridge, which Herbert must!
!
often have seen, contain parallel pictures of Christ*s en
tombment and Joseph inside the round brick well; and of the
iflarys seeking Christ and Reuben seeking Joseph. Furthermore,
the Soeculum considers in great detail the parallels between
Joseph*s coat and Christ’s: Jacob’s children tore Joseph’s
coat, the Jews tore Christ’s flesh with nails and thorns;
Joseph’s coat felt no pains, the body of Christ felt pain in
jevery member; Joseph's coat reached to the heels, Christ was
bovered with wounds from His crown to His heels; Joseph's
brothers sprinkled his coat with the blood of a kid, the
Jews sprinkled Christ's "coat" with His own blood. Hence, j
Joseph's coat becomes a symbol of the humanity of Christ, j
which he put on to save man and of which he was "denuded” or
"despoiled" by those he was to save (see Tuve, Reading of
Herbert. pp. 176-77)* An awareness of these iconographic j
i :
relations gives deeper significance to Herbert’s very brief
ipoem "Joseph's Coat":
| Wounded I sing, tormented I endite,
I Thrown down, I Tall into a bed and rest;
I Sorrow hath changed Its note: such Is His will
Who changeth all things as Him pleaseth best.
For well He knows, if but one grief and smart
Among my many had his full career,
Sure it would carry with it e’en my heart,
And both would run until they found a bier i
To fetch the body; both being due to grief. I
But He hath spoiled the race, and given to anguish
One of Joy’s coats, 'ticing it with relief '
To linger in me, and together languish.
I live to show his power, who once did bring
My Joys to weep, and now my griefs to sing.
Christ’s flesh was commonly compared not only to j
i
I
Joseph’s coat but also to the related images of the bloody J
robe and wine-press which traditionally symbolized the
Passion. This comparison is revealed by the passage from
I
Isaiah, which was read as the Epistle for Holy Monday:
’Who Is this that cometh from Edom,
With crimsoned garments from Bozrah?
This that Is glorious In his apparel,
Stately in the greatness of his strength?’—
’I that speak in victory, mighty to save.*—
’Wherefore is Thine apparel red,
And Thy garments like his that treadeth in the wine vat? *-4
'I have trodden the winepress alone,
And of the peoples there was no man with Me:
Yea, I trod them in Mine anger,
‘ And trampled them in My fury;
And their lifeblood is dashed against My garments,
And I have stained all My raiment.
For the day of vengeance that was in My heart,
And My year of redemption are come.
And I beheld in astonishment, and there was none to uphold;;
Therefore Mine own arm brought salvation unto Me,
And my fury, it upheld Me.
And I trod down the peoples in Mine anger, !
And made them drunk with My fury,
And I poured out their lifeblood on the earth.’
(lxili.1-6)20
20The fifteenth century poet John Lydgate had similarly
identified this red-robed visitor from Edom as Christ. See
In his poem ’ ’ The Agony,” Herbert makes important use of
this image from Isaiah:
Who would know Sin, let him repair
Unto Mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair, |
His skin, his garments bloody be.
Sin is that press and vice, which forceth pain 1
To hunt his cruel food through ev'ry vein. j
Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that Juice which on the cross a pike
Bid set again abroach; then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love is that liquor, sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as blood, but I as wine.
| (lines 7-18)
He applies the same Image in "The Sacrifice”:
Then with a scarlet robe they me array;
Which shows my blood to be the only way
And cordial left to repair man's decay:
! Was ever grief like mine?
j (lines 159-66)
j Thus, through lyrics, medications, and liturgy, as well
ks art and music, Old Testament symbols had become part of a
i ;
religious tradition which Herbert echoes throughout his
!
poetry. That these symbols, with their attendant ambigui
ties and Ironies, came to Herbert "ready made" does not de- :
i i
tract from his poetic stature. He uses this body of tra- i
I
dltional imagery with great freedom and facility, placing
■traditional Hebraic materials in conventional Christian con
texts and achieving surprisingly fresh and forceful results.
His images are not single, appearing only once with
his "Second Nightingale," in Lydgate's Minor Poems. The Two
Nightingale Poems (A.D. 1446). ed. Otto Glauning, Early i
English Text Society (London, 1900), LXXX, 20. I
i ' 157
I
determinate limits, but rather become great themes in his
poetry; therefore, although an image may be expressed di
rectly in only one passage of a poem, it colors the phrase
ology and deepens the meaning of many others, and gives
unity and cohesiveness to the entire poem. Herbert thus has!
j ' j
full command of his materials and employs them imaginatively^
for example, in one passage of "The Sacrifice," he fuses the
j !
image of the vineyard of Sion choked with thorns (Isaiah v.6J
1 i
!
with the "curse of thorns" (Genesis lii.17-19) and the j
thorns of Christ*s bloody crown:
I
j So sits the earth*s great curse in Adam's fall
I Upon my head; so I remove it all
! From th* earth unto my brows, and bear the thrall:
} Was ever grief like mine?
(lines 167-70)
!
In traditional liturgical thought, thorns, like sweat, sym
bolized punishment for Original Sin. The significant pas
sage in Genesis reads:
i
i
j And unto Adam He said: "Because thou hast hearkened unto
i the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of
! which I commanded thee, saying: Thom shalt not eat of It;
j cursed is the ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat
j of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles
! shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb
of the field. In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat \
bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it
wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt j
thou return."
And, on the basis of a passage from the Song of Songs, pa
tristic exegeses had assigned symbolic significance to
Christ's crown of thorns: j
Go forth, 0 ye daughters of Zion,
And gaze upon king Solomon,
Even upon the crown wherewith
! his mother hath crowned him
j in the day of his espousals,
■ And in the day of the gladness of his heart,
j (iii.11-16)
ijohn Donne, in his funeral sermon for James I, had developed
the antithetical implications between the crown of thorns
and the heavenly orown: j
I *
You know the curse of the earth, Thorns and thistles shall
it bring forth unto thee: it did so to our Solomon here,
it brought forth thorns to Christ, and he made a crown of
those thorns, not only for himself, but for us too.
j (Cited by Hunt, Donne*s Poetry. p. 246)
find in his "Hymne to God My God in My Sieknesse," Donne
!
writes:
We think that Paradise and Calvarie.
Christs Crosse, and Adams tree, stood in one placej
Looke Lord, and find both Adams met in raej
As the first Adams sweat surrounds ray face,
May the last Adams blood ray soule embrace.
So, in his purple wrapp'd receive me Lord,
By these his thomes give me his other Crowne;
And as to others soules I preach'd thy word,
Be this ray Text, ray Sermon to mine owne,
Therefore that he may raise the Lord throws down.
(lines 21-30)
In linking "Christs Crosse" and "Adams tree," Donne em
ploys a common liturgical parallel, used, for example, In
Jselebrations of the several festivals of the Cross (Inven- j
bion, Exaltation, Mass of Holy Cross): j
By a tree we were enslaved; and by the Holy Cross we have
been set free; the fruit of the tree beguiled us; the Son
of God redeemed us, alleluja. (Cited by Tuve, Reading of
Herbert. p. 32) i
(
find as the Mass of the Holy Cross was recited every Friday |
I . i
from Trinity to Advent and at Eastertide (at least twenty- s
six or more times), it Is no wonder that this comparison of
f 159'
i
tree with tree became firmly embedded as a convention which
i
was echoed repeatedly in legend and poetry— by Giles
Fletcher, for example, in his Christfs Triumph over Death
[ 1610:
t
A Tree was first the instrument of strife,
j Whear Eve to sinne her soule did prostitute, ;
j A Tree is now the instrument of life, ;
i Though ill that trunke, and this faire body suit:
Ah, cursed tree, and yet G blessed fruit! j
That death to him, this life to us doth give: i
| Strange is the cure, when things past cure revive, !
And the Physitian dies, to make his patient live. 0. !
(lines 97~10^) I
i
Thomas Middleton, in The Marriage of the Old and New Testa- j
ment (l62G), repeats the connection:
The Tree of Good and Evil brought forth an Apple to cast
us all away, and the Tree of Shame bare a fruit to save us
all for ever. (Cited by Tuve, Reading of Herbert, p. 86)
Seventeenth century readers, then, would see nothing odd or ;
unusual in Herbert*s use of the tree image in "The Sacri
fice":
0 all ye who pass by, behold and see—
Man stole the fruit, but I must climb the tree,
The Tree of Life to all but only me:
Was ever grief like mine?
I
Lo! here I hang, charged with a world of sin, j
The greater world o’ the two; for that came in !
By words, but this by sorrow I must win: ;
Was ever grief like mine? |
(lines 203~10) j
In "Justice," Herbert uses another familiar comparison j
— that of the Cross as a great towering scale of Justice:
21Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Poetical Works. ed.
Frederick S. Boas (Cambridge, 1908-09), I, 61.
The dishes of thy balance seemed to gape,
j Like two great pits;
i The beam and scape
Lid like some tottering engine show;
Thy hand above did burn and glow,
Daunting the stoutest hearts, the proudest wits.
But now that Christ’s pure veil presents the sight, j
I see no fears; '
Thy hand is white, i
Thy scales like buckets, which attend \
And interchangeably descend,
Lifting to heaven from this well of tears.
(lines 7-18) \
i
This traditional description of the Cross as a balance with !
cross-beam and scape is based upon the concept of the just j
Father weighing man’s sins in one dish against the suffer
ings of Christ as Man in the other. Thus, when the Cruci-
1 :
fix!on took place, the sufferings completely outweighed the i
sins, and the "lust” verdict could be made in favor of man’s
salvation. Herbert is here able to communicate the notion
of the unceasing reenactment of these events by his image of
the two buckets waiting and descending for their freight of
sins and calamities. The veil is simply another symbol of
the thematic contrast, prevalent in medieval liturgy and in
Herbert’s poetry, between the Old and New Dispensation, with
Christ’s flesh as the veil before the tabernacle.
Herbert further uses the symbol of the Cross to link !
Christ to the numerous iconographic depictions of Samson j
bearing the flat, plank-like gates of Gaza on his shoulder
while ascending a hill (see Tuve, Reading of Herbert, p. |
1159)* Thus, Herbert is on traditional ground when he writes:
t " - . 161'
f
The rest of our creation
I Our great Redeemer did remove
; With the same shake, which at His passion
Did the earth and all things with It move.
As Samson bore the doors away,
Christ’s hands, though nailed, wrought our salvation,
And did unhinge that day.
("Sunday,* 43-49) 1
Herbert also makes considerable use of the popular |
theme of God or Christ as light, and sin, death, fear, and !
1
rejection as darkness or spiritual blindness. This, again,
was a liturgical commonplace: the pillar of light, which
t 1
jfigures dramatically in the Paschal Candle service of Holy i
Saturday, was derived from the Biblical "pillar of cloud,”
t
which "came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel
I
and there was the cloud and the darkness here, yet gave it
light by night there" (Exodus xiv.l9~20). Thus, it remained
a "cloud and darkness" to the Egyptians, but proved a source!
of light to the Hebrews. Seventeenth century religious
i
1
poets found this ironic, for they felt that the very choice
of this lesson for use at Easter evensong amounted to a dra
matic accusation of those later Jews, who, in rejecting
■
Christ, had become very Egyptians for blindness. Thus, Her
bert can open "The Sacrifice” with, "0 all ye who pass by,
| 1
whose eyes and mind / To worldly things are sharp, but to me
blind." He succeeds in conveying an added sense of warning
and sorrow by introducing into his "light" Imagery the
ancient symbol of the Star (whom the disciples themselves j
left in the Betrayal scene): I
All my disciples fly! Fear puts a bar
Betwixt my friends and me. They leave the star
» That brought the wise men of the east from far:
Was ever grief like mine?
("The Sacrifice," 49~52)
'ie heightens the poignancy of Christ’s capture by Judas and
the Roman soldiers by telescoping into one vivid observation!
| j
the dim physical lantern-light and the traditional symbol ofj
i
the shining star, thus revealing man’s blindness in the j
| i
midst of brilliant light: !
i
Look how they run! !
Alas! what haste they make to be undone!
How with their lanterns, do they seek the Sun!
Was ever grief like mine?
| (lines 33-35)
; Herbert also employs the traditional figure of Christ
I
to fuse a number of other popular Biblical symbols. In the ;
stanza,
| My silence rather doth augment their cry;
I My dove doth back into my bosom fly,
Because the raging waters still are high:
Was ever grief like mine?
(lines 94-97)
le makes use of another favorite from medieval typology—
Noah, who, as restorer of peace between Ood and man, had be
come conventionally identified with Christ. And allegorical
writings throughout the Middle Ages commonly viewed Christ
simultaneously as the Dove, Love incarnate, the olive branch
of peace, and Noah, the savior of the human race in the ark
of the Church (see Tuve, Reading of Herbert, p. 72).
An examination of Herbert’s use of thematic Imagery,
then, reveals his keen awareness of the dramatic contrast
between (Joel's actions toward man and man's actions toward
God. He generally expresses this contrast by emphasizing
the irony inherent in man's misunderstanding of the real na
ture of God's goodness; for the sin of ingratitude, like
I i
that of injustice and of hubris, has a fundamental conceptu-i
i i
al relationship to irony, being peculiarly a failure to !
grasp true relations. Thus, the gap between Truth and man's;
| |
perception of it becomes the framework of Herbert's reli
gious poetry. Because of his preoccupation with this "gap"
there appears throughout his poems the figure of Christ as
| ;
phe giver treated as thief; the planter of the vine crowned
with the "thorny fruit" it produces; the looser of bonds
j . i
bound; the physician made sick; and the llght-glver forsaken
i
instead of adored. Herbert also emphasizes the ironies in
herent in such traditional parallels as the side-wounding of
I
Christ (when the Church was bom) and the creation of Eve;
Moses striking the rock and the stream from Christ's side;
Christ bearing the Gross and Samson bearing away the gates
|
of Gaza. Also serving Herbert's poetic purpose, though to a
lesser extent, are the various forms of the "spouse conceit",
from the Song of Songs--including Christ's choosing of the ;
I
ugly black one, cleansing and rescuing her; Christ's Church
I
as the dove; the bees as the symbol of chastity; and Christ
as the ram.
In his treatment of this traditional material, Herbert
jdisplays no more hesitancy than many of his contemporaries—
r ■_ - .........— x64
I
perhaps even less— in employing what had been used by those
who had preceded him. Yet, inevitably he manages to add
isome last stroke of originality and genius to what had been
said before, noting always some unforeseen resemblance in
bhe ancient paradoxes which lay at the heart of his religion
I
penetrating them more deeply, and making ©f them something j
new. In fact, the various types of poetic contrast, upon j
which most of his poems are constructed, work down into the i
J !
very poetic structures, enriching them with ambiguity, (
i l
density, and ambivalence of tone. But it is apparent that
[ i
his consistent preoccupation with the nature, demands, and
j
rewards of the New Dispensation leads to his adoption of the
liturgical practice of freely reading New Testament meanings!
i *
\
back Into Old Testament images— a practice which provides
each Biblical allusion with multiple significance. As
i
liturgy, iconography, and homily had firmly established this
as habitual even In ordinary lay thinking, Herbert finds no j
need for treading cautiously.
Metaphysical "wit" and the yoking together of apparent i
unlikes In an image, then, often approach very closely—
though in much condensed form— to a considerably older mode j
t
pf allegorical writing. Both Herbert*s use of the "pulley"
and "collar" and Bonne’s making a symbol of an Elizabeth
Drury are directly in the traditional stream which flowed
from the Scriptures through the Middle Ages. This tradition;
!is vaguely reflected in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale or Spenser’s
Mutability Cantos. but becomes truly vital only in the meta
physical poetry of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. Nowhere in earlier poetry are there to be found
the detailed analogies of Bonne’s compass image or lecture
on a shadow, ©r Herbert’s rose with its root ever in the
| I
grave. And even Bonne uses fewer traditional symbols than j
Herbert, staking it more difficult to discern the stream of j
i j
traditional imagery in his poetry.
Hence, the "key1 1 to Herbert's poetic "wit" lies in an j
awareness of his debt to the Biblical writers and to the
!
liturgical writers of the Middle Ages. All of the early
seventeenth century religious writers, whether in prose or
I ' . !
verse, learned from men particularly skilled in apprehending)
the world as a complex of religious meanings and values,
!
meanings the latter were able to pass on as organically re- I
I
lated images. Scarcely a poem of Herbert's lacks this
i
"witty" quality, this tension which mingles homeliness with
I
sublimity within a pattern of expectancy— a pattern empha
sizing the elements of surprise and shock. These elements
j
i
stem from a great allegorical tradition which sought to link
i
a body of new concepts and images to a corpus of religious j
literature belonging to an ancient and widely discredited
people.
CHAPTER V
THE RELIGIONS TRADITION
IN THE POEMS OF RICHARD CRASH AW j
j
t
Although George Herbert, in his religious poetry,
i
stressed God‘s humanity, seventeenth century Protestant
writers in general seem to have been preoccupied more with j
the themes of divine .justice, condemnation and redemption, !
justification and election, than with a compassionate, suf-
i
I
fering Divinity. This emphasis is perhaps traceable to the
! |
rationalistic temper of the period and to the instincts of
the Puritans, who had burned and broken medieval paintings
and statues because of their taint of superstition and idol
atry. Moreover, Protestant and Catholic attitudes toward
jfche arts differed significantly. Hebrew in its origin, the
Protestant attitude brooked no "graven Images" of the super-
!
natural and often viewed the physical senses as seductive j
instruments of the flesh and direct enemies of the spirit, j
The Catholic point of view was more indulgent, incorpo
rating elements of Greek polytheism and Platonism. Catholi
cism discerned a ladder of ascent from beautiful objects to
beautiful minds and souls, culminating ultimately in the
Ifinal Beauty, which is to be found only in God. It saw the J
Incarnation not only as an event in history but as a
~ 167
beautiful act sanctifying both the body and sense.1 The In
carnation thus became the central paradox in medieval Chris-
i
tianity, uniting not only the divine and the human, but time
r
and eternity. For the orthodox Christian of the Middle Ages,
f
therefore, the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ were
cosmic as well as historical events, absorbing sacramentally
|
the cosmic into the historical order. Hence, Easter embodied
in Its structure the rebirth of nature in spring, the ancient;
i
i
Hebraic feast of the Passover— with its awareness of the role
\
p ;
of providence in history— and the rebirth of the Ood-man.
In line with this emphasis upon Christ as man, then, medieval
hymns and religious ballads speak of life in Galilee In an
informal and familiar tone— as if they were speaking of life]
in an ordinary, local village, and Jesus and Mary engage in
conversations very similar to those of simple villagers
Although such a humanizing of Jesus was generally
avoided in the seventeenth century by both Puritan and Anglif
can, a Catholic poet had no need to avoid any part of his
own religious tradition. Thus, Richard Crashaw, the one j
Catholic among the major religious poets, displays little ofi
the contemporary Protestant reticence In expressing a
j :
j ^See Austin Warren, Richard Crashaw: A Study in Baroque
Sensibility {University, Louisiana, 1939)» P- 66.
1 2See Malcolm Mackenzie Ross, Poetry and Dogma (New ]
Brunswick, New Jersey, 195^), p. 11.
i j
' 3gee Helen White, Metaphysical Poets. p. 236.
personal sense of wonder at divine love condescending to
intimacy with the yearnings of human love, and dwells per-
i
sistently on the least significant aspects of Christ’s
j
2 a r t h l y e x i s t e n c e . j
Crashaw*s first poems, the Epjgranmiata Sacra (1634), I
are modeled upon the writings of four early seventeenth cen-
| i
jfcury Jesuit epigrammatists— Bettinus, Bederman, Remond, and j
Bauhusius— who devoted themselves to celebrating the figure
of Jesus and those linked to him in Scripture. For each
epigram in this group, Crashaw usually cites the particular
3iblical passage which provided the theme. All of these
passages are taken from the New Testament— a great majority j
from the Gospels. In thus centering his Latin epigrams al- i
most exclusively about Christ and Mary, Crashaw fashioned a j
unique body of sacred verse; for the other Catholic poets— j
Like Bederman and Bauhusius— though akin to Crashaw in style!
and sharing his admiration for Jesus and Mary, celebrated
chiefly the latter-day or exclusively Catholic saints, vir
gins, and martyrs. Most Protestant epigrammatists, on the
other hand, whether writing in Latin or in the vernacular—
writers such as Rosse, Saltmarsh, Hoddeston, and Vlivain— j
devoted themselves almost completely to Old Testament
L
themes. The Puritan, although he considered all parts of
^See Austin Warren, "Crashaw*s Eolgrammata Sacra."
Journal of English and Germanic Philology. 33:233-239* 1934.
the Bible as equally inspirational, dwelled particularly up
on the law and the history of God's separate and "peculiar"
people, in whose conflicts with Egyptians and Philistines he
saw parallels to his own warfare with Papists and Prelates.
The Catholic, on the other hand, viewed the Bible as but one!
part of revelation, with tradition composing the other part,
the history of the Catholic Church continuing that of the ;
Bible. The High Anglican took a position between these two j
"extremes," and drew his spiritual nourishment principally j
! • !
from the Psalms and the Gospels {see Warren, Crashaw. p. 8l).
With all of these marked contrasts in the various reli
gious attitudes of the early seventeenth century, it is
hardly surprising that Crashaw's concept of God differs
markedly from that of both Bonne and Herbert. Only on a few,
rare occasions in his English poems does he address the Old
Testament God of wrath, about Whom Bonne had so movingly and-
so often attempted to reassure himself; in fact, Yahweh ap-
!
pears even less in the poetry of Crashaw than in that of
Herbert. Crashaw presents this familiar Hebraic deity most
extensively in a poem, filled with Old Testament imagery,
entitled significantly "Our Lord in his Circumcision to his i
i
Father." This poem centers about the traditional medieval
notion that the blood shed at Christ's circumcision formed
I
but the first drops of the mighty shedding on the Cross.
The Son here takes up his own predicament and gives voice to
■ a Job-like challenge to the Father. "The audacity with
I ...... 170'
I
which these lines treat the wrath of God would be blasphe
mous if represented as uttered by any but divine lips" (Vfeite,
i tfetaphysical Poets. p. 232).
To thee these first fruits of my growing death
(For what else is my life?) lo I bequeath. I
Taste this, and as thou lik’st this lesser flood !
Expect a Sea, my heart shall make it good. j
Thy wrath that wades heere now e*re long shall swim
I The flood-gate shall be set wide ope for him. 1
| Then let him drintee, and drinke, and doe his worst, I
To drowne the wantonnesse of his wild thirst. |
Now's but the Nonage of my paines, my feares I
Are yet but in their hopes, not come to yeares. j
The day of my darke woes is yet but morne, j
My teares but tender and my death new-borne.
