MISS GREENWELL'S SONGS OF THE CROSS.*

MOST poetry falls naturally into one of two divisions : either, as in that of Chaucer, it tells in clear ringing tones what men and things are like, what men say, what they do, and what they long for with the healthy animalism of untutored natures; or, as in that of Wordsworth and Tennyson, it gives voice to the feelings, the doubts, and broodings of a mind ill at ease, unsatisfied with what it knows, and eager for glimpses behind the veil of material things. Chaucer's breezy laughter dies away without calling up any questions to perplex the mind with dark uncertainties. The most characteristic parts of "The Excursion" and all of "In Memoriam," on the other hand, impress the mind less by giving the eye sunny glimpses of nature, than by filling the ear with a low, melodious, inarticulate note, as if from some encompassing sea of sorrow. It is in the school of Wordsworth and Tennyson that Miss Greenwell has learned to sing, and since her range of song is smaller, so her note of poetic discontent seems more loud. In Carmina Crucis there is much beauty and much melody ; every page reveals the touch of a true artist ; but it is from the ascetic spirit of the authoress, from the mysticism which dims whatever she touches, and the nun-like eye with which she looks at this life, that her poems derive much of their interest. They are made interesting by reason of their very imperfections, as well as by their merits. And at the outset, we must say that those imperfections are neither few nor hidden. Miss Greenwell's mastery over the forms of her art is much more marked than her fund of native strength. Too often she reminds us of a pianist who, while perfectly acquainted with the capacities of his instrument, and too well trained ever to

offend the most delicate ear, strikes the key-board with such timid finger, that passages of the melody die away into a murmur of uncertainty, or are shadowed by an eclipse of sound. Even her most appreciative readers must covet a louder and harder note. And, indeed, some may be deterred by her want of distinctness from going far enough through the book to find out with how much of beauty it is laden.

Religious themes give perhaps the best of all fields for the exercise of poetic power, because they force the poet to touch the profoundest springs of human emotion. Dogmatically religious themes, on the other hand, present him with a more contracted area, since they are cut up into definite parts by the hard lines of logical thought, and since the tenets with which they bristle do not awaken deep emotions, or, indeed, emotions of any kind, in the breast of him who has not the gift of faith, and is not potentially a believer. That is why even George Herbert is dull reading to many minds of high culture. That is also why many of those minds have never been able to find out how the pious and sweet but feeble tunefulness of Keble could have won for the Christian Year its boundless popularity. And it is for the same reason that even the mightiest poets, such as Dante and Milton, speak with faltering and prosaic accents when they load themselves with the dogmatic fetters of the theologian. Miss Greenwell has not committed the fatal mistake of cramping her song within the four corners of the Prayer-Book, but she has followed the dogmatic lines too closely for the freedom of her fancy and her verse. Not only is Carmina Crucis essentially religious, but it seeks to typify the process by which, after struggling with the sorrows and doubth incidental to our nature, men find rest in the deeds, the teaching, and the promises of a Redeemer. By a few touches of great beauty Miss Greenwell first pictures the "Garden of Proserpine," rich with amaranth and asphodel, and softened by the glow of flowers "whose leaf or petal hints at grief." The imagery is bathed in that voluptuous mysticism which is natural to a dreamy mind when the action of thought is suspended, and when it sees beauty, and beauty alone. Having struck a key-note, by calling up a hazy and almost formless scene of loveliness, Miss Greenwell pictures a "Morning of Spring," full of freshness, full of joy, but also laden with vague uneasy questionings as to the secrets which Nature hides behind her smiling face. For the first time, we hear the note of sorrow. The note is intensified by some strangely beautiful and mystical verses which give voice, as if in a low, soft whisper, to the musings of one who "sang at evening in an ancient room," and who from the gloom of sunset drew an inspiration of such sorrow as to seek the solace of darkness and of night. The same sad note is further deepened by a "Life Requiem" on one "that had no friends but God and death." A still profounder chord of sorrow is struck when, picturing the dreariness and ruin

of November, Miss Greenwell asks the world-old question whether any hope, or comfort, or new existence of bliss lies beyond this life of trouble and of grief ; and the answer is :

"Behold! the heavens are strong, the earth is old, And all that comes between is dim and cold."

In the next poem, " Desdichado," those inward questionings receive the answer that the worst of all sorrows is not misery or death, but the want of faith in the presence of an omnipotent Being who is the Father of His creatures :—

" Weep not for them who weep

For friend or lover taken thence, for child That falls 'mid early flowers and grass asleep, Untempted, undefiled.

