THE WEDDING SERMON.

The truths of Love are like the sea

For clearness and for mystery.

Of that sweet love which, startling, wakes

Maiden and Youth, and mostly breaks

The word of promise to the ear,

But keeps it, after many a year,

To the full spirit, how shall I speak?

My memory with age is weak,

And I for hopes do oft suspect

The things I seem to recollect.

Yet who but must remember well

‘ Twas this made heaven intelligible

As motive, though‘ twas small the power

The heart might have, for even an hour.

To hold possession of the height

Of nameless pathos and delight!

In Godhead rise, thither flow back

All loves, which, as they keep or lack.

In their return, the course assign'd,

Are virtue or sin. Love's every kind.

Lofty or low, of spirit or sense,

Desire is, or benevolence.

He who is fairer, better, higher

Than all His works, claims all desire,

And in His Poor, His Proxies, asks

Our whole benevolence: He tasks,

Howbeit, His People by their powers;

And if, my Children, you, for hours,

Daily, untortur'd in the heart,

Can worship, and time's other part

Give, without rough recoils of sense,

To the claims ingrate of indigence,

Happy are you, and fit to be

Wrought to rare heights of sanctity,

For the humble to grow humbler at.

But if the flying spirit falls flat,

After the modest spell of prayer

That saves the day from sin and care,

And the upward eye a void descries,

And praises are hypocrisies,

And, in the soul, o'erstrain' d for grace,

A godless anguish grows apace;

Or, if impartial charity

Seems, in the act, a sordid lie,

Do not infer you cannot please

God, or that He His promises

Postpones, but be content to love

No more than He accounts enough.

Account them poor enough who want

Any good thing which you can grant;

And fathom well the depths of life

In loves of Husband and of Wife,

Child, Mother, Father; simple keys

To what cold faith calls mysteries.

The love of marriage claims, above

All other kinds, the name of love,

As perfectest, though not so high

As love which Heaven with single eye

Considers. Equal and entire,

Therein benevolence, desire,

Elsewhere ill-join'd or found apart,

Become the pulses of one heart,

Which now contracts, and now dilates,

And, both to the height exalting, mates

Self-seeking to self-sacrifice.

Nay, in its subtle paradise

( When purest ) this one love unites

All modes of these two opposites,

All balanced in accord so rich

Who may determine which is which?

Chiefly God's Love does in it live,

And nowhere else so sensitive;

For each is all that the other's eye,

In the vague vast of Deity,

Can comprehend and so contain

As still to touch and ne'er to strain

The fragile nerves of joy. And then

‘ Tis such a wise goodwill to men

And politic economy

As in a prosperous State we see,

Where every plot of common land

Is yielded to some private hand

To fence about and cultivate.

Does narrowness its praise abate?

Nay, the infinite of man is found

But in the beating of its bound,

And, if a brook its banks o'erpass,

‘ Tis not a sea, but a morass.

No giddiest hope, no wildest guess

Of Love's most innocent loftiness

Had dared to dream of its own worth,

Till Heaven's bold sun-gleam lit the earth.

Christ's marriage with the Church is more,

My Children, than a metaphor.

The heaven of heavens is symbol'd where

The torch of Psyche flash'd despair.

But here I speak of heights, and heights

Are hardly scaled. The best delights

Of even this homeliest passion, are

In the most perfect souls so rare,

That they who feel them are as men

Sailing the Southern ocean, when,

At midnight, they look up, and eye

The starry Cross, and a strange sky

Of brighter stars; and sad thoughts come

To each how far he is from home.

Love's inmost nuptial sweetness see

In the doctrine of virginity!

Could lovers, at their dear wish, blend,

‘ Twould kill the bliss which they intend;

For joy is love's obedience

Against the law of natural sense;

And those perpetual yearnings sweet

Of lives which dream that they can meet

Are given that lovers never may

Be without sacrifice to lay

On the high altar of true love,

With tears of vestal joy. To move

Frantic, like comets to our bliss,

Forgetting that we always miss,

And so to seek and fly the sun,

By turns, around which love should run,

Perverts the ineffable delight

Of service guerdon'd with full sight

And pathos of a hopeless want,

To an unreal victory's vaunt,

And plaint of an unreal defeat.