Yet may these unfledg'd griefes give fate some guesse,
These Cradle-torments have their towardnesse.
These purple buds of blooming death may bee,
Erst the full stature of a fatall tree.
I And till ray riper woes to age are come,
| This knife may be the speares Praeludium.^ !
I
j But except for a rare instance like this, the wrathful
God of Justice does not appear in Crashaw's poetry; rather,
j
he is concerned with the God of pity Who could not bear to
abandon His creation, man, to destruction, in spite of man’s
r 1
wilfulness. The sharp contrast between Crashaw’s God and
that of Donne is exemplified in the wonder with which "Charlr!
'
:as Nimla or the Dear Bargain" opens:
1
lord, what is man? why should he coste thee
So dear? what had his ruin lost thee?
Lord, what is man? that thou hast ouerbrought
So much a thing of nought?
In another passage of the same poem, Crashaw continues to
5All citations to Crashaw’s poetry in my text are from |
The Poems ... of Richard Crashaw. ed. L. C. Martin (Oxford,
1927).
T71
marvel that God should stoop to help mankind:
Let froward Dust then doe it’s kind;
And glue it self for sport to the proud wind.
Why should a piece of peeuish clay plead shares
In the AEternity of thy old cares?
Why shouldst thou bow thy awful1 Brest to see
What mine own madnesses haue done with me? j
Should not the king still keepe his throne >
Because some desperate Fool’s undone?
Or will the world's Illustrious eyes
Weep for ©uery worm that dyes, (lines 29”38)
This same sense of wonder penetrates Crashaw’s concept |
i . !
of the Incarnation, which is for him the central fact in the
World’s history. He is fascinated less by the fact that 1
i
Christ died for man to satisfy God’s Justice and redeem His
j .
elect, than that God should have stooped in His glory by
coming Into the world and adding to His ancient cares the
i
littleness of human life. Hence, while Crashaw's early
!
Latin poems range over a relatively wide field of speech and!
[ ■ i
incident from the New Testament, the mature English poems
concentrate on the main expressions of the love which
brought Christ to earth— expressions in which that love is
! |
offered to man in the full surrender and patience of Infancy;
i
i
the Circumcision, and the Passion. For Crashaw, Christ’s
words--the challenge, the argument, the teaching, the expo
sition (of central significance in medieval liturgy and in ■
I
fche poetry of Herbert)— are not important. Me is concerned j
with the bare deed itself, rather than any specific word.
Crashaw is not given to the direct expression of ideas I
in his poems; he does not use poetry as an instrument of ex
plication. He is not interested in explaining a dogma,_____
f- - — 172
Enforcing a moral, or even exhorting the reader to right
feeling. Long addresses to the Deity, prevalent in many
i
seventeenth century religious poems, are not to he found in
ials. Crashaw*s poetry also lacks the highly subjective ex
pression of personal feeling which forms an integral part ofj
1
the poetry of both Donne and Herbert. j
1
i
Furthermore, Crashaw avoids several of the themes
prevalent in Elizabethan verse. He does not sing directly
i i
of the sexual passion— expressing a highly passionate nature|
In religious imagery— and does not present a literal de
scription of the female body, such as is found in Spenser,
Sidney, or in Carew*s "Compliment" and "Rapture.’ 1 In his
i
elegies, he does not invoke the "metaphysical shudder" of
Donne and Marvell, who incessantly hear "time's winged
phariot" at their backs. Neither does he share the fear and
dismay of physical dissolution so painful to Elizabethan
dramatists and lyric poets. Rarely does he give way to medi
tations upon the brevity of life or the fragility of beauty,!
themes which had fascinated poets from Horace to Herrick.
In fact, he seldom pays attention in his poetry merely to
the "beauties" of nature, seeing always a manifestation ©f j
i
Cod's regenerative powers in all living things: I
All Trees, all leavy Groves confess© the Spring
Their gentlest friend, then, when the lands begin
To swell with forward pride, and seed desire
To generation; Heavens Almighty Sire
Melts on the Bosome of his Love, and powres
Himselfe into her lap in fruitfull showers. j
And by a soft insinuation, mlxt
With earths large Masse, doth cherish and assist
..........'..~ 173
Her weake conceptions.
("Out of Virgil, In the Praise of the Spring,*' 1-9)
Mature, therefore, represents creation and man’s creative
activity upon it, man attempting by eternal labor to heal
j r n d restore the orders of obedience and humility broken b, j
the sin of Adam. Mature is the source by which God provided
the varied wonders of "the living & life-giving bread," and ;
1
’ wlnde {the faire friend of life)," to "The ransom'd Isack, i
' I
& his ramme; / The Manna, & the Paschal Lamb." For Crashaw,!
i . . . . !
then, nature is another symbol by which he can express poeti-
! •
\ t
cally his devotion to God.
The sacred poets of Tudor and Stuart England seldom of-1
j
fered their poems to the public without some prefatory anti-
I
thesis between profane and sacred love, between the pagan
i . |
muses and the Christian muse, Urania. They often contrasted:
the rival founts of Jordan and Helicon and the rival mounts
! f i
of Olivet and Parnassus. They thus intended a double
| Thomas Fuller apparently originated this comparison In
1662 i he says of Quarles that he "drank of Jordan instead
of Helicon, and slept on Mount Olivet for his Parnassus"—
The History of the Worthies of England, ed. P. A. Nuttall
(London,lo40), X, 519*This comparison appears also in
Nicholas Murford’s Fragments Poetlca (1650): ;
!
I Therefore, Lord, I’ll think on
i Thy Jordan, for my purest Helicon;
And for bi-forked Parnassus, I will set
My fancy on Thy sacred Olivet.
(Cited by Warren, Crashaw. p. 230)
sind David Lloyd, In his brief biographical sketch of Crashaw,
writes that he had S
no other Helicon. than the Jordan of his eyes; nor_______J
| ' " I74j
rebuke: first, against the wanton who desired, poetry to
i
serve as a reminder of sensual amusement, and, secondly,
against the Puritan who viewed the sacred themes only as a
Das is for his reason and faith and thus as being too solemn j
i
for adornment, exploration, or exploitation by the poetic j
I ' i
imagination- In reply to those who "thinke it halfe sacrl- ;
| I
lege for prophane poetrie to deale with divine and heavenly j
* „ 1
matters,' Giles Fletcher appealed to such honorable literary*
* i
predecessors as Moses, David, and Solomon; St. Gregory
Nazianzen, "sedulous Prudentius,1 1 and "prudent Sedulius";
j . . . I
St. Bernard, Du Bartas, and Edmund Spenser (see Works. ed.
Boas, I, 10-13).
I - ■
j Crashaw had, of course, the immediate sanction of both
Donne and Herbert in his devotion to sacred poetry. Yet,
! ■ i
jdespite this (and the added fact that the title of his 1646 i
volume, Steos to the Temple, is an open avowal of indebted- j
aess to Herbert), Crashaw owes surprisingly little to Her
bert In either versification or Imagery. Whereas Herbert*s
I - :
poems take the form of autobiographical lyrics born from thej
wrestlings of his soul with God, Crashaw * s are devotional j
and objective in the highly specialized sense of T. S. j
Eliot's definition: "Devotional poetry is religious poetry j
I
i
Parnassus, than the Sion where dwelled his thoughts, that
made the muses Graces, and taught Poems to do what they
did of old, propagate Religion, and not so much Cham as
Inspire the Soul. Hebrew. Greek, Latine, Spanish, French,
Italian, were as familiar to him as English. (Cited by
Martin, Poems of Crashaw. p. 416)'
r ..... its
i
which falls within an exact faith and has precise objects
i 7
for contemplation."1 His poems are not religious treatises,
I
descriptions, analyses, idyls, or self-revelations, but
rather emblems, contemplations, hymns— sometimes one of
these at a time, more often all together. !
j
The emblem, in particular, is an important element in |
Q •
2rashaw's poems. The emblem book, popularized by the '
Mlanese doctor Alciati in the sixteenth century, and subset
i
quently by Francis Quarles and others in England, was in- ;
tended as "visible poetry . . . catching the eye and fancy
at one draught,"9 and had a fascination for many religious
i ;
writers. Crashaw uses the emblem by taking some event in
j i
sacred history and trying to come as close as he can, in a
picture or a phrase, to the apprehension of it. The very
nature of the "intellectual wit" involved in the conceit of ;
the emblem is in many ways similar to the type of wit em
ployed by the metaphysical poets in general. As the seven
teenth century rhetorician and critic Tesauro puts it:
7"A Note on Richard Crashaw," in For Lancelot Andrewes
{London, 1928), p. 124.
! ®For a discussion of Crashaw's use of emblems, see Ruth
G. Wallerstein, Richard Crashaw: A Study in Style and Poetic
Development (Madison, 1935), pp. 120~12o.See also T. 0
Beachcroft, "Crashaw and the Baroque Style," Criterion. 13:
420-421, 1934; and Mario Praz, "The English Emblem Litera
ture," in English Studies (Amsterdam, 1937), XVI, 129-140.
%. E. Hutchinson, "The Sacred Poets," in Cambridge
iistory of English Literature (Cambridge. 1911), VII, 53-54.!
I 176
! A witticism from the pulpit is nothing but a witty sym
bolical idea lightly hinted at by God: then gracefully un-
) veiled by the talent of man: sharing the applause with God
for having come across it. (Cited by Beachcroft, "Crashaw
and Baroque," p. 421)
Crashaw employs these "witticisms" with an irregular,
I
uncontrolled energy that often alter® considerably the con- ;
j
ceits used by his contemporaries. He gives spiritual advice
1
with the exaggeration of worldly compliment; he makes songs ;
i 1
(not to his mistress* eyebrow but to the Magdalene's tears) 1
!
!
with a fervor exceeding that of the Elizabethan and Jacobean1
1
sonneteers. Sensuous of temperament, Crashaw produced
jpoetry which is highly musical and lavishly imagistic.
I . !
Denying his passionate senses all save their homage to God, j
I '
he channeled his emotions into religion and religious poetry.
Dike Donne, he uses similar images in his secular and hi®
1
sacred poems, and addresses his God as he might have ad
dressed his "supposed mistress.” But, in Crashaw1® reli
gious poetry, this rich, erotic language and symbolism are
I
not quite so inappropriate as one might think, for he did
not view himself as either a preacher or prophet with a j
I *
"message" to deliver, nor did he desire to philosophize in
poetry or to present a systematic formulation of his reli- j
j 1
gious experience. He sought, rather, to communicate to the j
! I
reader his own sense of spiritual suffering and passionate j
■exultation. And, in spite of the elaborateness of his eon-
1 i
Celts and the almost hectic quality of his imagery and lan- ;
jguage, Crashaw*s symbolism is, on the whole, not really
'.... ITT)
exceptional or undecipherable. It follows, In the main, the;
traditionally Christian lines of the Bible, ecclesiastical
lore, and the books of such mystics as St. Bernard and St.
Teresa.
i
Kathleen Lea has stated that Crashaw*s genius is truly I
i
i a startling blend of Elizabethan exuberance, Jacobean j
mysticism, and that love of compression and intellectual j
j point which distinguishes the poets of the Restoration.10 ;
i I
Most readers would probably agree with this description, as !
all of these qualities are exemplified in such brief lines 1
j !
as "True Hope's a glorious lunatic, and her chase / The God
of Nature in the field of Grace." But a good deal of modern
I
criticism of Crashaw*s poetic technique tends to be unfavor-l
able. Miss Lea also expresses this critical attitude:
I I 'The Weeper* is beyond disgust; it moves us to laughter; we;
f -
regard it'— to use one of his own notorious phrases— with
*one consistent solid smile*" ("Conceits," p. 403). Again,
she finds the metaphor In the epigram "On Our Crucified Lord
Naked, and Bloody" highly offensive:
Th* have left thee naked Lord, 0 that they had; ,
This Garment too I would they had deny'd.
Thee with thy self© they have too richly clad, >
Opening the purple wardrobe of thy side. [
O never could bee found Garments too good j
For thee to weare, but these, of thine owne blood. ;
But perhaps she and other critics have not been sufficiently
aware of the tradition behind much of Crashaw*s Imagery:
aere, for example, he is employing the traditional symbol of;
■^"Conceits," Modem Language Review. 20:403, 1925.
178
;he garment which linked Christ to Joseph In medieval litur
gy and iconography,11 a symbol familiar enough to seven-*
i
teenth century readers to prevent them from finding it
ilther fantastic or offensive. However, one's awareness of !
! ■ j
tradition still may not permit him to exonerate Crashaw al- i
t j
together, for a good deal of his poetry does, it must be ad-;
jaitted, fail aesthetically; and such figures as “walking |
baths," "compendious oceans," and "delicious wounds" are at
I ' i
least unnecessarily grotesque, if not offensive. j
Like Donne and Herbert, Crashaw borrows heavily from
the body of traditional imagery which stemmed originally
j
from the Bible and which became, despite a certain degree of
classical influence, an integral part of the ritual of the
patholic church during the Middle Ages. He repeats certain
j
traditional images over and over, with but slight variation
or adaptation: roses and snow; the Pelican; the Phoenix
rising out of its own ashes; the Dove, sacred and profane;
the White Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world;
nests of various kinds; breasts of all sorts; and veritable j
seas of blood, wine, and tears. The following passages from;
"On the Bleeding Wounds of our Crucified Lord" are fairly
representative:
13“ Por a discussion of Herbert's use of this and other
iconographlc materials, see the preceding chapter. See also
Rosemond Tuve's criticism of William Empson’s interpretation
of Herbert's "The Sacrifice," in which she points out Emp
son 's lack of awareness of iconographlc tradition— Reading
of Herbert, pp. 23~90. ______
1 7 9
Welcome ray Griefe, my loyj how deare•s
• To me ray Legacy of Teares I
1*1 weepe, and weepe, and will therefore
; Weepe, *cause I can weepe no more:
Thou, thou (Deare Lord) even thou alone,
Giv'st Joy, even when thou glvest none.
("Verily I Say Unto You . . . Job XVI")
1
. i
Waterfd by the showres they bring, j
The thomes that thy blest browes encloses i
(A cruell and a costly spring) I
Conceive proud hopes of proving Hoses ...
Not a haire but payes his River j
To this Red Sea of thy blood, !
Their little channels can deliver '
Something to the general1 flood. I
Rain-swolne Rivers may rise proud
Threatning all to overflow,
But when indeed all’s overflow’d
! They themselves are drowned too.
! ■
This thy Bloods deluge (a dire chance
; Deare Lord to thee) to us is found
A deluge of deliverance,
A deluge least we should be drown'd.
(lines 24-40)
Like Herbert, Crashaw shows no compunction in applying
phe Old Testament Imagery of the Flood to the Crucifixion.
fie displays also an especial fondness for images of man as
! 1
"disdainful dust and ashes" and the "dark son of dust and
j
sorrow":
Darke, dusty Nan, he needs would single forth, !
To raake the partner of his owne pure ray: j
j And should we Powers of Heav'n, Spirits of worth ;
i Bow our bright Heads, before a King of clay?
It shall not be, said I, and elombe the North,
Where never wing of Angell yet made way
What though I mist ray blow? yet I strooke high,
And to dare something, is some victory.
("Sospetto d'Herode, 217-224)
Also frequent in his poems is the contrast between day and
night or darkness and light: __
The ludge or Torments, and the King of Teares:
[ Hee fills a bumisht Throne of quenchlesse fire:
! And for his old faire Roabes of Light, hee weares
A gloomy Mantle of darke flames, the Tire
That erownes his hated head on high appeares;
Where seav'n tall Homes (his Empires pride) aspire
And to make up Hells Majesty, each Home
Seav'n crested Hydra's horribly adorne. |
His Eyes, the sullen dens of Death and Right, j
Startle the dull Ayre with a dismall red: j
Such his fell glances as the fatall Light |
Of staring Comets, that looke Klngdomes dead,
i Prom his black nostrills, and blew lips, in spight
! Of Hells owne stinke, a worser stench is spread.
His breath Hells lightning is: and each deepe grone j
Disdaines to thinke that Heav * n Thunders alone. . . .
i
Heavens Golden-winged Herald, late hee saw
To a poore Galilean virgin sent:
j How low the Bright Youth bow'd, and with what awe
i Immortal flowers to her faire hand present.
Hee saw th* old Hebrewes wombe, neglect the Law
Of Age and Barennesse, and her Babe prevent
His Birth, by his Devotion, who began
Betimes to be a Saint, before a Man.
{lines 41-56, 97-104)
Interestingly enough, certain significant colors are con
spicuously absent from Crashaw's religious poetry: green,
I
jthe color of nature, and blue, the color of truth and of the
Virgin in the Christian art tradition (see Warren, Crashaw. I
p. 185). He emphasizes, rather, contrasts of dark and light,
I ■ 1
appropriate to his more stark Images of fire and flood, the ;
womb and tomb, and wounds and death. ;
Crashaw repeats certain words as often as he does his
favorite images. Such phrases as "fair and sweet," "sweet
and sweetnesd*— displayed in a variety of contexts; "soft,"
"dear,” "delicious"--appearing in very unexpected places, as
in "delicious wounds"; and such nouns as "womb," "tomb,"
l8l
j"grave,” "day,” "death,” and "fount" appear very frequently.
However, the range of Crashaw’s vocabulary Is not limited,
i
as this repetition of simple words might Indicate. When he j
keslres, he Is capable of a very delicate and precise use of
language, taking the same pleasure in the use of words for !
the sheer delight of them as did the other metaphysical
poets. His use of imagery and language is ritualistic, with!
i ■ ;
connotations that are freshened and enlivened rather than i
I * '
dulled by ceaseless repetition (see Beachcroft, "Crashaw and]
Baroque," p. 421}.
I
I The Bible also served him as an unending source for
much of his sensory imagery. The odors which apparently so j
i
delight him are chiefly of the traditional flowers and
spices. "Bet my prayers be set forth in Thy sight as the
jlncense," says the Psalmist. And the Song of Songs,12 a
manual for Crashaw as for all mystic poets, is pervaded by
t
I „
the fragrance of spices. Thus, in his "On a Prayer Book
Sent to Mrs. M. R.," Crashaw bids the lover of Sod, the
I
i -
pirgin soul, to seize the Bridegroom, "All fresh and fra- ;
grant as he rises / Dropping with a baulmy Showr / A deli- j
cious dew of spices” {lines 101-104). Crashaw even takes j
occasional, Innocent delight in gustatory images— in such
lines as "Of sweet-lipp’d Angel-Imps, that swill their
throats / In cream of Morning Helleon" ("Muslcks Duell," ?6~j
12For a discussion of the influence of this book, see
Chapter I. _
77). But more often, M s palate1 s pleasures are symbolic,
Crashaw, like Herbert, was a devout believer in Tran-
Therefore, a good deal of Ms Imagery centering around
milk (maternal succor, nutrition), blood (martyrdom on the
part of the shedder, transference of vitality to the recipi-;
ways. In his metrical version of "Psalme 137/’ for example,;
Sinke Sion, downe and never rise,
Her falling thou did'st urge and thrust,
And haste to dash her into dust.
Dost laugh? proud Babels Daughter! do laugh on,
Till thy ruine teach thee Teares,
Even such as these, laugh, till a venging throng
Gf woes, too late doe raze thy feares.
Laugh, till thy childrens bleeding bones
Weepe pretious Teares upon the stones.
In "To Our Lord, upon the Water Made Wine," he expresses
as when the Psalmist bids all to "taste . . . how good the
Lord is":
0 may at once my Tongue
Lose this same busie speaking art
Vnpearcht, her vocall Arteries unstrung,
Ho more acquainted with my Heart,
On my dry pallats roofe to rest
A wither'd Leafe, an idle Guest.
("Psalme 137," 19-24)
substantiation; he was equally aware of the medieval litur- j
gical tradition which traced the symbolic "blood" of Christ !
i
bo its Old Testament roots in the fruit of the vine "Sion."
Christ's Passion takes the form of water (tears, penitence)
^ , and, of course, wine (religious inebriation, ecstasy)
He mixes these fluids In many paradoxical and miraculous
blood turns into water:
(lines 28-36)
' " 183
idea in epigrammatic fashion:
Thou water turn’st t© Mine (faire friend of Life)
Thy foe to cross© the sweet Arts of thy Relgne
Distill from thence the Teares of wrath and strife,
And so turnes wine to Water hack© again©.
in "Sancta Marla," with a touch of irony: |
i
What kind of marble than 1
Is that cold man !
Who can look on & see, I
Nor keep such noble sorrowes company? !
Sure eu * en from you !
(My Flints) some drops are due ;
To see so many vnklnd swords contest I
So fast for one soft Brest. ;
While with a faithfull, 'mutual1, floud j
Her eyes bleed TEARES, his wounds weep BLOOD.
(lines 11-20)
He alters this image somewhat In his epigram "Vpon the In-
! „
fant Martyrs”; here, the mothers* milk and the children1s
r ■
blood turn, amazingly enough, into flowers:
I To see both blended in one flood
I The Mothers MlIke, the Children’s blood,
J Makes me doubt if Heaven will gather,
j Roses hence, or Lillies rather.
Crashaw had, like Spenser before and Keats after him, a
sensibility acutely attuned to beauty and a belief that all
things have value only to the degree that they reflect the |
beautiful. Poetry enabled him to express this grasp of 1
spiritual beauty. Yet, he apparently did not have the J
| i
vision of a positive ethical law, a noble ideal which might !
! " I
.penetrate and order his reason, transmuting and giving co-
I ' I
herence to the entire body of his poetic output. Although
he appears to share the metaphysical poets* ability to
transform the exuberance of the flesh into the transcendence
this
and,
Of the spirit,©ne suspects that he has merely substituted
j ...... •
a corporeal passion Tor a spiritual one. Whereas Bonne
seeks to get at emotions directly through ideas, like a law-
i
yer pleading from analogy, defining his ideas through an ex
ternal physical object (the "objective correlative") as in j
the "compass" image, Crashaw chooses to embody his ideas In j
I • i
highly sensuous, emotive symbols, using the resultant com- j
i i
plex of suggestions as the actual sign or metaphor of his
poetic concept. In short, he makes of the object Itself the
! • ' ' ■ ‘ " ' !
abstract name or symbol for the spiritual or Intellectual
i
concept he wishes to express. He therefore seeks to evoke a
specific emotion in the reader by the direct symbol, rather !
r - . . . . • ■ !
than by a related image, such as a compass, shadow, map, or
flea (see Wallersteln, Crashaw. p. 85), and to extract from
particular emotions a state of pure feeling by which he may
color all of his reflections.
