NON-DRAMATIC POETRY OF THE EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

From the Death of Spenser, 1599, to the Restoration, 1660

The non-dramatic poetry of the early half of the seventeenth century, like the dramatic, is largely a continuation of that of the greater Elizabethans. As we have just seen, many of the rising generation of writers were united by a personal loyalty to Ben Jonson, and by a reverence for his critical opinions. Other poets took Spenser for their model, drawing inspiration from his pastoral rather than from his chivalric poetry, and following him chiefly in his more serious moods. Still others wrote under the influence of John Donne, another Elizabethan of wayward but powerful genius, of whom we have not yet spoken. Among these rising writers were a number of religious poets who through the medium of verse gave utterance to different moods and degrees of devotional piety. Some, like the saintly George Herbert, expressed in poetry much that was best in the Church of England; others, like Milton, stirred by different ideals, represented the militant and reforming spirit of Puritanism. But great as this difference may seem between the Anglican and the Puritan, it is insignificant to that which separates the Cavalier poets gay, elegant triflers of the Court from those poets who, apart in some respects, are at least united by a devotion to high ideals and by a lofty spirituality of nature. The variety of these schools, or groups, into which the poets of this time may be divided, the irreconcilable differences in feeling, and in the general attitude towards life, are characteristic of the confusion of the time. This diversity, we must remember, is not wholly due to the inevitable differences in human character, it is also national,

for it is the literary expression of those conflicting beliefs and ideals which were fought out in the Civil War.

The Spenserian School. While he had few followers among his contemporaries, Spenser has exercised a profound and almost continuous influence upon the English poetry of the succeeding time. His effect upon the poetry of the early seventeenth century was probably greater than that of any other Elizabethan, not excepting Shakespeare himself. Especially at this time a number of poets, of whom we may speak as the Spenserian School, were directly and specifically influenced by Spenser's poetic mood. They used the old forms of allegory and romance in which to treat new themes in science, religion, and philosophy. Retaining the familiar figures and associations of classical mythology, one poet explains the parts of the human body, another tells the story of the life of Christ. This strange combination naturally leads to great incongruity; but there is in these poems much genuine beauty. The authors have caught something of the master's fluent melody and ease of versification. Descriptions of Nature, of dawn and sunset, of field and stream, are woven in with the story of shepherds' and shepherdesses' loves; and we are often made to forget the scientific or religious theme in the background of romantic adventure, and the charm of an Arcadian atmosphere of quiet and beauty.

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John Donne. While these poets thus followed Divinest Spenser," others were led in a very different direction through the example of the great but eccentric poet, JOHN DONNE (1573-1631). Donne was a man of intense and "highly passionate nature. In his youth he showed that delight in action, travel, and adventure characteristic of so many of the great Elizabethans.

He was a hard student. Yet he found time to join the group at the Mermaid Tavern, to frequent the best society, and gather round him a host of friends. In 1617 the death of his wife seemed to work a great change in him; he turned from worldly interests and pursuits and concentrated his thought on things spiritual. He had entered the Church in 1615. In 1621 he was made Dean of St. Paul's, and became one of the greatest preachers England had ever known. His poetry was almost all written before the death of his wife; after that event he expressed himself chiefly through his sermons.

Donne is one of the great figures in Elizabethan literature. Both in subject-matter and in form his poetry is distinguished from that of his contemporaries. Rejecting the stock figures and poetic apparatus - gods and goddesses, nymphs and shepherds which the Elizabethan writers had gleaned from their study of the classics, Donne drew his comparisons from the lore of science, law, and metaphysics, in which he was deeply versed. He differed too from most Elizabethans in his rather careless versification and in his frequent obscurity of thought. Ben Jonson once said that "Donne, for not keeping accent, deserved hanging," and that "for not being understood he would perish." But Jonson also spoke of him as "the first poet in the world in some things;" and we feel that the praise was not undue. Donne's poetry is difficult and abstruse, but it is the poetry of a great mind. His obscurity is largely due to his use of far-fetched figures of speech, called conceits. Many writers of the time were going out of their way in the search for these ingenious comparisons and wiredrawn subtleties of thought. But with Donne such over-refinements, in many instances, seem natural rather than affected, and more profound than fantastic.

Donne's mental grasp and his command of language are shown in his grim realism, and in the packed thought of his verses, which is expressed oftentimes in the tersest words. An example is found in the description of a storm at sea in his poem The Storm:

"Lightning was all our light, and it rain'd more
Than if the sun had drunk the sea before.
Some coffin'd in their cabins lie, equally

Grieved that they are not dead, and yet must die;
And as sin-burden'd souls from grave will creep
At the last day, some forth their cabins peep,
And trembling ask, 'What news?'

"Some sitting on the hatches would seem there
With hideous gazing to fear away fear.
Then note they the ship's sicknesses, the mast
Shaked with an ague, and the hold and waist
With a salt dropsy clogg'd, and all our tacklings
Snapping, like too-too-high-stretch'd treble strings
And from our tatter'd sails rags drop down so,
As from one hang'd in chains a year ago."

Herbert and Vaughan. — Donne's example in the use of conceits and in the writing of devotional poems was followed by a number of poets who succeeded him, and whom we may call the Religious Poets. Some of these writers carried the use of conceits to the point of extravagance. Others, however, wrote more simply, especially GEORGE HERBERT (1593-1633) and HENRY VAUGHAN (1621-1695), whose poetry is full of sincere religious feeling. Indeed, so tranquil is it, so lifted into the serene air of holy meditations, that it seems a place of sanctity in the midst of a turbulent age. The circumstances in which these two poets wrote were in keeping with the remote and unworldly atmosphere of their work, for Herbert was a country parson, and Vaughan a village

doctor in Wales. Herbert, sprung from the younger branch of a distinguished family, was a courtier in his youth, and thought of devoting himself to a public career. His birth and spirit, he tells us, entangled him in a world of strife, and inclined him towards

"the way that takes the town."

But after some hesitation, he resolved to take orders. In 1630 he became vicar of Bemerton, a village about a mile from Salisbury. Here he wrote his poems, and here he died three years later.

Herbert's poetry has nothing of the inspired majesty of Milton's verse, but it pleases by its even tone of joyous contentment in the round of daily service and worship. Occasionally, as in the verses entitled The Collar, he strikes a note of passion which tells of the spiritual conflict through which he passed. In his most famous book of poems, The Temple (1633), the reader is invited to enter The Porch of the holy edifice, and in The Church to realize with the author the full joy of a religious life. To paraphrase the words of his biographer, Isaac Walton, Herbert was lowly in his own eyes and lovely in the eyes of others, and both the beauty of his nature and the religious seclusion of his surroundings shine through his poems. "It is his quiet religion, his quaint, contemplative, vicarage-garden note of thought and scholarship, which pleases most, and will always please, the calm piety of England."

Vaughan. - Vaughan, Herbert's disciple in sacred poetry, fell below his master in art, but surpassed him in depth and originality. Living out his secluded life in the quiet valley of the Usk, Vaughan saw God revealed not only in the services of the Church, but also in the living world of Nature, in the holy innocence of child