NPPF re: Canto Three: Chron & Analysis Pt 2 of 2 - Crashaw

[James Kyllo]

> The balance of Canto Three from stanza twenty through thirty-four
> recounts Mr. Shade's brush with death while lecturing to the Crashaw
> Club, a probable reference to the poet Richard Crashaw (1613-49), about
> Why Poetry Is Meaningful to Us.

Richard Crashaw

Metaphysical Poet

There are connections here with both exiled royalty and TS Eliot.

Crashaw removed himself from England to Paris during the interregnum, and
there met Henrietta Maria, queen of King Charles I.  (Charles lost his
throne and escaped abroad - to Scotland. )

There is a Richard Crashaw Club in Anderson, Indiana.


As for Eliot

Richard Crashaw visited and corresponded with members of the Little Gidding
community and wrote an approving poem about his encounter, "Description of a
Religious House and Condition of Life,"

No roofes of gold o're riotous tables shining
 Whole dayes & suns devour'd with endlesse dining;
 No sailes of tyrian sylk proud pavements sweeping;
 Nor ivory couches costlyer slumbers keeping;
 False lights of flairing gemmes; tumultuous joyes;
 Halls full of flattering men & frisking boyes;
 Whate're false showes of short & slippery good
 Mix the mad sons of men in mutuall blood.
 But Walkes & unshorn woods; and soules, just so
 Unforc't & genuine; but not shady tho.
 Our lodgings hard & homely as our fare.
 That chast & cheap, as the few clothes we weare.
 Those, course & negligent, As the naturall lockes
 Of these loose groves, rough as th'unpolish't rockes.
 A hasty Portion of præscribed sleep;
 Obedient slumbers; that can wake & weep,
 And sing, & sigh, & work, and sleep again;
 Still rowling à round spear of still--returning pain.
 Hands full of harty labours; doe much, that more they may,
 And work for work, not wages; let to morrow's
 New drops, wash off the sweat of this daye's sorrows.
 A long & dayly--dying life, which breaths
 A respiration of reviving deaths.
 But neither are there those ignoble stings
 That nip the bosome of the world's best things,
And lash Earth--laboring souls.
 No cruell guard of diligent cares, that keep
 Crown'd woes awake; as things too wise for sleep.
 But reverent discipline, & religious fear,
 And soft obedience, find sweet biding here;
 Silence, & sacred rest; peace, & pure joyes;
 Kind loves keep house, ly close, make no noise,
 And room enough for Monarchs, while none swells
 Beyond the kingdomes of contentfull Cells.
 The self--remembring Soul sweetly recovers
 Her kindred with the starrs; not basely hovers
 Below; But meditates her immortall way
 Home to the originall sourse of Light & intellectual Day.


Eliot reviewed (in: The Dial, vol LXXXIV, no 3, March 1928) "The poems
English Latin and Greek of Richard Crashaw; edited by L.C.Martin"

I can't find the text of that review, these quotes conflict as to what he
might have said:

"Richard Crashaw ... regarded as (a) 'minor poet' owing to the baleful
influence of such Anglican critics as T.S. Eliot"

"(Eliot) wanted to revive the appreciation of the 17th-century "Metaphysical
poets," referring to such writers as Donne, Crashaw, Vaughan, Lord Herbert,
and Cowley"


Crashaw biography:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04467a.htm


James