He was all gold when he lay down, but rose
All tincture; and doth not alone dispose
Leaden and iron wills to good, but is
Of power to make even sinful flesh like his.
Had one of those, whose credulous piety
Thought that a soul one might discern and see
Go from a body, at this sepulchre been,
And issuing from the sheet this body seen,
He would have justly thought this body a soul,
If not of any man, yet of the whole.
What a strange mode of saying that he is our head, the captain of our
salvation, the perfect humanity in which our life is hid! Yet it has its
dignity. When one has got over the oddity of these last six lines, the
figure contained in them shows itself almost grand.
As an individual specimen of the grotesque form holding a fine sense,
regard for a moment the words,
He was all gold when he lay down, but rose
All tincture;
which means, that, entirely good when he died, he was something yet
greater when he rose, for he had gained the power of making others good:
the _tincture_ intended here was a substance whose touch would turn the
basest metal into gold.
Through his poems are scattered many fine passages; but not even his
large influence on the better poets who followed is sufficient to justify
our listening to him longer now.
CHAPTER VIII.
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