ENG LYRIC POETRY.pdf - STIBA Malang

CAROLINE AMUSEMENTS
inappropriate to the hymnist, the kind of longing stimulated, not stabilized, by
the appeal of liturgy. “Who knows,” writes Carew of his muse,
but that her wandring eyes that run,
Now hunting Glow-wormes, may adore the Sun,
A pure flame may, shot by Almighty power
Into her brest, the earthy flame devoure.
Who knows? The longer Carew contemplates his answer, the more delphic the
question becomes, until it is difficult to imagine a more controlling and moving
“perhaps” than the one that wistfully directs his closing utterance:
My eyes, in penitentiall dew may steepe
That brine, which they for sensuall love did weepe.
So (though ’gainst Natures course) fire may be quencht
With fire, and water be with water drencht.
Perhaps my restless soule, tyr’de with persuit
Of mortall beauty, seeking without fruit
Contentment there, which hath not, when enjoy’d,
Quencht all her thirst, nor satisfied, though cloy’d;
Weary of her vaine search below, Above
In the first Faire may find th’immortall Love.
Prompted by thy example then, no more
In moulds of clay will I my God adore;
But teare those Idols from my heart, and write
What his blest Sprit, not fond Love shall indite;
Then, I no more shall court the verdant Bay,
But the dry leavelesse Trunke on Golgotha;
And rather strive to gaine from thence one Thorne,
Then all the flourishing wreathes by Laureats worne.
Perhaps Carew’s “Perhaps” flirts with another great moment of hesitation by
a contemporary: the moment when George Herbert, writing from within
The Temple in “The Forerunners,” reaffirms his total commitment to God’s
service but does so in a context that also accounts for all that must be
sacrificed, including “Beauty and beauteous words,” in this act of
resignation:
Yet if you go, I passe not; take your way:
For, Thou art still my God, is all that ye
Perhaps with more embellishment can say.
Go birds of spring: let winter have his fee;
Let a bleak paleness chalk the door,
So all within be livelier than before.
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