Hall's sermons, monologised
and overheard in the madhouse, are said to have transcended all that he
preached in his healthier moods. And, assuredly, the other poems by Smart
scarcely furnish a point of comparison with the towering and sustained
loftiness of some parts of the 'Song to David.' Nor is it loftiness
alone,--although the last three stanzas are absolute inspiration, and
you see the waters of Castalia tossed by a heavenly wind to the very
summit of Parnassus,--but there are innumerable exquisite beauties and
subtleties, dropt as if by the hand of rich haste, in every corner of
the poem. Witness his description of David's muse, as a
'Blest light, still gaining on the gloom,
The more _than Michal of his bloom_,
The _Abishag of his age_!
The account of David's object--
'To further knowledge, silence vice,
And plant perpetual paradise,
When _God had calmed the world_.'
Of David's Sabbath--
''Twas then his thoughts self-conquest pruned,
And heavenly melancholy tuned,
To bless and bear the rest.'
One of David's themes--
'The multitudinous abyss,
Where secrecy remains in bliss,
And wisdom hides her skill.'
And, not to multiply instances to repletion, this stanza about gems--
'Of gems--their virtue and their price,
Which, hid in earth from man's device,
Their _darts of lustre sheath_;
The jasper of the master's stamp,
The topaz blazing like a lamp,
Among the mines beneath.
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