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THE

CHRISTIAN DISCIPLE.

NEW SERIES-No. 26.

March and April, 1823.

SELECTIONS FROM THE POETRY OF CRASHAW.

Ir seems to me that, in their selections from the ancient English

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poets, neither Ellis nor Campbell have done justice to Crashaw, Campbell was fully capable of estimating his merits; and says, that there are many touches of beauty and solemnity' in his verses. He has not taken the trouble, however, of separating these from the mass of grosser matter; and I cannot help thinking, that he had not read Crashaw with much attention; for solemnity' is not altogether the right word to be used in his praise. The estimate, which was formed of him by his contemporaries, may be inferred from the poem of Cowley on his death, which commences with the splendid apostrophe :

Poet and saint! to thee alone are given

The two most sacred names of earth and heaven.

He has been imitated by Pope; and some traces of his expressions are to be found even in the poetry of Milton.

The date of his birth is uncertain. He took his bachelor's degree in 1634; and the same year published a volume of Latin poems, mostly devotional. In one of these, is contained the well known line, which has sometimes been ascribed to Dryden and others, on the miracle of turning water into wine:

Nympha pudica Deum vidit et erubuit.

The modest water saw its God and blushed.

He took orders; and was distinguished as a preacher for his energy of expression and strength of feeling. Having for some New Series-vol. V.

11

time lived a life of enthusiastic piety, and of even austere and ascetic morality, he at last became a Roman Catholic. He died in Italy, as a canon of Loretto, about the year 1650. Cowley alludes to his conversion in the following lines:

Pardon, my mother Church, if I consent

That angels led him, when from thee he went:
For even in error sure no danger is,
When joined to so much piety as his.

Ah Mighty God! with shame I speak it and grief,
Ah! that our greatest faults were in belief;
And our weak reason even weaker yet,
Rather than thus our wills too strong for it.
His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets, might
Be wrong; his life I'm sure was in the right.

Much of the poetry of Crashaw abounds in the faults of his age. It is full of extravagances, forced thoughts, and harshness of expression; showing, however, not so much a want of talents in the writer, as of a just and discriminating taste in the great body of readers. His religious poems written after his conversion to the Catholic Church, are overrun with that revolting imagery, which results from transferring to God the accidents and sufferings of the human nature of Christ; and with those shocking conceits, that a perverted ingenuity may draw from this source. But with all these faults, Crashaw has no common beauties.

The charm of his finer poems consists partly in the fresh and bright colours of their language, and in the happy turns of expression which now and then occur, and still more in the purity and holiness of feeling which they discover, sometimes calm and deep, and sometimes exalted to enthusiasm. I will give some specimens.

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DESCRIPTION OF A RELIGIOUS HOUSE AND CONDITION OF LIFE.

Out of Barclay.

No roofs of gold o'er riotous tables shining,
Whole days and suns devoured with endless dining;
No sails of Tyrian silk proud pavements sweeping;
Nor ivory couches costlier slumbers keeping;
False lights of flaring gems; tumultuous joys;
Halls full of flattering men, and frisking boys;
Whate'er false shows of short and slippery good
Mix the mad sons of men in mutual blood:
But walks and unshorn woods; and souls, just so
Unforced and genuine, but not shady tho':
Our lodgings hard and homely as our fare;
That chaste and cheap as the few clothes we wear;

Those coarse and negligent, as the natural locks
Of these loose groves, rough as the unpolished rocks.
A hasty portion of prescribed sleep;

Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep,

And sing, and sigh; and work, and sleep again,
Still rolling a round sphere of still returning pain
Hands full of hearty labours; pains that pay,
And prize themselves, do much that more they may,
And work for work, not wages; let to morrow's
New drops wash off the sweat of this day's sorrows :
A long and daily dying life, which breathes

A respiration of reviving deaths:

But neither are there those ignoble stings,
-That nip the bosom of the earth's best things,
And lash earth-labouring souls;

No cruel guard of diligent cares, that keep
Crowned woes awake, as things too wise for sleep:
But reverend discipline and religious fear,
And soft obedience, find sweet biding here;
Silence and sacred rest, peace and pure joys:
Kind loves keep house, lie close, and make no noise;
And room enough for monarchs, while none swells
Beyond the kingdoms of contentful cells:

The self remembering soul sweetly recovers
Her kindred with the stars; not basely hovers
Below; but meditates her immortal way

Home to the original source of life and intellectual day.

Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep: Every one will recollect this line in a later poem, which has none of the purity of that from which it is taken.

There are some pleasing passages in his verses on the death of Mr. Herrys.

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