Yet no less dangerous misconceit

May also be of the virgin will,

Whose goal is nuptial blessing still,

And whose true being doth subsist,

There where the outward forms are miss'd,

In those who learn and keep the sense

Divine of‘ due benevolence,’

Seeking for aye, without alloy

Of selfish thought, another's joy,

And finding in degrees unknown

That which in act they shunn'd, their own.

For all delights of earthly love

Are shadows of the heavens, and move

As other shadows do; they flee

From him that follows them; and he

Who flies, for ever finds his feet

Embraced by their pursuings sweet.

Then, even in love humane, do I

Not counsel aspirations high,

So much as sweet and regular

Use of the good in which we are.

As when a man along the ways

Walks, and a sudden music plays,

His step unchanged, he steps in time,

So let your Grace with Nature chime.

Her primal forces burst, like straws,

The bonds of uncongenial laws.

Right life is glad as well as just,

And, rooted strong in‘ This I must,’

It bears aloft the blossom gay

And zephyr-toss'd, of‘ This I may;’

Whereby the complex heavens rejoice

In fruits of uncommanded choice.

Be this your rule: seeking delight

Esteem success the test of right;

For‘ gainst God's will much may be done,

But nought enjoy'd, and pleasures none

Exist, but, like to springs of steel,

Active no longer than they feel

The checks that make them serve the soul,

They take their vigour from control.

A man need only keep but well

The Church's indispensable

First precepts, and she then allows,

Nay, more, she bids him, for his spouse,

Leave even his heavenly Father's awe,

At times, and His immaculate law,

Construed in its extremer sense.

Jehovah's mild magnipotence

Smiles to behold His children play

In their own free and childish way,

And can His fullest praise descry

In the exuberant liberty

Of those who, having understood

The glory of the Central Good,

And how souls ne'er may match or merge,

But as they thitherward converge,

Take in love's innocent gladness part

With infantine, untroubled heart,

And faith that, straight t'wards heaven's far Spring,

Sleeps, like the swallow, on the wing.

Lovers, once married, deem their bond

Then perfect, scanning nought beyond

For love to do but to sustain

The spousal hour's delighted gain.

But time and a right life alone

Fulfil the promise then foreshown.

The Bridegroom and the Bride withal

Are but unwrought material

Of marriage; nay, so far is love,

Thus crown'd, from being thereto enough,

Without the long, compulsive awe

Of duty, that the bond of law

Does oftener marriage-love evoke,

Than love, which does not wear the yoke

Of legal vows, submits to be

Self-rein'd from ruinous liberty.

Lovely is love; but age well knows

‘ Twas law which kept the lover's vows

Inviolate through the year or years

Of worship pieced with panic fears,

When she who lay within his breast

Seem'd of all women perhaps the best,

But not the whole, of womankind,

Or love, in his yet wayward mind,

Had ghastly doubts its precious life

Was pledged for aye to the wrong wife.

Could it be else? A youth pursues

A maid, whom chance, not he, did choose,

Till to his strange arms hurries she

In a despair of modesty.

Then, simply and without pretence

Of insight or experience,

They plight their vows. The parents say

‘ We cannot speak them yea or nay;

The thing proceedeth from the Lord!’

And wisdom still approves their word;

For God created so these two

They match as well as others do

That take more pains, and trust Him less

Who never fails, if ask'd, to bless

His children's helpless ignorance

And blind election of life's chance.

Verily, choice not matters much,

If but the woman's truly such,

And the young man has led the life

Without which how shall e'er the wife

Be the one woman in the world?

Love's sensitive tendrils sicken, curl'd

Round folly's former stay; for‘ tis

The doom of all unsanction'd bliss

To mock some good that, gain'd, keeps still

The taint of the rejected ill.

Howbeit, though both were perfect, she

Of whom the maid was prophecy

As yet lives not, and Love rebels

Against the law of any else;

And, as a steed takes blind alarm,

Disowns the rein, and hunts his harm,

So, misdespairing word and act

May now perturb the happiest pact.