"Mourn not for them that mourn For sin's keen arrow with its rankling smart ; God's hand will bind again what He hath torn; He heals the broken heart. "But weep for him whose eye Sees in the midnight skies a starry dome Thick sown with worlds that whirl and hurry by, And give the heart no home ; "Who hears amid the dense Loud trampling crash and outcry of this wild

Thick jungle world of dim magnificence No voice which says, 'My child!'

"Who marks through earth and space A strange dumb pageant pass before a vacant shrine, And feels within his inmost soul a place Unfill'd by the Divine ; "Weep, weep, for him above, That looks for God, and sees unpitying Fate, That finds within his heart, in place of love, A dull, unsleeping hate."

The burden of these fine and vigorous lines is seen still further, when speaking of "amiable, lovely Death," the authoress has the temerity to take as the vehicle of poetic expression the forms, not of verse, but of prose. If the perilous experiment does not succeed so well as to make us seek for a repetition, at least it does not fail ; but what gives its chief interest to this poem in undress is the vividness with which it reveals the ascetic spirit that pines for the softer solaces of religion, and that, shrinking from a life of action, covets the passive holiness of the cloister. In every time of tur moil that spirit breaks out into some form of protest ; time after time has it done so in the history of the Church ; and in our day, with its fierce political life, its attacks of science on what was once the vantage-ground of faith, and its growing partiality for the cold forms of logical thought, that spirit is waking up once more.

Ritualism is but one of the outlets for its strength. Miss Green well seems to be as instinct with the ascetic spirit as if she had passed her days in a cathedral, or seen life only from the windows of a convent cell. Every one has noticed how resistless is the spell cast over even the careless worshipper in a Gothic cathedral, when twilight has deepened the normal gloom of pillar and arch, and when the murmur of a priestly voice finds response in the low melody of choral song, and in the wail of an organ touched by soft womanly hand. The feeling, perhaps, imparts little nerve to the best part of the religious nature, sail a ceaseless repetition of its influence would as inevitably kill strength of soul as the constant caresses of woman would destroy strength of manhood ; nevertheless, more vividly than any other feeling does it bring into relief whatever is a3sthetic in religion. Now, most of the present volume seems as if it had been written after evening cathedral service. The doubts which nature forces into ugly form and the anguish which life sows on every hand find their response, not in the Pagan outbursts of a mind conscious of its own power to brave all ill and peril, nor

in the Puritan sternness which silences all vain repinings with the words of duty ; but in a wail of cathedral song, which dulls the

spiritual nerves with the opiate of loving words, and transports the weary soul into a brief heaven of religious ecstacy. Miss Greenwell might have entitled her book "Songs of the Cloister."

Indeed, it is when she writes most fully under the inspiration of the ascetic spirit, and when she delineates a nature which has ound peace through a victory over the will, that her words gather in fullest measure a poetic glow. "Buried, but not Dead," tells the story of a knight who rushes away from the scenes of his prowess, and in the lonely depths of a forest surrenders himself to Christ. In a grave hidden from the eye of all men, as that of Moses was from the idolatrous gaze of the Israelitish host, the repentant knight buries his old self—his unregenerate will ; and the being who goes back to battle clad in knightly form is not he who came to find a tomb, but a regenerate nature which shall know the Pagan promptings of the will no more. The conception is full of artistic cunning, and the verse flows with a limpid clear ness, but, above all things, the poem is stamped with the image and superscription of asceticism. It is a cloister view of life.

The second part of Carmina Crucis is devoted to the typifying of the peace that comes through faith in a personal Redeemer, and it opens with a few lines of perfect beauty :—

"My root of life is in Thy grave, This flower that blooms above I have no care to keep or save, Its hues are dim, iti stay is brief, I know not if its name be Grief, Oh! let it pass for Loye.

"Oh! let it pass for Love, dear Lord !

And lift it from Thy tomb, A little while upon Thy breast To yield its scent and bloom; In life, in dying to be blest, It needs but little room !"

Those verses strike the key-note of all that follows. If Miss Greenwell were anywhere untheological we might expect her to be so in "A Pastoral," which pictures the growth of song from its rude beginnings in the sound of the shepherd's reed ; and we might expect this all the more when we observe that in point of artistic merit the poem is perhaps her best; but even the uprise of her own art Miss Greenwell sees with a religious eye,—even verse she regards as the means of conveying revealed truth, and the flute-like sounds of pastoral music lead up to the peace which dwells "in Christo et in Ecclesia." Nor is her success often more marked than when she treats of such a theme as "The Cross," which would paralyze the faculties even of a true poet if he had not some capacity for faith, and which those who are not poets have made the excuse for piling up mountains of spiritual rubbish. Orthodoxy itself could not covet a more reverent exponent of its symbols than the authoress of Cambia Crucis. Nor can even heterodoxy refuse to pay its tribute to the quiet beauty with which she sings of Him who brought healing to the nations. It is the accents not only of poetry, but of faith, that we hear in this des cription of the joy with which she turns away from the desert of the Law to the seed-field of Christianity :—

" By Sinai long I stay'd,

And heard a voice that spake to me, This do, And thou shalt live;' but when more close I drew, I saw with hidden fire the mountain shake ; Upon the air I hoard the trumpet break

Long, loud, and louder yet ; what hope had I, When even Moses said, I fear and quake,—

Let not God speak unto me, lost I die !"

