Herrick and His Contemporaries.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, 1 September 1904, Page 432

Herrick and His Contemporaries.

By RACHEL DEE BROWNLOWE.

(V pp) T is not in the least surCsnfy*% prising that the period j^jfjlfj 1 covered by Herrick' s very J'% long life was one which j contributed great poetic |p|o- treasures to the literature JMpR , of England. For it was a ,|f^/ period during which a K^ wayward and overbearing j( monarchy was put upon

its trial, not by an hysterical mob, but by a deliberately flouted people ; a people who could forgive, and had already endured much; but who, rising at last, measured the seriousness of their vengeance by the frivolousness of the offender. Perhaps it would not be an exaggeration to say that Charles I. was beheaded because he insisted upon it ; and yet, to a nation which so strongly condemns his conduct, his kingly fortitude at the catastrophe will forever appeal most strongly ; and it is easy for us to realize that the men of his own party could cling to him, through defeat and imprisonment, enduring loss of property and even life itself in his cause. Stirring indeed were the times in which the Royalist Herrick lived, and loved, and sang ; times of intense religious feeling, of civil war, and at the Restoration of gay excess : such times produce poetry of widely different quality .

The puritan religious element of that period found lofty utterance in the work of that Titan, John Milton, who remains for ever the beginning and end of his own artistic conception. Like Moses, steeped in the learning of ancient Egypt,

yet called and set apart for the service of a great people ; like Paul, familiar from his youth with the Hebrew Scripture, yet able to quote their own poets to the Athenians, John Milton stands out, that rare combination, of finished classical scholarship and intense religious earnestness and conviction. Even in his lighter poetry, which is still a part of himself, one feels the palpable puritan spirit emanating fresh the page, like winds blowing fresh from unbreathed space. He is among those rare singers, of which even English literature cannot boast very many, who have ascended a poetic altitude where praise cannot follow ; an altitude upon which even the most comprehending spirit can gaze only in silence or tears of intensest joy. But, thoug-h it is scarcely possible to treat of any branch of the poetry of that time without touching, in passing, that one supreme presence, it is not of Milton that we purpose in these papers to speak : he was not Herrick's contemporary, Herrick was rather his. Among the lyrical poets whom we may class with Herrick there is by no means an absence of religious writers ; but their feeling is as different in a way from the superhuman religious fervour of the great puritan, as Herrick' s devotion to his Julia is different from the Miltonic Adam's regard for Eve. On the whole we find the work of George Herbert more stimulating to spiritual fervour than that great work in which Milton strives to '' Justify the ways of God to men,"

and one cannot but feel that if Milton's Adam was drawn from the -poef himself, then Milton's first wife may have had much provocation for her conduct in returning to her father's home. It is, perhaps, hardly fair to 'blame the author of " Paradise Lost " for failing somewhat in tenderness, or fos only betraying signs of it so infrequently ; one must recollect the immense scope of his poetic faculty, and this apparent want will appear the truest consistency. And it will also be counted fox consistency to Herrick and to George Herbert that in their more bounded spheres they each attained to a tenderness, and . an intimacy which come very near to the beating heart of things. For Herrick was bounded, a foreground painter of sweet country scenes, a singer of gay and exquisite songs, turning at times aside in a melancholy strain that is loaded with tender sadness but never '■ Wild with all regret," Falling" short of the sublime passion in love that marks the poets of the Nineteenth Century, Herrick yet sings of his lovely Julia with a constancy which causes him to associate her with his thoughts concerning his own life's end. Still, it is impossible not to note, to be almost vexed by what one might call the triviality of the poet's subjects. Julia's lips, her teeth, the dewdrops in her hair, the shimmer , of her silken robe afford him themes for his magic gift to work upon ; . indeed the description of " That brave vibration each -way free " in the sheeny gown is a masterstroke in its kind. But love to Herrick is apt, to be little more than a playful Cupid affording pleasure or inflicting a passing- smart, 'but never " Eeeling out. of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace." And incapable of regarding the forces of a sundering destiny as an "unplombed, salt, estranging sea." Vol. X.— No. 6.-SB/ •

