Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845

Wordsworth

"The God of love! Ah, benedicite,
How mighty and how great a lord is he,
For he of low hearts can make high, of high
He can make low and unto death bring nigh,
And hard hearts he can make them kind and free.

"Within a little time, as hath been found,
He can make sick folk whole, and fresh, and sound.
Them who are whole in body and in mind
He can make sick, bind can he and unbind
All that he will have bound, or have unbound.

"To tell his might my wit may not suffice,
Foolish men he can make them out of wise;
For he may do all that he will devise,
Loose livers he can make abate their vice,
And proud hearts can make tremble in a trice.

"In brief, the whole of what he will, he may;
Against him dare not any wight say nay;
To humble or afflict whome'er he will,
To gladden or to grieve, he hath like skill;
But most his might he sheds on the eve of May.

"For every true heart, gentle heart and free,
That with him is, or thinketh so to be,
Now against May shall have some stirring – whether
To joy, or be it to some mourning; never
At other time, methinks, in like degree.

"For now when they may hear the small birds' song,
And see the budding leaves the branches throng,
This unto their rememberance doth bring
All kinds of pleasure, mix'd with sorrowing,
And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long.

"And of that longing heaviness doth come,
Whence oft great sickness grows of heart and home;
Sick are they all for lack of their desire;
And thus in May their hearts are set on fire,
So that they burn forth in great martyrdom."

Here is the master of the art; and his work, most of all, therefore, makes us doubt the practicability of the thing undertaken. He works reverently, lovingly, surely with full apprehension of Chaucer; and yet, at every word where he leaves Chaucer, the spirit of Chaucer leaves the verse. You see plainly that his rule is to change the least that can possibly be changed. Yet the gentle grace, the lingering musical sweetness, the taking simplicity, of the wise old poet, vanishes – brushed away like the down from the butterfly's wing, by the lightest and most timorous touch.

"For he can make of lowè hertès highe."

There is the soul of the lover's poet, of the poet himself a lover, poured out and along in one fond verse, gratefully consecrated to the mystery of love, which he, too, has experienced when he – the shy, the fearful, the reserved – was yet by the touch of that all-powerful ray which enkindled, and to his own surprise made elate to hope and to dare.

"Shoots invisible virtue even to the deep,"

But now contract, as Wordsworth does, the dedicated verse into a half verse, and bring together the two distinct and opposite mysteries under one enunciation – in short, divide the one verse to two subjects —

"For he of low hearts can make high – of high
He can make low;"

and the fact vouched remains the same, the simplicity of the words is kept, for they are the very words, and yet something is gone – and in that something every thing! There is no longer the dwelling upon the words, no longer the dilated utterance of a heart that melts with its own thoughts, no longer the consecration of the verse to its matter, no longer the softness, the light, the fragrance, the charm – no longer, in a word, the old manner. Here is, in short, the philosophical observation touching love, "the saw of might" still; but the love itself here is not. A kindly and moved observer speaks, not a lover.

In one of the above-cited stanzas, Urry seems to have misled Wordsworth. Stanza iv. verse 4, Chaucer says: —

"And whoso that he wol, he lougheth or siketh."

The sense undoubtedly is, "and whosoever he" – namely, the God of Love – "will, he" – namely, the Lover – "laugheth or sigheth accordingly." But Urry mistaking the construction – supposed that he, in both places, meant the god only. He had, therefore, to find out in "lougheth" and "siketh," actions predicable of the love-god. The verse accordingly runs thus with him,

"And who that he wol, he loweth or siketh."

Now, it is true, that, after all, we do not exactly know how Urry understood his own reading; for he did not make his own glossary. But from his glossary, we find that "to lowe" is to praise, to allow, to approve – furthermore that "siketh" in this place means "maketh sick." Wordsworth, following as it would appear the lection of Urry, but only half agreeing to the interpretation of Urry's glossarist, has rendered the line

"To humble or afflict whome'er he will."

He has understood in his own way, from an obvious suggestion, "loweth," to mean, maketh low, humbleth; whilst "afflict" is a ready turn for "maketh sick" of the glossary. But here Wordsworth cannot be in the right. For Chaucer is now busied with magnifying the kingdom of love by accumulated antitheses – high, low – sick, whole – wise, foolish – the wicked turns good, the proud shrink and fear – the God, at his pleasure, gladdens or grieves. The phrase under question must conform to the manner of the place where it appears. An opposition of meanings is indispensable. "Humble or afflict," which are both on one side, cannot be right. "Approveth or maketh sick," are on opposite sides, but will hardly pick one another out for antagonists. "Laugheth or sigheth," has the vividness and simplicity of Chaucer, the most exact contrariety matches them – and the two phenomena cannot be left out of a lover's enumeration.

Chaucer says of his 'bosom's lord,'

"And most his might he sheddeth ever in May" —

renowning here, as we saw that he does elsewhere, the whole month, as love's own segment of the zodiacal circle. The time of the poem itself is accordingly 'the thridde night of May.' Wordsworth has rendered,

"But most his might he sheds on the eve of May."

Why so? Is the approaching visitation of the power more strongly felt than the power itself in presence? Chaucer says distinctly the contrary, and why with a word lose, or obscure, or hazard the appropriation of the month entire, so conspicuous a tenet in the old poetical mind? And is Eve here taken strictly – the night before May-day, like the Pervigilium Veneris? Or loosely, on the verge of May, answerably to 'ayenes May' afterwards? To the former sense, we might be inclined to propose on the contrary part,

"But sheds his might most on the morrow of May,"

i. e. in prose on May-day morning, consonantly to all the testimonies.

Chaucer says that the coming-on of the love-month produces in the heart of the lover

"A maner easè medled with grevaunce."

That is to say, a kind of joy or pleasure, (Fr. aise,) mixed with sadness. He insists, by this expression, upon the strangeness of the kind, peculiar to the willing sufferers under this unique passion, "love's pleasing smart." Did Wordsworth, by intention or misapprehension, leave out this turn of expression, by which, in an age less forward than ours in sentimental researches, Chaucer drew notice to the contradictory nature of the internal state which he described? As if Chaucer had said, "al maner esè," Wordsworth says, "all kinds of pleasure mixed with sorrowing."

In the next line he adds to the intuitions of his master, one of his own profound intuitions, if we construe aright —

"And longing of sweet thoughts that ever long."

That ever long! The sweetest of thoughts are never satisfied with their own deliciousness. Earthly delight, or heavenly delight upon earth, penetrating the soul, stirs in it the perception of its native illimitable capacity for delight. Bliss, which should wholly possess the blest being, plays traitor to itself, turns into a sort of divine dissatisfaction, and brings forth from its teeming and infinite bosom a brood of winged wishes, bright with hues which memory has bestowed, and restless with innate aspirations. Such is our commentary on the truly Wordsworthian line, but it is not a line answerable to Chaucer's —