Part 16 (1/2)

Well, great as are the differences between these poets, the resemblances are striking. It is true that when Swinburne was at the height of his fame, Francis Thompson was running errands and holding horses in the London streets, his genius practically unknown. Yet he was famous before Swinburne's death, and there are other points of contact beside that of time between this militant pagan and this militant Christian.

In the first place, both were poets. Both had genuine talent, and both had a strong desire to do the work of the poet, that is, to find beauty and to bind beauty with a chain of linked rhyme.

Now the poet's search for beauty often is difficult, and it was especially difficult in London in the latter days of the nineteenth century. All the poets were seeking for beauty, but the scientists had been industriously trying to drive beauty out of the world. Of course, they had not succeeded, any more than the French Atheist succeeded a few years ago in carrying out his blasphemous threat of putting out that light in the heavens. But they had thrown a veil over the face of beauty, and made beauty hard to see except for those who looked with the strong eyes of faith.

How the poets worried! Where had beauty flown? Browning thought that beauty was in humanity. So he searched for beauty in humanity, and in his search made many interesting and n.o.ble poems. Tennyson, that magnificent artist in words, thought that beauty was somewhere in evolution. And he at last descended to the most supine of intellectual att.i.tudes, his philosophy being merely that somehow good would be the final goal of all, that everything would come out all right in the end.

And he uttered the most absurd statement ever made by any poet in the history of the world when he said ”There lies more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.”

All the poets were seeking after beauty. When Swinburne, full of Greek and Latin and talent and conceit, left Oxford University to begin a military career, he was seeking for beauty. And when Francis Thompson was selling matches and shoestrings in the London gutters, he was seeking for beauty.

Swinburne knew that the life around him was dull and materialistic. The scientists had said that the old ethical and spiritual values were dead.

There could be no beauty in religion, for the scientists had killed religion, putting up in its place their own artificial dogma. Beauty and light had gone out of life.

So Swinburne decided, logically enough, that since beauty was not in his own land and age, he must seek it in the ages that had gone before. So he wrote not of modern scientific, dull, Victorian London, but of ancient Venice, of ancient Rome, of ancient Greece. He lamented the departure of Venus and Apollo and Dionysus and all the old G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, and the loss of the glories of the s.p.a.cious cla.s.sic days.

But Swinburne failed. Musical as are his rhymes and rhythms, lofty as was his imagination, he failed. He failed to write convincingly of medieval Rome and ancient Venice because he could not understand what made these cities beautiful and great--their faith. He failed to write convincingly of ancient Greece because he could never be that rare and in its way splendid thing, an honest pagan.

No one can be a real pagan nowadays. Swinburne is not to be blamed because he failed to be a real pagan, but because he tried to be a pagan. The ancient Greeks who lived before the time of Christ were brave and simple men, their chief virtues were courage, patriotism, obedience to the law, democracy and zeal for art. These virtues were in time taken over and multiplied by the Catholic Church, which has preserved all of pagan culture that deserved preservation. Swinburne rejected these virtues, probably thinking them to be Christian innovations, and the pagans of whom he wrote were sensual, decadent things, like the degenerate Greeks who lived in the days of Roman supremacy. And Swinburne finally reached his true level in the poem in which he speaks by the mouth of Julian the Apostate, the poor maniac who rejected Christianity and struggled vainly to restore the wors.h.i.+p of the legendary G.o.ds of his heathen ancestors.

Francis Thompson, like Swinburne, sought for beauty. And Francis Thompson found beauty. Francis Thompson found beauty because he knew where to look. He found beauty in prosaic scientific modern London, he found beauty in the city streets. He found beauty right around the corner, in a certain little Church around the corner which is also the big Church around the world. He found beauty where she is and always will be, in the Catholic faith.

Swinburne felt his lack of faith. He bitterly resented the veil that his infidelity had put between himself and beauty. And therefore he attacked faith, and railed with all the venom of a disappointed man against Christ, his Saints and His Church.

Swinburne longed for the days of pagan license and revelry, when Pan and Apollo dwelt with man. Francis Thompson knew that G.o.d was with man, that no street was so humble, no house so poor as not to know the tread of His feet. Instead of longing for a return of the old imaginary G.o.ds, he saw the beauty of G.o.d evident in such harsh thoroughfares as Charing Cross, and brooding even over the muddy waters of the Thames. He wrote:

THE KINGDOM OF G.o.d

The angels keep their ancient places, Turn but a stone and start a wing, 'Tis ye, 'tis your estranged faces That miss the many splendoured thing.

But when so sad thou canst not sadder Cry:--and upon thy so sore loss Shall s.h.i.+ne the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched between Heaven and Charing Cross.

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter, Cry,--clinging Heaven by the hems; And lo, Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesareth but Thames!

A dangerous test of a poet's genius is to be found in his att.i.tude towards the simplest and smallest things. It is for this reason that any poet of talent may safely write about a mountain or a waterfall or a sunset, but only a very great poet should ever write about children.

The poets know this, and in spite of his paganism and sophistication Swinburne often tried to prove his genius by making excursions into the enchanted land of childhood. He wrote one poem which he considered a very important achievement, reprinting it in many editions of his poetry. And in that poem Swinburne did accomplish something well worthy of accomplishment, he expressed an interesting and beautiful idea. Now it would be absurd to take this poem of Swinburne's and compare it with one of Francis Thompson's masterpieces, such as ”The Hound of Heaven.”

But it surely is fair to compare it to a poem by Francis Thompson on the same theme.

You must consider how it is that a poet writes a poem. There are said to be poets who are struck on the head by a great inspiration, and let that inspiration trickle down through the shoulder and arm and out the end of a pen upon a piece of paper. There are said to be such poets, although in my rather extensive observation of poets I have never met one. The usual method is for a poet to meditate on a subject, to set down on paper all the most beautiful ideas which his subject suggests to him.

Well, let us imagine Swinburne confronted by the miracle of childhood.

Knowing that his reputation must stand or fall by this attempt, he endeavors to record all the splendid emotions and n.o.ble comparisons which childhood suggests to him. And what is the result? What is the climax of thought in his poem? The climax is this: Swinburne says that the baby about whom he is writing, who happens to be wearing a plush cap, looks like a moss rose bud in its soft sheath.

This is a pleasant idea. Undoubtedly it pleased the baby's mother and the baby herself when she grew up. But these are scarcely the words that shall tremble on the lips of time.

Francis Thompson was great enough to do the obvious thing. When he was drawing inspiration from the miracle of childhood, he did not think about plush caps and moss roses. Instead, he did the most natural and the most beautiful thing. He thought about the Infant Jesus. Childhood to him suggested Him Who made childhood Divine. And in ”Ex Ore Infantium” he gave that thought immortal expression.

But in comparing the plush cap of the baby to a moss rose, Swinburne did not think he had said the last word on the subject. As the result of prolonged meditation on childhood, he produced another poem in which he really did accomplish something remarkable. He found a rhyme for ”babe.”

Now, I doubt if any of you know the rhyme for ”babe,” unless you happen to be familiar with this poem of Swinburne's or with those of Chaucer, who also used this word. There is such a word and Swinburne ingeniously introduces it towards the end of his poem. He writes: