(Fair Sister of the Seraphim!)
By all of Him we have in thee;
Let me so read thy life, that I
Unto all life of mine may die.

We cannot leave Crashaw without mentioning his Divine Epigrams. He has a great many of them. May I give one or two examples?

Two went up into the Temple to pray.

Two went to pray! O, rather say,

One went to brag, th' other to pray;
One stands up close and treads on high,
Where th' other dares not send his eye.
One nearer to God's altar trod,

The other to the altar's God."

And He answered nothing. Matt xxvii, 12.

O Mighty Nothing! unto thee,
Nothing, we owe all things that be;
God spake once when He all things made,
He saved all when He Nothing said.
The world was made of Nothing then ;
'Tis made by Nothing now again.

Upon the Holy Sepulchre.

Here where our Lord once laid His Head,
Now the grave lies buried.

To our Blessed Lord upon the choice of His
Sepulchre.

How life and death in Thee

Crashaw's best known secular poem is the Wishes: To his (supposed) Mistress, beginning:

Who e'er she be

That not impossible She

That shall command my heart and me.

and in the poem he shews a very pretty wit. But it is as a religious poet that he is best known, and his life all through is summed up in his Motto:

Live, Jesus live, and let it be

My life to die for love of Thee.

Cowley, in a poem on Crashaw's death, speaks of him as "Poet and Saint."

с

Poet and Saint! to thee alone are given

The two most sacred names of Earth and Heaven.
The hard and rarest union that can be

Next that of Godhead with humanitie.
Long did the Muses banisht slaves abide
And built vain pyramids to mortal pride;

Like Moses, thou (though spells and charms withstand),

Hast brought them nobly home back to their holy land.

And now to consider the work of Henry Vaughan. Mr. Hutton says that he has now come into his kingdom because we care less for style and manner than did our ancestors. May it not be that we care more for thought?

One of the best known of Vaughan's poems is The Retreat, which is said to have suggested to Wordsworth his Ode on Intimations of Immortality. I trust it is not too hackneyed to quote in full.

The Retreat.

Happy those early days when I
Shined in my angel-infancy!
Before I understood this p ace
Appointed for my second race,

Or taught my soul to fancy aught
But a white, celestial thought;
When yet I had not walked above
A mile or two from my first Love,
And looking back-at that short space-
Could see a glimpse of His bright face;
When on some gilded cloud, or flow'r,
My gazing soul would dwell an hour,
And in those weaker glories spy
Some shadows of eternity;
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness.

O how I long to travel back,

And tread again that ancient track!
That I might once more reach that plain,
Where first I left my glorious train;
From whence th' enlightened spirit sees
That shady City of palm-trees.
But ah! my soul with too much stay
Is drunk, and staggers in the way.
Some men a forward motion love,
But I by backward steps would move;
And when this dust falls to the urn,
In that state I came, return.

In these few verses one meets with lines which linger in the memory and which one likes to savour," as the French say.

Perhaps the most beautiful of all the poems is the one beginning,

They are all gone into the world of light." In it we have some of Vaughan's best known verses, as for example:

Dear beauteous Death, the jewel of the just,
Shining nowhere, but in the dark;
What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust,
Could man outlook that mark!

He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know

At first sight, if the bird be flown ;

But what fair well or grove he sings in now,
That is to him unknown.

And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,

And into glory peep.

Here is another poem on the same subject.