"All through the summer night, Those blossoms red and bright—' by one who had never seen them, and who must have derived his knowledge of them from careful cross-examination of some traveller from the Holy Land. It was an instance of his curious shyness that, when complimented on this singular accuracy of description of the Holy Land, he replied, 'It was by a happy accident.' Not less precise, if we knew exactly where to look for thể original spots which suggested them, are his descriptions of the scenery of England. With the single exception of the allusion to the rocky isthmus at the Land's End said to be found in the lines, 'Lo, on a narrow neck of land, "Twixt two unbounded seas I stand,' there is probably no local touch through the whole of the poems of the two Wesleys. But Oxford, Bagley Wood, and the neighbourhood of Hursley, might, we are sure, be traced through hundreds of lines, both in the Christian Year and the Lyra Innocentium. Though Keble's pastoral life was retired and his ecclesiastical life narrow, as a poet he not only touched the great world of literature, but he was also a free-minded, free-speaking thinker. Both in form and in doctrine his poetry has a broad and philosophical vein, the more striking from its contrast to his opposite tendencies in connexion with his ecclesiastical party. That eagerness to give the local colour of the sacred events, which runs through these volumes, is the 'first step which costs everything' in the attempt to treat these august topics historically, and not dogmatically. 'The rude sandy lea, Where stately Jordan flows by many a palm-' 'Green lake, and cedar tuft, and spicy glade, 'The cell In Kedron's storied dell;' 1 In all the early editions these were in a note erroneously called 'rhodo dendron.' It was not till after his attention had been called to it, that, we think in the 72nd edition, it was altered to oleander.' . The vaulted cells where martyr'd seers of old, The Biblical scenery is treated graphically as real scenery, the Biblical history and poetry as real history and poetry: the wall of partition between things sacred and things secular is broken down ; the dogmatist, the allegorist, have disappeared; the critic and the poet have stepped into their place. 'O for a sculptor's hand, That thou might'st take thy stand, Thy wild hair floating on the Eastern breeze.' This is the true poetic fire of Gray's 'Bard,' not the language of convention. This is the tone, not of the mystical commentator, but of the creative poet. In doctrine too, whether in points distinctive of high Anglicanism or in those common to Christian controversialists in general, it is noticeable how the view of the poet transcends the view of the theologian. The beautiful poem of the 'Waterfall' in the Lyra Innocentium is a direct contradiction to the rigid opinions of its author, in his theological writings, on the hope expressed by Origen and Tillotson of the final restoration of lost souls. He speaks of the ancient world as Zwinglius or Spinoza regarded it, not as the scholastic divines spoke of it : 'Now of Thy love we deem, As of an ocean vast, Mounting in tides against the stream 'That warning still and deep, At which high spirits of old would start In direct opposition to the spirit which would make not moral excellence but technical forms of belief the test of safety he writes such verses as these In one blaze of charity Care and remorse are lost, like motes in light divine; In His unerring sight, who measures Life by Love.' 6.66 Lord, and what shall this man do?" Christ hath told thee of his end: 'Wouldst thou the life of souls discern? Helps thee by aught beside to learn; Again, the doubts and difficulties, which in the rude conflict of theological controversy are usually ascribed to corrupt motives and the like, are treated in his Ode on St. Thomas's Day with a tenderness worthy of the most advanced of modern thinkers :— 'Is there on earth a spirit frail, That drew thy likeness here so true in every line. And the beautiful analysis of the character and position of Barnabas, which is one of the masterpieces of Renan's work on the Apostles, is all but anticipated in the lines on that saint in the Christian Year : 'Never so blest as when in Jesus' roll, They write some hero-soul, More pleased upon his brightening road To wait, than if their own with all his radiance glow'd.' Such a keen discrimination of the gifts and relations of the Apostles belongs to the true modern element of theology, not to the conventional theories of former days. And with regard to the more special peculiarities of the High Church school, it is remarkable how at every turn he broke away from them in his poetry. It is enough to refer to the justification of marriage as against celibacy in the Ode on the Wednesday in Passion Week; the glorification of the religion of common against conventual life in his Morning Hymn, and in his Ode on St. Matthew's Day. The contending polemic schools have themselves called attention to the well-known lines on the Eucharist in the poem on Gunpowder Treason. It is clear that, whatever may have been the subtle theological dogma which he may have held on the subject, the whole drift of that passage, which no verbal alteration can obliterate, is to exalt the moral and spiritual elements of that ordinance above those physical and local attributes on which later developments of his school have so exclusively dwelt. These instances might be multiplied to any extent. It would, of course, be preposterous to press each line of poetry into an argument. But the whole result is to show how far nobler, purer, and loftier was what may be called the natural element of the poet's mind, than the artificial distinctions in which he became involved as a partisan and as a controversialist. This is no rare phenomenon. Who has not felt it hard to recognise the author of the Paradise Lost and of the Penseroso in the polemical treatises on Divorce and on the Execution of Charles I? Who does not know the immeasurable contrast between Wordsworth the poet of nature and of the human heart, and Wordsworth the narrow Tory and High Churchman of his later years? In all these cases it is the poet who is the real man--the theologian and politician only the temporary mask and phase. A. P. STANLEY. [From The Christian Year.] THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT. (The Christian Inheritance.) See Lucifer like lightning fall, The Saints his spoils divide ; This world of Thine, by him usurped too long, Now opening all her stores to heal Thy servants' wrong. So when the first-born of Thy foes Dead in the darkness lay, When Thy redeemed at midnight rose. And cast their bonds away, The orphaned realm threw wide her gates, and told Into freed Israel's lap her jewels and her gold. And when their wondrous march was o'er, Among their fathers' tombs ; A land that drinks the rain of Heaven at will, Whose waters kiss the feet of many a vine-clad hill ;— Oft as they watched, at thoughtful eve, A gale from bowers of balm Sweep o'er the billowy corn, and heave The tresses of the palm, Just as the lingering Sun had touched with gold, Far o'er the cedar shade, some tower of giants old; It was a fearful joy, I ween, To trace the Heathen's toil, The limpid wells, the orchards green, The household stores untouched, the roses bright Wreathed o'er the cottage walls in garlands of delight. |