This boundedness was, 'in fact, a fault of the time ; " 'Twas here as in the coachman's trade ; and he That turns in the least compass shows most art." But art is not by any means the supreme qualification for a poet ; and Herrick is not merely a perfect artist. He is more ; he has a power of divination which enables him to seize, by an unerring instinct, those very points of colour -and beauty which possess the greatest power af expression and suggestion. The stanza upon Julia's voice gives a good example of this : "So smooth, so .sweet, so silvery is thy voice, As, could they hear, the damned would make no noise, But listen to thee, walking in thy chamber, Melting melodious words to lutes of amber." In that last line we get a perfect description of a round, liquid voice ; the whole line itself seems to melt upon the senses. In a stanza dedicated " To Music/ we get two very descriptive lines : "Fall down, down, down, from those chiming spheres, To charm our souls aa thou encbant'st our ears." In picturing those indefinable effects in a woman's attire, which afford so much pleasure to the eye, when .often the observer could scarcely tell how they were produced, Herrick displays a maQical skill ; this we see in his " Delight in Disorder " : A. cuff neglectful, and thereby Ribbons to flow confusedly ; A winning wave, deserving note, In the tempestuous petticoat ; A careless shoe string, in whose tie I see a wild civility ; Do more bewitch me than when art Is too precise in every part." That is a perfect word-picture ; and a moving, breathing picture at that.

By the rustle of the " tempestuous petticoat " we are left to surmise its silken texture. "To Meadows " g-ives a vivid picture of country pleasure : " Ye have been fresh and green Ye have been filled with flowers ; And ye the walks have been Where maids have spent their hoars. "Ye have beheld how they With wicker arks did come To kiss and bear away The richer cowslips horns." The poem ends with a melancholy note which is consistent with the poet's tendency to take a bounded and external view of nature. For, although Herrick's poetry abounds with exquisitely descriptive touches, as in " Corinna's Going a Maying " and "To Daisies," he is no interpreter of Nature as is Wordsworth. He is too deeply imbued with the spirit of his age, and of his set ; and lapses at times into a vein which is not to be atoned for by his prayer for the Divine forgiveness for his " un'baptized rhymes." Yet Herrick has given us exquisite songs and poems, and among his religious pieces " The Dirge of Jeptha's Daughter" has very sweet stanzas : " 0 thou, the wonder of all days ! 0 paragon, and pearl of praise ! 0 virgin martyr, ever blest Above the rest Of all the maiden train ! We come And bring fresh strewings to thy tomb." The next to the last verse is marvellously sweet and descriptive : " May no wolf howl or screech-owl stir A wing about thy sepulchre, No boisterous winds or storms come hither, To Btarve or wither Thy soft sweet earth, but like a spring Love keep it ever flour'Uhing." There are touches in this poem which remind of George Herbert ; for instance : " Andin the purchase of our peace The cure was worse than the disease."

The Hebrew virgins who are supposed to chant the dirge, dwell with grateful devotion upon the selfsacrifice of the maid whose life is represented as having been paid as the price of their deliverance from the invader. For Herrick accepts the interpretation which represents the Gileadite as having slain his daughter in the fulfilment of his vow ; in some ways this is the more directly effective interpretation of the incident. In the poem, "To his Saviour, a Child ; a Present by a Child," he bestows a touch of most acceptable and exquisite realism upon a subject concerning which a widely different view has been taken 'by both poet and painter : " Go, pretty child, and bear this flower, TJuto thy little Saviour." That word " little/ in such a connection, possesses a force of human feeling and tenderness, which makes us feel that the poet-parson-— for Herrick was a country clergyman — must have been popular with the mothers of his rustic flock. He. speaks of the other simple gifts to be offered : " And tell him, for good handsel too, That thou hast brought a whistle new, Made of a clean strait oaten reed, To charm liis cries at time of need." One almost feels, perhaps one quite feels, that these happy verses press nearer to the true spirit of the subject than do the verses by Mrs. Browning on the same theme. And in the silence of the inspired record concerning the infant Christ and his. life, one accepts Herrick' s picture in preference to that drawn with so much massed shadow, and sorrowful suggestion, by Mrs. Browning. In his " Grace for a Child " : " Here a little child I stand, Heaving up my either hand ; Cold as paddocks though they be, Here I lift them up to Thee, For a benison to fall On our meat, or on us all. Amen."