I . ;
I In Crashaw’s second group of poems, he shows the in-
Ifluence of the textbooks and handbooks of rhetoric used in
phe English schools and universities, and of "the hyperboles^
and luscious sweetness of the Italian poet Marino." Prom
these sources, j
Crashaw constructed a series of rhetorical syllogisms, and
this construction of syllogisms was a process of thought
which indeed always remained verbal and trivial In Its
i
*3see Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, p. 279 •
•^Jban P. Bennett, Pour Metaphysical Poets; Donne. Her
bert. Vaughan. Crashaw (Cambridge, 1934)t P- 9 5 - '
technique, hut which was an intellectual exercise, too,
and. was used by Crashaw to create in substance a schematic
j and dialectic account of that symbolism wherewith this ma~
j terial world symbolizes spiritual reality. (Wallerstein,
; Crashaw. p. 13d)
I
' In his third body of poems, based upon the emblem, Cra-
I . . . . . . . .
shaw displays a more intensive study of symbolism, as well
!
as more concern for the idea symbolized in his work. Seeing
this world as one vast alphabet of the spiritual, he sought
f c o express It in terms which center about the imagery of the
Slass and the traditional elements of the Song of Songs. He
phus evolved a schematic symbolic pattern, which became al
most a private form of scholasticism; his repetition of
1
imagery represents his attempt to describe the ineffable In
some ideal form— in the same manner that Taughan uses his
Images of darkness and light, or Shelley his moonlight on
moving water. Hence, not only Images of such wide scope as I
“flame" and "sacrifice," but those of a more limited conno- !
Ration, like "tears" and "blushes," become Integral elements!
i
In his highly sensuous poems:
There * s no need at all
That the balsom-sweatlng bough
So coyly should let fall
His med,cinable teares; for now
Nature hath learn*t to extract a deaw I
More soueraign & sweet from y o u .15
^The Balsam Tree grew near Jersalem and gave off a j
white acrid sap. It has become associated in the religious ;
[tradition with a vegetable product obtained especially in j
pilead (Genesis xxxvii.25* Jeremiah viil.22, and Ezekiel
xxvii.17), which was used as an ointment for the healing of
Wounds. Hence, there are many allusions in the Old Testa
ment to the "Balm of Gilead."
j Yet let the poor© drops weep
j (Weeping is the ease of woe)
i Softly let them creep,
j Sad that they are vanquish*t so.
They, though to others no releife,
Balsom may he, for their own greife.
Such the maiden gemme
By the purpling vine put on,
Peeps from her parent stemme
! And blushes at the bridegroom© sun. j
J This watry Blossom of thy eyn j
I Ripe will make the richer wine.
| ("Sainte Mary Magdalene or The Weeper,” 49-66)
i
: Crashaw's handling of the traditional imagery of the
jsong of Songs in the third stanza illustrates the uniqueness!
i ' |
of his poetic method. His epigrammatic paradoxes and in
genious metaphors serve to modify the very nature of his
I
sensations, loading every simple experience with a heavy
layer of connotation. While he was as heavily influenced by
i ;
the great body of traditional religious imagery as any of
| j
his contemporaries, he sought to refashion the old modes of I
i I
^expression into one that carried with it the summation of
ils own personal and momentary elements of experience. An
other example of the manner in which certain traditional
| i
themes interweave themselves in Crashaw’s Imagination with |
I i
his ecstatic experiences is his reiteration of the medieval
| i
iconographlc convention linking Christ's Cross to the Old
Testament Tree of Knowledge. His tone is that of almost j
I - i
childlike wonder: !
All hail, fair Tree.
Whose Fruit we be.
What song shall raise
Thy seemly praise.
______ Who brought to light _______ _
187
Life out of death, Day out of night.
(“The Howres: Matines, The Antiphona")
Now is the noon of sorrow’s night;
High is his patience, as their spite
Lo the faint LAMB, with weary limb
Beares that huge tree which must bear Him.
That fatall plant, so great of fame
For fruit of sorrow & of shame.
Shall swell with both for HIM; & mix
All woes into one CRVCIFIX.
("The Howres: The Sixt, The HIMN," 1-8) ;
.... . . . |
le thus infuses a fresh note into this liturgical common- j
place. i
He also repeats in several poems his conviction that
atonement for Adam's sin may be achieved by means of the
i
Gross, for the Cross counterbalanced the Fatal Tree:
t
t
; 0 deare & sweet Dispute
j »Twixt death's & Loue's farr different FHVTTl
j Different as farr
i As antidotes & poysons are.
By that first fatall TREE
Both life and liberty
; Were sold and slain;
By this they both look vp, & live again.
("The Howrest The Slxt, The Anttphona")
and, again:
Tall TREE of life! thy truth makes good
What was till now ne're Understood,
Though the prophetick king
Struck lowd his faithfull string,
It was thy wood he meant should make the THRONE !
For a more then SALOMON. j
("The Hymn of the Holy Crosse," 28-35) j
And, despite his deep adoration for the Virgin Mary,
|
*5ary Magdalene, and the then recently canonized St. Teresa— j
all of whom are treated with deep and repeated reverence
throughout his poetry— Crashaw cannot forget that all are
daughters of the Eve who brought sin upon mankind: _____
, The first Eue, mother of our PALL,
! E're she bore any one, slew all.
I Of Her vnldLnd gift might we haue
The Inheritance of a hasty ©RAVE:
Quick burye * d In the wanton TOMB
Of one forbidden bitt;
Had not a Better FRVTT forbidden It.
!
:3ut as Christ1s Cross obliterated the Fatal Tree, so the I
i ' i
J
Tlrgin Mary supplied mankind with the means of cleansing it-j
self from the sins of Eve:
Had not thy healthfull womb f
The world's new eastern window bin I
And giuen vs heau*n again, in giving HIM. i
Thine was the Rosy LAWN that sprung the Lay
Which renders all the starres she stole away. I
Let then the Aged world be wise, & all
Prone nobly, here, vnnaturall.
•Tis gratitude to forgett that other
And call the maiden Eue their mother.
("0 Gloriosa Lamina,” 11-26}
Hence Crashaw Includes in his meditative poems many of !
the same traditional themes used with telling effect by
i
George Herbert. These themes provided him with both the re-
j
liglous sensations and symbols by which he might express his
^piritual ecstasy. No other poet more often voices the need
to crush to humility the personal and bodily man, nor ex
presses with more anguish the devotional desire for personal
participation in the Passion. And no theme or figure rings ■
Lore often or with more pathos in his hymns than the paradox
f
of man, the dark son of dust and sorrow, attaining the glory
of God's gift of Himself to man. Even Satan wonders why
i
j the Lawes eternal1 Giver,
Should bleed in his owne lawes obedience:
And to the circumcising knife deliver
Himselfe, the forfeit of his slaves offence.
That the unbleraisht Lambe, blessed for ever,
Should take the marke of sin. and palne of sence.
j ("Sospetto d’Herode," lS5”90)
Crashaw seems to have been particularly appalled that
Christ’s fellow Jews, who should have been the first to welH
come Him as the long-awaited Messiah, were the first to turn
upon Him, despite the fact that "a thousand prophecies” in
the Old Testament foretold His coming: j
Hears't thou, my soul, what serious things
Both the Psalm and sybyll sings
Of a sure ludge, from whose sharp Ray
The world in flames shall fly away. . , .
t
0 that Book! whose leaues so bright I
Will sett the world in seuere light.
0 that ludgeJ whose hand, whose eye
} Hone can indurej yet none can fly.
| ("The Hymn of the Chvrch . . .” 1-4, 17-20)
i ■ • I
They were even too blind to realize that from
S
! th* Hebrewes royall stemrae
(•That old dry stock©) a despair’d branch is sprung
; A most strange Babe! who here conceal’d by them
1 In a neglected stable lies, among
Beasts and base straw. . . .
What busy motions, what wild Engines stand
On tiptoe In their giddy Braynes? th! have fire
Already in their Bosomes; and their hand
Already reaches at a sword: They hire
Poysons to speed thee.
("Sospetto d’Herode," 433-36, 440-44)
‘ .................... ' ' i
And Christ, in the very midst of his suffering— In a tone
i
highly reminiscent of the medieval "All Ye that Pass By"
poems, as well as of Herbert's "The Sacrifice"— asks God why
Dthers have welcomed Him but not His own people:
A riddle! (father) still acknowledg'd thine
Am still refus’d; before the Infant Shrine
Of my weake feet the Persian Magi lay
And left their Mithra for my star: this they.
But Isaacks Issue the peculiar heyres, _ ____
Of thy old goodnesse, know thee not for* thelres,
Basely degenerous. Against me flocke
1 The stiffe neck'd Pharisees that use to mooke
Sound goodnesse with her shadow which they weare,
And 'gainst religion her owne colours beare.
The bloud hound brood of Priests against mee draw
Those Lawlesse tyrant masters of the Law.
Profane Sadocustoo does fiercely lead
His court-fed impes against this hated head. '
What would they more? th* aue seene when at"my nod
Great Natures selfe hath shrunke and spoke me god.
Drinke fayling there where I a guest did shine
The Water blush'd, and started into Wine. :
Pull of high sparkeling uigour: taught by mee j
A sweet inebriated extasy. !
(”0at of Grotius his Tragedy . . .,n 35“5^> I
But he, Richard Crashaw, can never forget his personal debt
Tor the great sacrifice made for him and for all men;
! Lord, what is Man? why should he cost thee
So dear? what had his ruin lost thee?
Lord, what is man? that thou hast ouerbrought !
So much a thing of nought? ...
Let freward Bust then do it's kind;
And giue it self for sport to the proud wind.
Why should a peice of peeuish clay plead shares
I In the AEternity of thy old cares?
Why shouldst thou bow thy awfull Brest to see
What mine own madnesses haue done with me? . . .
If I were lost in misery,
I What was it to thy heaun & thee?
What was it to thy pretious blood
If my foul Heart call'd for a floud?
("Charitas Nlmia. Or The Bear Bargain,"
i 1-4, 29-3A, 45-48) j
1 ;
He begs to be allowed to drink of Christ’s blood that he ;
sight share his Lord's pain:
0 let me suck the wine
So long of this chast vine j
Till drunk of the dear wounds, I be j
A lost Thing to the world, as it to me. j
("Saneta Maria Dolorvm," 101-10)
His constant identification of Christ's blood with wine
naturally brings to bis mind the wine press image from
Isaiah (lxlii), so popular in medieval liturgy and used so
often by Herbert. Crashaw introduces it into his "An Apolo-
igie for The Precedent Himne" s
Let my soule swell
With thee, strong wine of"Love; let others swlmme
In puddles, we will pledge this Seraphim
Bowles full of richer blood then blush of grape
Was ever guilty of, change wee our shape,
My soule, some drinke from men to beasts; o then,
Drinke wee till we prove more, not lease then men;
And time not beasts, but Angels. Let the King,
Mee ever into these his Cellars bring;
Where flowes such Wine as we can have of none
But him, who trod the Wine-presse all alone:
Wine of youths Life, and the sweet deaths of Love,
Wine of Immortal! mixture, which can prove
f Its tincture from the Rosie Nectar, wine
| That can exalt weak earth, and so refine
! Our dust, that in one draught, Mortality
' May drinke it selfe up, and forget to dy.
| (lines 30-46)
Hence, in his attempt to express the relationship of the
individual soul to God, Crashaw, like his Protestant con-
i
^temporaries, felt it only natural to Interfuse traditional
Christian themes with elements of the Old Testament and the
I
i
Hebraic tradition. He centered many of his poems about the
basic scriptural themes of man's sin against God and the in
dividual soul's need for eventual salvation; he was con
cerned primarily with the paradox between the external forms
bf earthly objects and their true spiritual meanings, for he
viewed the material as mere allegorical extensions of the
spiritual. Therefore, much of his poetry represents an at
tempt to span the void between corporeal and incorporeal
values, a. void crossed successfully only once in the long
i 192
i
history of man, and then only by the Son of God, and only
after extreme and unappreciated suffering. Crashaw*s poems
ponstitute an avowal of his appreciation for this heroic
deed.
Crashaw*s is an intense rather than a large or varied
i
poetic gift; his poems lack the depth or breadth of those of
either Donne or Herbert. He lacks Donne*s self-searching j
and self-doubting mind, for of his own sincerity and devout-;
ness he has n© doubt, only of his personal worth. Whereas >
Donne attains a high degree of psychological realism by th©
L ' :
continual probing into his own motives, Crashaw never allows
i
himself the pleasure— or pain— of penetrating self-scrutiny.
I
And his poetry is the lesser for it.
| Neither does Crashaw’s poetic vein flow from any self-
conscious assertion of literary originality, rebellion, or
Individualism. He is, in the main, a traditionalist using
I- • . . . . . . .
widely accepted religious materials. Despite the distinc-
jtiveness of his Imagery, the sensuousness and the Ingenious i
turns of his figures, and the curious blending of his figur-j
atlve and literal meanings, there is no one element that was
not paralleled in contemporary verse, either in England or j
| i
on the Continent. This is true despite his repeated placing!
I ’ |
jcf a traditional image beside an unaccustomed one to produce^
an Ironic insight into spiritual revelation. Crashaw’s gift;
•is that of a highly skilled musical arranger, rather than
jth&t of a truly creative composer. He remains most
noteworthy for the sensitive and passionate articulation of |
his extremely keen religious sensibility, the richness of
his imagination, and the sincerity of a faith which trav
ersed a wide range of Christian beliefs.
THE PRINCIPAL RELIGIOUS THEMES AMD IMAGES
IN THE POETRY OP HENRY VAUGHAN
Like Mis contemporaries John Donne and George Herbert, j
I
:ienry Vaughan accepted the authority and traditions of* the J
j
Anglican church, finding satisfaction in Its decency, order,
and reverence. Consequently, on occasion his poetry seems
to reflect his general satisfaction with both Scripture and
Church and his antipathy for those who, he felt, were at
tempting to overthrow the established order. In "L*Envoy,"
I ■ •
jfor instance, he repudiates the mllitance of the Puritans
and calls upon God to "Dry up their arras"— those who "for
i
meer words / Wound Thy beloved"— and to transfer to His own
saints "That faithful seal"; and again, in "The Constella
tion," he expresses similar indignation, presumably against j
the Puritans with their zealous sound and fury:
Commissioned by a black self-wil |
The sons the father kil,
The Children chase the mother, and would heal ;
The wounds they give, by crying, zeale.
! Then Cast her bloud, and tears upon thy book
Where they for fashion look,
And like that Lamb which had the Dragons voice
Seem mild, but are known by their noise.1
1Lines 37-44. All citations from Vaughan*s poetry in
ay text are from The Works of Henry Vaughan, ed. Leonard
Cyril Martin (Oxford, 1914). _ _ _ _ _
However, In spit© of this apparently "partisan” posi
tion, Vaughan is on the whole more concerned with inner 11-
!
lamination than with church doctrine or dogma; in searching
for this Illumination primarily in God1s works, he often
t . . . . ... |
i ' j
parallels the thinking of many diverse religious and philo
sophical groups— the Cambridge Platonists; the half-philo-
i ;
sophic, half-scientific Hermeticists; the more exclusively
religious Quakers; and his fellow-Anglicans as well, among
S • ;
to the "Book of the Creatures” as the second book of reve
lation, while Francis Bacon stresses the importance of medi
tating not only upon "the book of God's words," but also up
on "the book of God's work":
For as the Psalraes and other Scriptures doe often inuite
vs to consider, and magnifle the great and wonderful
workes of God: so if we should rest onely in the contem- !
plation of the exterior of them, as they first offer them-,
selues to our sences; we should do a like iniurle vnto the
Maiestie of God, as if wee should iudge or construe of the
store of some excellent leweller, by that onely which is
set out toward the street© in his shoppe. . . . For our
Saulour saith, You erre not knowing the Scriptures. nor
the oower of God: laying before vs two Bookes or volumes
to studie, if we will be secured from errour: first the )
scriptures, reuealing the will of God; and then the crea
tures expressing his power; whereof the later is a key vn
to the former.2
i
Vaughan praises God not merely as the source of all
universal life but also as the preserving spirit of His cre
ation; he sees this spirit manifest in the commonest of |
^The Advancement of Learning, ed. W. Aldis Wright (Ox
ford, 1926), pp. 50-51.
living creatures^— even the lowly worn:
Oft have I seen, when that renewing breath
That binds, and loosens death
Inspir'd a quickning power through the dead
Creatures a bed,
Some drowsie sllk-worme creepe
From that long sleepe
And in weake, infant huramlngs chime, and knell
About her silent Cell I
Untill at last full with the vitall Hay |
She wing'd away,
And proud with life, and sence, '
Heav'ns rich Expence,
; Esteem'd (valne things!) of two whole Elements
As raeane, and span-extents. !
! Shall I then thinke such providence will be !
■ Iiess friend to me?
I Or that he can endure to be unjust
| Who keeps his Covenant even with
\ our dust.
| ("Eesurrectlon and Immortanlity," 1-18)
S
:ie sees God's spirit even more clearly In the soaring bird:
As fresh and chearful as the light
Thy little heart in early hymns doth sing
Unto that Providence. whose unseen arm
Curb'd them, and cloath'd thee well and warm.
All things that be, praise himj and had
Their lesson taught them, when first made.
("The Bird,” 7~12)
Taughan, then, Is Interested in God primarily as the In-
spirer and Life Force entering into His creation, and he
values the "Book of the Creatures” mainly as an embodiment
of this life-giving spirit. For, while he is obviously very!
sensitive to nature's visible wonders and charms, he seeks j
J |
principally to derive the moral and spiritual significances j
I « » i
of God's providence from the 'Book of the Creatures. All ;
3see A. E. Waite, "Henry and Thomas Vaughan," Bookman
(London), 43:241, August 1922.
bf the metaphysical poets, in fact, see natural objects as
potential examples for man; for by studying them accurately,
i
man may perceive the workings of the creative spirit in His
creations and may contrast his own relation to God with that
implicit in other natural objects, ‘ Therefore, Vaughan con
trasts the ways of fallen man— his deep-rooted rebellion,
his instability, and his willingness to follow strange gods
! ' ... .
i
■ — with the instinctive life of animals, the motions of the
heavenly bodies, and the earth*s inanimate objects— their
Stability, order, and obedience:
Weighing the stedfastness and state
! Of some mean things which here below reside,
; Where birds like watchful Clocks the noiseless date
And Intercourse of times divide,
i Where Bees at night get home and hive, and flowrs
j Early, aswel as late,
Rise with the Sun, and set in the same bowrs;
i
i I would (said I) my God would give
i The staidness of these things to'man! for these
To his divine appointments ever cleave,
I And no new business breaks their peace;
1 The birds nor sow, nor reap, yet sup and dine,
The flowres without clothes live,
Yet Solomon was never drest so fine,
j ("Man,1 1 1 1-14)
i
Thus, Vaughan views the spectacle of creation as sub-
r
lime, but finds pathetic the fact that man— the most know
ingly sinful of creatures— should have been set above all
i
the rest as "the world's high Priest," chosen, as it were,
Jto present "The sacrifice for all; while they below / Unto
j !
the service mutter an ascent" ("Providence," 13”l6). For
man has proved a faithless and turbulent rebel to divine
I
order and peace and has fallen from his original grace and
glory; toe has thus betrayed not only himself but all of the
|
helpless creatures beneath him:
Sure, It was so. Man In those early days
Was not all stone, and Earth,
He shin'd a little, and by those weak Rays
Had some glimpse of his birth. i
He saw Heaven o'r his head, and knew from whence
He came (condemned,) hither, j
And, as first Love draws strongest, so from hence ;
His mind sure progress'd thither.
Things here were strange unto him: Swet, and till
All was a thorn, or weed, '
Nor did those last, but (like himself,) dyed still i
As soon as they did Seed. j
! They seem'd to quarrel with him; for that Act !
. That fel him, foyl'd them all, I
; He drew the Curse upon the world, Crackt
The whole frame with his fall,
i This made him long for home. as loath to stay
j With imarmurers, and foes;
I He sigh'd for Eden, and would often say
! Ahi what bright days were those! I
("Corruption," 1-20)
| Vaughan repeatedly expresses his belief that all things;
created by Cod, even those objects commonly considered in-
i
animate, have a capacity for sensation:
! Trees, flowers & herbs; birds, beasts & stones,^
| That since man fell, expect with groans
To see the lamb . . .
Whose death will be
; Man's life, and your full liberty.
; ("Palm Sunday," 11-13, 16-17)
Vaughan here seems to be extending Jesus' figurative
reply to the Pharisees, who had objected to the acclamations;
of the multitude: "I tell you, that if these should hold |
their peace, the stones would immediately cry out!"— see P. ;
E. Hutchinson, Henry Vaughan. A Life and Interpretation (Ox~l
iford, 1947), p. ifo.Herbert employs this saying in "The :
kltar," and Vaughan repeats it in "Jesus Weeping." Bit he j
goes further than both the Bible and Herbert in "The Bay of ;
Judgement": "And stones, though speechless, are not dumb," i
but lend their voices in nature's adoration of the divine.
[Note 4 continued on next page.] _______
pence, they also await the coming of the Messiah, who will
restore to the world the pristine purity and innocence it
i
knew before the Fall. This universal praise of God, im
plicit in the majestic obedience and faithfulness of the
i !
lower creatures and inanimate objects, captivates Vaughan i
j ' |
and seems to him an ironic contrast and challenging rebuke |
to the wilfulness of man, who is unwilling to fulfill his 1
f ■ i
proper function In the universal scheme: f
! Plants in the root with Earth do most Comply, j
i Their Leafs with water, and humiditle, I
I Flowres to aid draw neer, and subtil tie,
j And seeds a kinred fire have with the sky.
J All have their keves. and set ascents: but man
! Though he knows these, and hath more of his own,
i Sleeps at the ladders foot. 1
| !
0 foolish man! how hast thou lost thy sight?
How is it that the Sun to thee alone
Is grown thick darkness, and thy bread, a stone?
Hath flesh no softness now? mid-day no light?
i
1 Lord! thou didst put a soul here; if I must
j Be broke again, for flints will give no fire
I Without a steel, 0 let thy power cleer
Thy gift once more, and grind this flint to dust!
("The Tempest,” 33“39, 53“60)
Maun thus finds himself ”at the ladders foot" rather than at 1
his proper place— serving as "the nodal point between the
material and the spiritual" worlds, just below the
And in "The Bird," he writes:
So hills and valleys into singing break,
And though poor stones have neither speech nor tongue,
While active winds and streams both run and speak,
Yet stones are deep in admiration.
(lines 13“16)
angels.Vaughan here links Jacob’s Ladder to the Great
Chain of Being, popular among seventeenth century humanists
such as Milton, who conceives of it as the means by which
man can ascend to the Intelligible World. Vaughan, however,!
takes the mystical view that the Mvlne Spirit employs the :
! ■ ' !
