A Poem in Seven Books^[1] By the Rev. John Brande Morris^[2]

[Author Unknown]

[Published in The Pioneer, January 1843]

[Edited and Annotated by Stephanie Choi for University of Arizona Antebellum Magazine Edition Project, 4 May 2015]

[Editor's Note]

 

The famous "Tracts for the times"^[3] have wrought a convulsion in England, and in the church establishment there, some quiverings of which have not been unfelt in this country. The aim of Puseyism^[4], so far as we understand it, is to create a life under those outward forms* of the service, which, merely as forms, are but ribs of death, - to bring back the old poetic romance of belief which took a sorrowful leave of the church when the painter and sculptor were locked out of it, and to unite once more religion and beauty, whom God had joined, but whom man had striven to put asunder. The Puritans went too far in their iconoclasm^[5]. In breaking the form and image, they too often shattered the substance and spirit also, and we cannot but think that there was as much image-worship, and perhaps more pride, in their own adoration of close-cropt plainness as in that bowing of the knee to paintings and statues which they so fiercely warred upon with tongue and sword. Those divine shadowings forth of the Maid-mother, and those venerable effigies of holy saints and martyrs, who, in their dim Gothic oratories, with clasped hands and lifted eyes, continued unchanged their silent, marble supplication for generation after generation of the fleshly worshippers below, - these were not meant by the Roman Church (however ignorance and superstition may have perverted their first pure intent) as objects of worship. They were not put there as means whereby the spirit might reach the pure, eternal source of all spirit, but rather as material types by which the bodily senses might also be led upward and be no longer a clog and hindrance to their heavenward inmate. They were but the illuminations of the missal, the outward emblems and mottos of a spiritual, inward meaning. We cannot venerate an establishment like that of the English Church, but we sympathize with those of its members who (if we rightly understand their object, from a very superficial glance) are striving to bring back the old simple faith in its outward observances; for we are well assured that belief in anything is better food for the soul than the dry husks of an uninterested acquiescence, or a concealed, blase unbelief. To attain their end, they have argued and persuaded in prose, they have gone back to the early fathers, (as if to revivify the dead body of their ritual by touching it with the bones of the buried prophets,) and they have enlisted the golden mouth of poesy in their cause.

The object of the volume before us, is to point out in nature the reality of those physical types made use of in Scripture, and in the forms of church worship, to interpret spiritual mysteries. It is a Church-of England exposition of the Swedenborgian doctrine of correspondences^[6]. Dr. Johnson^[7] kicked his foot against stone in answer to the deniers of the existence of matter, and a foolish old philosopher (a word which means one who makes a puzzle of simple things) endured martyrdom for this immaterial theory, by suffering himself to be run over by a chariot which he contended was but a type or spiritual appearance. But to prove the existence of matter does not account for its existence. Indeed the utmost of proof is only as to its hardness and capability of impressing matter, for it is no less an existence, whether it be called a sign or a reality. Poets from the first, have been unconsciously accounting for it by metaphorically showing that every fact which we discern in spirit has its index or" marginal finger" in matter. To them everything in matter is a metaphor for something in spirit, and the great universe itself an allegory expanded into numberless cantos.

The attempt of Mr. Morris, then, is to render this semi-conscious belief into a philosophical system. Philosophy should always be the groundwork to poetry, but whether poetry can be made a fit vehicle for it, may well be doubted. The pyramidal form has long been known as the true one for grouping in art, and as the most enduring in architecture, but in order to this, our first postulate is that it do not stand upon its apex. So is it of poetry and philosophy; poetry is the plant, philosophy is the soil which feeds its roots, and we do not take the safest method of insuring the growth of the one by heaping it wholly over with the other*. The book before us contains many beautiful and even poetical passages, but it might be more fitly called a dictionary of correspondences inverse, than a poem. The feeling manifested in it has sometimes reminded us of Very's sonnets^[8], but it is not of so wide and generous a scope, and is rather pietistic^[9] than pious.

We copy one or two of the passages which most pleased us in the first part of the book, - for we must confess that we have not yet read it through, it being almost too cataloguish (if we may use so harsh a term) for continuous reading.

 

"Nature is not untongued with accents meek,

What time, escaping from the unseasoned mirth

Of this world's drunkards, he in sadness roams

Along some lonelier path; about are strewed

Gentle forget-me-nots to call to mind

The countless spirits who may interpose

In his behalf and claim return of love :

The wild rose breathes its fragrancy abroad

As if 't was made to cheer him, and the bell

That bends its head beneath the hawthorn rows

Hath semblance of a brotherhood with him

Who under sorrows kneels in hidden prayer.

In everything is nature, like a home

Fraught with the offices of sister's ready love."

 

In the following, the death of a botanical friend is

alluded to.

 

                        ----------------" lilies grew

Within the room of one I dearly loved,

And dearly love with freshness unimpared

By winter's outward air. For friends are friends,

And friendship is a habit of the soul

Which death with flimsy veil may intercept

So only as to make it energise

By faith not otherwise than distance doth,

or other temporary foe to love.

 

And so the change which death to saints supplies

May be with kindred circumstance of life Attended. They are haply looking back

Upon the childhood of existence here

As we may look upon our infancy And feel whereto its lessons bent their way.

Haply to him the vegetable world

Is opened into a transcendent scheme,

And he is marvelling how men can walk

Unawed among prophetic presences,

Or harshly breaking symbols delicate." –

 

The metre of the poem seems to be founded on the blank verse of Milton, and his parenthetic style (or trick, as it might be called,) has been caught by our author to such a degree as renders him often obscure and tiresome. The spirit of the book is good, though there is too decided a leaning toward asceticism, both spiritual and bodily. There is less bigotry than was to have been expected, indeed there is scarce any, except what must necessarily result from a firm belief in the principles of that church of which the author is a member. If not a highly poetical book, it is at least a very interesting one on a highly poetical subject.

 

*”Forms are like barrels only of value when they are full.”---Guesses at Truth

*Sir James Mackintosh^[10], in his History of Ethical Philosophy, says that men too often forget the distinction between philosophical poetry and versified philosophy.

 

Editor's Note

In discussing his work, Morris asserts that the “same Author” creates both the systems that the Church and Nature proceed from. Further, that because of this, “there arises, upon the principles of that great divine, an immediate probability that there will be a similarity in the two” (Rowell, 7). Morris uses poetry to draw this connection between Nature and the Church. While Morris was not one of the main leaders of the Oxford movement, or one whose literary work remains a symbol of the movement, poetry was the main vehicle used to drive the movement. In fact, the movement was “born in the spirit of poetry” (Jasper, 218). John Keble published the guiding spirits of the movement in 1827, with his series of poems, The Christian Year. Keble saw poetry and religion as inseparable.  Keble published many poems throughout the movement, and drew many of his devotional reflections in his poems from nature: “he draws his devotional reflections from nature, by recourse to analogy”, just like Morris (Jasper, 228).

In comparing the Oxford Movement poetry and nature relationship with the Romantic movement occurring at the same time, Jasper, in his article studying both Keble, and another prominent leader of the movement, J.H. Newman, states that the Oxford movement leaders “carried the poetic genius of the Romantics into their theology and devotion so that finally the two elements could not be disentangled (229). For romantics, nature was a place where the “self” could “fulfill its potential”. American Romantics viewed nature as a refuge, and as a source of knowledge and/or spirituality. An important point of distinction to make, though, is that in Romanticism, there was a key emphasis on individualism. Thus, reaching spirituality in nature was an individual and “self” endeavor (“American Romanticism”). In comparison, the key poetry leading the Oxford Movement, used the “poetic genius of the Romantics into their theology and devotion” (Jasper, 229) in a way that furthered their mission of integrating more traditional Catholic practices in the Anglican Church. Thus, there is an apparent tension between Romanticism and the Oxford movement; though, at the same time, they both carry similar themes of the use of poetry and philosophy, and the existent relationship between religion and nature.  

The reviewers consider the notion of poetry and philosophy in its discussion of the poem. They state, “philosophy should always be the groundwork to poetry, but whether poetry can be made a fit vehicle for it, may well be doubted”. The questions and thoughts being raised here regard a theme that also seems to be found in the review of Hawthorne’s Historical Tales for Youth: the relationship between form and content. Again, questions rise around how form can impact content, or how content shapes form. In addition, is poetry the place to discuss philosophy? In the review of "Historical Tales," the argument seems to be that poetry is not the right method of teaching kids. However, in this piece, an argument for or against doesn’t seem to be made. The end of the piece leaves the reader to think with the assertion that the book is “If not a highly poetical book, it is at least a very interesting one on a highly poetical subject”. This leaves the reader to think about whether it is a poetical book or just a book on a poetical subject. Is it poetry? Literary theory on the purpose and place of poetry is still is popular topic among scholars and the literary community today. There are more forms and areas of poetics today. A discussion around the growing popularity of spoken word poetry would likely raise the same ideas and questions the reviewers raise in regards to Oxford movement poetry. Slam poetry is usually a very straightforward commentary or complaint about a societal injustice. The performance works to elicit collective emotion and reaction in the audience surrounding the issue the slam poem involves. The idea of this popular, relatively new form of poetry and performance could be reviewed in same way and raise the same questions as the review of John Morris’s Nature, A Parable.

 

Notes