Milton :: EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

In the meantime, while Dryden and Milton both had their schools, most of our seventeenth-century poetry fell into an almost complete oblivion. Dryden's satiric, and Milton's epic strains engrossed attention, and shaped the verses of an age. But the seventeenth century was extraordinarily wealthy in poetic kinds quite distinct from these: in metaphysic, and mysticism, in devotional ecstasy, and love-lyric, and romance. The English genius in poetry is essentially metaphysical and romantic. Milton was neither. He could not have excelled in any of these kinds; nor have come near to Suckling, or Crashaw, or Vaughan, or Herrick, or Marvell, in their proper realms. It is a permissible indulgence, therefore, in taking leave of Milton, to turn from the Paradise Lost for a moment, and, escaping from the solid materialism of the heroic and epic strain, to find passion once more among the Court lyrists, and spiritual insight among the retired mystics, to find Religion and Love, and the humility that has access to both. A profound humility, impossible to Milton, inspired Vaughan when he wrote such a verse as this:--

There is a natural vision, and there is a spiritual vision; the spiritual belongs to Vaughan, not to Milton. If Milton persuades us to a willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, Vaughan thrills us with a sense of vivid reality. His Ascension Day is a thing seen, as if it were a memory of yesterday:--

The day-star smiles, and light, with thee deceast,

Now shines in all the chambers of the East.

What stirs, what posting intercourse and mirth

Of Saints and Angels glorifie the earth!

What sighs, what whispers, busie stops and stays;

Private and holy talk fill all the ways!

They pass as at the last great day, and run

In their white robes to seek the risen Sun;

I see them, hear them, mark their haste, and move

Amongst them, with them, wing'd with faith and love.

To the intensity of his aspiration and hushed expectance the world seems only a turbulent passing pageant, or a hard wayfaring, suffered in a dream:--

Who stays

Here long must passe

O'er dark hills, swift streames, and steep ways

As smooth as glasse.

Or a brief sickness:--

So for this night I linger here,

And, full of tossings to and fro,

Expect still when thou wilt appear,

That I may get me up and go.

His eyes are fixed on the shining lights that beckon him; the world is full of voices, but its sights and sounds appeal to him in vain; the beauties that surround him are things of naught--

Glorious deceptions, gilded mists,

False joyes, phantastick flights.

In the distance before him there shines

An air of glory

Whose light doth trample on my days;

My days, which are at best but dull and hoary,

Meer glimmering and decays;

and he lifts up his voice in passionate desire for the ultimate deliverance:--

Ah! what time will it come? When shall that crie

The Bridegroome's comming! fill the sky?

Shall it in the evening run,

When our words and works are done?

Or will thy all-surprising light

Break at midnight?

He broods over it till nothing else is present to him in the night-watches:--

I saw Eternity the other night

Like a great ring of calm and endless light.

The history of the struggles and corruption of mankind may close at any moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at a signal given:--

All's in deep sleep and night; thick darkness lyes

And hatcheth o'er thy people--

But hark! what trumpet's that, what angel cries

Arise! Thrust in thy sickle!

Here is a religious poet indeed, a visionary, a mystic, and a Christian; none of which names can be truly applied to Milton. And if we wish to find Love enjoying his just supremacy in poetry, we cannot do better than seek him among the lyrists of the Court of Charles II. Milton, self-sufficient and censorious, denies the name of love to these songs of the sons of Belial. Love, he says, reigns and revels in Eden, not

in court amours,

Mixed dance, or wanton mask, or midnight ball,

Or serenate, which the starved lover sings

To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.

Yet for the quick and fresh spirit of love in the poetry of that time we must go to the sons of Belial. There is a pathetic passage in one of Milton's divorce pamphlets, where, speaking of the unhappy choices in marriage to which "soberest and best governed men" are liable, he remarks:--"It is not strange though many, who have spent their youth chastely, are in some things not so quick-sighted while they haste too eagerly to light the nuptial torch; nor is it therefore that for a modest error a man should forfeit so great a happiness, and no charitable means to release him, since they who have lived most loosely, by reason of their bold accustoming, prove most successful in their matches, because their wild affections, unsettling at will, have been as so many divorces to teach them experience."

