CHAPTER X.

RELIGIOUS POEMS: "SAUL," CHRISTMAS EVE,”

THE SUN."

I HAVE called the present group of poems religious because they deal more directly than is usual with the poet with religious themes and ideas, and, though one of them has vivid dramatic properties, the ideas as such have much prominence even there. The poems differ much from each other in certain respects. The emotional key and musical quality of "Saul" is very distinct from the argumentative spirit and style of "Christmas Eve," or the didactic aim of "The Sun." But in themes and ideas they complement each other the better for these differences.

Their dates are widely apart: "Saul," 1845 ; Christmas Eve," 1850; and "The Sun" (" Ferishtah's Fancies"), 1885. Standing thus forty years apart, they show well the depth and stability of the poet's interest in their themes. He has always been and he remains deeply interested in these matters. Through his career as a poet, the greater facts and ideas of

religion have found in him a student. Other poets besides in our age have been drawn to these questions, but no one has so well expressed the inner spirit and worth of religion or the essential greatness of its ideas.

The mere mention of religious poetry is apt, I am aware, to prove an offence to lovers of poetry; it has so often been a poetry of special emotions and narrow ideas; it has so rarely had value as literature. Yet only in so far as these and similar poems in Browning have the general truth and broad interest of literature do I present them for study. And it seems to me that these poems, in their method as in their matter, have that quality. I judge them to be a proof of the depth of modern poetry, and an instance of the modern spirit as regards the whole subject of religion.

Religion in history is a great body of facts, throwing light not merely on the institutions, but on the very life of man. And religion in the present is not merely a tradition from the past, but a part of living experience. It has sprung, it springs, out of the nature and relations of man as something strictly natural. In that sense these facts of religion belong to and bear upon all who have to do with man or human life.

And Browning has explored the facts in that sense and with that aim. He is in deep agreement with the great modern view of religion—of religion as part of the vital study of man. He has sought out these facts in his own mind, and the facts of other minds and lives, for their proper interest and large

significance as regards the nature of man. Religion interests him little as a body of opinion; more as a faith, though rather in a way of suggestion than of definition; but most of all as a revelation of man, and as a clue to man's thought and passion, and only through these to what may be known or guessed of the cosmic order. With a wide, if not impartial and really comprehensive, interest in the facts of man's nature, he has shown a special interest in the bearing and import of the emotions and beliefs we call religious. He has appreciated and shown the unique place and power of religion among the facts of the mind, among the factors of life. He has, as a poet freely interested in man, exhibited the natural energy, the reality, of religion.

But it is as a poet. Let this be distinctly said and clearly seen, for two reasons. However true theology may be, and however valuable “edification" from their own standpoints and within their own spheres, these are not the poet's, and with these the poet meddles only to muddle, to lose his way and value. Looking at facts and ideas within the province of religion, his part is to see them in their place, to catch them in their action, to interpret and render their living value. If the modern mind, looking at the facts of religious history, regards them as it regards other facts in their order, and seeks to explain them in relation to man and experience, and man with due regard to them, the poet must carry the process and principle to a farther stage and a higher

power. He must present them "alive and at work," if I may say so-present them as they play their parts in the souls of men, or as they reveal the passion and play of the natures of men.

And it is in this way and as a poet that Browning has presented these ideas and their relations to men's lives. And the interest and power of some of his studies of this kind are so great, his statement of certain religious ideas in their relation to the soul and to life is so forcible, that he may be counted in the class of those who, by sheer power and vitality of conception, have given independent and original witness to the human truth of religion.

The larger relations of this poetry to spiritual religion will be considered under another group of the poems. For the present we take only the ideas presented in the poems now chosen.

Saul," vol. iii. p. 146. This poem is one of the early dramatic lyrics. It belongs to the "Bells and Pomegranates" series in its first form. Its date is 1845. In that form it only went as far as section ix. (i.-ix.). When re-issued in "Men and Women," in 1855, it was much enlarged, and, from our present standpoint, had got a new purpose. The poet had in the interval added its great sections x.-xix. The subject had clearly attracted him, and he threw all his power of certain kinds into its development-his power of passion, of music, of mystical thought and hope. In its kind it is one of his finest poems-one of the finest proofs of his poetic power, his swiftness and sustained

energy of feeling and of verse; while in the matter of it it has several aspects of deep interest.

Let us follow the development of the poem, and make clear as to its scheme. Saul, Israel's chosen king and special hope, is mad, driven so by his own wild and wilful passions. Those about him are impotent to control or help him. David is sent for as one likely to bring help. He comes with music and song, and even more, with his humanity and faith, to try what may be done for the mad king. He tries all kinds of song and all earthly appeals, and is only very partially successful. When impelled to save, he is driven by his very helplessness and yearning out upon God-on "the Christ in God"-and finds at length in that (when the whole feeling and resource of his nature had been roused) the saving help and vital power he was seeking. The divine love and pity, the essential humanity of Deity, are our last ground of hope for such cases, and if, in a life such as ours and with men as they are, they are not a necessary truth, they are surely a reasonable faith.

The poem is a dramatic lyric. It gives an account of the whole situation from a single point of view. David is the speaker, and tells all that happened as he saw and felt it. And, most fitly, the whole is highstrung. It was a task to put his whole nature to the test and bring out all his passion, and Browning makes you feel it so, not only in the resource of the poet, but in the strain of the man. So it is highly lyrical. In other words, Browning seeks the heart of the