England's Antiphon. George MacDonald
hold fast, after what fashion may be possible, the vanishing song that has changed its key, is indeed a victory over the flesh, however childish the forms in which the faith may embody itself, however weak the logic with which it may defend its intrenchments.
The poem which has led me to make these remarks is in many respects noteworthy. It is very different in style and language from any I have yet given. There was little communication to blend the different modes of speech prevailing in different parts of the country. It belongs,24 according to students of English, to the Midland dialect of the fourteenth century. The author is beyond conjecture.
It is not merely the antiquity of the language that causes its difficulty, but the accumulated weight of artistically fantastic and puzzling requirements which the writer had laid upon himself in its composition. The nature of these I shall be enabled to show by printing the first twelve lines almost as they stand in the manuscript.
Perle plesaunte to prynces paye,
To clanly clos in golde so clere!
Oute of oryent I hardyly saye,
Ne proued I neuer her precios pere;
So rounde, so reken in vche araye,
So smal, so smothe her sydes were!
Quere-so-euer I iugged gemmes gaye,
I sette hyr sengeley in synglure:
Allas! I leste hyr in on erbere,
Thurh gresse to grounde hit fro me yot;
I dewyne for-dolked of luf daungere,
Of that pryuy perle with-outen spot.
Here it will be observed that the Norman mode—that of rhymes—is employed, and that there is a far more careful measure in the line that is found in the poem last quoted. But the rhyming is carried to such an excess as to involve the necessity of constant invention of phrase to meet its requirements—a fertile source of obscurity. The most difficult form of stanza in respect of rhyme now in use is the Spenserian, in which, consisting of nine lines, four words rhyme together, three words, and two words. But the stanza in the poem before us consists of twelve lines, six of which, two of which, four of which, rhyme together. This we should count hard enough; but it does not nearly exhaust the tyranny of the problem the author has undertaken. I have already said that one of the essentials of the poetic form in Anglo-Saxon was the commencement of three or more words in the line with the same sound: this peculiarity he has exaggerated: every line has as many words as possible commencing with the same sound. In the first line, for instance,—and it must be remembered that the author's line is much shorter than the Anglo-Saxon line,—there are four words beginning with p; in the second, three beginning with cl, and so on. This, of course, necessitates much not merely of circumlocution, but of contrivance, involving endless obscurity.
He has gone on to exaggerate the peculiarities of Norman verse as well; but I think it better not to run the risk of wearying my reader by pointing out more of his oddities. I will now betake myself to what is far more interesting as well as valuable.
The poem sets forth the grief and consolation of a father who has lost his daughter. It is called The Pearl. Here is a literal rendering, line for line, into modern English words, not modern English speech, of the stanza which I have already given in its original form:
Pearl pleasant to prince's pleasure,
Most cleanly closed in gold so clear!
Out of the Orient, I boldly say,
I never proved her precious equal;
So round, so beautiful in every point!
So small, so smooth, her sides were!
Wheresoever I judged gemmes gay
I set her singly in singleness.
Alas! I lost her in an arbour;
Through the grass to the ground it from me went.
I pine, sorely wounded by dangerous love
Of that especial pearl without spot.
The father calls himself a jeweller; the pearl is his daughter. He has lost the pearl in the grass; it has gone to the ground, and he cannot find it; that is, his daughter is dead and buried. Perhaps the most touching line is one in which he says to the grave:
O moul, thou marrez a myry mele.
(O mould, thou marrest a merry talk.)
The poet, who is surely the father himself, cannot always keep up the allegory; his heart burns holes in it constantly; at one time he says she, at another it, and, between the girl and the pearl, the poem is bewildered. But the allegory helps him out with what he means notwithstanding; for although the highest aim of poetry is to say the deepest things in the simplest manner, humanity must turn from mode to mode, and try a thousand, ere it finds the best. The individual, in his new endeavour to make "the word cousin to the deed," must take up the forms his fathers have left him, and add to them, if he may, new forms of his own. In both the great revivals of literature, the very material of poetry was allegory.
The father falls asleep on his child's grave, and has a dream, or rather a vision, of a country where everything—after the childish imagination which invents differences instead of discovering harmonies—is super-naturally beautiful: rich rocks with a gleaming glory, crystal cliffs, woods with blue trunks and leaves of burnished silver, gravel of precious Orient pearls, form the landscape, in which are delicious fruits, and birds of flaming colours and sweet songs: its loveliness no man with a tongue is worthy to describe. He comes to the bank of a river:
Swinging sweet the water did sweep
With a whispering speech flowing adown;
(Wyth a rownande rourde raykande aryght)
and the stones at the bottom were shining like stars. It is a noteworthy specimen of the mode in which the imagination works when invention is dissociated from observation and faith. But the sort of way in which some would improve the world now, if they might, is not so very far in advance of this would-be glorification of Nature. The barest heath and sky have lovelinesses infinitely beyond the most gorgeous of such phantasmagoric idealization of her beauties; and the most wretched condition of humanity struggling for existence contains elements of worth and future development inappreciable by the philanthropy that would elevate them by cultivating their self-love.
At the foot of a crystal cliff, on the opposite side of the river, which he cannot cross, he sees a maiden sitting, clothed and crowned with pearls, and wearing one pearl of surpassing wonder and spotlessness upon her breast. I now make the spelling and forms of the words as modern as I may, altering the text no further.
"O pearl," quoth I, "in perlés pight, pitched, dressed.
Art thou my pearl that I have plained? mourned.
Regretted by myn one, on night? by myself.
Much longing have I for thee layned hidden.
Since into grass thou me a-glyghte; didst glide from me.
Pensive, payred, I am for-pained,25 pined away.
And thou in a life of liking light bright pleasure.
In Paradise-earth, of strife unstrained! untortured with strife.
What wyrde hath hither my jewel vayned, destiny: carried off.
And done me in this del and great danger? sorrow.
Fro we in twain were towen and twayned, since: pulled: divided.
I have been a joyless jeweller."
That jewel then in gemmés gente, gracious.
Vered
For the knowledge of this poem I am indebted to the Early English Text Society, now printing so many valuable manuscripts.
The for here is only an intensive.