O the flush of universal summer! What a purple light
of love canopies that "bridal of the earth and sky" which every July
morning rehearses and every evening celebrates! All that was glad before
is gladdest now; a roseate life overspreads death and decay; love laughs
in the golden clouds, and revels in the fragrant wind, and bathes in the
floods of all-prevailing, all-pervading light.
So the poets speak; and they ever speak the truth.
Yet, not always the whole truth. Is it not the case that in most minds
this summer gladness is tinged, in some seriously impaired, and in a few
altogether neutralized, by a feeling of melancholy rising out of
the depths of our nature, which is not met but rather fostered, and even
originated, by the very fulness of blessing around? I have known some
persons (and they are not a few, even among those who in company are
vivacious and high-spirited), to whom the exuberance of beauty in high
summer was even an intolerable burden; and the feeling is shared by many
of the finest, if not the healthiest, natures. What can be the reasons
of such a paradoxical and perverse experience? Are they such as have
some bearing upon all men, and are in some shape rooted deep in human
nature? Let us see.
One reason for the feeling of summer-sadness is the
powerful principle of contrast. The mind is so constituted that
it can never rest in any one object presented to it; it is imperatively
forced in considering it to pass out of it and compare it with something
else. So when our eyes range over the barren plains and leafless woods
of winter, they look forward instinctively to another season when a
fresh verdure shall clothe the earth; and the outward desolation is
robbed of half its power. Is not this too the hidden charm of spring—not
so much what it performs, as what it promises—that all the opening buds
and blades and beauties are but hints, beyond which the imagination
travels to a richer future? Now, in summer, we have no such resource.
Nature has given and poured forth all, and when the mind, weary of
gazing, seeks to refresh itself by variety, it finds the world
impoverished, and it can import into the scene of summer, nothing but
images drawn from the seasons of death or of decay. And this the mind
will do, rather than do nothing, or be merely recipient. For I have
often thought that the antagonism which the Records of old declare to
have been established between man and the earth which he tills and
subjugates, may apply to more than the struggle of bodily labour. The
mind too, keeps a position not merely independent of the material
universe, but even antagonistic to it. It will not submit to be merely
the reflex of influences borrowed from the world without; it asserts its
authentic and immortal energy. The only season of the year in which a
very intimate friend of mine has for many years attained really high
spirits, is during the early months of winter, and especially in "gloomy
November;" and I have no doubt the explanation of such cases is, that,
feeling all outward sources and suggestions of gladness removed, and an
array of dismal images crowding in upon the sense, the mind
instinctively recoils upon its own immortality, summons up its innate
and divine strength, and so makes the happiness it does not find.
And just as it refuses to be intimidated into sadness, so will it often
scorn to be bribed into joy. You cannot feed the immortal spirit with
bon-bons. It sees vanity under the verdure of summer, and the trail
of death among the flowers. Therefore, even in laughter the heart is
sorrowful; in all pleasure surgit amari ali-quid; and in summer
bursting around, we may feel a winter of inward discontent or satiety.
May there not be another reason? There is always to
human creatures something saddening in the perfection of beauty. You
have spent the week, let us suppose, in some huge and overgrown city,
and day after day while mingling with the feverish flow of business in
its streets, you have looked forward to the calm beauty and peace of
some quiet country nook to which the Saturday consigns you. Nor when the
day comes can you accuse Nature ; she hath done her part. You steam down
the glassy river under a glorious sky; mountain after mountain is left
behind, each nobler in outline or richer in foliage than that before,
and as day gives place—
"That the sunset may breathe, from the lit sea
beneath, Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve
may fall From the depth of heaven above,"
the fragrance of the hawthorn blossom attracts you to
the window, and across breadths of sloping verdure your eye travels to
the thunder-scarred peaks of Arran, and returning, ranges round an
amphitheatre of beauty which for once satisfies the eye with seeing. The
eye, and why not the heart? Whence this secret feeling of
dissatisfaction? Whence this murmur from within, which there is nothing
around to justify or excite? Is it not again the feeling of contrast,
but now rather the sense of the contrast between what is without and
what is within? All is harmony and peace without; within, is there not
something, however slight, of discord or dissonance? All is purity and
loveliness around, but the immortal spirit feels the moral dust and
defilement from those seven days of labour, and cannot bathe without
some hesitation in the pure fountain of nature. All outside is perfect
in beauty; we too were once perfect in beauty and complete in God, and
the heart travels back swiftly and spontaneously to the holy Age of gold
which heathen poets saw afar off, and were sad —sad for that sore change
which we too feel in this hour of loveliness around and sorrow within.