That Miss Greenwell could strike a more daring note, and give her utterance the most perfect clearness, is manifest from " Si deseendero in Infernum, Ades." Her religious creed has its dark and stern, as well as its bright and loving side. Taking the traditional rendering of the dogma, that after His Crucifixion Christ descended into hell, to set at liberty the souls whom the sin of Adam had doomed to wait for the atonement amid the gloom and pain of death, Miss Greenwell gives voice to a soul which, even in the darkness of the tomb, is expectant of deliverance :—

" What sea is this what shore?

What sullen, tidal moan that still recedes? What waves are these that cast up evermore Weedi, foul and clinging weeds ?

"Weeds, weeds around my hands, Weeds, weeds around my heart, that choke and prose And drag my spirits downward into lands Of dire forgetfulness.

"Weeds, weeds about my head

Are wrapped, I said, 'The darkness covers me ;' But even while I spike among the dead

.1 knew my soul was free.

"One cometh on the wings Of morn, to Him the darkness is as light, He seeks my soul, he saves it from the Sings Of Hades and of Night."

We wish we had space to print the whole of this striking poem,

which has a vigour that Miss Greenwell does not often display, and is totally free from the mysticism that too often shrouds her conceptions in a spiritual twilight.

Not the least remarkable feature of the volume is the intensely sceptical, as well as the intensely religious nature, which it reveals. Miss Greenwell may, perhaps, be horror-stricken by the fact that her broodings should even suggest the idea of unbelief. What we mean is, that the burning faith in a personal Redeemer and in an Almighty Father, is only the reflex of an equally powerful capacity to share the feelings of those sceptics who say, that the stern rules of historical evidence warrant no belief in such a Son of God as the Churches hold up for worship, and that Nature speaks of no such Omnipotent Being as the Creeds reveal, but only of an impassive Fate. All the great religious minds have been richly dowered with sceptical instincts. But for his overwhelming sense of the reality of sin, Pascal would have taken his place with Bayle, and Voltaire, and Hume among the great sceptical teachers of mankind ; but for the same overwhelming sense of that reality, the most gifted religious nature of our own time, John Henry Newman, would have held an immortal place amid the same cold dialectical phalanx. For that reason, among others, the lives of Pascal and of Newman present a striking parallel, which the students of both have strangely missed. In the present volume, we witness a fervency of religious devotion springing out of the fact that the abyss of unbelief is seen to be near, and that, if the soul did not ceaselessly proclaim the ever-abiding presence of sin, and if sin did not speak of an offended God, the depths of unbelief would be the only resting-place.

Miss Greenwell's mysticism has a beauty of its own, but it never theless involves a grave fault of art. Living in an atmosphere rarer than that which envelops a life of action, and habitually indulging in the luxury of meditation, she connects her processes of thought by ties of association which are invisible to every mind that has not travelled by the same path. Even in the most obscure fields, it is comparatively easy to follow a logical thinker who, link by link, unbares his chain of inference. It is less easy, but by an exercise of attention it is quite possible, to follow a meditative thinker, who weds his thoughts to such every-day associations that his mental orbit, even when it is most irregular, and when it seems to be traced with the utmost independence of logical guidance, is marked by some flickering line of light. But a thinker becomes hopelessly mystical when, by the mere tie of place, he joins together the scattered meditations of years, without revealing the path of thought which leads from each to each. Miss Greenwell's mysticism is often accompanied by a low soft music which is strangely fascinating, and it would be folly to deny an artist the means of lulling the mind by dream -like conceptions into a state of meditative sleep. Still, in the main, the best art must rest on a Greek definiteness of thought and a Greek clearness of expression. It was at the impulse of a profoundly logical instinct that the imaginations of Dante, Milton, and Wordsworth revolved ; they are most successful when that impulse is obeyed with such rigour as to give their conceptions a scientific precision ; aud their language is most felicitous when it is most clear. Did we dare to offer counsel to a poet, we should say that Miss Greenwell's fine gifts would meet with heartier recognition were she for a time to deny herself the luxury of meditation, not to glance at a single poem, and sternly go through a course of Blue-Books, Hansard Debates, and the Transactions of the Statistical Society. It is not genius, but a love of hard outlines, that she lacks ; and, paradoxical as it may seem, she would often be truer to her poetic nature, were she more prosaic.