The more, indeed, is love, the more

Peril to love is now in store.

Against it nothing can be done

But only this: leave ill alone!

Who tries to mend his wife succeeds

As he who knows not what he needs.

He much affronts a worth as high

As his, and that equality

Of spirits in which abide the grace

And joy of her subjected place;

And does the still growth check and blur

Of contraries, confusing her

Who better knows what he desires

Than he, and to that mark aspires

With perfect zeal, and a deep wit

Which nothing helps but trusting it.

So, loyally o'erlooking all

In which love's promise short may fall

Of full performance, honour that

As won, which aye love worketh at!

It is but as the pedigree

Of perfectness which is to be

That our best good can honour claim;

Yet honour to deny were shame

And robbery: for it is the mould

Wherein to beauty runs the gold

Of good intention, and the prop

That lifts to the sun the earth-drawn crop

Of human sensibilities.

Such honour, with a conduct wise

In common things, as, not to steep

The lofty mind of love in sleep

Of over much familiarness;

Not to degrade its kind caress,

As those do that can feel no more,

So give themselves to pleasures o'er;

Not to let morning-sloth destroy

The evening-flower, domestic joy;

Not by uxoriousness to chill

The warm devotion of her will

Who can but half her love confer

On him that cares for nought but her;—

These, and like obvious prudencies

Observed, he's safest that relies,

For the hope she will not always seem,

Caught, but a laurel or a stream,

On time; on her unsearchable

Love-wisdom; on their work done well,

Discreet with mutual aid; on might

Of shared affliction and delight;

On pleasures that so childish be

They're‘ shamed to let the children see,

By which life keeps the valleys low

Where love does naturally grow;

On much whereof hearts have account,

Though heads forget; on babes, chief fount

Of union, and for which babes are

No less than this for them, nay far

More, for the bond of man and wife

To the very verge of future life

Strengthens, and yearns for brighter day,

While others, with their use, decay;

And, though true marriage purpose keeps

Of offspring, as the centre sleeps

Within the wheel, transmitting thence

Fury to the circumference,

Love's self the noblest offspring is,

And sanction of the nuptial kiss;

Lastly, on either's primal curse,

Which help and sympathy reverse

To blessings.

God, who may be well

Jealous of His chief miracle,

Bids sleep the meddling soul of man,

Through the long process of this plan,

Whereby, from his unweeting side,

The Wife's created, and the Bride,

That chance one of her strange, sweet sex

He to his glad life did annex,

Grows more and more, by day and night,

The one in the whole world opposite

Of him, and in her nature all

So suited and reciprocal

To his especial form of sense,

Affection, and intelligence,

That, whereas love at first had strange

Relapses into lust of change,

It now finds ( wondrous this, but true! )

The long-accustom'd only new,

And the untried common; and, whereas

An equal seeming danger was

Of likeness lacking joy and force,

Or difference reaching to divorce,

Now can the finish'd lover see

Marvel of me most far from me,

Whom without pride he may admire,

Without Narcissus’ doom desire,

Serve without selfishness, and love

‘ Even as himself,’ in sense above

Niggard‘ as much,’ yea, as she is

The only part of him that's his.

I do not say love's youth returns;

That joy which so divinely yearns!

But just esteem of present good

Shows all regret such gratitude

As if the sparrow in her nest,

Her woolly young beneath her breast,

Should these despise, and sorrow for

Her five blue eggs that are no more.

Nor say I the fruit has quite the scope

Of the flower's spiritual hope.

Love's best is service, and of this,

Howe'er devout, use dulls the bliss.

Though love is all of earth that's dear,

Its home, my Children, is not here:

The pathos of eternity

Does in its fullest pleasure sigh.

Be grateful and most glad thereof.

Parting, as‘ tis, is pain enough.