Who is there of human kind that has not felt feelings
such as these? There is not a summer holiday but they rise in ten
thousand minds, of all sorts and conditions of men. Yet, slight and
transient and common as they are, they are
feelings that go right to the heart of all religion; whether we take
religion as the mere seeking and yearning towards the First Good, First
Fair, in whom alone the finite and imperfect being finds satisfaction ;
or as that renewing of the broken bond, in which the soul, recognising
its guilt and moral ruin and alienation from God, seeks once more to be
brought into harmony with the universe and with the God of the universe.
Paulo minora canamus. It cannot be denied that
the too habitual indulgence of such feelings tends to a morbid
sentimentalism, and is to be avoided. Those who hold with the quaint old
poet, that "nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy," are
exceedingly apt to get a love for the "bitter-sweet" sorrow which the
imagination distils from the contemplation of nature's loveliness.
Wordsworth acutely remarks this as a characteristic of young men. The
old man, who is nearing the "days of darkness," and has had ample
experience of the real troubles and trials of life, is under no
temptation to indulge in gratuitous sorrow. He loves rather to sit in
the sun, and warm his chilled limbs in the beams whose force he feels
daily less and less; to look on the bright faces and smiles of children,
and on all fair and lovely things, and so to fan in his breast the
remembrance of the fire that burned there in former days. But
"In youth, we love the darksome lawn,
Brushed by the owlet's wing;
Then twilight is preferred to dawn,
And autumn to the spring.
"Sad fancies do we then affect,
In luxury of disrespect,
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness."
This, however, is only the affectation of melancholy,
to be snubbed semper, ubique, et ab omnibus; while my remarks
have reference rather to the irresistible presence and intrusion of a
very real melancholy, in the midst of the most Paradisiac beauty that
this earth affords. There is such an intrusion; and the fact (for fact
it is), that it applies chiefly, or equally, to young men, ought not to
surprise us. "The riddle of the painful earth" presents itself to young
men far more powerfully than to any others. Boys do not think of these
things, or of anything; and men are too much mixed up in the world and
its details to think of it or of life as a whole. Youth, the ancients
used to say, is dear to the gods; and that very curious commentator,
Lord Bacon, in speaking of the verse, " The young men shall see visions,
and the old men shall (only) dream dreams," remarks that "the
imaginations of young men do stream into their minds more divinely." It
were nearer a full explanation of that pensiveness of which we are
speaking, to say, that youth is the time when the infinite aspiration
and hunger of the human being comes out. The child cries for the moon,
and finding that it is not given him at once and without qualification,
he doubles his fist in his face, and begins to cry. Fifteen years after,
he begins to cry for the universe; and finding that his demand, Who will
show me any good? is not at once met, he again sulks, and will not be
comforted. You offer him sweatmeats and playthings of all kinds: youth,
health, pleasure, business, love, ambition, activity, repose,—all are
presented to him, and the unreasonable youngster pouts and rages, and
sighs for he knows not what. Ah! it is absurd; yet not without a deep
meaning, which all who laugh at it may not be capable of perceiving. For
who of the Fathers is it who has said, 'Thou hast made us for Thyself,
and our heart is restless till it rest in Thee!" Truly light is sweet,
and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun shining in
mid-summer beauty on hill and river; yet there are thousands who cannot
enjoy that scene without hearing behind and within them a voice which
says, "While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the
children of light." Is it unwise to listen to a voice so full of grace
as well as majesty? Is it to be regretted that such a voice should be
heard even in highest summer?
Let us turn to another poet yet living, whose poems
whoso loves, loves them the more as years pass over him, and who also
has taken up this particular subject. On the Third Sunday after Easter,
Mr. Keble sits on a violet bank under a cloudless sky, and finding to
his surprise, that instead of being light-hearted, "the languid
sweetness seems to choke his breath," and induce a more than usual
melancholy, he scolds himself thus :—
"Shame on the heart that dreams of blessings gone,
Or wakes the spectral forms of woe and crime,
When Nature sings of joy and hope alone,
Beading her cheerful lesson in her own sweet time."
Then feeling, rather than expressing, the too deep
and mournful answer which the human heart is ready to return to his
appeal, he brings forward the great and sufficient Reason of joy for
this world, so long as summer and winter shall alternate their reign:—
"Nor let the proud heart say, In her
self-torturing hour,
The travail pangs must have their way,
The aching brow must lower.
To us long since the glorious Child is born,
Our throes should be forgot, or only seem
Like a sad vision told for joy at morn,—
For joy that we have waked and found it but a dream."
It is well and truly said. It is the sufficient
answer for every one who is able to believe and adopt it, and no other
answer is sufficient. The same law of gravity that binds the massive
earth to the sun, guides the course of a tear down an infant's cheek. So
the same truth which enables a dying man to tread on the neck of the
great Enemy, and makes him more than conqueror in the mysterious
conflict of our nature,—even that same truth, understood and felt, if
not expressly contemplated, is necessary to make one enjoy a holiday.
