Part 31 (2/2)

Scene after scene is described without pause, or only interrupted by sermonizing; it is as monotonous as a gallery of landscape paintings.

The human beings introduced are mere accessories, they do not live, and the undercurrent of all is praise of the Highest. His predilection is for still life in wood and field, but he does not neglect grander scenery; his muse

”Sees Caledonia, in romantic view: Her airy mountains, from the waving main Invested with a keen diffusive sky, Breathing the soul acute; her forests huge, Incult, robust, and tall, by Nature's hand Planted of old; her azure lakes between, Poured out extensive and of watery wealth Full; winding, deep and green, her fertile vales, With many a cool translucent br.i.m.m.i.n.g flood Washed lovely....”

And in _A Hymn_ we read:

Ye headlong torrents rapid and profound, Ye softer floods that lead the humid maze Along the vale; and thou, majestic main, A secret world of wonders in thyself.

It is the lack of human life, the didactic tone, and the wearisome detail which destroys interest in the _Seasons_--the lack of happy moments of invention. Yet it had great influence on his contemporaries in rousing love for Nature, and it contains many beautiful pa.s.sages. For example:

Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come, And from the bosom of yon dropping cloud, While music wakes around, veiled in a shower Of shadowing roses, on our plains descend.

His most artistic poem is Winter:

When from the pallid sky the sun descends With many a spot, that o'er his glaring orb Uncertain wanders, stained; red fiery streaks Begin to flush around. The reeling clouds Stagger with dizzy poise, as doubting yet Which master to obey; while rising slow, Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns.

Seen through the turbid fluctuating air, The stars obtuse emit a s.h.i.+vering ray; Or frequent seem to shoot, athwart the gloom, And long behind them trail the whitening blaze.

s.n.a.t.c.hed in short eddies plays the withered leaf, And on the flood the dancing feather floats.

With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned, The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale....

Retiring from the downs, where all day long They picked their scanty fare, a blackening train Of clamorous rooks thick urge their weary flight And seek the closing shelter of the grove, a.s.siduous, in his bower, the wailing owl Plies his sad song. The cormorant on high Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land.

Loud shrieks the soaring heron, and with wild wing The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky skies.

Ocean, unequal pressed, with broken tide And blind commotion heaves, while from the sh.o.r.e, Eat into caverns by the restless wave And forest-rustling mountains, comes a voice That solemn-sounding bids the world prepare.

The elaboration of detail in such painting is certain evidence, not only of a keen, but an enthusiastic eye for Nature. As he says in Winter:

Nature, great parent! whose unceasing hand Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year!

How mighty, how majestic, are thy works!

With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul That sees astonish'd, and astonish'd sings!

Brockes was directly influenced by Pope and Thomson, and translated the _Seasons_, when he had finished his _Irdisches Vergnugen in Gott_. This unwieldy work, insipid and prosaic as it is, was still a literary achievement, thanks to the dignity of the subject and the high seriousness of its aim, at a time when frivolity was the fas.h.i.+on in poetry. Its long pious descriptions of natural phenomena have none of the imposing flow of Thomson's strophes. It treats of fire in 138 verses of eight lines each, of air in 79, water in 78, earth in 74, while flowers and fruit are dissected and a.n.a.lyzed at great length; and all this rhymed botany and physics is loosely strung together, but it shews a warm feeling for Nature of a moralizing and devotional sort. He says himself[7] that he took up the study of poetry first as an amus.e.m.e.nt, but later more seriously, and chose Nature as his theme, not only because her beauty moved him, but as a means 'whereby man might enjoy a permissible pleasure and be edified at the same time.'

So I resolved to sing the praises of the Creator to the best of my powers, and felt the more bound to do it, because I held that such great and almost inexcusable neglect and ingrat.i.tude was a wrong to the Creator, and unbecoming in Christendom. I therefore composed different pieces, chiefly in Spring, and tried my best to describe the beauties of Nature, in order, through my own pleasure, to rekindle the praise of the wise Creator in myself and others, and this led at last to the first part of my _Irdisches Vergnugen_. (1721.)

His evidence from animal and plant life for the teleological argument is very laughable; take, for example, the often-quoted chamois:

The fat is good for phthisis, the gall for the face, chamois flesh is good to eat, and its blood cures vertigo--the skin is no less useful. Doth not the love as well as the wisdom and almightiness of the Creator s.h.i.+ne forth from this animal?

For the rest, the following lines from _Irdisches Vergnugen in Gott_ will serve to give an idea of his style; they certainly do honour to his laborious attempt to miss none of the charms of the wood:

Lately as I sat on the green gra.s.s Shaded by a lime tree, and read, I raised my eyes by chance and saw Different trees here and there, some far, some near, Some half, some all in light, and some in shade, Their boughs bowed down by leaves.

I saw how beautifully both air and flowery mead Were crowned and adorned.

To describe the green grace And the landscape it makes so sweet, And at the same time prolong my pleasure, I took pencil and paper And tried to describe the beautiful trees in rhyme, To the glory of G.o.d their Creator.

Of all the beauty the world lays before our eyes, There certainly is none which does not pale Beside green boughs, Nothing to compare for pure beauty with a wood.

The green roofing overhead Makes me feel young again; It hangs there, a living tapestry, To the glory of G.o.d and our delight....

Beyond many trees that lay in shade I often saw one in full light; A human eye would scarce believe How sweetly twilight, light and darkness Meet side by side in leafy trees.

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