If love, by joy, has learn'd to give

Praise with the nature sensitive,

At last, to God, we then possess

The end of mortal happiness,

And henceforth very well may wait

The unbarring of the golden gate,

Wherethrough, already, faith can see

That apter to each wish than we

Is God, and curious to bless

Better than we devise or guess;

Not without condescending craft

To disappoint with bliss, and waft

Our vessels frail, when worst He mocks

The heart with breakers and with rocks,

To happiest havens. You have heard

Your bond death-sentenced by His Word.

What, if, in heaven, the name be o'er,

Because the thing is so much more?

All are,‘ tis writ, as angels there,

Nor male nor female. Each a stair

In the hierarchical ascent

Of active and recipient

Affections, what if all are both

By turn, as they themselves betroth

To adoring what is next above,

Or serving what's below their love?

Of this we are certified, that we

Are shaped here for eternity,

So that a careless word will make

Its dint upon the form we take

For ever. If, then, years have wrought

Two strangers to become, in thought.

Will, and affection, but one man

For likeness, as none others can,

Without like process, shall this tree

The king of all the forest, be,

Alas, the only one of all

That shall not lie where it doth fall?

Shall this unflagging flame, here nurs'd

By everything, yea, when reversed,

Blazing, in fury, brighter, wink,

Flicker, and into darkness shrink,

When all else glows, baleful or brave,

In the keen air beyond the grave?

Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh

O'er him who learns the truth by half!

Beware; for God will not endure

For men to make their hope more pure

Than His good promise, or require

Another than the five-string'd lyre

Which He has vow'd again to the hands

Devout of him who understands

To tune it justly here! Beware

The Powers of Darkness and the Air,

Which lure to empty heights man's hope,

Bepraising heaven's ethereal cope,

But covering with their cloudy cant

Its ground of solid adamant,

That strengthens ether for the flight

Of angels, makes and measures height,

And in materiality

Exceeds our Earth's in such degree

As all else Earth exceeds! Do I

Here utter aught too dark or high?

Have you not seen a bird's beak slay

Proud Psyche, on a summer's day?

Down fluttering drop the frail wings four,

Missing the weight which made them soar.

Spirit is heavy nature's wing,

And is not rightly anything

Without its burthen, whereas this,

Wingless, at least a maggot is,

And, wing'd, is honour and delight

Increasing endlessly with height.

If unto any here that chance

Fell not, which makes a month's romance,

Remember, few wed whom they would.

And this, like all God's laws, is good;

For nought's so sad, the whole world o'er,

As much love which has once been more.

Glorious for light is the earliest love;

But worldly things, in the rays thereof,

Extend their shadows, every one

False as the image which the sun

At noon or eve dwarfs or protracts.

A perilous lamp to light men's acts!

By Heaven's kind, impartial plan,

Well-wived is he that's truly man

If but the woman's womanly,

As such a man's is sure to be.

Joy of all eyes and pride of life

Perhaps she is not; the likelier wife!

If it be thus; if you have known,

( As who has not? ) some heavenly one.

Whom the dull background of despair

Help'd to show forth supremely fair;

If memory, still remorseful, shapes

Young Passion bringing Eshcol grapes

To travellers in the Wilderness,

This truth will make regret the less:

Mighty in love as graces are,

God's ordinance is mightier far;

And he who is but just and kind

And patient, shall for guerdon find,

Before long, that the body's bond

Is all else utterly beyond

In power of love to actualise

The soul's bond which it signifies,

And even to deck a wife with grace

External in the form and face.

A five years’ wife, and not yet fair?

Blame let the man, not Nature, bear!

For, as the sun, warming a bank

Where last year's grass droops gray and dank,

Evokes the violet, bids disclose

In yellow crowds the fresh primrose,

And foxglove hang her flushing head,

So vernal love, where all seems dead,

Makes beauty abound.

Then was that nought,

That trance of joy beyond all thought,

The vision, in one, of womanhood?

Nay, for all women holding good,

Should marriage such a prologue want,

‘ Twere sordid and most ignorant

Profanity; but, having this,

‘ Tis honour now, and future bliss;

For where is he that, knowing the height

And depth of ascertain'd delight,

Inhumanly henceforward lies

Content with mediocrities!