Chain to descend into the wisely receptive mortal mind. j
! I
George Herbert, who exerted a considerable influence upon j
Vaughan, relates the union of divine and human natures to
the life and death of Christ. For Vaughan, however, this
union is another manifestation of God’s penetration of na- j
tjure’s "veil." He thus apprehends the power of God in all
natural objects, and as a result experiences within himself j
a continual awareness of this union between the supernatural
knd the natural.
I Vaughan is also struck by the manner in which all grow
ing things in nature seem Imbued with the same living spirit
to be found In the human soul. Thus, almost ever, poem In
! j
Silex Scintlllans contains at least one image symbolizing
l
the human soul as a growing plant hardened by the frosts and:
buffeted by the sto inns of affliction and needing the dew of ,
grace; j
0 Joyes! Infinite sweetnes! with what flowres,
And shoots of glory, ray soul breakes, and buds!
All the long houres
Of night, and Rest
Through the still shrouds
%. L. Bethell, The Cultural Revolution of the Seven
teenth Century {London, 1951), p. 152.
aor
Gf sleep, and Clouds,
This Dew fell on my Breast.
; ("The Morning Watch,” 1-7)
In "The Night,” this concept of God's grace a3 a quickening
^.nd nourishing dew (see MIcah v-7) is fused with an echo
from the Song of Songs:
I
: When my Lords head is fill'd with dew, and all
His locks are wet with the clear drops of night;
His still, soft call;
His knocking time; fhe souls dumb watch,
When Spirits their fair kindred catch.
(lines 30-36)
And when Vaughan describes his symbolic plant as nourished ,
by "soft winds” and "spicy airs," he seems to echo another
passage from the Song of Songs:
| Awake, 0 north wind; and come, thou south;
Blow upon my garden, that the spiees thereof may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat his pleasant fruits. (IV. 16)
Vaughan finds still another congenial series of symbols
for God's "sublime truths and wholesome themes” in the im
petuous rush of waterfalls and mountain streams toward the
sea:
i
1 Dear stream! dear bank, where often I
, Have sate, and pleas'd my pensive eye. . . .
! What sublime truths, and wholesome themes,
! Lodge in thy mystical, deep streams!
J Such as dull man can never flnde
i Unless that Spirit lead his ralnde, «
| Which first upon thy face did move, !
And hatch'd all with his qulckning love. j
("The Water-Pall,” 13-14, 27-32) !
- ■ ■ i
ie detects in their purifying and beneficent qualities a 1
j
significance similar to that of the desert rains which pro
vided the means of life to the Hebrew tribes and their
r~“ 202
flocks. These heavenly waters cleansed the Hebrews of sin
in much the same manner as the Sacramental waters purified
j
the Christian soul. In his apotheosis of the rainbow, he
writes:
} !
i
j How bright wert thou, when Shems admiring eye
Thy burhisht, flaming Arch did first descry! j
When Terah. Nahor. Haran. Abram. Lot. ;
Did with Intentive looks watch every hour
For thy new light, and trembled at each shower!
When thou dost shine darkness looks white and fair,
Storms turn to Musiek, clouds to smiles and air:
Rain gently spends his honey-drops, and pours
I Balm on the cleft earth, milk on grass and flowers. !
I Bright pledge of peace and Sun-shine! the sure tye |
Of thy Lords hand, the object of his eye.
! ("The Rain-Bow," 3-14)
ITaughan several times uses the circulation of water between '
t ..... . ...... \
\
earth and sky as a symbol for the relationship between God
and manI rain and dew signify the descent of grace, and
man's prayer for rain embodies a form of exhalation. In the;
following lines from "Disorder and Frailty," he rather
pointedly bridges the gap between the divine descent into
. . . . . . .
the macrocosm and man's longing for ascent to God:
I threaten heaven, and from my Cell
Of Clay, and frailty break, and bud ;
Touch'd by thy fire, and breath: Thy bloud
Too, is my Dew, and springing wel.
(lines 16-19)
Nature, then, has for Vaughan a religious significance,
and he endows it with the same "Immortality" as other reli
gious writers promise to man alone. In "The Jews," he vlsu-
alizes the rebirth of nature, when trees long dead will
spring back to life; and whereas other contemporary poets
limit their speculations to the ultimate reunion of the
203"
scattered dust of man, Vaughan can detect, even in a book,
the remains of many created things, all of which will again
i
come to life at some future date:
Eternal God; maker of all
That have liv’d here, since the mans fall;
The Rock of ages! in whose shade I
i They live unseen, when here they fade. |
[ . 1
Thou knew'st this oapvr. when it was j
i Mere seed, and after that but grass: j
Before ’twas drest or spun♦ and when 1
Made linen, who did wear it then: I
What were their lifes, their thoughts & deeds I
Whither good corn, or fruitless weeds. j
Thou knew*st this Tree, when a green shade
Cover’d it, since a Cover made,
And where it flourish’d, grew and spread,
As if it never should be dead.
I
I Thou knew’st this harmless beast, when he
! Bid live and feed by thy decree
J On each green thing; then slept (well fed)
Cloath’d with this gkin, which now lies spred
A Covering o’re this aged book,
Which makes me wisely weep and look
On my own dust; meer dust it is,
But not so dry and clean as this.
Thou knew’st and saw’st them all and though
Now scatter’d thus, dost know them so.
0 knowing, glorious spirit! when
Thou shalt restore trees, beasts and men,
j When thou shalt make all new again,
Destroying onely death and pain,
Give him amongst thy work3 a place,
Who in them lov’d and sought thy face!
("The Book," 1-30)
And in the last of his religious poems, "L*Envoy," he en
visions the transformation of all corrupt matter into a
ifinal state of purity:
0 the new worlds new, quickening Sun!
Ever the same, and never done!
The seers of whose sacred light
_ _ _ _____Shall all be drest in shining w h i t e , _________
204'
And made conformable to his
Immortal shape, who wrought their bliss,
Arise, arise!
And like old cloaths fold up these skies,
This long worn veyl: then shine and spread
, Thy own bright self over eaeh head,
And through thy creatures pierce and pass
Till all becomes thy cloudless glass,
Transparent as the purest day
> And without blemish or decay, j
' Flxt by thy spirit to a state j
I For evermore immaculate. i
' (lines 1-16) I
S
It is hardly surprising then that in "Religion” Vaughan
!
should view nature as a direct means of communing with God: j
i J
My God, when I walke in those groves,
1 And leaves thy spirit doth still fan,
I see In each shade that there growes
An Angell talking with a man. ...
Here Jacob dreames, and wrestlesj there
Elias by a Raven Is fed,
Another time by th’ Angell, where
i He brings him water with his bread.
(lines 1-4, 9-12)
He echoes Herbert*s thought that God was much closer to man !
In the days of the Hebrew patriarchs than In his own day;
In Abr1hams Tent the winged guests
(0 how familiar then was heaven1)
I Eate, drinke, discourse, sit downe, and rest
ffntill the Coole, and shade Even:
I
j Nay thou thy selfe, my God, In fire. !
i Whirle-winds. and Clouds. and the soft voice
I Speak*st there so much, that I admire
' We have no Conf*rence in these dales.
(lines 13-20) 1
For Man had preserved his innocence only in the brief golden
age when the world was new and untarnished and Adam had yet
to sin:
1 ” "..-. 205
I walk the fields of Bethanl which shine
J All now as fresh as Eden, and as fine.
Such was the bright world, on the first seventh day,
Before man brought forth sin, and sin decay.
("Ascension-Day," 37-40)
i
i
Then men had little difficulty in encountering angelic
i
guests: j
Angels lay Integer here; Each Bush, and Cel, ■
Each Oke, and high-way knew them. j
Walk but the fields, or sit down at some wel,
And he was sure to view them. i
("Corruption," 25-28) I
i
But, since this is no longer true, I
Is the truce broke? or ’cause we have
A medlatour now with thee,
Doest thou therefore old Treaties wave
And by appeales from him decree?
| or is11 so, as some green heads say
| That now all miracles must cease?
| Though thou hast promis’d they should stay
j The tokens of the Church, and peace;
i
No, no; Religion is a Spring
That from some secret, golden Mine
Derives her birth, and thence doth bring
Cordials in every drop, and Wine;
But in her long and hidden course
Passing through the Earths darke veines,
i Growes still from better unto worse,
j And both her taste, and colour staines ... j
( i
Heale then these waters, Lord; or bring thy flock, j
Since these are troubled, to the springing rock,
Looke downe great Master of the feast; 0 shine,
And turn once more our Water Into Wine!
("Religion," 21-36, 49-52)
Vaughan’s wistful backward glance at Eden is not unique.
luring the theological controversies of the Reformation, :
■ i
several Protestant groups turned back to the primitive
Church as a source of authority against that of the medieval
church; and many seventeenth century religious thinkers, in-
!
heriting the disputations of the sixteenth century, at
tempted to establish a communion with Eden, and thereby to
recapture the primeval innocence which linked man closely to;
3od. This concern for an age of innocence, of course, in-
I
ferlgued the nineteenth century Romantic poets, who also bor-!
rowed from the seventeenth century the related idea that
children are able to catch a brighter glimpse of the eternal
verities* Vaughan goes a step further, affirming that the j
adult can reenter this state of felicity, and conceiving of i
Life as a great circle, with birth and death beginning at
the same point.^ In "The Retreate," he gives voice to this I
j " I
idea, visualising life as a Journey which may very well take
man far from his home but which will eventually also bring
aim back:
0 how I long to travell back
And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plaine,
Where first I left my glorious traine,
Prom whence th* Inlightned spirit sees
That shady City of Palme trees.
(lines 21-26)
i Vaughan here echoes the Old Testament account of the j
keath of Moses, who was given but one glimpse of the Prom- I
lsed Land and "Jericho, the city of palm trees" (Deuteronomy]
\
kxxiv.3). Thus, life for Vaughan is not complete estrange- j
i ■ !
ment or exile by the waters of Babylon, as it appears to j
^See Helen N. MeMaster, "Vaughan and Wordsworth," Re
view of English Studies* 11:322, July 1935*
| ~207
some of* the nineteenth century poets; it is rather a Journey
into the Promised Land. Although one must, in the course of
the Journey, cross a dry, dark, forbidding desert, God can
te relied upon to drop manna from the sky, issue water from j
the rock, and lead the way as a pillar of cloud by day and a!
. . . . . . . . . . j
oillar of fire by night. In Silex Scintillans. Vaughan al- ;
ludes repeatedly to the guidance received by the Hebrews as
an example of the manner in which Divine Providence shelters!
the weary traveler. Thus, despite the persistent strain of 1
melancholy in his poetry, he 3hares with the other metaphysi-r
pal poets the belief that through all the apparently mean
ingless wandering, loneliness, and frustration of human ex- j
istence, God is actually directing man to his ultimate
spiritual home. Although, among all of God's creatures, man
alone
hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd,
Bit ever restless and Irregular
About this Earth doth run and ride,
He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where,
He sayes it is so far
That he hath quite forgot how to go there.
yet Vaughan is confident that at the end of his days of j
wandering, if he will but ask for guidance, man can reach
ais "home":
That in these Masques and shadows I may see
Thy sacred way,
And by those hid ascents climb to that day
Which breaks from thee j
Who art in all things, though invisibly; i
Shew me thy peace,
Thy mercy, love, and ease.
{"Man,* 16-21, 50-56)
208
The determination of the seventeenth century religious
poets to attain once again a state of innocence is closely
akin to the mystic’s desire to reach God directly. Vaughan,
possessing something of this desire, approaches God as di
rectly as he can when he discerns His hand in the varied
acts of Providence— Providence which has brought both life
s
and death into the universe and which serves as the manifes-
I
tation of God’s might, to which man should be wise enough to
[
submit:
j
| Sacred and secret hand!
By whose assisting, swift command
The Angel shewd that holy Well,
Which freed poor Hagar from her fears,
And turn’d to smiles the begging tears
Of yong, distressed Iahmaei.
How in a raystick Cloud
(Which doth thy strange sure mercies shroud)
Doest thou convey man food and money
Unseen by him, till they arrive
Just at his mouth, that thankless hive
Which kills thy Bees, and eats thy honey! . . .
Poor birds this doctrine sing,
And herbs which on dry hills do spring
Gr in the howling wilderness
Bo know thy dewy morning-hours,
And watch all night for mists or showers,
Then drink and praise thy bounteousness.
May he for ever dye
Who trusts not thee! but wretchedly
Hunts gold and wealth, and will not lend
Thy service, nor his soul one day:
May his Crown, like his hopes, be clay,
And what he saves, may his foes spend!
("Providence,” 1-12, 25-36)
As is well known, Vaughan and some of his contemporaries
conceive of childhood as close to that state of innocence
knd-intimacy with God, which had been lost by the Pall and
which may toe attained again only after* death:
I Happy those early dayesI when I
i Shin*d in my Angell-infancy.
) Before I understood this place
! Appointed for my second race,
Gr taught my soul to fancy ought
But a white Celestial thought,
When yet I had not walkt above
A mile, or two, from ray first love,
And looking back (at that short space,)
j Could see a glimpse of his bright face,
j ("The Retreate, " 1-10)
i
Vaughan and his contemporaries had ample precedent in Jewish
\ ' ' ' ‘ ‘ . . . . . . . . . . .. ....
doctrine for this emphasis upon childhood.^ It has been
Jpointed out that "The Rabbins emphasize untiringly the spot-
|
less purity of the new-born babe" (see Martin, "Theme of In-
i - • . . . .
fancy," p. 248). And several passages of the Talmud erapha-
i „
size that man is sinless at birth: A child aged one year
r
j . . . has not tasted sin" (Joma, 22b); "Happy the man whose
i
hour of death is like the hour of his birth; as at his birth
1 „
he is free of sin, so at his death may he be free of sin"
i '
(Berachoth, F, 4d); "Give the soul back to Him as he gave it!
jto you, in a condition of purity" (Shabbath, 152b)Other
Talraudie legends link the innocence of childhood to the still
higher purity of the pre-natal state, viewing the newly born,
child I
*1 am indebted to L. C. Martin, who cites many Hebraic
sources, referred to above, in his highly informative arti-
ble "Henry Vaughan and the Theme of Infancy," Seventeenth
Century Studies (Oxford, 1938), pp. 243“255*
o
°These passages from the Talmud are cited from A. Cohen
Everyman^ Talmud (London, 1932), p. 102.
!________
as a higher being, which, but a few seconds before, had
been conversing with angels and saints, and had how cohde
scended into our profane world to make two ordinary mor
tals happy.®
The Midrash Tancfauma. a fourth century Talmudic commentary,
explains in some detail the Talaiudie concept of the pre-
Whiie the child is still in its mother's womb ... a
I light illumines round about its head, whereby it looks and*
! sees from one end of the world to the other. . . .During
! this interval, too, it gains an insight into all the know- 1
ledge that is available, all the rules of life whereby, if
j a man observe them, he will live,--the veritable secrets
of Almighty Wisdom. Once, however, arrived in the world
of phenomena, an angel comes forward, and closes its
mouth; the knowledge it has acquired is all but forgotten."
! . .Yet, on the strength of these dim recollections, the
new born is adjured thus: "Be thou righteous, be not
wicked. . . . Understand that the Almighty is pure, His
I messengers are pure; and the soul which He has placed !
within thee is pure. If thou preservest thy soul in puri-
i ty, well and good; but if not, I will take it from thee.10;
i As a result of the sixteenth century Hebraic studies in
England (see Chapter I), these Rabbinical concepts were ap~
j. . . . . . . . . . . . - - |
parently well known to early seventeenth century writers.
jis Bacon, for instance, in his essay "Of Youth and Age,”
quotes Jewish authority to buttress his argument that young
i
people have greater powers of spiritual insight than their
alders because they are nearer to God:
A certain rabbin, upon the text, Your voung men shall see \
visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, inferreth
that young men are admitted nearer to God than old,
^Solomon Schechter, Studies in Judaism: First Series
(Philadelphia, 1911), p. 3W~*
•^Herman Gollancz, Paedaaogics of the Talmud (London,
1924), pp. 93-94. _____
natal state
because vision Is a clearer revelation than a dream; and
certainly, the more a man drinketh of the world the more
it intoxicateth.11
i
Mlcrocosmograohle (1628), also draws a sharp contrast be
tween the child and the grown man, stressing the unspoiled
nature or the child: ;
A Child is a Man in a small letter, yet the best Copie of
I Mam before he tasted of Eue, or the Apple; and hee is 1
happy whose small practice in the World can only write his!
Character. Hee is natures fresh picture newly drawne in !
Oyle, which time and much handling dimmes and defaces.12 j
i
Because of his sense of worldly contamination, then,
Vaughan seeks purity and innocence in Eden, the patriarchal |
times, and childhood; for during these periods the "veil"
between the spiritual and material worlds was kept trans-
Man of old
Within the line
Of Eden could
Like the Sun shine
All naked, innocent and bright,
And intimate with Heav'n, as light;
But since he
That brightness soil’d,
His garments be
All dark and spoil*d,
And here are left as nothing worth,
Till the Refiners fire breaks forth.
("Ascension-Hymn,” 19*30)
, ed. W. Aldis Wright (London, 1890), pp. j
lsEd. L. L. Williams (Albany, 186?), p. 1.
John Earle, in delineating his "character" of a child in
parent by innocence:
Hence, Vaughan describes the Biblical age in the "color of
I
P — ~ s is r
i
innocence"; in "The Search,” for example, he refers to the
1
"golden Evenings" and "white dayes" of the Patriarchs--that
j
"bright” period before the Hebrews* subjugation to the Mosa-
t
1c Law:
i ;
j Tyr*d here, I come to Svchar: thence i
; To Jacobs wel. bequeathed since !
; Unto his sonnes, (where often they ;
; In those calme, golden Evenings lay
I Watring their flocks, and having spent I
Those white days, drove home to the Tent j
Their well-fleee *d traine). I
| (lines 20-27) \
And he repeatedly, in prose as well as verse, apostrophizes I
i !
(Sod as the "Light of Lights. ” In The Mount of Olives, for
I
Instance, while meditating on the setting of the sun, he
presents a crystallization of his light symbolism:
This Sun of the firmament hath his Course; It riseth, set-
teth, comes up again, and again goes down: But thou Lord j
. .". art . . . the same to day and yesterday, and for
| evermore I Thou bright and morning Starre springing from
j on high, illuminate me, who am now sitting in darkness
1 and in the shadow of death. 0 light of light . . . In-
j lighten all Inward obscurities in me, that after this life
j I may never be cast into the outward darkness.*3
In such poems as "The Starre” and "The Constellation," the
stars serve as a source of spiritual Illumination— somewhat
In the manner of the Apocryphal verse "The stars shined in
fcheir watches, and rejoiced: / When he ealleth them, they ;
say, *Here we be*; / And so with cheerfulness they shewed
i ” j
light unto him that made them" (Baruch 111.3*0, which he i
seems to echo in his poem "Midnight":
*3pfartin, Works of Vaughan. p. 151. Cf. Psalm xix.4-6.
! " 2 1 3
When to ray Eyes
(Whilst deep sleep others catches,)
Thine hoast of spyes
i The starres shine in their watches,
I doe survey
Each busie Ray,
And how they work, and wind,
And wish each beame
My soul doth streame,
I With the like ardour shin'd; [
; What ©nanations, |
Quick vibrations
f And bright stirs are there?
I What thin Ejections, \
Cold Affections, i
And slow motions here? i
(lines 1-16) > > i
The stars further symbolise for Vaughan "that busie Commerce”
existing between Cod and His Creatures, both living and dead;
for the dead are like the stars that illuminate man's tortu-
i
!
bus path:
! They are (indeed,) our Pillar-fires
| Seen as we go,
They are that Cities shining spires
I We travell to.
' ("Joy of My Life,” 25*28)
f
He expresses a somewhat parallel idea in his well-known
lines:
They are all gone into the world of light!
And I alone sit lingering here;
Their very memory is fair and bright,
And my sad thoughts doth clear.
("They Are All Gone,” 1-4) ;
Hence, life, when compared to the "pure and endless light"
of heaven, amounts to little more than a dark cavern (see
"Silenee and Stealth of Dayes," 5-8) or a long journey at
. . j
night (see "Joy of My Life," 9-16); even at its very best,
sit achieves no more than the reflected glow of sunset, since!
1........ ~ .•' ■ 214
the bright morning of Eden and of childhood have both long
since passed.
j Vaughan also finds in nature a reflection of the eter
nal conflict between the forces of light and darkness , a
i . I
conflict as vivid as the battle between good and evil in the
I * '
human soul. He thus shares with the Elizabethan poets a ;
fondness for that almost imperceptible Interval between the j
j , I
ending of night and the breaking of day. Dawn represents |
J
I |
for him the Second Coming, the daybreak to the long darkness'
i |
of earthly existence:
i Mornings are Mysteries: the first worlds Youth.
Mans Resurrection. and the futures Bud
' Shrowd in their births: The Crown of life, light, truth
Is stil’d their starre♦ the stone. and hidden food.
j Three blessings wait upon them, two of which
| Should move; They make us holy, happy. rich,
j ("Rules and Bessons,*1 25~3®)
In "The Dawning," he speculates about the most suitable hour
I
for Christ’s second coming and decides In favor of the
"early fragrant hours”:
i
J The whole Creation shakes off night,
And for thy shadow looks the light,
Stars now vanish without number,
Sleepie Planets set, and slumber,
The pursle Clouds disband, and scatter,
All expect some sudden matter,
Wot one beam triumphs, but from far j
That morning star. ,
(lines 1?“24)
By thus referring to Christ as the day-spring and the morn
ing star, Vaughan adds his own paradox to those used by the j
other metaphysical poets in their attempts to express the \
I !
miracle of the Resurrection:
Lord! when thou didst thy self© undresse
' Laying by thy robes of glory,
| To make us more, thou would be lease,
And becaro'st a wofull story.
To put on Clouds instead of light,
! And cloath the momlng-starre with dust,
j Was a translation of such height
i As, but in thee, was n@*r exprest.
! ("The Incarnation and Passion," 1-8)
Vaughan repeatedly employs this "cloud" image as a sym
bol for the separation of the human soul from the Divine 1
Light; together with the "veil," the cloud stands for all of
I ,
the limitations of the body, space, and time, which are 1m- ;
r j
posed on the soul by human existence. In the final stanza
of "Resurrection and Immortality," the Soul speaks of these
i
' i
limitations: j
1 1*5
j Then I that here saw darkly in a glasse ^
, But mists, and shadows passe,
j And, by their owne weake, Shine, did search the springs
I And Course of things
Shall with Inlightned Rayes
Pierce all their wayes;
And as thou saw*st, I in a thought could goe
To heavln, or Earth below
To reade some Starre. or Min*rail. and in State
There often sate,
So shalt thou then with me
(Both wing*d, and free,) 1
i Rove in that mighty, and eternall light ;
j Where no rude shade, or night '
j Shall dare approach us; we shall there no more
j Watch stars, or pore
j Through melancholly clouds, and say
> Would it were Day!
