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EDMUND WALLER, THOMAS BROWN, AND JEREMY TAYLOR.
Edmund Waller, born in 1605, was three years older than Milton; but I had
a fancy for not dividing Herbert and Milton. As a poet he had a high
reputation for many years, gained chiefly, I think, by a regard to
literary proprieties, combined with wit. He is graceful sometimes; but
what in his writings would with many pass for grace, is only smoothness
and the absence of faults. His horses were not difficult to drive. He
dares little and succeeds in proportion--occasionally, however, flashing
out into true song. In politics he had no character--let us hope from
weakness rather than from selfishness; yet, towards the close of his
life, he wrote some poems which reveal a man not unaccustomed to ponder
sacred things, and able to express his thoughts concerning them with
force and justice. From a poem called Of Divine Love, I gather the
following very remarkable passages: I wish they had been enforced by
greater nobility of character. Still they are in themselves true. Even
where we have no proof of repentance, we may see plentiful signs of a
growth towards it. We cannot tell how long the truth may of necessity
require to interpenetrate the ramifications of a man's nature. By slow
degrees he discovers that here it is not, and there it is not. Again and
again, and yet again, a man finds that he must be born with a new birth.
The fear of hell, or aiming to be blest,
Savours too much of private interest:
This moved not Moses, nor the zealous Paul,
Who for their friends abandoned soul and all;
A greater yet from heaven to hell descends,
To save and make his enemies his friends.
* * * * *
That early love of creatures yet unmade,
To frame the world the Almighty did persuade.
For love it was that first created light,
Moved on the waters, chased away the night
From the rude chaos; and bestowed new grace
On things disposed of to their proper place--
Some to rest here, and some to shine above:
Earth, sea, and heaven, were all the effects of love.
* * * * *
Not willing terror should his image move,
He gives a pattern of eternal love:
His son descends, to treat a peace with those
Which were, and must have ever been, his foes.
Poor he became, and left his glorious seat,
To make us humble, and to make us great;
His business here was happiness to give
To those whose malice could not let him live.
* * * * *
He to proud potentates would not be known:
Of those that loved him, he was hid from none.
Till love appear, we live in anxious doubt;
But smoke will vanish when that flame breaks out:
This is the fire that would consume our dross,
Refine, and make us richer by the loss.
* * * * *
Who for himself no miracle would make,
Dispensed with[134] several for the people's sake.
He that, long-fasting, would no wonder show,
Made loaves and fishes, as they eat them, grow.
Of all his power, which boundless was above,
Here he used none but to express his love;
And such a love would make our joy exceed,
Not when our own, but others' mouths we feed.
* * * * *
Love as he loved! A love so unconfined
With arms extended would embrace mankind.
Self-love would cease, or be dilated, when
We should behold as many selfs as men;
All of one family, in blood allied,
His precious blood that for our ransom died.
* * * * *
Amazed at once and comforted, to find
A boundless power so infinitely kind,
The soul contending to that light to fly
From her dark cell, we practise how to die,
Employing thus the poet's wingéd art
To reach this love, and grave it in our heart.
Joy so complete, so solid, and severe,
Would leave no place for meaner pleasures there:
Pale they would look, as stars that must be gone
When from the east the rising sun comes on.
* * * * *
To that and some other poems he adds the following--a kind of epilogue.
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