There is a grotesiq.ueness which is characteristic, and which, in this instance, is not rashly to be construed as profane. The quaint lines leave upon the mind an indelible impression ; and the poet was no doubt painting 1 from life when he pictured the devout child, with the poor, blue, little hands lifted in his simple grace. Poor little hands, " cold as frogs \" that is the meaning given in the glossary. In the lines, " To his dear God/ he manifests a spirit of resignation to his lot : " 111 learn to be content With that small stock Thy bounty gave or lent." And in other of his poems we see the homeliness of his country life under the care of his housekeeper, Prue. " A Thanksgiving to God for His House " presents a vivid picture of his domestic economy : " Lord, Thou hast given me a cell Wherein to dwell ; A little house, whose humble roof Is weatherproof, Under the spars of which I lie Both soft and dry ; Where Thou, my chamber for to ward, Hast set a guard Of harmless thoughts, to -watch and keep Me while I sleep. Low is my porch, as is my fate, Both void of state, And yet the threshold of my door Is worn by th' poor, Who thither come and freely get Good words or meat." And so on, through many more lines, he recounts his blessings, the bounty of his country lot, and closes with : " All these, and better Thou dost send Me, to this end, That I should render, for my part, A thankful teart, Which, fired with incer.se, I resign, As wholly Thine ; But the acceptance, that must be, My Christ, by Thee." But Herrick's religious verse is

lacking in the passionate fervour of that of George Herbert. Herrick was a humourist, and there is in the British Museum an almanack entitled, "An Almanack after a New Fashion ; written by Poor Robin, Knight of the Burnt Island, a well-wilier to the Mathematicks." We give one or two quotations ; here is one, an observation for the month of February, 1664 : "We may expect some showers of rain either this month or the next, or the next after that, or else we shall have a very dry Spring." From the almanack for the year 1667, we quote a perfectly delicious couplet : " When the rain raineth, and the goose winketh, Little wots the gosling what^the goose thinketh." Tradition ascribes the authorship of this almanack to Herrick. If Herrick didn't write it — who did ? There are among his poems verses to Ben Jonson, the idol of the young poets of his day, verses to the River Thames, to Candlemas Day, to His Winding Sheet, to The Untuneable Times, to The Hock Cart, and to many another object or subject ; the titles to his pieces often being as full of poetic suggestion as the lines themselves. There are poems also to the King, for, as we said, Herrick was a Royalist, and during the Commonwealth had to forfeit his living at Dean Prior, only to be returned to it at the Restoration. His verses, "To his Book," betray a touch of apprehension which posterity shows little signs of justifying ; we quote them : " Go thou forfh, my book, though late, Yet he timely fortunate. It may chance good luck may send Thee a kinsman or a friend, That may harbour thee, when I, With my fates neglected He. If thou knowest not where to dwell, See, the fire's by. Farewell."

The pronounced poetic merit of Herrick's " Book " has long decided that " the fire " shall not be called upon to afford it an entrance into oblivion, and lias won for the writer a place with the great names in English poetry. Among the secular Caroline lyrists the name of Richard Lovelace stands out very prominently. He is conspicuous among the amorous poets for a certain virile power and reserve which betoken entire sincerity ; and which have gained for him a place of his own in that age of extravagant and frivolous conceits. He is best known to lovers of English classical poetry by the couplet which occurs in his lines "To Lucasta going to the Warres" : "I could not love tliec, dear, so much, Lov'd I not Honour more." These lines possess that quality which distinguishes great poetry ; the quality of an enduring truth, set forth with simple, direct persuasiveness ; and clad in a graceful form which subserves the poet's meaning, and is not obtruded upon the sense to hide the absence of meaning. It is on the merit of this poem, with one or two others of pronounced beauty, that Lovelace has attained to immortality. His lines "To Althea from Prison " show the same noble spirit : " Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage ;

If I have |reedom in my love, And in mjr soul am free, Angels aldne that soar above Enjoy such liberty." Such utterances show us in what a spirit some of the cavaliers served a* King- who was not worthy such high service. Lovelace's ode on " The Grasshopper " possesses the qualities of movement, freshness and life in a high degree. It has a buoyant gladness which is quite spontaneous, and the touch of sadness wherein he introduces the sickle rises to the level of the tragic. After spending many years in reduced circumstances owing to his devotion to the Royalist cause, he died, tradition says, of a broken heart, because Lueasta had married, supposing him to be dead. Such a fate is not inconsistent with the more earnest and lofty tone of his poetry, and is certainly much more easily believea'ble of him than it could be of a spirit like the jovial Herrick. There is not space within the compass ofi this paper to quote Carew, who, according to Professor Sairitsfcmry, "is one of the most perfect masters of lyrical form in English poetry."

Suffice it to say, that the period was a rich blossoming time for the fancy, before the parenthesis of the Pope School of Wit a«, after that parenthesis, the end of the Eighteenth and beginning of the Nineteenth Centuries were the blossoming time of the imagination.