The wild affections, unsettling at will, wrote better love-songs than the steadfast principles of the sober and well-governed. Roystering libertines like Sir Charles Sedley were more edifying lovers than the austere husbands of Mary Powell and of Eve. Milton would have despised and detested the pleasure-seeking philosophy of Sedley:--

Let us then ply those joys we have,

'Tis vain to think beyond the grave;

Out of our reach the Gods have laid

Of Time to come th' event,

And laugh to see the Fools afraid

Of what the Knaves invent.

But the self-abandonment and the passion of two or three of Sedley's songs are out of Milton's reach:--

Not Celia that I juster am,

Or better than the rest,

For I would change each hour like them,

Were not my heart at rest.

But I am ty'd to very thee

By every thought I have,

Thy face I only care to see,

Thy heart I only crave.

All that in woman is ador'd

In thy dear self I find,

For the whole sex can but afford

The handsome and the kind.

Why should I then seek further store,

And still make love anew;

When change itself can give no more,

'Tis easie to be true.

It is like a cup of cold water after the didactic endearments of Adam, and his repeated apostrophe:

Daughter of God and Man, immortal Eve--

For such thou art, from sin and blame entire.

Then there was John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester. He was drunk for five years on end,--so his biographer, who had it from his own lips, alleges--and he died at the age of thirty-two. Like Sedley, he professes no virtues, and holds no far-reaching views. But what a delicate turn of personal affection he gives to the expression of his careless creed:--

The time that is to come is not,

How can it then be mine?

The present moment's all my lot,

And that, as fast as it is got,

Phyllis, is only thine.

Then talk not of inconstancy,

False hearts, and broken vows

If I by miracle can be

This live-long minute true to thee,

'Tis all that Heaven allows.

Rochester's best love-poetry reaches the topmost pinnacle of achievement in that kind. None has ever been written more movingly beautiful than this:--

When, wearied with a world of woe,

To thy safe bosom I retire,

Where love and peace and truth does flow,

May I contented there expire!

Lest, once more wandering from that heaven,

I fall on some base heart unblest--

Faithless to thee, false, unforgiven--

And lose my everlasting rest!

Or than that other piece (too beautiful and too intense to be cited as a sudden illustration of a thesis) beginning--

Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why

Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny

The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye?

The wind bloweth where it listeth; the wandering fire of song touches the hearts and lips of whom it will. Milton built an altar in the name of the Lord, and he made a great trench about the altar, and he put the wood in order, and loaded the altar with rich exotic offerings, cassia and nard, odorous gums and balm, and fruit burnished with golden rind. But the fire from Heaven descended on the hastily piled altars of the sons of Belial, and left Milton's gorgeous altar cold.

His fame is now old-established and settled, so there is no place left for the eloquence of the memorialist, or the studied praises of the pleader. I have tried to understand Milton; and have already praised him as well as I know how, with no stinted admiration, I trust, and certainly with no merely superstitious reverence. If I must round my discourse by repeating something that I have already said or suggested, it shall be this--that as he stands far aloof from his contemporaries, so in the succession of great figures that mark for us the centuries of our literature he is seen once more singular and a stranger. We bred Shakespeare in our Midlands; he was nourished from the soil that still grows our daily bread. But Milton was an alien conqueror. The crowd of native-born Puritans, who sometimes (not without many searchings of heart and sharp misgivings) attempt to claim him for their leader, have no title in him. It is a proof of his dominating power, and no credit to their intelligence, that they accept him as their representative. His influence on the destinies and history of our literature might be compared to the achievement of Napoleon while he was winning the victories that changed the map of Europe. He could not change the character of a people, nor perpetuate his dynasty. But nothing is as it would have been without him. Our literature is as hospitable as the Hindoo pantheon; the great revolutionary has won a place even in our creed. And the writer has this advantage, at least, over the conqueror and legislator, that he has bequeathed to us not maps, nor laws, but poems, whose beauty, like the World's unwithered countenance, is bright as at the day of their creation.

e bright sunlight as their hearts once more were brimful of joy.

When at last the little son of the Spring Princess was born she wanted to take him with her when she went to visit her mother. The Sun Giant, however, did not approve of such a plan. He firmly refused to allow the child to leave home. After much pleading, all in vain, the Spring Princess set out upon her journey alone, with sorrow in her heart. She left her baby son with the best nurses she could procure.

Now it happened that the Giantess of the Great River had not expected that her daughter would be able to visit her that year. She had thought that all the rivers and lakes, the palace of mother-of-pearl, and her own mother heart would have to get along as best they could without a visit from the Spring Princess. The Giantess of the Great River had gone away to water the earth. One of the land giants had taken her prisoner and would not let her escape.

