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James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Poetry and Religion. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays

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James Russell Lowell (1819-1891). Poetry and Religion. David J. Brewer, et al., eds. 1900. The World's Best Essays Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record David J. Brewer, et al., eds.  The World’s Best Essays.  1900. Poetry and Religion
By James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) From “Conversations on the Poets.” Second Conversation, “Chaucer.”
                      “Infantine, Familiar, clasp of things divine”

AN AUTHOR’S piety cannot be proved from the regular occurrence of certain decorums and respectabilities of religion in his works, but from a feeling which permeates the whole. I have read books in which the name of God was never once so much as alluded to, which yet irresistibly persuaded me of the writer’s faith in him and childlike love of him. And I have read others, where that blessed name with a parenthetical and systematic piety, made part of every sentence, and only impressed me like the constantly recurring figures upon calico. There is no intentional piety about Chaucer, no French collar-and-wristband morality, too common in our day. Now, certain days of the week, and certain men, seem to claim a monopoly in religion. It is something quite too costly and precious to make part of every day’s furniture. We must not carry it into the street or the market, lest it get soiled. We doff it and hang it up as easily as a Sunday suit. The Ancients esteemed it sacrilege to touch what was set apart for the gods. Many of our own time imitate that ethnic scrupulousness, and carefully forbear religion, yet are deemed pious men, too. In Chaucer, you will find a natural piety everywhere shining through, mildly and equably, like a lamp set in an alabaster vase. The wise man maintains a hospitable mind. He scruples not to entertain thoughts, no matter how strange and foreign they may be, and to ask news of them of realms which he has never explored. He has no fear of their stirring any treason under his own roof. Chaucer apparently acted upon this principle. He loved speculation, and, when he was running down some theological dogma, he does not mind leaping the church inclosure, and pursuing his prey till it takes refuge under the cassock of the priest himself. But, though he seems not to set much store by forms and outward observances, he is quite too near the days of wonder and belief and earnestness not to be truly religious.

1   The earliest poetry of all countries is sacred poetry, or that in which the idea of God predominates and is developed. The first effort at speech which man’s nature makes in all tongues is, to pronounce the word “Father.” Reverence is the foundation of all poetry. From reverence the spirit climbs on to love, and thence beholds all things. No matter in what Scythian fashion these first recognitions of something above and beyond the soul are uttered, they contain the germs of psalms and prophecies. Whether, for a while, the immortal guest rests satisfied with a Fetich or an Apollo, it has already grasped the clew which leads unerringly to the very highest idea. For reverence is the most keen-eyed and exacting of all the faculties, and, if there be the least flaw in its idol, it will kneel no longer. From wood it rises to gold and ivory; from these, to the yet simpler and more majestic marble; and, planting its foot upon that, it leaps upward to the infinite and invisible. Let our external worship be paid to what gods you will, the soul is restless and dissatisfied until she has soared into the higher region of that true piety in whose presence creeds and forms become mere husks and straw. Always in her intimate recesses the soul builds an altar to the unknown God, and it is here that Poesy makes her sacrifices and officiates as authorized priestess. When I assume reverence, then, as the very primal essence and life of poetry, I claim for it a nobler stirp than it has been the fashion to allow it. Beyond Adam runs back its illustrious genealogy. It stood with Uriel in the sun, and looked down over the battlements of heaven with the angelic guards. In short, it is no other than the religious sentiment itself. That is poetry which makes sorrow lovely, and joy solemn to us, and reveals to us the holiness of things. Faith casts herself upon her neck as upon a sister’s. She shows us what glimpses we get of life’s spiritual face. What she looks on becomes miraculous, though it be but the dust of the wayside; and miracles become but as dust, for their simpleness. There is nothing noble without her; with her there can be nothing mean. What songs the Druids sang within the sacred circuit of Stonehenge we can barely conjecture; but those forlorn stones doubtless echoed with appeals to a higher something; and are not even now without their sanctity, since they chronicle a nation’s desire after God. Whether those forest priests worshiped the strangely beautiful element of fire, or if the pilgrim Belief pitched her tent and for a night rested in some ruder and bleaker creed, there we may yet trace the light footsteps of Poesy, as she led her sister onward to fairer fields, and streams flowing nearer to the oracle of God.

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