! One everlasting Saboth there shall runne
Without Succession, and without a Sunne.
(lines 51-70)
*^Cf. Philippians ii.5“9.
IScf. j . Corinthians xill.12.
/
216^
The Interrelationship of light and darkness symbolizes for
Vaughan the cyclic nature of life and death, past and pres
ent, good and evil, and evokes from him several moving pas
sages in praise of death:
Though since thy first sad entrance by
Just Abels blood,
* Tis now six thousand years well nigh,
I And still thy sov*rainty holds good:
| Yet by none art thou understood.
! We talk and name thee with much ease
: As a tryed thing,
j And every one can slight his lease
| As if it ended in a Spring,
i Which shades & bowers doth rent-free bring.
i
! To thy dark land these heedless go:
But there was One.
Who search*d it quite through to and fro,
| And then returning, like the Sun,
j Discover*d all, that there is done,
i
| And since his death, we throughly see
! All thy dark way;
| Thy shades but thin and narrow be,
i Which his first looks will quickly fray:
Mists make but triumphs for the day.
i ("Death," 1-20)
s
Death, therefore, is not always evil, nor is darkness:
I
Dear night! this worlds defeat;
The stop to busie fools; cares check and curb;
The day of Spirits; my souls calm retreat
Which none disturb! „^
Christs progress, and his prayer time;1* *
The hours to which high Heaven doth chime. . . .
! There is in God (some say)
A deep, but dazling darkness; As men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear;
0 for that night! where I in him
Might live invisible and dim.
("The Night," 25~30, 49~54)
l6Cf. Mark 1.35; Duke xxi.37 -
Yet, while Vaughan recognizes that physical darkness Is not
In itself evil, he often uses the traditional imagery of
darkness and light to symbolize the difference between the
temporal and eternal. In the much-quoted opening lines of
’ The World,” he expresses his wonderment at the pure and !
endless light of eternity: ■
*
! I saw Eternity the other night ;
Like a great Ring of pure and endless light, ' !
; All calm, as it was bright,
] ' And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years
I Brlv'n by the spheres
i Like a vast shadow mov'd, In which the world
| And all her train were hurl'd*
I Throughout Vaughan's religious poetry, his thorough
familiarity with the Bible is obvious. It has been said, in
fact, that he reveals ”a more intimate knowledge of the
j i
Bible" than any of his contemporaries, possessing "a deeper !
*
and finer knowledge” of Scriptures than even John Bunyan at-
i - !
I
tained, and that he was able to surrender "his sensibility
as a poet" to the Authorized Version in a more abandoned
manner than could the "poet-priests" Donne and Herbert:
! The Welsh and English countryside appeared to him as they ,
did to a later mystic, Samuel Palmer, "apparell'd in ;
j celestial light, like the symbolic landscapes of Hebrew I
i poetry or the visions of St. John. When he rode into an
English town "that cities shining spires" became a fore- ;
sight of the New Jerusalem; and the Brecknock Beacons J
which bounded the horizon at Newton-by-Usk were for
Vaughan the holy hill whence the Psalmist looked for help,!
or Solomon's mountains of myrrh and hills of frankin
cense.-1 (
| M. Mahood, Poetry and Humanism (London, 1950), p.
255*
j As lias often been pointed out, Vaughan was also influ- j
£ n c e d b y t h e H e r m e t i c p h i l o s o p h y , 3 - ® a c u r i o u s b o d y o f b e - |
i : :
llefs gathered together by the followers of the third cen
tury Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus. Hermeticism had sunk
to the level of alchemy and magic during the Middle Ages, '
I ..... ‘ i
b u t w a s r e s t o r e d b y R e n a i s s a n c e t h e o r i s t s a s a p h i l o s o p h i c a l j
system. Thomas Vaughan, a leading Hermetic philosopher of i
i .
this time, evidently exerted considerable influence on his I
I - I
brother*s poetry (see Mahood, Poetry and HumanisBi. pp. 258-
59)• However, there seems to be some difference of opinion
a s t o h o w o r t o w h a t d e g r e e H e r m e t l c i s m a f f e c t e d H e n r y
V a u g h a n ' s t h i n k i n g . E l i z a b e t h H o l m e s 3 ^ i m p l i e s t h a t t h e I
! ' i
H e r m e t i c p h i l o s o p h y m a y h a v e d i l u t e d V a u g h a n 1 s r e l i g i o u s d e
v o t i o n w i t h e l e m e n t s " a l i e n t o o r t h o d o x r e l i g i o n . " S h e
p o i n t s o u t t h a t h e h a d a l e s s p e r s o n a l a n d l e s s a u s t e r e c o n - ;
\
c e p t i o n o f G o d t h a n D o n n e a n d t h a t h e l a c k e d t h e s a m e s e n s e ;
o f a l i e n a t i o n f r o m G o d a n d r e d e m p t i o n t h r o u g h t h e C r o s s e v i -
k e n t i n D o n n e , H e r b e r t , a n d — l a t e r i n t h e c e n t u r y — B u n y a n .
i
H e w a s n o t a s t r o u b l e d b y t h e P a l l a s t h e s e men; e v e n d e a t h ;
i i
l o s t a c e r t a i n d e g r e e o f t e r r o r , b e i n g c o m p a r a b l e t o t h e
l®See W. G . Clough, "Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic
Philosophy." PMLA. 48:1108-1130, March 19335 C. Martin,
"Henry Vaughan and Hemes Trismegistus," Review of English
Studies. 18:301-307, July 1920; Richard Walters, "Henry
yaughan and the Alchemists," Review of English Studies. 23:
107“122, April 1947.
j ^Henry Vaughan and the Hermetic Philosophy (Oxford,
1932), p . 14.'
seasonal changes In plant life (p. 51). Helen White, on the!
i
o t h e r h a n d , t a k e s t h e v i e w t h a t V a u g h a n * s H e r m e t l c i s m e n -
i
] lanced his awareness of Sod and the Holy Spirit in nature
f Metaphysical Poets, pp. 290-92).
The Hermetic philosophy was based upon the belief that '
i
a series of correspondences exist between the universe and i
ian. Whereas the universe is intellectual or angelic, ce- j
i ' ' ' ' " ' " " ■
lestial or starry, and terrestrial or elementary, man is !
composed of an "elemented1 * body, an immortal soul, and a
sidereal spirit which links soul and body* thus, all of the j
U n i v e r s a l e l e m e n t s a r e e m b o d i e d v i r t u a l l y — i f n o t m a t e r i a l l y
| ’
j — I n m a n . M a n a l s o e n c o m p a s s e s s o m e t h i n g o f t h e " d i v i n e
r * i
s p a r k , " o r " q u i n t e s s e n c e — t h a t f i n e a n d p u r e a n d h i d d e n e s
s e n c e w h i c h p r e s e r v e s e a c h c r e a t u r e f r o m c o r r u p t i o n " ( s e e
H o l m e s , V a u g h a n a n d H e r m e t i c P h i l o s o p h y , p p . 33~S). T h i s
e s s e n c e i s d e r i v e d n o t f r o m a n y o f t h e f o u r e l e m e n t s b u t
l ■ ■ : ■ ;
from something beyond them, from a primal force existing be
tween matter and spirit which seems to pervade the entire
u n i v e r s e : i
1
I
For as the Catholics, from Aquinas to many minor medieval j
writers, saw the creation as a "ladder" or "scale" reach
ing through various rungs of being to the throne of God,
the mystic and Hermetic philosophers, from Plotinus to the!
i workers and explorers of Vaughan's own day, saw the living!
■ Spirit stoop descending through all things to inform them |
and link them together. (Holmes, p. 36) ;
Despite the fact that Hermetlcism contained a good deal!
I" ' ‘ ' ' ' ' ' ' ' ' 1
of peculiar Jargon, as well as magical and occult practices,)
lit aided in restoring a profound sense of the unity of all
life toy detecting the presence of God in even the humblest
i
of creatures. Certainly Vaughan is imbued with this concept
of the interrelationship of all living things. But his Her-
i
raetic beliefs are so absorbed toy his theology that they are
Virtually impossible to separate. In "Resurrection and Im
mortality, " for instance, he expresses his belief in a cos-
! |
mic fall: while the lower creatures are thoroughly obedient]
man has brought suffering upon them toy his sin, causing de-
i
cay throughout the natural order. Restoration will occur [
only at the end of time.
[ However, although his Biblical and even his Hermetic
sources permit Vaughan to interpret nature religiously and
■to see God in His works, he seems often to have been troubled
i
by his inability to penetrate the "veil" whleh God had inter
posed between Himself and the mind of man, and thus to ex-
i _ I
perience union with God--except during those rare visionary
Intervals when "some strange thoughts transcend our wonted
jtheams, / And into glory peep” (see Mahood, Poetry and Hu
manism . pp. 261-64). His use of the "veil" image reveals
I
the adroit manner in which he handles his sources. Thomas
i
I
Vaughan had quoted Cornelius Agrippa*s plea "Cast off the j
I ■ on
veil that is before your faces." It had also been a popu-
I
f
l i a r i m a g e w i t h t h e G e r m a n m y s t i c s ( s e e W h i t e , M e t a p h y s i c a l
P o e t s . p . 297); i t w a s u s e d a s w e l l t o y t h e s e v e n t e e n t h
i *
^°The Works of Thomas Vaughan, ed. A. E. Waite (London,
1919), p. 61. _______ _
: ' ' 221
century emblem writers— for instance, Francis Quarles:
i
Thou art my Sun, great God! Oh when shall I
, View the full beams of thy meridian eye?
I Draw, draw this fleshly curtain, that denies
I The gracious presence of thy glorious eyes.21
Vaughan employs the image of the veil repeatedly, conveying
at least four distinct meanings with it. In lines from
"L'Envoy"— "Arise, arise! / And like old cloaths fold up j
i
these skies, / This long worn veyl"— the allusion to folded
clothes following the plea to "Arise!" brings to mind the
Resurrection and treats the body as a veil for the soul. In!
! . i
“The Might," the veil alludes to the mortal body of Christ— !
! • *
"That sacred vail drawn o'r thy glorious noon"; and in "Coder
! .
Crowing," it represents all mortal flesh:
i
! Gnely this Veyle which thou hast broke,
J And must be broken yet in me,
This veyle, I say, is all the cloke
And cloud which shadows thee from me.
| This veyle thy full-ey'd love denies,
! And onely gleams and fractions spies.
j (lines 37-^2)
i
He also links the rending of "the veil of the temple" at the
death of Christ— "And, behold, the veil of the temple was
rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did j
I 22 '
quake, and the rocks rent— to that of the Resurrection,
jthus symbolising the supersession of the Old Law by the New:
21Book V, Bnblem XIIj The Poetical Works of Richard
Crashaw and Quarles» Emblems. ed. Rev. George Gilfillan
(Edinburgh, 1<356), p. 359 ♦ Cf. Vaughan's "Cock-Crowing."
22Matthew xxvii.51* See also Hebrews vi.19; x.20.
W h e n t h e S u n o f r i g h t e o u s n e s s
B i d o n c e a p p e a r ,
T h a t S c e n e w a s c h a n g ' d , a n d a n e w d r e s s e
B e r t f o r u s h e r e ;
V e i l e s b e c a m e u s e l e s , A l t a r s f e l ,
Fires smoking die;
And all that sacred pomp, and shel
Of things did file.
("Faith," 21-28)
| H e a l s o u s e s t h e i m a g e o f t h e v e i l t o e m p h a s i z e t h e e x -
i
istence of a boundary between the natural and supernatural
worlds. As the moon's sphere was the supposed limit of the
natural world, he looks upon it as blocking access to those
“brave, translunary things” toward which he is striving.^
He therefore alludes to the moon, in a prose work The Mount
of Olives, or Solitary Devotions, as "that planet (whose
sphere is the veil or partition drawn betwixt us and Immor
tality?) (Martin, Works of Yaughan. p. 1J6). And in his
elegy "To the Pious Memorie of C. W. Esquire," he refers
rather slightingly to the "Moon's ruder veile" which can
f
cause an eclipse of the much brighter Sun. Finally, he
voices his displeasure at the limitations Imposed upon the
aspirations of the human spirit not only by space but by
I
time as well. His phrase "like old eloaths fold up these
skies" in "L'Envoy" seems to echo a passage from the Apoca-
j
iypse: "And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is
i
rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved
^Edmund Blunden has pointed out that Yaughan is almost
alone in his indifference to the moon's beauties. See Blun-
On the Poetry of Henry Vaughan (London, 1927)> P* 4l.
I . . . . . . . . " “ . . . . . 2 2 3 1
f
o u t o f t h e i r p l a c e s " (vi.l4). T h i s , i n t u r n , s u g g e s t s t h e
c e n t r a l i m a g e o f " T h e D a y o f J u d g m e n t , " i n w h i c h V a u g h a n
v i s u a l i z e s t i m e a s c a s t i n g a s h a d o w u p o n t h e l i g h t o f e t e r n i -
i
t y :
j 0 d a y o f l i f e , o f l i g h t , o f l o v e !
; T h e o n e l y d a y d e a l t f r o m a b o v e !
i A d a y s o f r e s h , s o b r i g h t , s o b r a v e
T w i l l s h e w u s e a c h f o r g o t t e n g r a v e ,
A n d m a k e t h e d e a d , l i k e f l o w e r s , a r i s e j
Y o u t h f u l a n d f a i r t o s e e n e w s k i e s .
A l l o t h e r d a y s , c o m p a r ' d t o t h e e , I
A r e b u t l i g h t s w e a k m i n o r i t y ,
T h e y a r e b u t v e i l s , a n d C y p e r s d r a w n
I L i k e C l o u d s , b e f o r e t h y g l o r i o u s d a w n .
! 0 c o m e , a r i s e , s h i n e , d o n o t s t a y
j D e a r l y l o v ' d d a y !
! ( l i n e s 1 - 1 2 )
V a u g h a n t h u s c o m p r e s s e s , w i t h t y p i c a l m e t a p h y s i c a l c o m p l e x i
t y , t h e f o u r m a j o r o b s t a c l e s b e t w e e n G o d a n d t h e h u m a n s o u l ,
t h e f o u r b a r r i e r s w h i c h w e r e o v e r c o m e t e m p o r a r i l y o n l y a t
t h e R e s u r r e c t i o n , a n d w h i c h w i l l e n c o u n t e r u l t i m a t e d e s t r u e - i
t i o n o n l y a t t h e f i n a l d a y o f J u d g m e n t : t h e O l d L a w , t h e
! '
h u m a n b o d y , t i m e , a n d s p a c e ( M a h o o d , P o e t r y a n d H u m a n i s m , p .
243).
H e p r e s e n t s a m o d i f i c a t i o n o f t h e " v e i l " i m a g e i n t h e
j
i f o r m o f a t r a n s l u c e n t s h e l l , s i m i l a r t o t h e " m u n d a n e s h e l l " j
o f B l a k e ' s e m b l e m s ( M a h o o d , P o e t r y a n d H u m a n i s m , p . 2 7 6 ) . j
V a u g h a n f u s e s t h i s i m a g e w i t h t h e t r a d i t i o n a l C h r i s t i a n s y m -
1
h o i o f e t e r n a l l i f e , t h a t o f t h e l i b e r a t i o n o f t h e s i l k - r a o t h
f r o m h e r c o c o o n :
S o m e d r o w s i e s i l k - w o r m e c r e e p e
P r o m t h a t l o n g s l e e p e
A n d i n w e a k e , i n f a n t h u m m i n g s c h i m e , a n d k n e l l
A b o u t h e r s i l e n t C e l l _ _ _ _ _ _ _
j “ ' ' ... — “22%
Untill at last full with the vitall Ray
She winged away.
, ("Resurrection and Immortality," 5~10)
In "The Search," this symbolism is made more explicit:
The skimne, and shell of things
' Though faire,
! are not
Thy wish, nor pray * r i
but got ;
| By raeer Despair
I of wings. j
, (lines 81-87) !
ks the enclosed spirit senses that with the growth of its I
i i
wings it has become an exile, so does man feel himself !
< ;
| only . . . a stranger here, where all else are at home,
i Furthermore . . . the losing of his innocency, and his de-
i vice of Tyranny have made him unpittied, and forfeited a
^ prerogative, that would have prevailed more by submission,
I then all his posterity shall do by o p p o s i t i o n .24
Vaughan thus views man as a traveler who Is himself response
jble for his waywardness:
! Man hath stll either toyes, or Care,
! He hath no root, nor to one place is ty'd,
But ever restless and Irregular
About this Barth doth run and ride,
He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where
He sayes it is so far
That he hath Quite forgot how to go there.
! ("Man," 15-21J i
Hence in "The Pilgrimage," he presents man not only as a j
I 1
bird driven from his native wood but, again, as an unhappy
traveler who dreams uneasily of his lost home. He contrasts
with this sad human plight the unerring Instinct of such
i
lesser creatures as homing birds and bees. Man's
^primitive Holiness. Set Forth in the Life of Paulinas.
in Martin, Works of Vaughan, p. 352. _______
I 225
homesickness is a direct result or his loss of Eden; there
fore, in "Man's Pall and Recovery," he represents him as a
i
"sully1d flowre" robbed of calm and transplanted from para
dise, a mere slave to his passions and his fate.
The Biblical theme of exile, then, dominates Vaughan's
poetry; and he accepts the dictum of St. Paul that only j
through Christ can man end his state of exile. Paul had j
looked upon Isaiah's prophecy— "And he will destroy in this i
mountain / The face of the covering cast over all people / |
I 1
And the veil that is spread over all nations"— as fulfilled
only when the rent veil of the Temple revealed "a new and
!
living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the !
veil, that Is to say, his flesh. describing the
veil covering the face of Moses on his descent from Mount
Sinai, St. Paul asserts:
until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the;
reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in
; Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the
' veil is upon their heart, nevertheless when it shall turn
i to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away. (II Gorinthi- j
ans ill.1^-16)
Vaughan echoes these words whenever he uses the image of the!
i
veil. I
! His favorite image, however, is that of the stone,
j
which symbolizes the unregenerate human heart. It has been
pointed out that this image was used by the emblem-writers
| ^Hebrews x.20. These words serve Vaughan as the epl
graph for "Resurrection and Immortality."
L _
of the period and appeared often in Jesuit hooka of devotion.
In that part of Nieremberg's De Arte Voluntatis which
Vaughan translated, there occurs the simile, "Certaine
Mvine Rales break out of the Soul in adversity, like
sparkes of fire out of the afflicted flint.” (Mahood,
Poetry and Humanism, p. 266)
The image of the stone heart, however, would have been most
familiar to seventeenth century religious writers because of
its liturgical use, for it derived originally from God's !
j
promise to Ezekiel:
I
A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I ;
put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out
of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh,”
(xxxvi.26)
knd from the Lord's angry query in Jeremiah: ”Is not ray
1 •
word like as fire? . . . and like a hammer that breaketh the I
This image provides the title for Vaughan's religious
verse, Silex Scinti1Ians— the flint which will emit fire
0 foolish man! how hast thou lost thy sight?
How is it that the Sun to thee alone
Is grown thick darkness, and thy bread, a stone?
Hath flesh no softness now? mid-day no light?
Lord! thou didst put a soul here; If I must
Be broke again, for flints will give no fire
Without a steel, 0 let thy power cleer
Thy gift once more, and grind this flint to dust!
("The Tempest,” 53-60)
Warning:
Tremble, thou earth, at the presence of the Lord,
At the presence of the God of Jacob;
Which turned the rock into a standing water,
The flint into a fountain of waters.
(exiv.T-B)
only when struck:
r ~ ■■■■......... 22T
!
Like Herbert, Vaughan compares the obdurate human heart to
i
the traditional Old Testament symbol of the rock in the
?
wilderness which gave forth water when struck by Moses. He
introduces this image into his devotional prose work The j
I i
Mount of Olives: i
! j
| Take away, 0 ray God! this heart of stone, and give me a j
: heart of flesh, renew a right spirit within me. ... 0
i thou that didst cause the waters to flow out of the stoniej
rock, and gavest to Magdalen such store of teares that she!
! washed thy feet with them, give to me true remorse, and
j such a measure of repentance as may become a most misera- I
I ble sinner! (Martin, Works of Vaughan. p. 159) j
! \
| i
Vaughan Joins his heart and stone metaphors in the Latin
poem which appears on the original title page of Silex Scin-
tlllans and which accompanies an emblem of a thunderbolt of I
divine fire striking a flinty heart. u As translated by
Edmund Blunden, it captures the note of anguished remorse
*■ " !
prevalent in early seventeenth century religious poetry:
The Flashing Flint
0 I confess, without a wound
; Thou oft hast tried me,
I And oft Thy Voice without a sound
j Hath longed to guide me;
I Thy zephyr circled me from heaven
I On a calm wing,
j And murmuring sought t*allure me, given
To no such thing.
c A Flint X was, both deaf and dumb,
But Thou, unceasing,
I (So lov’st Thou all Thy tribe) didst come
To my releasing;
2 % e e t h e r e p r o d u c t i o n o f t h e e n g r a v e d t i t l e p a g e o f
S i l e x S c i n t l l l a n s (1650) i n F. E . H u t c h i n s o n , H e n r y V a u g h a n : !
A L i f e a n d I n t e r p r e t a t i o n ( O x f o r d , 19^7)» P * 168.
Thou hast tried all Thy powers, until
Thou show*at Thy love,
With whose vast Will my stubborn will
Thou dost remove.
Thy siege comes sharper; by Thy shock
My wall's o'erthrown;
Thou shatter*st even my breast of rock,
And what was stone
Is flesh and blood; 0 see, I bleed;
At last these Heaps
j Burn with Thy heaven, and, changed indeed!
1 The Marble weeps.
! Thus in the world's first age Thy hand
| Made fountains ripple
i Prom Hocks, and Cliffs at Thy command
J Refreshed Thy people;
I Thy secret busy care, my Lord,
1 Hath here been plain:
i My dying is my life restored;
| My loss, my gain.
(Blunden, Poetry of Vaughan, p. 62)
i . .
j Vaughan's Imagery thus reflects the same complexity of
mind and multiplicity of means as that of his predecessors.
j
His sources, like theirs, are many and varied, stemming es-
i
sentially from the emblem books, contemporary religious
poetry, Hermetic mysticism, and the Bible. He turns to
|
these varied sources for another of his favorite poetic fig
ures, "the Candle of the Lord.” Like Milton and the Cam
bridge Platonists, he views this image as symbolic of that
light of human reason which remained with man even during
i
his Pall and which could be brightened considerably by grace,
And despite his repeated criticism of the Puritan illumin
ists who made the "candle” a metaphor for the Inner Light,
he alludes to it repeatedly— for instance, in his Dedication
to Silex Scintillans:
229
This is the earnest thy love sheds,
The Candle shining on some heads,
Till at thy charges they shall he,
Cloath'd all with immortality.
