Mrs. Thrale tells how, when Johnson would try to repeat the Dies Irae, ‘he could never pass the stanza ending thus, Tantus labor non sit cassus, without bursting into a flood of tears; which sensibility (she adds) I used to quote against him when he would inveigh against devotional poetry.’ And the best hymns of Watts deserve a larger allowance of praise than they receive from Johnson. Yet Watts in his religious poetry does illustrate the truth of Johnson’s remarks. He is often splendid, but it is a monotonous and vague splendour. There is usually no progress in his theme, so that the order of his verses might be rearranged, and new poems compounded by selection, without loss of meaning. The following verses, taken from scattered places in the Poems Sacred to Devotion and Piety, show the author’s metaphysical grasp. Some of them describe the Godhead:
Life, Death, and Hell, and Worlds unknown
Hang on his firm Decree:
He sits on no precarious Throne,
Nor borrows Leave to Be.
The Tide of Creatures ebbs and flows,
Measuring their Changes by the Moon:
No Ebb his Sea of Glory knows;
His Age is one Eternal Noon.
Some of them are addressed to the Godhead:
Still restless Nature dies and grows;
From Change to Change the Creatures run:
Thy Being no Succession knows,
And all thy vast Designs are one.
A glance of thine runs thro’ the Globes,
Rules the bright Worlds, and moves their Frame:
Broad sheets of Light compose thy Robes;
Thy Guards are form’d of living Flame.
