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. Awake, my glory! soul (if such thou be, And be all wing! Bring hither thy whole self; and let me see, 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. Alas, will never do; We must have store, Go, soul, out of thyself, and seek for more, Great Nature for the key of her huge chest Of nimble art, and traverse round The airy shop of soul-appeasing sound: All-sovereign name, To warn each several kind And shape of sweetness-be they such 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 Into a hasty fit-tun'd harmony. 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. Bring all the powers of praise Your provinces of well-united worlds can raise ; 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 And everlasting series of a deathless song;- 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. And speak aloud To all the dear-bought nations this redeeming name, New similes to nature. May it be no wrong, Blest heav'ns! to you, and your superior song, 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; 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, And give thyself awhile the gracious guest Of humble souls, that seek to find 95 The hidden sweets Which man's heart meets When thou art master of the mind. 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, And then, not knowing what to do, Oh, come away And kill the death of this delay. Oh see, so many worlds of barren years To catch the daybreak of the dawn. And know what sweets are suck'd from out it. By which they thrive, Where all their hoard of honey lies. Lo, where it comes, upon the snowy dove's |