It cannot be

That I am he,

On whom Thy tempests fell at night!

These are Thy wonders, Lord of love!
To make us see we are but flow'rs that glide:
Which when we once can find and prove,
Thou hast a garden for us where to 'bide.
Who would be more,

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
But touch'd with an interior ray;
The name of our new peace; our good;
Our bliss, and supernatural blood;
The name of all our lives and loves:
Hearken, and help, ye holy doves!
The high-born brood of day; you bright
Candidates of blissful light,

The heirs elect of love; whose names belong
Unto the everlasting life of song;

All ye wise souls, who in the wealthy breast

Of this unbounded Name build your warm nest.

Awake, my glory! soul (if such thou be,
And that fair word at all refer to thee),
Awake and sing

And be all wing!

Bring hither thy whole self; and let me see,
What of thy parent heaven yet speaks in thee.
O thou art poor

I

Of noble powers, I see,

And full of nothing else but empty me;

Narrow and low, and infinitely less

Than this great morning's mighty business.
One little world or two,

Alas, will never do;

We must have store,

Go, soul, out of thyself, and seek for more,
Go and request

Great Nature for the key of her huge chest
Of heav'ns, the self-involving set of spheres,
(Which dull mortality more feels than hears),
Then rouse the nest

Of nimble art, and traverse round

The airy shop of soul-appeasing sound:
And beat a summons in the same

All-sovereign name,

To warn each several kind

And shape of sweetness-be they such

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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.
Wake, lute and harp,

And every sweet-lipp'd thing
That talks with tuneful string!

Start into life, and leap with me

Into a hasty fit-tun'd harmony.

Nor must you think it much
To obey my bolder touch:

I have authority, in love's name, to take you
And to the work of love this morning wake you.
Wake! in the name

Of Him who never sleeps, all things that are,-
Or, what's the same,

Are musical;

Answer my call,

And come along;

Help me to meditate mine immortal song.
Come, ye soft ministers of sweet sad mirth!
Bring all your household-stuff of heaven on earth.
Oh you, my soul's most certain wings,
Complaining pipes, and prattling strings,

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.

Bring all the powers of praise

Your provinces of well-united worlds can raise ;
Bring all your lutes and harps of heaven and earth,
Whate'er co-operates to the common mirth;
Vessels of vocal joys,

Or you, more noble architects of intellectual noise,
Cymbals of heav'n, or human spheres,

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;-
Mix all your many worlds, above,

And loose them into one, of love.

Cheer thee, my heart!

For thou too hast thy part,

And place, in the great throng

Of this unbounded all-embracing song.
Powers of my soul, be proud!

And speak aloud

To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name,
And in the wealth of one rich word proclaim

New similes to nature.

May it be no wrong,

Blest heav'ns! to you, and your superior song,
That we, dark sons of dust and sorrow,

Awhile dare borrow

The name of your delights and our desires,

And fit it to so far inferior lyres.

Our murmurs have their music too,

Ye mighty orbs! as well as you;
Nor yields the noblest nest

Of warbling seraphim, to th' ears of love,
A choicer lesson than the joyful breast
Of a poor panting turtle-dove.

And we, low worms, have leave to do

The same bright business, ye third heav'ns! with you.
Gentle spirits, do not complain;

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,

And give thyself awhile the gracious guest

Of humble souls, that seek to find

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The hidden sweets

Which man's heart meets

When thou art master of the mind.
Come, lovely name! life of our hope!
Lo, we hold our hearts wide ope!
Unlock thy cabinet of day,

Dearest sweet, and come away.

Lo, how the thirsty lands

Gasp for thy golden showers, with long stretch'd hands!

Lo, how the labouring earth

That hopes to be

All heaven by thee,

Leaps at thy birth!

The attending world, to wait thy rise,
First turn'd to eyes;

And then, not knowing what to do,
Turn'd them to tears, and spent them too.
Come, royal name! and pay the expense
Of all this precious patience:

Oh, come away

And kill the death of this delay.

Oh see, so many worlds of barren years
Melted and measur'd out in seas of tears!
Oh, see the weary lids of wakeful hope
(Love's eastern windows) all wide ope
With curtains drawn,

To catch the daybreak of the dawn.
Oh dawn at last, long-look'd for day!
Take thine own wings and come away.
Lo, where aloft it comes! It comes, among
The conduct of adoring spirits, that throng
Like diligent bees, and swarm about it.
Oh, they are wise,

And know what sweets are suck'd from out it.
It is the hive

By which they thrive,

Where all their hoard of honey lies.

Lo, where it comes, upon the snowy dove's
Soft back, and brings a bosom big with loves.
Welcome to our dark world, thou womb of day!