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SPENSER AND HIS FRIENDS.
We have now arrived at the period of English history in every way fullest
of marvel--the period of Elizabeth. As in a northern summer the whole
region bursts into blossom at once, so with the thought and feeling of
England in this glorious era.
The special development of the national mind with which we are now
concerned, however, did not by any means arrive at its largest and
clearest result until the following century. Still its progress is
sufficiently remarkable. For, while everything that bore upon the mental
development of the nation must bear upon its poetry, the fresh vigour
given by the doctrines of the Reformation to the sense of personal
responsibility, and of immediate relation to God, with the grand
influences, both literary and spiritual, of the translated, printed, and
studied Bible, operated more immediately upon its devotional utterance.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century, we begin to find such verse
as I shall now present to my readers. Only I must first make a few
remarks upon the great poem of the period: I mean, of course, The Faerie
Queen.
I dare not begin to set forth after any fashion the profound religious
truth contained in this poem; for it would require a volume larger than
this to set forth even that of the first book adequately. In this case it
is well to remember that the beginning of comment, as well as of strife,
is like the letting out of water.
The direction in which the wonderful allegory of the latter moves may be
gathered from the following stanza, the first of the eighth canto:
Ay me! how many perils do enfold
The righteous man to make him daily fail;
Were not that heavenly grace doth him uphold, it understood.
And steadfast Truth acquit him out of all!
Her love is firm, her care continual,
So oft as he, through his own foolish pride
Or weakness, is to sinful bands made thrall:
Else should this Redcross Knight in bands have died,
For whose deliverance she this Prince doth thither guide.
Nor do I judge it good to spend much of my space upon remarks personal to
those who have not been especially writers of sacred verse. When we come
to the masters of such song, we cannot speak of their words without
speaking of themselves; but when in the midst of many words those of the
kind we seek are few, the life of the writer does not justify more than a
passing notice here.
We know but little of Spenser's history: if we might know all, I do not
fear that we should find anything to destroy the impression made by his
verse--that he was a Christian gentleman, a noble and pure-minded man, of
highest purposes and aims.
His style is injured by the artistic falsehood of producing antique
effects in the midst of modern feeling.[54] It was scarcely more
justifiable, for instance, in Spenser's time than it would be in ours to
use glitterand for glittering; or to return to a large use of
alliteration, three, four, sometimes even five words in the same line
beginning with the same consonant sound. Everything should look like what
it is: prose or verse should be written in the language of its own era.
No doubt the wide-spreading roots of poetry gather to it more variety of
expression than prose can employ; and the very nature of verse will make
it free of times and seasons, harmonizing many opposites. Hence, through
its mediation, without discord, many fine old words, by the loss of which
the language has grown poorer and feebler, might be honourably enticed to
return even into our prose. But nothing ought to be brought back
because it is old. That it is out of use is a presumptive argument that
it ought to remain out of use: good reasons must be at hand to support
its reappearance. I must not, however, enlarge upon this wide-reaching
question; for of the two portions of Spenser's verse which I shall quote,
one of them is not at all, the other not so much as his great poem,
affected with this whim.
The first I give is a sonnet, one of eighty-eight which he wrote to his
wife before their marriage. Apparently disappointed in early youth, he
did not fall in love again,--at least there is no sign of it that I
know,--till he was middle-aged. But then--woman was never more grandly
wooed than was his Elizabeth. I know of no marriage-present worthy to be
compared with the Epithalamion which he gave her "in lieu of many
ornaments,"--one of the most stately, melodious, and tender poems in the
world, I fully believe.
But now for the sonnet--the sixty-eighth of the Amoretti:
Most glorious Lord of Life! that, on this day,
Didst make thy triumph over death and sin,
And having harrowed hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, dear Lord, with joy begin;
And grant that we, for whom thou diddest die,
Being with thy dear blood clean washed from sin,
May live for ever in felicity!
And that thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love thee for the same again;
And for thy sake, that all like dear didst buy,
With love may one another entertain.
So let us love, dear love, like as we ought:
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.
Those who have never felt the need of the divine, entering by the channel
of will and choice and prayer, for the upholding, purifying, and
glorifying of that which itself first created human, will consider this
poem untrue, having its origin in religious affectation. Others will
think otherwise.
The greater part of what I shall next quote is tolerably known even to
those who have made little study of our earlier literature, yet it may
not be omitted here. It is from An Hymne of Heavenly Love, consisting
of forty-one stanzas, written in what was called Rime Royal--a
favourite with Milton, and, next to the Spenserian, in my opinion the
finest of stanzas. Its construction will reveal itself. I take two
stanzas from the beginning of the hymn, then one from the heart of it,
and the rest from the close. It gives no feeling of an outburst of song,
but rather of a brooding chant, most quiet in virtue of the depth of its
thoughtfulness. Indeed, all his rhythm is like the melodies of water, and
I could quote at least three passages in which he speaks of rhythmic
movements and watery progressions together. His thoughts, and hence his
words, flow like a full, peaceful stream, diffuse, with plenteousness
unrestrained.
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