When the Spring Princess arrived at the beautiful palace of mother-of-pearl and gold and silver and precious stones, where the Great River runs into the sea, there was no one at home. She ran from room to room in the palace calling out, “O dear mother, Giantess of the Great River, dear, dear mother! Where are you? Where have you hidden yourself?”

There was no answer. Her own voice echoed back to her through the beautiful halls of mother-of-pearl with their rich carvings. The palace was entirely deserted.

She ran outside the palace and called to the fishes of the river, “O fishes of the river, have you seen my own dear mother?”

She called to the sands of the sea, “O sands of the sea, have you seen my darling mother?”

She called to the shells of the shore, “O shells of the shore, have you seen my precious mother?”

There was no answer. No one knew what had become of the Giantess of the Great River.

The Spring Princess was so worried that she thought her heart would break in its anguish. In her distress she ran over all the earth.

Then she went to the house of the Great Wind. The Giant of the Great Wind was away, but his old father was at home. He was very sorry for the Spring Princess when he heard her sad story. “I am sure my son can help you find your mother,” he said as he comforted her. “He will soon get home from his day’s work.”When the Giant of the Great Wind reached home he was in a terrible temper. He stormed and raged and gave harsh blows to everything he met. His father had hid the Spring Princess in a closet out of the way, and it was fortunate indeed for her that he had done so.

After the Great Wind Giant had taken his bath and eaten his dinner he was better natured. Then his father said to him, “O my son, if a wandering princess had come this way on purpose to ask you a question, what would you do to her?”

“Why, I’d answer her question as best I could, of course,” responded the Giant of the Great Wind.

His father straightway opened the closet door and the Spring Princess stepped out. In spite of her long wanderings and great anguish of mind she was still very lovely as she knelt before the Giant of the Great Wind in her soft silvery green garments embroidered with pearls and diamonds. The big heart of the Giant of the Great Wind was touched at her beauty and at her grief.

“O Giant of the Great Wind,” said the Spring Princess, as he gently raised her from her knees before him, “I am the daughter of the Giantess of the Great River. I have lost my mother. I have searched for her through all the earth and now I have come to you for help. Can you tell me anything about where she is and how I can find her?”

The Giant of the Great Wind put on his thinking cap. He thought hard. “Your mother is in the power of a land giant who has imprisoned her,” he said. “I happen to know all about the affair. I passed that way only yesterday. I’ll gladly go with you and help you get her home. We’ll start at once.”

The Giant of the Great Wind took the Spring Princess back to earth on his swift horses. Then he stormed the castle of the land giant who had imprisoned the Giantess of the Great River. The Spring Princess dug quietly beneath the castle walls to the dungeon where her mother was confined. You may be sure that her mother was overjoyed to see her.

When the Spring Princess had led her mother safely outside the castle walls she thanked the Giant of the Great Wind for all he had done to help her. Then the Giantess of the Great River and the Spring Princess hastened back to the wonderful palace of mother-of-pearl set with gold and silver and precious stones, where the Great River runs into the Sea. As soon as she had safely reached there once more the Spring Princess suddenly remembered that she had stayed away from her home in the palace of the Sun Giant longer than the three months she was supposed to stay according to the agreement. She at once said good-bye to her mother and hastened to the home of the Sun Giant, her husband, and to her baby son.

Now the Sun Giant had been very much worried at first when the three months had passed and the Spring Princess had not come back to him and her little son. Then he became angry. He became so angry that he married another princess. The new wife discharged the nurses who were taking care of the tiny son of the Spring Princess and put him in the kitchen just as if he had been a little black slave baby.When the Spring Princess arrived at the palace of the Sun Giant the very first person she saw was her own little son, so dirty and neglected that she hardly recognized him. Then she found out all that had happened in her absence.

The Spring Princess quickly seized her child and clasped him tight in her arms. Then she fled to the depths of the sea, and wept, and wept, and wept. The waters of the sea rose so high that they reached even to the palace of the Sun Giant. They covered the palace, and the Sun Giant, his new wife, and all the court entirely disappeared from view. For forty days the face of the Sun Giant was not seen upon the earth.

The little son of the Spring Princess grew up to be the Giant of the Rain. In the rainy season and the season of thunder showers he rules upon the earth. He sends upon the earth such tears as the Spring Princess shed in the depths of the seas.

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