(lines 27-30)
This image also has its roots in several Biblical sources.
G that I were as in months past,
As in the days when God preserved me;
When his candle shined upon ray head,
And when by his light I walked through darkness;
As I was in the days of my youth,
When the secret of God was upon my tabernacle
When the Almighty was yet with me.
And David, in praising the lord for having delivered him
from the hand of Saul, and certain of eventual good fortune,
For thou wilt light ray candle:
The Lord ray God will enlighten ray darkness.
For by thee I have run through a troop}
And by ray God have I leaped over a wall.
(Psalm xviii.28-9)
In the King James Bible, the well -known twentieth chapter of
Hieroglyphics of the Life of Man and Robert Farley's Lvcfano
causla both make emblematic use of the Dux interna, and
ings or texts of these two works (see Mahood, Poetry and Hu-
1
manlsm. p. 269). candle was also a traditional Hermetic|
piece to Lumen de Lunalne. The central concept of Thomas
(xxix.2“5)
States confidently:
Proverbs contains the rather surprisingly worded statement,
"The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord, / Searching
all the Inward parts of the belly.’ 1 In addition, Quarles's
Vaughan's light images can be matched in either the engrav
symbol, appearing in Thomas Vaughan * s emblematic frontls-
J ” 230
¥aughan's philosophical system is the "Fire-Soul," which he
describes as
t h e S e c r e t C a n d l e o f G o d , w h i c h h e h a t h t i n n e d i n t h e e l e
m e n t s : I t b u r n s a n d i s n o t s e e n , f o r i t s h i n e s i n a d a r k
p l a c e . E v e r y n a t u r a l b o d y i s a k i n d o f b l a c k l a n t e r n ; i t
c a r r i e s t h i s C a n d l e w i t h i n i t , b u t t h e l i g h t a p p e a r s n o t :
i t i s e c l i p s e d w i t h t h e g r o s s n e s s o f t h e m a t t e r . ( W a i t e ,
W o r k s o f T h o m a s V a u g h a n , p p . 266-67)
i
Y e t , d e s p i t e h i s u s e o f m a n y a n d v a r i e d s o u r c e s , ;
!
V a u g h a n c o n t r o l s h i s p o e t i c b o r r o w i n g s a n d i s r a r e l y c o n - i
i I
t r o l l e d b y t h e m . H e h a s t h u s q u i t e J u s t l y b e e n t e r m e d t h e i
! j
" m o s t o r i g i n a l a n d t h e m o s t i m i t a t i v e o f t h e g r e a t r e l i g i o u s !
i
poets of the seventeenth century*' (Bethell, Cultural Revolu-
! :
tion. p. 140). The principal poetic influence upon him is
G e o r g e H e r b e r t , f r o m w h o m , i n b o t h h i s s e c u l a r a n d r e l i g i o u s I
v e r s e , h e f r e e l y b o r r o w s f i g u r e s , i d e a s , i m a g e s , p h r a s e s ,
i I
!
a n d t i t l e s . M a n y o f t h e i d e a s a n d e m o t i o n s i n S i l e x S c i n -
I
t i l l a n s a m o u n t t o l i t t l e m o r e t h a n d i r e c t b o r r o w i n g s f r o m
i
T h e T e m n l e . I n f a c t , h e d i s p l a y s a n a l m o s t p e r v e r s e h u r a i l i -
I ....
t y i n e c h o i n g s o m e o f H e r b e r t ' s t i t l e s , s u c h a s ' " H u e R e
l a p s e , " " T h e R e s o l v e , " " U n p r o f i t a b l e n e s s , " " R e p e n t a n c e , " a n d ;
| i
' T h e P r o f f e r . " H e e m p l o y s r e p e a t e d l y H e r b e r t ' s i n t i m a t e |
c o l l o q u i a l t e c h n i q u e o f i n t r o d u c i n g a p o e m w i t h a n i n t e r r o -
i
a j a t i o n , a s t a r t l i n g e x c l a m a t i o n , o r a d r a m a t i c i n v o c a t i o n t o !
i i
G o d . H i s d e b t t o H e r b e r t i s a p p a r e n t i n t h e o p e n i n g l i n e s
o f " T h e R e s o l v e " :
i
I h a v e c o n s i d e r ' d i t ; a n d f i n d J
A l o n g e r s t a y
I s b u t e x c u s ' d n e g l e c t . T o m i n d
O n e p a t h , a n d s t r a y
| Into another, or to none,
i Cannot be love,
i (cf. Herbert’ s "The Reprisall.")
Herbert’s Influence is also apparent in the opening lines of,
"The Check":
’
i
Peace, peace! I blush to hear thee; when thou art i
A dusty story |
A speeehlesse heap, and In the midst ray heart j
; In the same livery drest I
’ Lyes tame as all the rest. j
I
It can be seen in "Affliction": I
I '
Peace, peace; It is not so. Thou doest miscall I
I Thy Physick; Pils that change j
! Thy sick Accessions into setled health,
This is the great Elixir that turns gall
To wine and sweetness; Poverty to wealth.
and in the closing lines of "The Dwelling-Place";
, i
But I am sure, thou dost now come
Oft to a narrow, homely room,
Where thou too hast but the least part,
My Cod, I mean ray sinful heart.
However, Vaughan shows taste and imagination, for the
most part, In the use of his sources. A comparison of the
- i
symbols In his "Son-Bayes" with those of its model, Herbert’s
"Prayer I," will reveal something of the manner in which he j
responds to Herbert’s Influence. His phrase "Pulleys unto j
i ■ *
headlong man" seems rather a flat Imitation of Herbert’s
i i
"The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth" (an image ;
\
popular with contemporary emblem writers), and exposes his
difficulty in handling Herbert’s concrete secular images. |
Again, when he tries to copy one of the monetary Images by |
which Herbert communicates a high degree of emotion, the re-
bult_is equally uninspiring; "Times Prerogative / And .
! '... 232
interest / Deducted from the whole.” However, when he bor
rows an image into which he can transfuse some of his own
devotional experience, he often transforms a merely clever
image into a highly imaginative one. Thus, Herbert’s "The j
iailkie way” becomes ”The milky way ehalkt out with Suns”; j
and the ”six-daies world transposing in an houre” becomes a i
I ' t
fusion of outer and inner experience In "A Gleam of glory, j
after six-days-showres.”
No matter how flagrant his borrowing, therefore, 1
Yaughan is able to Infuse a quality uniquely his own into
f (
all his poetry. While he may lack something of Herbert’s
clarity of thought and sureness of tone, he often attains
levels of intensity in meditating upon nature, night, eterni-
I
!
ty, or death beyond the reach of Herbert's muse. His unique
Sensibility colors and changes even his most direct borrow
ings . ^
! Yaughan borrows freely, openly, and imaginatively.
Poetically, he owes much to both Donne and Herbert, yet dis
plays notable differences. He lacks the tight cohesion of
I
poetic structure so characteristic of these older poets.
Against Herbert’s firm poetic line, his texture often seems ,
. f
uncertain and fumbling. There is lacking that “drive of
logic" which serves to unify so much metaphysical poetry
(see White, Metaphysical Poets, p. 313)* His poems tend to
2?See Geraldine Hodgson, "Henry Vaughan," Modern Lan
guage Quarterly. 4:80, March 1943. ________
be stronger in development than in form and are more copious
than Incisive. He shows little capacity for the incisive
compression so evident in both Donne and Herbert; thus, his
poems abound in beautiful phrases but lack periods that
i
strike a concise point; the epigram and the emblem find
!
little place in his poems. And not having the metaphysical
Organization of Donne or Herbert, he rarely displays their
common capacity for precision and for variety of sub-surface
I . . .
implication (see Bethell, Cultural Revolution, p. 13@)* He
lacks also what has been termed that
sanctified worldliness that balances the transcendent
faith of many Metaphysicals, and which creates that
tension between being and becoming which is at the root
of their paradoxical wit. (Mahood, Poetry and Humanism.
i p. 290).
j
Neither does he Introduce into his religious verse the secu-
i
lar imagery of the seventeenth century arts and sciences, as
do the continental Jesuits and John Donne. He differs from
j
his poetic contemporaries, too, in his acceptance of Plato's
I
assertion that the soul is Impeded and corrupted by the
I
physical body; he shares none of Donne1s delight in the
I
bodily senses.
Yet he is essentially a true heir of the metaphysical
tradition and displays his Inheritance by means of the in
tellectual facility with which he manipulates his imagery, j
Furthermore, his view of the universe is traditionally hu- I
j !
manistic and organic. Believing that man's failure to add
I
to the pattern of universal harmony is compensated in part
i
b y n a t u r e ' s a d h e r e n c e t o t h e h e a v e n l y s c h e m e o f t h i n g s , h e
t h e r e f o r e c o n t r a s t s t h e f i x e d m o t i o n s o f t h e s t a r s w i t h t h e
i
s o c i a l c h a o s o f w a r - t o r n s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u r y E n g l a n d :
F a i r , o r d e r ' d l i g h t s ( w h o s e m o t i o n w i t h o u t n o i s e
R e s e m b l e s t h o s e t r u e J o y s
W h o s e s p r i n g i s o n t h a t h i l w h e r e y o u d o g r o w
A n d w e h e r e t a s t s o m e t i m e s b e l o w ,
With what exact obedience do you move
Now beneath, and now above,
A n d i n y o u r v a s t p r o g r e s s i o n s o v e r l o o k
' T h e d a r k e s t n i g h t , a n d c l o s e s t n o o k ! . . .
j S i l e n c e , a n d l i g h t , a n d w a t c h f u l n e s s w i t h y o u
A t t e n d a n d w i n d t h e G l u e ,
1 N o s l e e p , n o r s l o t h a s s a l l e s y o u , b u t p o o r m a n
S t i l l e i t h e r s l e e p s , o r s l i p s h i s s p a n . . . .
T h u s b y o u r l u s t s d i s o r d e r ' d i n t o w a r s
O u r g u i d e s p r o v e w a n d r i n g s t a r s ,
W h i c h f o r t h e s e m i s t s , a n d b l a c k d a y s w e r e r e s e r v ' d ,
W h a t t i m e w e f r o m o u r f i r s t l o v e s w e r v ' d . . . .
S e t t l e , a n d f i x o u r h e a r t s , t h a t w e m a y m o v e
I n o r d e r , p e a c e , a n d l o v e ,
A n d t a u g h t o b e d i e n c e b y t h y w h o l e C r e a t i o n ,
B e c o m e a n h u m b l e , h o l y n a t i o n .
("The Constellation," 1-8, 13~l6, 45-48, 53“56)
H i s a l l u s i o n s t o t h o s e a s p e c t s o f n a t u r a l p h e n o m e n a w h i c h
Interest him— night and dawn, the classical rose, myrtle and
lily, the primrose and "low violet," Juniper and oak, the
legendary phoenix and the mystic dove— are always devoted to
the expression of his dominant poetic theme: the reflection
1
o f t h e s p i r i t u a l w o r l d I n t h e m a t e r i a l , t h e m a n i f e s t a t i o n o f
G o d i n e v e n t h e m o s t m u n d a n e o f h i s c r e a t i o n s . H i s p o e t r y
r e f l e c t s t h e d e s i r e o f a l l o f t h e m e t a p h y s i c a l p o e t s t o k e e p
!
h e a v e n a n d e a r t h i n s i g h t . H i s o r g a n i c m y s t i c i s m i s e s
p e c i a l l y e v i d e n t i n s u c h p o e m s a s " A s c e n s i o n - B a y " :
“— ■ .... ......— 235
*
i
I soar and rise
Up to the skies.
Leaving the world their day,
And in my flight,
For the true light
do seeking all the way. . . .
What stirs, what posting intercourse and mirth
Of Saints and Angels glorifie the earth?
What sighs, what whispers, busie stops and stays;
Private and holy talk fill all the ways? j
They pass as at the last great day, and run
In their white robes to seek the risen Sun.
(lines 9*14, 25-30) j
j Vaughan thus views the world with an Imaginative sensi
bility; although reaching for the transcendental, he never j
loses sight of the things of this earth. His conception of !
the universe is impressive in Its completeness, for he in
cludes in his "great Chime and Symphony of nature" not only
God and man, the past and present, and the living and the
dead, but all of creation, both animate and inanimate. He
^fashions all Into a series of religious poems significant
for their honesty, clarity, and vividness.
j C H A P T E R V I I
MAN1 S RELATIONSHIP TO GOD I
IN THE POETRY OP THOMAS TRAHERNE I
i
j !
! The bitter seventeenth century religious struggle be
tween Protestant and. Catholic was Intensified toward the
i
middle of the century by the outbreak of civil strife be
tween Anglo-Catholic and Puritan and the rapidly diverging
Views of the various Puritan sects. Yet, despite their very
real and constant theological differences, Roman Catholic,
Anglican, and Presbyterian had all inherited the medieval
respect for a uniform system of belief and practice; each
group felt, however, that it possessed the ecclesiastical
system of divine origin and thus the most deserving of the
highest veneration. It is, therefore, not surprising that
even during this embattled period, some men held that a com-
j :
mon ground of belief could be found in the spiritual aspira-|
1 i
t
tions and fears of all men. ]
1
\ Thomas Traherne expresses this Idea in his prose and [
poetry, which were so little known in his own day that later
scholars at first attributed them to Henry Vaughan. In his
poem "Churches,1 * for example, Traherne visualizes the possi-
i
billty of a single house of worship:
Were there but one alone
Wherin we might approach his Throne,
One only where we should accepted be,
As in the Days of old
It was, when Solomon of gold
His Temple madej we then should see
A numerous Host approaching it,
Rejoicing in the Benefit:
The Queen of Sheba com
With all her glorious Train,
Pone from Rome. j
The Kings beyond the Main; |
The Wise men of the East from far,
As guided by a Star, |
With Rev’rence would approach that Holy Ground, j
At that sole Altar be adoring found.* I
(
?
There was In actual practice a considerable blending of!
i
philosophical and religious theories (science and Hermetl- \
I . |
cism, Stoicism and Christianity)— particularly In those
areas rather remote from the major Intellectual centers,
where, during the Commonwealth in England, many of the nEn~
i »
thusiastlc" sects and cults, kept down during the Laudian
! O
regime, flourished openly. Ironically enough, the uncom
promising and embittered theological disputes, which have
been discussed elsewhere (see Chapter I), caused many of the
more enlightened minds to begin questioning a religious
state of affairs which turned a creed of love and brother- |
! :
hood into hatred and strife. Furthermore, not only religion;
1Lines 25-^0. All citations from Trahernefs poems are
from The Poetical Works of Thomas Traherne, ed. Gladys I.
Wade (London, 1932).
%ee Robert Barclay, The Inner Life of the Religious
Societies of the Commonwealth (London. 1876V. See also Gil
bert Waterhouse, "The Theologians," in The Literary Rela
tions of England and Germany in the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge, 191 *0*
but man himself came in for a good deal of extremely close
scrutiny. All of man's liabilities— his blindness, passion,
and wilfulness— were carefully noted. This rather skeptical!
view persisted well into the latter part of the century--in !
i ■ |
Milton, who asserts that man has fallen from grace because '
1 !
of his pride and his improper use of reason; and in Thomas j
Hobbes, who paints an even blacker picture of man's moral '
i
nature.
| Mot everyone, however, took so negative a view of man; !
many still retained a belief in the fundamental goodness of
i - - -
the individual. The metaphysical poets, despite many mis-
i
givings, constantly reaffirm their faith In man, and this
{reaffirmation is expressed also in the poetry and prose of
the last of the major metaphysical poets, Thomas Traherne.
) - ' • • •
in fact, Trahernes faith In hnman natnre Is stronger and
more persistent than that of most of his contemporaries. He
i
considers human nature essentially good and thus worthy of
1 '
the world God had created for it; thus, in his Christian
Ethickshe objects to the negative account of man pre-
| 1
sented by Hobbes. Man represents, after all, God's supreme !
I
achievement, for only he can provide the Creator with the
worship He demands (see White, Metaphysical Poets, p. 336).
f
Man alone can express his appreciation and pleasure at
having been created in God's image:
3(London, l6?5), pp. 519-521.
If I be like My God, my King,
I (Tho not a Cherubim,)
I will not care,
Since all my Powers derived are
Prom none but Him.
The best of Images shall I
Comprised in Me see;
For I can spy
All Angels in the Deity
Like me to ly.
("The Image, 1-10)
I
! Having been thus created In the image of God, man must j
I
; !
conduct himself In the manner prescribed by his Creator; 1
When the »an the Path» o. »Way j
pod," he brought evil upon himself and his posterity: I
i God made Man upright at the first;
Man made himself by Sin accurst:
Sin is a Deviation from the Way
Of God: *TIs that wherin a Man doth stray
From the first Path wherin he was to walk,
From the first Theme he was to talk.
i His Talk was to be all of Prais,
| Thanksgiving, Rapture, Holy-days;
I For nothing els did with his State agree:
! Being full of Wonder and Felicity,
He was In thankful sort to meditate
Upon the Throne in which he sate.
No Gold, nor Trade, nor Silver there,
Nor Cloaths, no Coin, nor Houses were
No gaudy Coaches, Feasts, or Palaces,
Nor vain Inventions newly made to pleas;
Bit Native Truth, and Virgin-Purity, \
An uncorrupt Simplicity. !
("Adam’s Fall,” 1-lS) j
Traherne describes the world as It would have been if man j
3 ' ' 1
> \
h a d r e f r a i n e d f r o m s i n , p a i n t i n g a n E d e n t h a t h a s n o n e e d o f
c h u r c h o r s o c i e t y , l e a r n i n g o r c o m m e r c e , I n d u s t r y o r m e d i
c i n e ( s e e a l s o C h r i s t i a n E t h i c k s . p p . 4 6 - 4 7 ) . E x c e p t f o r
s o m e l i g h t g a r d e n i n g , a b l a m e l e s s A d a m c o u l d h a v e e n j o y e d
r — -.......... 240
Unlimited silent communion not only with nature but with God
i
himself:
i
A quiet Silent Person may possess
All that is Great or High In Blessedness.
The Inward Work is the Supreme: for all
The other were occasiond by the Fall.
A man, that seemeth Idle to the view
Of others, may the Greatest Business do.
Those Acts which Adam in his Innocence
1 Performed, carry all the Excellence.
i These outward Busy Acts he knew not, were I
But meaner Matters, or a lower Sphere. j
Building of Churches, giving to the Poor,
In Dust and Ashes lying on the floor,
| Administrlng of Justice, Preaching Peace, j
j Ploughing and Toyling for a fore * t Increas, j
! With Visiting the Sick, or Governing
The rude and Ignorant: This was a thing
As then unknown. For neither Ignorance
Nor Poverty, Nor Sickness did advance
Their Banner In the World, till Sin came in:
These therefore were occasioned all by Sin.
The first and only Work he had to do,
j Was in himself to feel his Bliss, to view
1 His Sacred Treasures, to admire, reJoyce
Sing Praises with a Sweet and Heavnly voice,
See, Prize, Give hearty Thanks within, and Dove
Which is the High and only Work, above
Them all.
| ("Silence,” 1-27)
In both his prose and poetry, Traherne attempts primari
ly to reveal himself; and if he lacks the capacity for self-!
! !
analysis and criticism of Donne or Herbert, or the emotional!
! ' l
fervor of Crashaw, he is even more fully and immediately
i
personal than they— more direct and constant in his self- 1
revelation, more pointedly self-conscious. Traherne is a
prophet with a tale of self-revelation to relate. And al-
i !
i :
though his is more a spiritual than an actual autobiography,;
Lt is still a decidedly consistent and sustained one (see
White, Metaphysical Poets, p. 326). Thus, his incidents
! 241'
i
tend to be general rather than particular, abstract rather
than concrete. He is concerned with the symbolic value of
these experiences; and In the more successful poems he man-
i
ages an effective fusion of literal experience and spiritual
interpretation. He is not so successful in those poems
where the ethical teaching becomes so predominant as to de- j
j • i
stroy the poetic balance. i
i
Traherne*s poems— in the Dobell manuscript— can be di- j
vided into three main groups, each reflecting certain con
crete aspects of his philosophy. The first group centers
about the ideas of the parable of childhood. Traherne, like
Vaughan, echoes both the Talmudic and the Gospel writers in j
asserting that the innate Innocence of the child gives him
> ii
ian intuitive grasp of the eternal truths. He seems to have;
linked this faith in childhood Innocence with the widespread:
revolt against culture and learning fomented by the various
j-Enthusiastlc" movements. The Renaissance faith in the per-;
faction of man through learning had given way to an exaita-
t
[
jtion of primitive innocence and its corollary, childhood. ;
It is, therefore, interesting to note that although Donne
i
and Herbert are not influenced by this philosophical glori-
jflcation of childhood, both Vaughan and Traherne are im
pressed by it— despite the fact that Traherne staunchly ad-
\
vooates formal learning.
^See Arthur Payne, "A Prose Poet: Thomas Traherne,M j
Educational Times. 18:347, August 1922. J
Reflecting the influence of many Platonic and (probably
indirectly) Talmudic writings,** Traherne begins his story
i
with the pre-natal mind's first awareness of the members of
its own body:
My Body being Dead, my Dims unknown; !
Before I skild to prize I
Those living Stars mine Eys, j
! Before my Tongue or Cheeks were to me shewn, j
f Before I knew my Hands were mine, :
Or that my Sinews did my Members joyn, 1
When neither Nostril, Foot, nor Ear,
j As yet was seen, or felt, or did appear; I
i I was within j
A House I knew not, newly clothd with Skin.
Then was my Soul my only All to me,
| A living Endless Ey,
! Just bounded with the Skie
Whose Power, whose Act, whose Essence was to see.
; I was an Inward Sphere of Light. I
Or an Interminable Orb of Sight.
An Endless and a Living Day,
A vital Sun that round about did ray
All Life, all Sence,
A Naked Simple Pure Intelligence.
("The Preparative," 1~20)
In such poems as "The World," he attempts to recapture that
state of intense Joy or "felicity" which he had enjoyed as a
young child, or which Adam had experienced in Eden:
When Adam first did from his Dust arise,
He did not see, i
Nor could there be
A greater Joy before his Eys: I
The Sun as bright for me doth shine. ... j
The Moon as much I view
As Adam did, and all God's Works divine
I Are Glorious still, and Mine. . . .
! My virgin-thoughts in Childhood were
j Full of Content,
^For a discussion of the Talmudic concept of the pre-
catal_state,_see Chapter VI. _______
And innocent,
! Without disturbance, free and clear.
