The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II

Name: The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II
Author: Crashaw, Richard

Crashaw, Richard

English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700

His homage to the Virgin is put into words that pass the bounds which we
Protestants set to the 'blessed among women' in her great renown, and
even while a Protestant Crashaw fell into what we must regard as the
strange as inexplicable forgetfulness that it is The _Man_, not The
Child, who is our ever-living High-Priest 'within the veil,' and that
not in His mother's bosom, but on the Throne of sculptured light, is His
place. Still, you recognise that the homage to the Virgin-mother is to
the Divine Son through her, and through her in fine if also mistaken
humility. 'Mary' is the Muse of Crashaw; the Lord Jesus his 'Lord' and
hers. I would have the reader spend willing time, in slowly,
meditatively reading the whole of our Poet's sacred Verse, to note how
the thinking thus thrills into feeling, and feeling into rapture--the
rapture of adoration. It is miraculous how he finds words wherewith to
utter his most subtle and vanishing emotion. Sometimes there is a
daintiness and antique richness of wording that you can scarcely equal
out of the highest of our Poets, or only in them. Some of his images
from Nature are scarcely found anywhere else. For example, take this
very difficult one of ice, in the Verse-Letter to the Countess of
Denbigh (vol. i. p. 298, ll. 21-26), 'persuading' her no longer to be
the victim of her doubts:

      'So, when the Year takes cold, we see
      Poor waters _their own prisoners be;
      Fetter'd and lock'd-up fast they lie
      In a cold self-captivity_.
    Th' astonish'd Nymphs their Floud's strange fate deplore,
    To find themselves their own severer shoar.'

Young is striking in his use of the ice-metaphor:

                  'in Passion's flame
    Hearts melt; but _melt like ice, soon harder froze_.'

  (Night-Thoughts, N. II. l. 522-3.)

But how strangely original is the earlier Poet in so cunningly working
it into the very matter of his persuasion! Our quotation from Young
recalls that in the 'Night-Thoughts' there are evident reminiscences of
Crashaw: _e.g._

                  'Midnight veil'd his face:
    Not such as this, not such as Nature makes;
    A midnight Nature shudder'd to behold;
    A midnight new; a dread eclipse, without
    Opposing spheres, from her Creator's frown.'

  (Night IV. ll. 246-250.)

So in 'Gilt was Hell's gloom' (N. VII. l. 1041), and in this portrait of
Satan:

    'Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll
    His baleful eyes!'       (N. IX. ll. 280-1.) and

                  'the fiery gulf,
    That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent;'  (Ib. ll. 473-4)

and

    'Banners streaming as the comet's blaze;' (Ib. l. 323)

and

    'Which makes a hell of hell,' (Ib. l. 340)

we have the impress and inspiration of our Poet.

How infinitely soft and tender and Shakesperean is the 'Epitaph vpon a
yovng Married Covple dead and bvryed together' (with its now restored
lines), thus!--

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Opening the text

The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume IICrashaw, Richard

General

The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II

Crashaw, Richard

English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700

His homage to the Virgin is put into words that pass the bounds which we
Protestants set to the 'blessed among women' in her great renown, and
even while a Protestant Crashaw fell into what we must regard as the
strange as inexplicable forgetfulness that it is The _Man_, not The
Child, who is our ever-living High-Priest 'within the veil,' and that
not in His mother's bosom, but on the Throne of sculptured light, is His
place. Still, you recognise that the homage to the Virgin-mother is to
the Divine Son through her, and through her in fine if also mistaken
humility. 'Mary' is the Muse of Crashaw; the Lord Jesus his 'Lord' and
hers. I would have the reader spend willing time, in slowly,
meditatively reading the whole of our Poet's sacred Verse, to note how
the thinking thus thrills into feeling, and feeling into rapture--the
rapture of adoration. It is miraculous how he finds words wherewith to
utter his most subtle and vanishing emotion. Sometimes there is a
daintiness and antique richness of wording that you can scarcely equal
out of the highest of our Poets, or only in them. Some of his images
from Nature are scarcely found anywhere else. For example, take this
very difficult one of ice, in the Verse-Letter to the Countess of
Denbigh (vol. i. p. 298, ll. 21-26), 'persuading' her no longer to be
the victim of her doubts:

      'So, when the Year takes cold, we see
      Poor waters _their own prisoners be;
      Fetter'd and lock'd-up fast they lie
      In a cold self-captivity_.
    Th' astonish'd Nymphs their Floud's strange fate deplore,
    To find themselves their own severer shoar.'

Young is striking in his use of the ice-metaphor:

                  'in Passion's flame
    Hearts melt; but _melt like ice, soon harder froze_.'

  (Night-Thoughts, N. II. l. 522-3.)

But how strangely original is the earlier Poet in so cunningly working
it into the very matter of his persuasion! Our quotation from Young
recalls that in the 'Night-Thoughts' there are evident reminiscences of
Crashaw: _e.g._

                  'Midnight veil'd his face:
    Not such as this, not such as Nature makes;
    A midnight Nature shudder'd to behold;
    A midnight new; a dread eclipse, without
    Opposing spheres, from her Creator's frown.'

  (Night IV. ll. 246-250.)

So in 'Gilt was Hell's gloom' (N. VII. l. 1041), and in this portrait of
Satan:

    'Like meteors in a stormy sky, how roll
    His baleful eyes!'       (N. IX. ll. 280-1.) and

                  'the fiery gulf,
    That flaming bound of wrath omnipotent;'  (Ib. ll. 473-4)

and

    'Banners streaming as the comet's blaze;' (Ib. l. 323)

and

    'Which makes a hell of hell,' (Ib. l. 340)

we have the impress and inspiration of our Poet.

How infinitely soft and tender and Shakesperean is the 'Epitaph vpon a
yovng Married Covple dead and bvryed together' (with its now restored
lines), thus!--

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II

The Complete Works of Richard Crashaw, Volume II

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