You must be at peace with yourself, and with all things. You must have a
charter from the Lord of the manor, that you may walk abroad in His
glorious fields unperturbed. You must acquaint yourself with God, if you
would taste His works. You may have around you many worldly cares, and
deep responsibilities, and pressing anxieties; yet still, if you have
this deep and central peace, you have that which the world did not give,
and which on this bright and happy holiday it shall not be able to take
away. You have a right to your joy: there was One who bought it
with His sorrow. All things whisper peace to your heart; and because the
Son of peace is there, your peace remains and your joy shall be full.
It may seem to some an ungracious proceeding to find
solemn teaching in summer sunshine and flowers, and to convert a holiday
into a homily. I think very much otherwise. It is to me the most
gracious and blessed of all the many ways in which God stretches forth
His hands to His evil children, excepting of course the actual
proclamation of His gospel in word and sacrament. His voice comes in the
thunder and in the fire; in fierce spasms of conscience, and dark
premonitions of death. But it comes also more purely and peacefully,
nor, I think, less powerfully, in His gifts of earthly gladness. Even
the pure light of early morning, falling direct from heaven, fresh and
new, like the snow which has never been on our earth before, and
succeeded moment after moment by inexhaustible floods of a celestial
radiance, every square foot of which would be of priceless value, were
it not God's common gift,—at how many hearts does it knock every
morning, reminding us that the night is far spent, and the day is at
hand, and "Whoso followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the fight of life!" So, too, with summer, and its recurrent gladness and
splendour. It is said that affliction is a means to lead men to God ;
but He who will have all men to be saved will try joy also, and there is
no glad and glorious day in nature's festive season which does not stir
thousands of human hearts more or less with those whispered thoughts
which we have been considering; thoughts which, as I said before, go at
once to the heart of all that is awful and blessed in the destiny of
man. God, as the apostle tells us, hath never left Himself without
witness; but it is surely of His goodness that He has chosen for part of
this witness His great ordinance of Beauty.
Let us therefore accept His ordinance, and meet Him
where He has chosen to meet with us. The gospel command is, "Rejoice
evermore;" and it is re-enforced by every summer day that dawns. I have
heard some preachers, and seen some people, who visibly shrunk from
pressing this command to joy, as if under a feeling that men might too
readily comply with it. There is small danger of that. We are a
sad-hearted race, and half our mirth is to hide our want of joy. Indeed
I know nothing that goes home more touchingly to a man's heart, and
reveals to him more the destitution and emptiness of his nature, than
this great and high command of God to be glad. How should we sing this
song in a foreign land? Wherewithal should we be glad,—we who are
guilty and sad, and filled with the home-sickness of exiled humanity!
Nevertheless, even such a message has God sent to us, that His banished
may return to Him, and sent it by His Son! Therefore He means it:
and this summer of 1860, radiant with hues of heaven, is His authentic
messenger and herald, binding upon us His great command. Some of us have
lived through many summers, teased with anxieties, amused with trifles,
living small and futile lives. What might those years have been ! How
blessed, pure, and prosperous! How near to God; how loving to men! How
high and holy; filled with what light, and beauty, and joy! Once
more the summer comes. It may be to us like those that went
before, and, like them, be swept into the waste of years. But it may
be—what may it not be to us? Why should it not be to some of us the
beginning of years, from which eternity shall date its cycles?
Those also who have felt long ago the discord that
exists between the beauty of God's creation and the unlovely spirit of
man, and who have found in personal and living union to Christ the great
cure and reconcilement, even they will do well, ere this season depart,
to consider how they are to make the most of it. The angels of God
sometimes come to us, but leave no blessing behind, because we were not
prepared to receive them aright. Now, each summer, as it comes round,
does convey a specially gracious message to all who are Christ's. It is
like that Shining One who brought to Christiana a letter from the King ;
when she "took it, and opened it, it smelt after the manner of the best
perfume ; also it was written in letters of gold; and she blushed and
trembled, and her heart began to wax warm with desires to know from
whence he came, and what was his errand to her." But do Christians know
nothing of summer sadness? I suspect they beyond all men have a quick
and sharp sense of it. With the man whose conscience is tender, and
whose heart is loyal to God, a very little thing will poison a very
glorious summer day. Therefore let us watch against little things, and
when we go to» the country, or set out for a day of enjoyment, let us
wash our hands in innocency, and keep our garments pure and white, that
we may not shame-the splendour all around, where high feast is spread in
our Father's house. People sometimes allow themselves to do just the
reverse of this. They do things and speak words and follow courses when
travelling, or when in the country, which they would be ashamed to do at
home. It is, to say the least, an unwise course. They are throwing away
days and hours that might be rich with blessing; tossing nuggets of
heaven's purest gold into the irrevocable deep. But let all who hope to
"summer high in bliss upon the hills of God," live as those who have
this hope in Him, and greet every summer as His Angel sent yearly to
meet us, his hands filled with golden gifts.