' (lines 1-5* 10-12, 29’32)
!
I
Thus, for Traherne childhood corresponds to that brief time
in Eden when all was innocence and Joy:
How like an Angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
; When first among his Works I did appear
! G how their Glory did me crown!
: The World resembled his ETERNITY,
In which my Soul did walkj
I And evry thing that I did see
j ©id with me talk.
[ A Nativ Health and Innocence
! Within my Bones did grow,
i And while my God did all his Glories show
I I felt a vigor In my Sense
: That was all SPIRIT: I within did flow
With Seas of Life like Wine;
I nothing in the World did know
■ But 1 twas Divine.
J ("Wonder,” 1-8, 17-24)
I
For the child, there is involved no effort in learning. As
f
his soul is clear, so is his eye. All of the beauties of
the sun, wind, sea, and earth burst in upon him and receive
a ‘ response that is natural and unspoiled:
j A world of Innocence as then was mine,
I In which the Joys of Paradice did shine
| And while I was not here I was in Heaven,
; Not resting one, but evry Day in Seven.
Forever Minding with a lively Sence,
The Univers in all its Excellence.
No other Thoughts did Intervene, to Cloy,
Divert, extinguish, or Ecclyps my Joy.
No other Customs, New-found Wants, or Dreams
Invented here polluted my pure Streams.
No Aloes or Dregs, no Wormwood Star
! Was. seen to fall into the Sea from far.
No rotten Soul, did like an Apple, near
My Soul approach.
("Silence," 47-60)
Both Vaughan and Traherne,.credit, the .child with types
| ------------- ■ 244
and degrees of insight lost to his elders. Thus for Tra-
I
heme, as for Vaughan, neither the innocence of the child
t
nor of Adam is of long duration; both soon fall victim to
the weaknesses of the flesh, and with the loss of innocence,!
I j
kaen is lost or, for Traherne, ease of mind: i
; 0 Eden fair! I
| Where shall I seek the Soul of Holy Joy j
I Since I to find it here despair;
i Nor in the shining Day,
1 Nor in the Shade,
Nor in the Field, nor in a Trade
I can it see? Felicity! 0 where
Shall I thee find to eas my Mind! 0 where!
("Solitude,'1 113-20)
Traherne considers man's ability to learn, his "educability,"
!
as the vulnerable point in his moral armor (see White, Meta-
t !
Physical Poets♦ p. 338); for soon after his arrival, the
i !
}
child learns to value through his physical senses the super-;
jficial objects valued by the world. Of himself, he states: J
It was a difficult matter to persuade me that the tin-
' selled ware upon a hobby-horse was a fine thing. They did
impose upon me, and obtrude their gifts that made me be
lieve a ribbon or a feather curious.®
But before too long, he finds that he has been betrayed by
i ' 1
his physical awareness: j
i
For Sight Inherits Beauty, Hearing Sounds,
The Nostril Sweet Perfumes,
All Tastes have hidden Rooms
Within the Tongue: and Feeling Feeling Wounds
With Pleasure and Delight.
("The Preparative," 31”35)
However, he realizes that worldly objects are really so many
f t
Centuries of Meditations. ed. Bertram Dobell (London,
1927), P. 158, ______
i —..... ~ 2 ' 4 ' 5 '
i
^'gilded manacles,” and that true happiness consists in some-
i
thing different. "All Bliss," he warns,
Consists in this,
To do as Adam did;
And not to know those superficial Joys
Which were from him in Eden hid:
Those little new-invented Things,
: Fine Lace and Silks, such Childish Toys
As Ribbans are and Rings, j
Or Worldly Pelf that Us destroys. |
("The Apostacy," 37~^5)
Traherne extends this faith in youthful intuition to
include the unlearned, wondering if the ignorant savage does!
hot retain a sensitiveness to reality much longer than the
relatively educated and civilized Christian:
Verily there is no savage nation under the cope of Heaven,,
that is more absurdly barbarous than the Christian World. [
They that go naked and drink water and live upon roots are
like Adam, or Angels in comparison of us. (Meditations.
i p. 161)
Traherne glorifies the child and the childlike barbarian for
their undistracted and uncorrupted penetration into the
I
heart of creation; untainted by sin, both are still linked
jto Cod and thus are keenly aware of His presence in all
things. They therefore have no need to be educated as to
i ;
their "duty" toward God. Traherne recollects imaginatively
that his own infant innocence
Divided me,
From all the Vanltie,
From all the Sloth Care Pain and Sorrow that advance,
The Madness and the Miserie j
Gf Men. No Error, no Ms traction I j
Saw soil the Earth, or overcloud the Skie. }
X knew not that there was a Serpents Sting,
Whose Poyson shed
_______ On Men, did overspread . . . . . _______
The World: nor did I Dream of such a Thing
As Sin; In which Mankind lay Dead. . . .
Only what Adam in his first Estate,
Did I behold;
Hard Silver and Drie Gold
As yet lay under Ground; my Blessed Fate
Was more acquainted with the Old
And Innocent Delights, which he did see
In his Original Simplicitie.
Those Things which first his Eden did adorn,
My Infancy
Did crown. Simplicitie
Was ray Protection when I first was born.
Mine Eys those Treasures first did see,
Which God first made.
("Eden," 1-12, 29-41)
Traherne, like Wordsworth, recognizes that maturity often
brings false values to the individual and distracts his at
tention from the central facts of creation to the ephemera
of ordinary existence. Both poets believe that in order to
re-attain that clear and accurate vision which the infant
possesses by virtue of his unimpeded and effortless contact
with God, man must employ his reason. Traherne, however,
j
does not merely dwell sentimentally on the blissful Inno
cence of children; rather, he uses childhood as a symbol and
1 I
looks upon the child as merely "a living parable, and embodi-
I r 7 ■
ment of truth; but he Is not the truth Itself.His poems,:
phen, are actually comments on the Biblical phrase "Ye must
be born again" and are no more to be taken literally than
the phrase itself. His poems of childhood are “songs of
innocence," parables reflecting the perfect joy or "felicity1
/^Gladys Wade. Thomas Traherne (Princeton. 1944), p. 170 ,
i 247
J
Inherent in that blessed state. "The Preparative,” "The In-
i
struction," and "The Vision," for example, convey the sad
ness of one who seeks to recover a lost childlikeness. "The
Rapture" expresses the sheer joy of recovery, while "The Im-|
! !
provement," "The Odour," and "Admiration" stress the ease j
with which unsophisticated instinct perceives God in nature,;
i
God has devised childhood, Traherne Implies, not only as a j
i
mere foretaste of eventual happiness, but as an unforgetta- I
I I
ble memory of a joyous state which the human soul should |
| !
continually strive to recapture. j
i j
! For Traherne, the best— perhaps the only certain— means;
of recapturing this state is through the human mind and
proper learning. His second group of poems, then, emphasize
the adult man in his proper relation to God. For, despite
I
his repeated praise of Innocence, Traherne is thoroughly
convinced that only through learning can man rise above his I
i
corrupt and fallen state and recover that intuitive bond
! ' I
with God and nature possessed by the child and lost by the
adult. If man had remained In a state of Innocence, he j
would not require reason or learning, as the hidden meaning '
behind all of creation would have been apparent to him in- j
I !
stinctively; but both reason and knowledge had become neees-
I
jsary in a world of sinful decay (see Christian Ethicks. p.
58}. Only by the rigorous ardors of faith and the conscious
1 j
'exertion of an awakened and illumined mind, which will
properly employ the vast resources of learning, can man hope
! . . _ _
~ ...” ---- 248
to recover Tor himself his lost sense of values. Traherne’s
I
attitude, therefore, reflects the Renaissance exaltation of
the human mind as well as the increasing rationalism of the
rapidly developing scientific age:
' For God gave man an endless intellect, to see all things, i
and a proneness to covet them, because they are His treas
ures; and an infinite variety of apprehensions and affec- j
| tions, that he might have an all-sufficiency in himself toj
j enjoy them; a curiosity profound and unsatiable to stir !
: him up to look into them: an ambition great and everlast-j
[ ing to carry him to the highest honors, thrones, and dig- j
, nities. (Meditations. pp. 182-83) I
i i
f
Only when man acquires the wisdom to prize the world as!
the creation of Qod and to praise the Creator for His
!
achievement and gift does he satisfy that inner craving for i
worship Which brings about a state of internal felicity. I
But man must first learn to reject superficialities and dis-
♦
cern in all things the infinite hand:
i
• ' All Bllsse
Consists in this,
To do as Adam did;
And not to know those superficial Joys ...
Or Worldly Pelf that Us destroys.
i . i
Traherne notes with pride that he accomplished this at an
I - 1
early age: !
i 1
Divine Impressions when they came,
Did quickly enter and my Soul inflame. j
Tis not the Object, but the Light !
That maketh Heaven; Tis a Purer Sight.
Felicitie
j Appears to none but them that purely see.
| ("The Preparative," 55-60)
Yet this ability to see "purely" only partially fulfils our
obligation as "images" of Qod; the individual must also com
municate to Oqd his Imaginative responses to the world which
■ ' 249
has been created for him. For Just as nature is deemed per
fect only through man's enjoyment of its beauties, so the
i
internal order of the mind is achieved only in the expres
sion of praise of God (see Mahood, Poetry and Humanism, p.
t
j For God enjoyd is all his End.
j Himself he then doth Comprehend.
1 When He is Blessed, Magnified,
| Extold, Exalted, Praiad and Glorified
Honord, Esteemd, Belovd, Enjoyd,
Admired, Sanetifled, Obeyd,
That is receivd. For he
Doth place his Whole Felicitie
In that, who is despised and defied
Undeified almost if once denied.
(
! In all his Works, in all his Ways,
I We must his Glory see and Prals;
i And since our Pleasure is the End,
j We must his Goodness and his Lov attend. . . .
! Tis not alone a Lively Sence
! A clear and Quick Intelligence
A free, Profound, and full Esteem:
I Tho these Ellxars all and Ends do seem
But Gratitude, Thanksgiving, Prais,
A Heart returnd for all these Joys,
! These are the Things admird,
i These are the Things by Him deslrd.
These are the Nectar,and the Quintessence
The Cream and Flower that most affect his Sence.
j ("The Recovery," 11-24, 51-6©)
Here, and in other poems of his second group ("Amend
ment,” "The Demonstration," "The Anticipation"), Traherne
indicates that man serves as a necessary Intermediary be-
i
jtween God and the physical universe. Love and gratitude can
transform man's physical joys into spiritual joy, in which
form they may be communicated to God. Thus, man plays a vi
tal role in Traherne's world picture; and his failure to
fulfill this role will bring about both moral and spiritual
failure. He therefore warns:
i
i Tis Death my Soul to be Indifferent,
Set forth thy self unto thy whole Extent,
And all the Glory of his Passion prize,
Who for Thee livs. who for thee Dies.
("Another,” 17-2©)
In "The Circulation," Traherne again stresses that man— the
end of creation— must fulfill the life cycle by recreating |
i
the world for God:
. j
I All Things to Circulations owe
I Themselvs; by which alone
They do exist. . . .
, All things do first receiv, then giv.
Only tis GOD above,
! That from, and in himself doth live,
Whose All sufficient Love
Without Original can flow
And all the Joys and Glories shew
Which Mortal Man can take Delight to know
He is the Primitive Eternal Spring
1 The Endless Ocean of each Glorious Thing.
I The Soul a,Vessel is
! A Spacious Bosom to Contain
All the fair Treasures of his Bliss
Which run like Rivers from into the Main,
And all it doth receiv returns again.
; (lines 29-31, 70-84)
Man’s fulfillment of this cyclic pattern enhances his re-
i
lationship with Godj for God values the imaginative world, j
! I
which man can make for Him, even more than the natural worldj
which He originally created (see Mahood, Poetry and Humanism.
p. 304). Apparently much taken with this circular concep-
! f t
tion of all life, Traherne presents it in various forms in
O
See Marjorie Hope Nicolson, The Breaking of the Circle:
Studies in the Effects of the "Mew Science'* upon Seventeenth
! --------- - ------251'
"Another," In "Love," and In three poems exalting the human
body— "The Person" "The Estate," and "The Enquirie." He al
so discusses It in his prose:
The world within you is an offering returned, which Is in
finitely more acceptable to God Almighty, since It came
from Him, that it might return to Him. Wherein the mys- j
| tery is great. For God hath made you able to create i
worlds in your own mind which are more precious unto Him I
| than those whieh He created; and to give and offer up the '
, world unto Him, which is very delightful in flowing from
Him. but much more in returning to Him. (Meditations. p.
139}
thus, for Traherne the individual has not only the ability
but the obligation to establish an imaginative "world" of j
thoughts and emotions centering about his relationship to
God.
' Traherne*s overwhelming awareness of God’s presence in
i
His creation, his awareness of a meaning behind mere sense- i
1 ;
phenomena, and his animistic outlook give him a certain kin
ship with the mystic. Although there Is no evidence that he
himself attained the mystical state of oneness with "the In
finite," Infinity and Eternity are persistent themes in both
I
his prose and poetry:
Infinite is the first thing which is naturally known.
Bounds or limits are discerned only in a secondary manner.
Suppose a man were born deaf and blind. By the very feel
ing of his soul, he apprehends infinite about him, infi- ;
nite space, infinite darkness. He thinks not of wall and
limits till he feels them and is. stopped by them. That
things are finite therefore we learn by our senses. But
infinity we know and feel by our souls, (Meditations. p.
132)
Century Poetry (Evanston, 1950).
I ________
j 252
i
In on© of his Poems from Christian Ethleks. he perceives
that each object participates in "the One":
In all Things, all Things service do to all:
And thus a Sand is Endless, though most small.
And every Thing is truly Infinite
In its Relation deep and exquisite.
(111,29-32)
He had in his youth taken for granted the eternal nature of
t !
the world:
I [
j Sometimes my thoughts would carry me to the Creation, for
| I had heard now, that the World which at first 1 thought
! was eternal, had a beginning: how therefore that begin-
| ning was, and why it was, why it was no sooner, I mightily
i desired to know. (Meditations. p. 164)
He "mightily desired to know" probably because he was also
i • I
considerably influenced by discoveries and implications of
i i
the new science and the new philosophy:
When he saw eternity in a grain of sand, he was speaking
I not only mystically but microscopically. The worlds un-
! numbered through which his God was known were his heritage
i from both the Platonists and the telescope. (Nicolson,
! Breaking of Circle, p. 173)
i
Yet his formal learning served only to enhance his very
early awareness that the universe is not only infinite and
eternal but perfectly related and balanced. "My Inclina
tion,” he writes, "rais'd me up on High, and guided me to
trace Infinity." And he expresses In several of his poems
his desire to penetrate the barriers of space and time and j
i
: l
to view the limitless boundaries of creation: j
| j
j One World was not j
(Be't ne'r forgot)
Ev'n then enough for me:
My better Sight
Was inflnit,
_______New Regions I must see.
In distant Coasts new Glories I
Did long to spy:
What this World did present
; Gould not content;
i But, while I looked on Outward Beauties here,
j Most earnestly expected Others there.
I know not well
What did me tell
Of endless Space; hut I j
• Bid in my Mind
| Som such thing find
! To be beyond the Sky
That had no Bound.
(“Sight," 25-43)
and again:
! I
< My Contemplation Basies in the End
Of all I comprehend.
And soars abov all Heif^ats,
Diving into the Depths of all Delights.
(“The Anticipation,” 1-4)
Traherne, then, like his poetic predecessors, displays
!
acute awareness of the interrelationship of all things ere- j
ated by Qod, which permeates the thinking and writings of
the Hebrew Prophets. And, like the other metaphysical poets,
he repeatedly expresses this organic relationship by means
of images drawn from the Old Testament. In "Innocence," for
example, he again identifies himself with the still-innocent
Adam, describing himself as “A little Adam in a Sphere / Of j
jjoys”; and wishing to express the manner in which God em-
i .
braces all creation within the circumference of His love, he
|
fuses the popular image of the circle with the traditionally
Biblical image of light. “The ancient Light of Eden," he
thus asserts, conveys into his soul the knowledge that he is
an inward Sphere of Light,
Of an interminable Orb of Sight, ________
254
Exceeding that which makes the Bays,
A vital Sun that shed abroad his Rays:
All Life, all Sense,
A naked, simple, pure Intelligence
(“The Preparative,” 15-20}
lere, he seems to echo Vaughan's "great Ring of pure and
the Bible upon him; he quotes from it liberally in his prose!
tened to it with enthusiasm when still a child:
When the Bible was read, my spirit was present in other
I ages. I saw . . . the land of Canaan, the Israelites
entering it, the ancient glory of the Amorltes, their
peace and riches, their cities, houses, vines and fig-
trees. ... I saw all and felt all in such a lively man
ner, as if there had been no other way to those places,
i but in spirit only. . . . For without changing place in
myself I could behold and enjoy all those: Anything when
it was proposed, though it was ten thousand ages ago, be
ing always before me. (Meditations. pp. 169-70)
t i e also expresses his admiration for the Bible in verse:
That! That! There I was told
That I the Son of Cod am made,
His Image. 0 Bivine! And that find Gold,
With all the Joys that here do fade,
Are but a Toy, compared to the Bliss
Which Hev'nly, God-like, and Eternal is.
("The Bible,T l 1-6)
classical writers the answers to questions posed by his
searching mind; Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Platonism had
each made its contribution to ethics; but the Judaic concept
endless light"; in fact, his poems are full of references to
glorious rays, shining beams, and various other forms of
that "pure primitive virgin light” by which man may discern
(
all that has been created for his benefit.
Traherne's writings reflect the profound influence of j
and alludes to it continuously in his poetry. He had 11s-
!An avid student of philosophy, he failed to find in the
of an external Lawgiver and an external immutable Law had,
!
h© felt, made the greatest contribution to Christian theolo
gy. It was this Idea which provided the basic framework of
i
the Scripture© and presented man with a rigid code of moral
!
behavior:
|
PhilosophyI canst thou descry
My Bliss? ;
Will Books or Sages it to me disclose?
I miss j
Of this in all: They tell me Pleasure,
Or earthly Honor, or a fading Treasure, i
Will never with it furnish me,
the Holy Writings serve his needs:
Weary of all that since the Fall
Mine Eys on Earth can find,
I for a Book from Heven look.
Since here
No Tidings will salute or eas my Mind:
Mine Ear,
My Ey, my Hand, my Soul, doth long
For som fair Book fill’d with Eternal Song. ...
Oh! that som Angel would bring down
Hie same to me; That Book should be my Crown.
I breathe, I long, I seek:
Fain would I find, but still deny'd,
I sought In ev'ry Library and Creek
Hntil the Bible me supply’d.
("Bissatisfaction, 59“6§, 70-77, 106-11)
i
And all that he observes about him in the physical world— j
the sun and stars, the birds and animals— appear in his eyes!
t
to be merely the living revelation of the Divine Will, of-
j
fering further illustration and confirmation of the truths
recorded in Scripture.
j So much is the Bible a part of his thinking that he can
h — " — * — * *“ l "
laminate one of his own ideas; and so inextricably blended
j
!
with his own is its language— particularly that of the
Psalms— that it largely determined both his prose-rhythms
and his technique of reiterating his ideas in varied forms
(see Wade, Traherne. p . 153)• He reflects this influence
most graphically in his Hexameron. or Meditations on the Six
Days of the Creation, a group of six prose meditations, one j
for each day of Creation, and each complete in itself and j
confined to the events of that day as related in Genesis: I
' |
Each begins with the appropriate verse from Genesis, and I
l develops into a series of detailed eulogies of the wonder ;
and beauty and servieeableness of the thing created, all
fields of knowledge being drawn upon to provide the matter
each new aspect displayed is rounded off with a prayer of
aspiration; and each ends with a set of verses. (Wade,
Traherne. p. 153)
In another prose work, Meditations and Devotions upon the
Life of Christ, he seeks to cover the entire span of Jesus*
life. A highly detailed amplification of Traherne * s adora-
j
tion and reverence for Christ, this work— combined with the
i
i
Heocgymeron--indicates the manner in which both Old and New
Testaments permeate his thinking.
j This pervading consciousness of the Bible is still fur-
l
•ther exemplified by another of his prose works, Centuries of
Meditations. in which he draws heavily from the Psalms. [
| i
Here, Traherne is interested in drawing from his own life
i
I - j
"an allegory of all the lives of those who have lost and j
could regain a divinely intended state of well-being” (Wade,
i
Traherne. p. 184). And because he sees himself taking the
\- !
same spiritual path as David, he feels that he can return to
; ‘ ..'.. 257'
this perfect state only by following the, course laid down in
the Psalms:
When X saw those objects celebrated in his Psalms which
God and Nature had proposed to me, and which I thought
chance only presented to my view, you cannot imagine how
unspeakably I was delighted to see so glorious a person,
i so great a prince, so divine a sage, that was a man after
God's own heart by the testimony of God Himself, rejoicing
in the same things, meditating on the same, and praising
! God for the same. For by this I perceived we were led by
one Spirit, and that following the clue of Nature into j
this labyrinth, I was brought into the midst of celestial [
Joys: and that to be retired from earthly cares and fears|
and distractions that we might in sweet and heavenly peace!
contemplate all the Works of God, was to live in Heaven, I
and the only way to become what David was, a man after
: God's own heart. (Wade, Traherne. pp. 205~06)
Viewing his own life as a spiritual triumph, he is able to
write of himself in both prose and verse without either ego-1
i i
tism or self-consciousness; he is actually writing not of
himself alone, but of all men:
evry Man
Is like a God Incarnat on the Throne,
Even like the first for whom the World began;
Whom all are taught to honor serv and lov,
Becaus he is Belovd of God unknown;
And therfore is on Earth it self abov
All others, that his Wisdom might be shewn. ...
This shows a Wise Contrivance, and discovers
Some Great Creator Sitting on the Throne, I
j That so disposeth things for all his Lovers,
I That evry one might reign like GOD alone. ;
j ("Ease," 18-24, 29”32) !
j
He shares Augustine's conviction that all men are so con
structed as to desire more than mere temporal Joy. Man can
satisfy this seemingly insatiable spiritual longing only in
jGod: and this very longing, Traherne feels, supplies ample
i
proof of man's immortal soul and his eventual heavenly
destination.
Traherne is imbued with a sense of the unity and the
yastness of God’s universe— a universe filled not only by
the presence of God—
i j
I His Omnipresence is an Endless Sphere,
Wherin all Worlds as his Delights appear.
Our Blessedness, like his, is infinit. j
j His Glory Endless is and doth Surround
And fill all Worlds, without or End or Bound. j
(' ’ Thoughts," IV, 32-37) !
[but by the restless "enquiring Soul” of man as well: J
, This busy, vast, enquiring Soul !
