phrase of Herbert of Cherbury, occurring in a poem entitled "Upon a Question Moved whether Love should Continue for Ever" "Were not our souls immortal made Our equal loves can make them so." Thus, while the Beatific Vision well-nigh absorbs some souls, there are many who dare to hope that love to man will be accounted of as love to God-that love, in brief, as Whittier says, is "one with holiness." And it is through human love only that we can attain to the Divine, as another American poet, Richard Watson Gilder, sets forth "Through love to light! Oh wonderful the way That leads from darkness to the perfect day! To morning that comes singing o'er the sea. Through love to light! Through light, O God, to Thee, "Charity never faileth," says the apostle to the Gentiles. "And who can sever love from charity?" asks Shakespeare, as if in wistful appropriation of the text. The ministry of faith and hope may end with this life, "One lost in certainty, and one in joy." But Love shall only find her proper home in heaven : "Shall stand before the host of heaven confest, For, if God be eternal, then, since God is love, love must needs be eternal also. Matthew Prior: "Charity." X A GOLDEN GRIEF "What though the social circle be denied, WHAT is a golden grief? Is it not a grief that can look backward, through its tears, on a past illumined by kindness, and forward, if also through tears, beyond the brightening west, to a renewal of that past in a more perfect future? What else can gild the dark cloud of sorrow but some such reflections from the sun of Hope, and from the lesser light that rules the night of memory? Thus does the dying Gertrude of Campbell's poem seek to console her lover : "And when this heart hath ceased to beat-oh! think, And let it mitigate thy woe's excess, That thou hast been to me all tenderness, And friend to more than human friendship just. Oh! by that retrospect of happiness, And by the hopes of an immortal trust, God shall assuage thy pangs-when I am laid in dust!" Somewhat thus, too, does a forgotten versifier 1 of the seventeenth century attempt to comfort her husband. Writing under the spell, it would seem, of approaching death, she entreats of him that when she shall have been taken from the world and its "necessary pain" (a beautiful touch of resignation), there shall" no blacks be worn " for her "Not in a ring, my dear, by thee! A thought as sparkling as the diamond, and that must often have flashed comfort on him with its rays. Leigh Hunt, quoting the passage, quaintly remarks that if any one wishes to know "what sort of a thing the shadow of an angel is," he cannot learn it better than from these lines. With something of the anxious persistence of the sick, the dying wife harps on her reluctance that there should be any mourning whatever on her account "As if there were some dismal deed gone, as she shall be, to the "bright palace" of heaven's King. And in her revolt against the emblems of mourning many would sympathise with the gentle lady of a bygone century. Dickens was a strong protester Dyce's "British Poetesses." I against the outward symbols of grief, as was also Tennyson. At the funeral service of Sir Edward Burne-Jones in the Abbey, it was noticed that though almost all the congregation were in mourning, his own family were not, in accordance with the painter's expressed wish, and his opinion that when there is joyous hope of a resurrection it is not meet to attend a funeral in garments emblematic of despair. The once popular Irish poet, Thomas Parnell, draws a vigorous contrast between the gloomy trappings of death and the bliss of the enfranchised soul. If death be but the path to God, "A port of calms, a state of ease From the rough rage of swelling seas," how ill it befits us to welcome it with such mournful emblems as he enumerates. For death was attended with even darker ceremonies in the poet's days (he died in 1717) than in our own. "Nor can the parted body know, Nor wants the soul these forms of woe," reasons Parnell. And rising on the eager wings of faith high above this atmosphere of mortal misery, the dreary "earth-side" of death, as Mrs. Browning called it, he exults in the glorious prospects opening on his spirit-vision. "A just man summoned by God-for what purpose can he go but to meet the Divine love and goodness? I never think about deploring such; and as you and I send for our children, meaning them only love and kindness, how much more Pater noster?" So wrote Thackeray, who through his own fatherly heart was well qualified to judge of the Father-heart of God, to his friend, Mr. Reed, on the death of Mr. Reed's brother. A striking instance of this spirit carried to its logical conclusion is given by Rudolph Lehmann in his "Reminiscences." Condoling with his painter friend, Friedrich Overbeck, on the death of his wife, he was assured by the bereaved husband that the occasion was not one for lamenting, but rather for rejoicing. “All through life," he said, “we pray: Lord may Thy kingdom come! and when it comes we lament and cry, instead of thanking Him. When we lost our only son at the age of nineteen we thanked God on our knees for having preserved him from the temptations of this wicked world." It is in the fine extravagant vein of the old poets that Ben Jonson, in his Elegy on the Lady Anne Pawlet, administers comfort to the stricken parents under the semblance of reproof. Painting a glowing picture of her joys, he bids them "Go now, her happy parents, and be sad, Shakespeare, too, who knows so well how to lacerate the heart with his descriptions of grief, knows also how to administer sharp and wholesome rebuke to the over-morbid exhibitions of it: |