Our Catholic Heritage in English Literature of Pre-Conquest Days | Page 6

of sinners, fast surrounded there, The sea-pale, sodden warriors their souls up-yielded Then the dark upsweltering, of haughty waves the greatest, Over them spread; all the host sank deep. And thus were drowned the doughtiest of Egypt, Pharaoh with his folk. That foe to God, Full soon he saw, yea, e'en as he sank, That mightier than he was the Master of the waters, With His death-grip, determined to end the battle, Angered and awful.
[Footnote B: blow.]
How fine a conception it is. Let us notice how far had been travelled from the old pagan "Fate goeth even as it will" to "the Lord of Fate." How great is the thought of the vision of God's might, the power of the Master of the waves, brought before the eyes of Pharaoh before he sinks in the death-grip that will not let him go!
CHAPTER III
Allegory. Principle of comparison important in life, language, literature. Early use of symbolism; suggested reasons for this. Poem of the Phoenix. Allegorical interpretation of the story. Celtic influence on English poetry. Gifts of colour, fervour, glow. Various gifts of various nations enriching one another.
In these papers we are not going through anything like a course of older English literature. We are looking at some of the work which our early writers have left, from the point of view of its being our Catholic Heritage, and we want to pay special attention to special works, not to go through a long list of names. It is hoped that the bringing forward of what is so good and strong in interest may be found really helpful by those who have little or no time to go to the originals. That it may be so is alike the desire of writer and publisher.
To-day we are going to consider a poem of a different kind from what we have had before, an old poem called "The Phoenix."
Literature is full of allusions to the fable of the phoenix; it is one of those stories which have caught hold of people and fired their imagination; and the reason is, we may well suppose, because it has suggested so many comparisons, some of them great and beautiful and holy. There are some stories which lend themselves easily to an allegorical interpretation; stories quite true, and yet suggesting things beyond their own actual scope. I dwell on this before passing on to the poem, because I want to bring before you the remembrance of what a tremendous factor in literature, as in thought and in the whole of life is the principle of comparison, or, as we might put it, the principle of similitude or likeness. We learn about a thing we do not know through its likeness, as a whole or in some parts, to a thing we do know. Our little children can understand most easily something of the love of Our Father who is in Heaven through the love of their father on earth: they learn of their Redeemer's Mother, their own dear Mother of Grace, through their earthly mother, who is ever ready to supply their wants and give them joy and comfort.
In devotion what do we most need to pray for? Is it not for likeness to the holy ones and to the holiest of all creatures, Our Lady; and highest of all, to the Lord, Our Saviour and Example? And is it not the fairest of promises that one day "we shall be like to Him, for we shall see Him as He is"? (St John iii.)
So in literature we have, springing from this principle of comparison, the forms fable, parable, and allegory; and in language the figures of speech which we know as simile and metaphor.
Ovid, a Roman poet who lived before the Incarnation, tells the old Eastern fable thus:
"There is a bird that restores and reproduces itself; the Assyrians call it the Phoenix. It feeds on no common food, but on the choicest of gums and spices; and after a life of secular length (_i.e._, a hundred years) it builds in a high tree with cassia, spikenard, cinnamon, and myrrh, and on this nest it expires in sweetest odours. A young Phoenix rises and grows, and when strong enough it takes up the nest with its deposit and bears it to the City of the Sun, and lays it down there in front of the sacred portals."
It was a much later and a much longer version of the story that our English poet was debtor to. It was written in Latin by Lactantius, and the fable there, Professor Earle says, "is so curiously and, as it were, significantly elaborated, that we hardly know whether we are reading a Christian allegory or no."
He goes on to say that Allegory has always been a favourite form with Christian writers, and