HERBERT. To which, besides their own demean, Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing. Who would have thought my shrivell'd heart All the hard weather, Dead to the world, keep house unknown. Oh, that I once past changing were; Offering at heav'n, growing and groaning thither: Want a spring-shower, My sins and I joining together. But, while I grow in a straight line, What frost to that? What pole is not the zone When thou dost turn, And the least frown of thine is shown? And now in age I bud again; After so many deaths I live and write, 91 It cannot be That I am he, On whom Thy tempests fell at night! These are Thy wonders, Lord of love! Swelling through store, Forfeit their Paradise by their pride. RICHARD CRASHAW. William Crashaw was a celebrated preacher at the Temple, and his son Richard, who was born in London, was a student of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. He was afterwards elected a Fellow of Peterhouse. With a pensive and poetical temperament, and, at the same time, with feelings deeply devotional, he was ill at home amidst the wranglings and tumults of the Parliamentary era, and at last, when ejected from his fellowship, he took refuge in the Church of Rome. He seems to have died in Italy; but the exact period of his death, as well as of his birth, is unknown. Mystical, enthusiastic, artificial, Crashaw is a poet by no means English. He seldom sees either an object in nature or a truth in revelation, as it offers itself to Anglo-Saxon eyes; but everything has a halo or nimbus around it, and is painted in mediæval proportions. But the less that we sympathise with this style, the stronger is the testimony implied in the homage which we are constrained to yield to the author's genius; and no one can read such effusions as the following without feeling that the harp is in the hand of a master, and, we might almost add, without envying the fervour of the enraptured minstrel, whose motto was "Live, Jesus, live, and let it be My life to die for love of Thee." CRASHAW. Hymn to the Name of Jesus. I sing the Name which none can say The heirs elect of love; whose names belong All ye wise souls, who in the wealthy breast Of this unbounded Name build your warm nest. 93 As sigh with supple wind Or answer artful touch That they convene and come away To wait at the love-crowned doors of that illustrious day. And every sweet-lipp'd thing Start into life, and leap with me Nor must you think it much I have authority, in love's name, to take you Of Him who never sleeps, all things that are,- Are musical; Answer my call, And come along; Help me to meditate mine immortal song. Bring all the store Of sweets you have; and murmur that you have no more. Come, ne'er to part, Nature and Art! Come; and come strong, To the conspiracy of our spacious song. Your provinces of well-united worlds can raise ; Vessels of vocal joys, Or you, more noble architects of intellectual noise, Solicitors of souls or ears: And when you are come, with all That you can bring or we can call, CRASHAW. Oh may you fix For ever here, and mix Yourselves into the long And everlasting series of a deathless song;- And loose them into one, of love. For thou too hast thy part, And place, in the great throng Of this unbounded all-embracing song. To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name, The name of your delights and our desires, Our murmurs have their music too, Ye mighty orbs! as well as you; Of warbling seraphim, to th' ears of love, And we, low worms, have leave to do The same bright business, ye third heav'ns! with you. We will have care To keep it fair, And send it back to you again. Come, lovely name! appear from forth the bright Regions of peaceful light; Look from thine own illustrious home, Fair King of names, and come: Leave all thy native glories in their gorgeous nest, Of humble souls, that seek to find 95 |