Brooks no Controul,
No Limits will endure,
Nor any Rest.
("Insatiableness,H I, 31-3*0
The poems in Traherne’s third group consider the nature;
»
of the human mind. He shows great faith in the development ;
and expansion of man’s imagination, permitting him to meet
i ;
the challenges presented by the ever-increasing knowledge of
i
[the universe j in fact, the more there is to know, he be-
I
lieves, the greater the human mind’s desire to learn:
> The Ey’s conflnd, the Body's pent
I In narrow Room: Li ms are of small Extent.
Bat Thoughts are always free.
[ ("Thoughts," I, 61-63)
j ... ,
He stresses repeatedly the dominance of thought over the j
confines of space and time:
That Temple David did intend,
Was but a Thought, and yet It did transcend
King Solomons. A Thought we know
Is that for which
God doth Enrich
With Joys even Heaven above, and Earth below.
("Thoughts," II, 25~30)
"Thoughts,1 1 again, are to him the "Wings" of the soul, soar
ing "Messengers," and "Elijahs firey Charet, that conveys /
The Soul, even here, to those Eternal Joys" (IV, 1-4). For
^Traherne, then, the human mind represents the closest link
between the infinite and the finite. God has created a
multitude of material and spiritual objects from which man j
can derive meaning If he will but exert his mental powers, j
For him, the Tree of Knowledge holds Infinite promise. And
as the Divine Image, man has within him the power to re- |
‘ t
create a universe of the mind, Which, Traherne feels, is the
real universe *
Hence, while the great body of new knowledge revealed
by the Mew Learning caused many of the earlier seventeenth
century poets to feel humble and inconsequential, it had
i
I
quite the opposite effect upon Traherne. For him, the New
!
Learning, rather, released man
i
! from the limits of a finite world and universe, gave mind I
and spirit space to expand, afforded room to those
! thoughts that wander through eternity. Pondering upon
vastness, the soul of man became vast. Its essence was
j Caoacltie. Man was discovering a new aesthetics— the
| Aesthetics of the Infinite." (Nlcolson, Breaking of
| Circle. p. 178)
jTraherne glories In his insatiable desire for knowledge; he j
thanks God "For giving me Desire, An Eager Thirst, a burning
Ardent fire." He views "This Soaring Sacred Thirst" as the
i ,
"Ambassador of Bliss,” which makes him "apt to Prize and
Taste, and See" ("Desire”). He proclaims enthusiastically: j
| No more shall Walls, no more shall Walls confine j
L_ 3?mt glorious Soul which in my Flesh doth shine. . . .
260
The Deity, the Deity to me
Doth All things giv, and make me clearly see. . . .
("Hosanna," 1-2, 13~l4)
And, particularly important, man can "clearly see" God's
glory and recognize his own participation in it:
i ■
j His Beauty is the Spring of* all Delight,
Our Blessedness, like his, is infinit.
His Glory Endless is and doth Surround
And fill all Worlds, without or End or Bound.
1 What hinders then, hut we in heav'n may he
Even here on Earth did we hut rightly see?
! As Mountains, Charets, Horsemen all on fire,
! To guard Elisha did of old conspire,
Which yet his Servant could not see, heing blind,
j Ourselvs environd with his Joys we find.
Eternity it self is that true Light,
That doth enclose us being infinite.
("Thoughts," IV, 34-45)
| Traherne thus glories in all aspects of God's creation
• — the heavens and the earth in nature, and the spiritual
soul and the corporeal body of man. And his vision of the
world is colored by his awareness of an inner reality which
fashions the external appearance of all things. His reli
gious poetry is motivated by his desire to achieve communion
I
with the Creator of all being, and to reflect the Indwelling
spirit of love by which God has formed all. Yet he chooses
to express himself almost always in abstract or highly
i
generalized terms; he rarely dwells on nature's sensual
i
i
beauty— its colors, odors, textures, or forms. This is true
even when he thanks God for His many gifts:
The Skies in their Magnificence,
! The Lively, Lovely Air;
! Oh how Divine, how Soft, how Sweet, how fair!
The Stars did entertain my Sence,
! And all the Works of GOD so Bright and pure,
j So Rich and Great did seem,
As if they ever must endure,
In ray Esteem.
(MWonder,° 9-16)
i )
perhaps this Is due partly to his basic suspicion of all
that is artificial and extrinsic (see White, Metaphysical
Poets. p. 371). He is dubious of anything visible to the
naked eye: j
t i
[ The Thought of the World whereby it is enjoyed is better !
j than the World. . . . Also a Thought of the World, or the
S World in a Thought, is more excellent than the World, be
cause it is spiritual and nearer unto God. The material
world is dead and feeleth nothing. (Meditations. pp. 138-j
39) !
f :
f :
He considers society incapable of coping with even those
ills which are plainly visible:
But while with open eyes we clearly see
The brightness of his Majesty?
While all the World, by Sin to Satan sold,
In daily Wickedness grows old,
Men in Chains of Darkness lye,
In Bondage and Iniquity,
And pierce and grieve themselves!
The dismal Woes wherein they crawl, enhance
The Peace of our Inheritance.
{Poems from Christian Ethlcks. V, 1-9)
i Puritanism, Platonism, and science had all contributed !
to this attitude of skepticism toward the material aspects
j ;
of nature; by Traherne*s time, nature was of importance only
• t
as a tangible manifestation of the supernatural. I
I !
; Traherne lived Just a little too late and his love of
i things became ingrown, a love of the thought of things,
since only the thought had life. (Bethell, Cultural Revo
lution . p. 113)
lie attempts to penetrate the surface and get at the heart of
the things he describes, and, by analysis, to evolve a defi
nite outline of the mind's reaction to physical objects In
262
the material world. He Is thus more concerned with the
elucidation of Ideas than with the development of specific
and concrete imagery. There Is, thus, more of "the glory
i
than of the look of things In so much of his verse" (White,
Metaphysical Poets, p. 371)* Believing that the true poet j
j 'I
must present his vision of unadorned truth and must try to |
. . . . . . . |
reach the minds and influence the thinking of his readers, j
he thus employs a simple and direct style and does not often
i " I
resort to far-fetched conceits, highly dulcet melodies, or
the verbal ingenuity of Bonne and Cowley. In "The Author to!
f . . . j
the Critical Peruser," he dismisses as worthless all con
ventional poetical ornaments, referring to them as mere
"gilded Scabbards sheathing rusty Swords."
The naked Truth in many faces shewn,
Whose Inward Beauties very few hav known,
A Simple Light, transparent Words, a Strain
That lowly creeps, yet maketh Mountains plain,
Brings down the highest Mysteries to sense
j And keeps them there; that is Our Excellence:
At that we aim; to th* end thy Soul might see
With open Eys thy great Felicity.
Its Objects view, and trace the glorious Way
! Wherby thou may1st thy Highest Bliss enjoy.
Ho curling Metaphors that gild the sence,
Nor Pictures here, nor painted Eloquence;
No florid Streams of Superficial Gems,
But real Crowns and Thrones and Madams! j
That Gold on Gold should hiding shining ly
! May well be recon*d baser Heraldry.
An easy Stile drawn from a native vein,
A clearer Stream than that which Poets feign,
i Whose bottom may, how deep so 'ere, be seen,
Is that which I think fit to win Esteem:
Els we could speak Zamzumralm words, and tell
A Tale In tongues that sound like Babel-Hell:
I 263
In Meteors speak, in blazing Prodigies,
i Things that amaze, but will not make us wise.
! (lines 1-24)
This concern with "the naked Truth" seems more mystical than
poetic. However, it is responsible for Traherne's ability
to attain the spiritual clarity of the mystic, which, for
1
instance, Vaughan achieves only in those rare and transcend-!
eat moments when he is able to recover his childhood's vi- !
s l o n .^ if, therefore, Traherne's poetry is somewhat de- ;
■ \
ficient in warmth, tenderness, and color, it is because he ;
j !
seeks primarily to reveal the essence of God, Whom he sees
as a symbol for pure action. In addition, he undoubtedly
I
i
shares the reticence of many devotional writers, who find
the communication of their spiritual experiences rather an
awkward task; hesitant to describe the deep personal emo
tions involved in such experiences, they may find It more
comfortable to generalize these emotions and present them in
the form of moral platitudes for the "improvement" of the
reader. Whereas the earlier metaphysical poets resist this '
r
I
temptation and express their spiritual fervors with an un
flinching, almost embarrassing candor, Traherne, lacking j
i
both their candor and concreteness, utters even his most
!
ardent passages In a voice carefully tempered by reason and
i
self-consciousness:
i
^For an interesting comparison of Vaughan and Traherne,
see Louise Collier Wlllcox, "A Joyous Mystic,” The North
American Review. 193s®93“904, June 1911.
1 ' - ....264'
»
0 what Incredible Delights, what Fires,
What Appetites, what Joys do ye
Occasion, what Desires,
What Heavenly Praises! While we see
What evry Seraphim above admires!
Your Jubilee and Trade
Ye are so Strangely, and Divinely made,
Shall never, never fade.
Ye ravish all my Soul, Of you I twice !
Will speak. For in the Dark y'are Paradice. i
(“Thoughts,” II, 88-97)
t , :
| Despite the fact that he can detect Qod’s hand in a
sand particle, rock, or tree, Traherne presents very few I
actual descriptions of the minutiae of nature. Therefore, |
j
even though he repeatedly praises man's gift of vision,
which enables him to approach God through His creation, he
is really referring to spiritual vision or Intuitive Insight
— “A meditating inward Ey / Gazing at Quiet" ("The Prepara
tive," 27-28). In order that man might more easily achieve ;
this clarity of vision, God has given him not two but three j
eyes:
Two luminaries in ray Flesh
Did me refresh;
But one did lurk within,
Beneath my Skin,
f
hat was of greater Worth than both the other.
"Sight," 7-11)
j
Thus, if God Is not discernible to man’s normal vision when j
j 1
he gazes upon a tangible object, man's "inner eye," or spir-
* — « — H
of the Divine.10 And this "little Spark / That shining in
1GSee E. N. S. Thompson, "The Philosophy of Thomas Tra-i
aerne," Philological Quarterly. 8:102-103* April 1929* |
the dark / Makes & encorages my Soul to rise" ("Fullnesse,"
25"27) is God's gift to man, which— although brightest in
i j
infancy— continues to burn within throughout his life.
! Traherne's emphasis upon intuition helps to clarify his
conception of "thought," for meditation represents for him
| ' . . .. j
the crystallizing of man's intuitive responses; "Man was j
| \
born to meditat on things, / And to contemplat the Eternal
Springs / Of God and Nature, Glory, Bliss, and Pleasure"
("Dumness," 1-3). Therefore, through thought alone, the
soul can transcend the limitations of the body and roam
freely, for it is "a sphere not shut up here but everywhere";
"thoughts are always free," and they provide the bond be
tween man and his God. "By thoughts alone the soul Is made
!
divine," by thoughts alone is man able to enter the splritu-i
al world and truly share in eternity (see Thompson, "Phi
losophy of Traherne," p. 104).
Traherne does not display the guilty self-recrimina
tions of a Bonne or the anguished spiritual yearnings of a
Grashaw. Yet he possesses the same desire for spiritual
perfection, the same "heavenly avarice." His peculiar gift j
i "
lies in his ability to infuse into the most ordinary things
a sense of wonder and an element of the extraordinary, to
i
perceive in even the most accepted commonplace some hidden j
j. - i
manifestation of the divine miracle. Man himself, he con- !
i i
pends, bears the mark of his divine origin and possesses in
i „
his soul the Seed of God. "The Image of God is seated In
i “ 266'
I
the lineaments of the soul,” "Man is the greatest miracle
of all,” the “mirror of all Eternity" (Meditations. pp. 12,
287). Man is not only made for "spiritual supremacy,” but
1 ■ ■ ■ 1
embodies within himself a hidden life surpassing anything
. ... .
else in the universe. Man is “nigh of kin / To those pure
j " ;
Things we find / In his Great Mind / Who made the World!" j
(”My Spirit,” 115-17). For there exists "A Spiritual World j
> . . . !
Standing within, / An Uni vers enclosed in Skin" {"Fullnesse,"!
7-8).
I i
Traherne*s manuscripts reveal that he exerted as much
jthought and care on the form of his poetry as on the content,
laboring to fashion stanzas of increasing complexity and ar
ranging them in careful designs on each page. Me employs
two principal verse forms: the heroic couplet, with its
pattern of regularity; and the Irregular stanza, with its
almost endless possibilities of metrical variety. Me is al-
1
so careful never to repeat a pattern, apparently sharing the
i
belief— as old as the lamentations of Jeremiah— that the
i 11
visual appearance of poetry is important. Me employs, on
the other hand, only one rhythm--the iambic; yet he succeeds■
jtn avoiding monotony by his skillful handling of onomatopoe
ia, internal rhyme, and accent.
j None of Traherne*s poems can be described as trivial,
I
complimentary, fashionably flattering, occasional, or
} !
1 ;
AASee Julius A. Bewer, The Literature of the Old Testa
ment (New York, 1953), P. 190.
amorous. He remained poetically aloof from the contemporary
I
religious sectarian strife* the political hatreds* and the
I
social vices. Yet* despite the fact that his verses display
i
high Intellectual quality and considerable spiritual vision,
!
his poetry is not of the first creative order. He seems
never to have mastered completely his technique* for his
poems are many times diffuse and repetitious. Certain
j i
rhymes* such as "treasures" and "pleasures," appear on page
after page. He is also strongly given to what has been :
termed the "categorical habit," stringing fifteen nouns to- \
gether in one poem* thirteen adjectives in another, and
12
fourteen participles in a third. Furthermore, his range !
- i
! |
is often narrow, his sense of euphony Inadequate, and his
i j
Vocabulary prosaic; also missing are the lovely rhythms and
subtleties of thought* prevalent in the poetry of both Her- I
l . . . . . . .
bert and Vhughan. The earlier metaphysical poets were ex
ceedingly anxious to establish contact with the realities of
i - I
life, but they were not willing to relinquish that magic
f
fusion of image and sound that is so fundamental to poetry, j
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the
scientific spirit of the time and the Neo-Classic attitude ;
i
jof Cowley and his disciples were impressing English poets
j
with the importance of clarity, control, and simplicity In
writing. Traherne * s poetry and prose reflect these
i i
! !
j 1%. E. Hutchinson, "The Sacred Poets," Cambridge Histo-r
rv of English literature (Cambridge, 1911), VII, 51*_______
influences, and also highlight the fact that they were
rather a mixed blessing so far as he is concerned; for what
i
proves to be a positive factor in his prose, shows itself to
I ..............
be rather a negative Influence in his poetry. The didactic
1 ' i
preacher in Traherne often overshadows the poet, making the j
I
reader increasingly aware of the prose motives in his verse.j
( i
Dr. Bell, the discoverer of Traherne*s manuscript volume of '
Poems of Felicity.1^ expresses in his preface to this work i
! . , . . . . . . I
the generally accepted opinion that Traherne's poetry is In-|
t ;
ferior to his prose:
Indeed, it is probably true to say that Traherne is not
, primarily a poet at all. His verse is full of the materi
al of poetry; it is continually preparing (so to say) to
pass into poetry, and here and there for a few lines,
1 sometimes for longer, it does so, but for the most part it
remains Imperfectly fused. . . . His verse conveys the im
pression of a man writing in a medium not really natural
to him. If we contrast his verse with his prose, we see
the difference at once. As a prose-writer he has little
I reason to fear comparison with any writer of his age. His
I prose shows a simplicity and a lucidness of phrase alto-
j gether admirable; and it will Indeed be wonderful if Cen-
, turies of Meditations does not become one of the classics
of the language.
Traherne apparently failed to understand that the prime
function of poetry is to reveal the world's inaccessible
I :
beauties by means of words formed by the creative power of
j I
the poetic imagination; that the worlds fashioned by the
creative forces of the mind should be only touched upon by
poetry, that all ethical and moral teaching must remain
j -^Harold Idress Bell, Traherne's Poems of Felicity.
Edited from Manuscript (Oxford, 1910).
subtly implicit. He seems to have written poetry
i
| by a sort of instinct, and because his hero David was also
: a poet. ... He trusted, reason too much, and Imagination
too little. . . . Traherne all too rarely sings to . . .
us; he all too frequently comments and interprets. (Wade,
i Traherne. p. 195)
i
He is unable to fuse organically form and content and submit
| 1
all to the shaping spirit of his poetic Imagination. j
i
But if Traherne is not always as poetically successful j
as the earlier metaphysical poets, he is their equal in de- j
1
!
voutness, Intensity, and awareness of God. All of these
, i
poets, in fact, are both Intensely lyrical and intensely re
ligious , but there are radical differences among them. John
Donne, for example, seeks in much of his poetry to comfort
his own frightened soul by placating heavenly Justice and by
! I
expressing to an attentive deity his religious yearnings.
His religious poms therefore center about his themes of
self-analysis and self-expression; hence,
j It is perfectly possible to draw a very lively picture of j
| his God from these poems, but God is the object of his
{ prayers, the end to which he is reaching, rather than the |
, theme of his contemplation. (White, Metaphysical Poets,
i p. *10)
Crashaw, on the other hand, attempts to recreate liturgically
the divine object of his contemplation. He subordinates the,
intellect and ethical elements to those of the imaginative |
; i
and affective faculties: I
| |
i The immediate presentment of the objects of his feeling,
of his worship, is the triumph of his meditation, on the i
crucifix, of his vision of Heaven in the hymn to Saint
Teresa, of the choruses which his shepherds sang for the
Nativity. Yet the poetic element of expression of person
al feeling is no less important than the more purely
■— ...................... '.' -270
mystical element or contemplation. (White, Metaphysical
I Poets. pp. 410-11)
George Herbert seems to have struck a middle ground between
Donne and Crashaw, for his poetry is more purely contempla-
j .
tive than Donne's and certainly less mystical than Crashaw*s.
i *
He attempts to set down, with obvious moralistic and affec- j
tive overtones, a history of his relations with Ms God, or,!
as he puts it, of those things that have taken place between!
his Creator and himself. In so doing, he manages to com- !
municate a wide range of personal emotions in the form of j
practical ethics for everyday life. And Vaughan attempts to
i
grasp and convey the feeling of those moments when the veil
between the spiritual and physical worlds seems to vanish
and there occurs that flash of insight and surge of Joy
which binds man to all objects of nature.
The autobiographical theme is apparent in all of these
poets; and to this common purpose of self-revelation, Thomas
Traherne adds an element of prophecy, which is not to be
discerned in the others. For Traherne, this prophecy takes ■
the form of biography with a purpose— that of communicating
f . . . .
for he believes that he possesses, in his personal relation
ship to God, the key to the universal relationship between
I
man and God. And if in his zeal to view the workings of the
i
i „
Divine hand, he commits the error of making "God too much a j
! .
man,” it is certainly an error which he shares with the ma
jority of all religious writers: ______
... 271
Perhaps it is a fault which is almost inseparable from a
sincere and fervent faith. Without refining away the con
ception of God to a mere abstraction, it is impossible to
think of Him Otherwise than as an infinitely magnified and
glorified man. Since the human mind is so constituted it
is surely vain to attempt to set limits within which we
are to think of Him. Every man will do this according to
the law of his own temperament. (Wade, Traherne. p.. Ixxiv)
! j
Neither Traherne nor any of the other metaphysical I
poets ever forget that man— even as a child of God— has to
I ' ;
live in this world: nor does his exuberant and continual Joy
' ' ' " I
in the wonders of creation ever blind him to the "muddled" i
! i
and "dreggy parts" of human existence. If man's educational
[ , I
values are so distorted as to corrupt the child by teaching
him "the dirty devices of the world," which must be subse
quently unlearned, the taint for him and the metaphysical
poets is not in the soul, but acquired in society. "I am
sure," he writes, that the "barbarous people that go naked, j
come nearer to Mam, God, and Angels in the simplicity of
jthelr wealth, though not in knowledge" fMeditations. p. l6l)i
Yet he would not have accepted William Blake's view that the;
moral law embodied in formal religion serves only to deaden j
the joys of childhood innocence} and if society serves as a
negative spiritual influence, he can accept this fact with-
i 14 I
Out the petulance or rancor of Rousseau. Furthermore, if
|
man has lost a divine state either through a Fall from God's
Grace or by the corruptive social institutions, it need not I
| -^See Paul Elmer More, "Thomas Traherne," The Nation.
88;161, February 18, 1909.
remain an irremediable loss. Merely by opening bis eye® and!
bis heart to the wonders wrought by God upon visible phe
nomena , man may recover his loss. “There are many glorious j
excellencies in the material World, he states, but without|
Love they are all abortive." Even as it was to Adam in j
I . . j
Paradise, "the Omnipresence and Eternity of* God are your •
! ‘
fellows and companions," reaching out to you from the beau- j
ties and wonders of nature (see More, "Traherne," p. 162).
And despite the contemplative and mystical bent of his mind,!
! !
he keeps before him the basic tenet shared by the Hebraic
Prophets and Jesus that the terminus of the spiritual life
kies in Action. Thus he can state that "Philosophers are
not those that speak but do great things" fMeditation®. p.
; Hence, if Traherne and the other metaphysical poets fix!
l
their eyes on heaven, they plant their feet solidly on the
ground. They reflect always their awareness of the demands !
of society, yet never make the mistake in their poetry of
i
considering themselves reformers. They do not attempt
I to reconstruct old systems of thought, old forms of faith
and old types of ehurch-organization, or to re-interpret
the Gospel, the way of salvation and the communion of
saints.15
They rather sense, organize, and fuse the newly dawning
spiritual insights and the resultant ideas and mold them
^5Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the Sixteenth
and Seventeenth Centuries (London. 1Q14). p. 321.
L . . . ____
"... 273
i
into poetic Tom. Each of them is conscious of the indi
vidual soul's inherent relation to the Bivine and wishes to
Communicate this awareness. Yet none of these poets side
steps the contemporary literary fashions. Like their secu-
i i
lar counterparts, these religious poets relish the use of ;
verbal ingenuity, hyperbole, and the detection of similar!- j
■ t
ties and differences in every type of unrelated object. For
the most part, they avoid the obviousness and sententious- I
i I
hess, the stock phrases and dullness of a good deal of the j
religious poetry of their time. And if their literary tech-;
niques often appear artificial, neither their sincerity nor
devoutness is open to question. ’ ’ The very outgoings of the
soule” constitute the basic fibre of the poetry of Bonne and
Herbert, Crashaw and Vaughan— as well as that of Thomas Tra-j
i i
heme, who explored with enthusiasm and imagination the won
ders of God's universe, and in an age of disenchantment and j
shattered idols chose to share those wonders with Joy, sin
cerity, and skill.
!
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University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses