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It is Holy Week, and I’ve decided for our Poem of the Week to go to C. S. Lewis’s favorite English poet, Edmund Spenser. I mean by “favorite” that he was most warmly moved by Spenser’s work, not that he thought Spenser was greater than Shakespeare or Milton — though he was well aware that Spenser was great indeed. People used to call him “the poet’s poet,” for the mellifluousness of his verse and for the variety and the ease of his imagination, which I trust you’ll hear in today’s selection.
First let me set the stage. Spenser liked to play on a kind of self-deprecating irony, sometimes as if he were a simple shepherd piping a song to his harvest queen, sometimes as if he were at his wits’ end as to how to continue with his narrative, and sometimes as if he were writing with a lesser motive and with modest skill, when actually he is reaching for the heights and expects us to be aware of that. Such is the case here. The work is called Four Hymns: a hymn of love (whose main figure is Cupid), a hymn of beauty (Venus), a hymn of heavenly love (Jesus), and a hymn of heavenly beauty (Wisdom, portrayed as the queen of heaven, seated in the bosom of God). Spenser says in the letter he appends to the beginning that he wrote the first two hymns “in the greener times of my youth,” but that he was worried that his fellow youths had been too carried away by their passion, so to correct for the wrong, he has added the last two hymns “of heavenly and celestial beauty.” Well, that’s Spenser poking us in the ribs, and saying, “Pay close attention, because the four hymns here are all related to one another. There’s nothing the least bit salacious or even salty in the first two. They’re meant to lead you on the ascent from earthly love and beauty to heavenly love and beauty, because heaven is both their wellspring and their aim.” For love, even earthly love, he says in the first of his hymns,
is Lord of truth and loyalty,
Lifting himself out of the lowly dust
On golden plumes up to the purest sky,
Above the reach of loathly sinful lust.
Cupid’s arrow sure does hurt, but in chaste hearts it’s a wound that raises them up to heroic deeds, and to the Paradise of delight.
It’s easy, then, to follow up the Hymn to Love with a Hymn to Beauty, with Venus as the figure — and in art and poetry, in philosophy and theology, Venus, we should understand, had two forms, one earthly, one heavenly. It’s the latter that Spenser has in mind, the beauty that raises us beyond ourselves, even to contemplation of the whole created universe and its orderly pattern, which, he says,
Is perfect Beauty which all men adore,
Whose face and feature doth so much excel
All mortal sense, that none the same may tell.
Again, let me make clear — those lines are from the Hymn to Beauty, not the Hymn to Heavenly Beauty. So if we expect to ascend from this point, where can we go? Spenser surprises us, in the Hymn to Heavenly Love, by returning us to earth, in the person of Jesus.
But that’s not before he sets us before all time and all created things, in the begetting of the Son:
That high eternal power, which now doth move
In all these things, moved in itself by love.
Then comes the creation of the angels in their “trinal triplicities,” and of all this universe, and of man made in God’s image,
In whom he might his mighty self behold,
For love doth love the thing beloved to see
That like itself in lovely shape may be.
But man fell from grace, and from pure love the Son came among us in the flesh, to suffer and to die in atonement for our sins. That’s where our passage begins.
One small but I think fascinating point. Spenser has set up his Four Hymns in a double-interlocking structure. Two belong to earth, though they direct our eyes and our hearts to heaven — the first two. Two belong to heaven, though they pour out their love and their wisdom upon the earth — the second two. The first in each pair is devoted to love; the second, to beauty. Thus they are like the four elements, earth, water, air, and fire, with their interlaced relations. For earth is cold and dry, water is cold and moist, air is warm and moist, and fire is warm and dry. As those four dance in a ring, so Spenser’s Four Hymns are meant to show forth a world embracing both heaven and earth, a world of love and beauty.
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Out of the bosom of eternal bliss In which he reigned with his glorious Sire, He down descended, like a most demiss And abject thrall, in flesh's frail attire, That he for man might pay sin's deadly hire, And him restore unto that happy state In which he stood before his hapless fate. In flesh at first the guilt committed was, Therefore in flesh it must be satisfied: Nor spirit, nor angel, though they man surpass, Could make amends to God for man's disguide, But only man himself, who self did slide. So taking flesh of virgin's sacred womb, For man's dear sake he did a man become. And that most blessed body, which was born Without all blemish or reproachful blame, He freely gave to be both rent and torn Of cruel hands, who with despiteful shame Reviling him, that them most vile became, At length him nailed on a gallow tree, And slew the just by most unjust decree. O huge and most unspeakable impression Of love's deep wound, that pierced the piteous heart Of that dear Lord with so entire affection, And sharply launching every inner part, Dolors of death into his soul did dart, Doing him die, that never it deserved, To free his foes that from his hest had swerved. What heart can feel least touch of so sore launch, Or thought can think the depth of so dear wound? Whose bleeding source their streams yet never staunch But still do flow, and freshly still redound To heal the sores of sinful souls unsound, And cleanse the guilt of that infected crime Which was enrooted in all fleshly slime. O blessed well of love, O flower of grace, O glorious Morning star, O lamp of light, Most lively image of thy Father's face, Eternal King of glory, Lord of might, Meek Lamb of God before all worlds behight, How can we thee requite for all this good? Or what can prize that thy most precious blood?
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