CHAPTER I KINSHIP BETWEEN RELIGION AND POETRY A YOUNG girl once went to visit the late Master of Balliol. She had with her a book. He asked her what she was reading. It was a semi-theological book. He suggested that Wordsworth would be more suitable reading. He meant to convey the simple truth that the religious element in poetry is often more potent for good than direct or formal theology. He was right. Theological treatises appeal to the speculative intellect; but they do not carry much nourishment to the soul. They are useful, but more from a rational than a spiritual point of view. They are valuable at times in clearing the mind, but they seldom feed the heart. There is another advantage in the religious influence of the poet. He is not, as a rule, self-conscious or intentional as the theological writer is. He does not irritate us by improving the occasion. If he is religious, : he is spontaneously so, and therefore more truly spiritual. He does not insist on his science of thought he breathes a spirit which kindles our responsiveness rather than challenges our adhesion. The religious element in poetry is a real force; and the kinship between religion and poetry is our subject. The very name of the subject will provoke discussion. There will be some who will deny that there is any religious element in poetry as such; and these will be opposed by others who would fain claim poetry as the handmaid of religion. Besides these there will be many who will feel that the subject needs defining. This is indeed true. When we speak of the religious element in poetry we may mean many things. We may only mean that there are poems which reveal the deep religious feeling of the writer. Or, we may mean that the religious and poetical aspects of life are so inseparably intertwined that there is strong natural relation between religion and poetry. Or, again, we may mean that, as a matter of fact, apart from any theory on the one side or the other, there is a historical bond between them. To the question, "Is there any religious element in poetry?" we may say at once that, as far as facts are concerned, the question sounds foolish. There is poetry, and good poetry too, which has no scintilla of religious element in it. There is poetry, and good poetry too, which is saturated with religion. Almost every collection of poetry gives us some of Ben Jonson's songs, or of Gay's Fables, or one of Gray's Odes, in which hardly a religious strain is touched. But the same collection will give us lines of Milton, Cowper or Wordsworth which are deeply and radically religious. The question, however, is not a shallow one, which can be answered by citing specimens of poetry on one side or the other. It really deals with the relation between religion and poetry. It asks whether the relation between them is deep, real and necessary, or only superficial and accidental. Religion, like art, history or love, may become the subject of poetry; but this is a connection of circumstance, not of necessity. Religion may be wedded to verse, but not necessarily related to it. Every human interest and affection belongs to the poet's sphere. He has an eye for every living thing, the flower, the stream, the star, and not less the art, the life and the spirit of man. He, therefore, must feel profoundly interested in the destiny of man, and we may expect to find the religious |