Rhythmic numinousness: Sydney Dobell and "The Church". (2024)

 Wanted a tutor to the rising age; he must be a creedless Christian full of faith, but full of charity--wise in head and large in heart--poet and a priest an "eternal child," as well as a thoroughly furnished man. (1)

WHEN GEORGE GILFILLAN CALLED FOR "A TUTOR TO THE RISINGAGE," HE had in mind several 'young, ardent and giftedspirits" who wrote poetry to inspire religious feeling in theirreaders. Philip Bailey seemed a likely candidate, but lackedforcefulness; Alexander Smith was regarded as a poet in possession of aprofound mode of expression but failed to direct it into religiouscontemplation. Only Sydney Dobell, a poet who had employed to greateffect the current trend for spasmodic feeling in poetics, appeared tolay true claim to Gilfillan's "vacant laurel." (2) Thatthis feeling was inherently religious in tone was Gilfillan's view,but modern criticism remains unclear regarding the question ofDobell's religion and how, if at all, it inflects his poetry. Thisessay aims to clarify the issue first by unravelling the details of hisfaith, and second by using such detail to work through his religiouslyrics. Religious or otherwise, all of his poetry is inflected by afitful rhythmic pace that reflects his frantic and perhaps conflicteddesire to both reach God and implement what he perceived to be the trueChristian message in society. Like the "snow-muffled, dim andsweet" snow-drop, Dobell wrote in "The Snow-drop in theSnow" (1851), the "Poet" produces a music oftenmisunderstood, being himself lost amidst "drifting snows" andblooming only in "loneliness" (11. 45-47, 59). (3) Yet as afigure "Full of faith," in Dobell's poem, the poet musttread, albeit precariously, a path between the winter of mortality and"Heaven / The dome of a great palace all of ice" (11.1-2).Dutiful behavior on earth to his "fellow men" was certainly assignificant to Dobell as his longing for paradise, a tension that sent ashudder through both his verse and his allegiance to a specific form ofChristianity known simply as "the Church."

The first part of this discussion turns to "the Church,"a religious community based on the Christian Church of the first centuryand headed by Samuel Thompson. Thompson, Dobell's grandfather,carefully outlined the philosophy of his "Church" in Evidencesof Revealed Religion (1814), which he published under the nameChristophilus as a series of letters that are everywhere echoed inDobell's own correspondence and verse. The influence of Evidencesalso extended to the Birmingham politician-preacher and social reformerGeorge Dawson, who forwarded a radicalized version of Thompson's"Church" philosophy in numerous sermons. As one ofDobell's more intimate friends, Dawson seems to have touched thepoet's concept of religion almost as much as Thompson, all threemen intent on putting individuals back in touch with their feelings inorder to create a national community founded on religious sensibility.Part two thus opens with Dobell's own prose explication of religionand "the Church" in Thoughts on Art, Philosophy and Religion(1876), a text usually cited to support Dobell's broad churchposition. "Broad Church," however, is a rather generalized andinadequate label to describe Dobell's position in light ofThompson's Evidences and Dawson's sermons. We might insteadwish to regard the poet's religious identity as one characterizedby its struggle to articulate the value of religious feeling overreligious doctrine. While critics like W. David Shaw have attributedsuch feeling to a Hegelian model of spirit, it is also worth renderingthis feeling as affective, spasmodically issuing from the believerentranced by God. (4) Dobell remains Christian even as he rethinks thistradition through Thompson and Dawson, and the most recognizablyreligious of his lyrics reinforce his emotive belief, as part two willillustrate by reading "The Harps of Heaven" (c. 1851),"To a Cathedral Tower" (1850) and "In War-Time: A Psalmof the Heart" (c.1855).

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Emily Jolly's The Life and Letters of Sydney Dobellestablishes itself from the fore as a testimony to Dobell's faith,which she traces from his childhood as a product of his parents'rather fervent religious beliefs. His father recorded that he used totalk to his son "of how delightful and blessed it would be if anychild would resolve to live as pure, virtuous and holy a life, asdedicated to the will and service of God, as Jesus." (5)Dobell's mother too commented: "In my eyes he was indeedprecious, precious in that highest sense in which a highly wroughtreligious temperament beheld him.... Surely never were prayers moredevotedly uttered than for him" (Jolly, 1:7). This immediatepressure to commit to some kind of religious or apostolic mission drewDobell, even as it strained his nerves, and from just eight years old,he was regularly attending the meetings of "the Church." AsJolly iterates, it is apparent that his parents regarded their son asthe means for implementing the "religious and social reforms....the Church" was to effect in society, despite his obvious draw to"the inspirations of art" as well as "the fervours oftheology" (Jolly, 1: ix, 8). As we will see later, Dobell connectedhis interest in art, and specifically poetry, to his religious belief,both expressive of a pulsating and convulsive emotion that put theindividual in a correct state of mind to contemplate God. One ofDobell's early letters to his future father-in-law, also a memberof "the Church," conveys such a sentiment. On readingDobell's zealous letters to his daughter, Emily, Mr. Fordhaminvited the future poet to yield to "calm reasoning," andrefrain from writing "at all, if, by so doing, you only excite andencourage painful and excessive feelings." "All the differencebetween an unhappy and a happy man," wrote Fordham, "lies inthe proper government of our passions.... Religion, too, which has forits sole object the happiness of man, above all other things teaches usthe absolute necessity of self-government, and the cultivation of calmand tranquil feelings" (letter to Dobell, 1838 in Jolly, 1:38).Dobell did not concur. While he agreed that "the proper regulationof the passions" enabled wisdom and righteousness, he could not seethe link between faith and tranquillity:

 The simple command "to love the Lord our God with all our hearts and with all our souls," seems to me to imply an intensity which would require some rather more active state of feeling than that calm and tranquil one which you so pleasingly describe. I am but a young religionist, and, therefore, ought to be careful in hazarding an opinion, but I should think that even the very constant anxiety to do right, and the fear of being mistaken as to what is or is not right, which must pervade the mind of one devoted to the Will of God, and possessing the humility of mind towards that God which is so enjoined by Him, would necessarily tend to destroy that calm and tranquillity which you say religion teaches. (Letter to Fordham, 1838, in Jolly, 1:39)

Finding "the Church" lacking in liberalism andincreasingly alienated by the religious intensity to which Dobell callsattention in his letter, the Fordhams withdrew their membership.Certainly Dobell quickly became notorious for his two-hour longimprovisations on prophecy and revelation at "Church"meetings, enough to put anyone off, and by the early 1840s the poet wasa regular preacher in the sect. So seriously did he take his beliefs atthis time that after his marriage to Emily in 1844, Dobell limited their"associations and domestic intercourse" to "Church"members. "I belong," he stated, "the connection ishereditary--to a very small religious sect--'small' for we donot consider it our mission to proselytise--very much resembling theQuakers" (Jolly, 1:87).

Yet "the Church" was very much a religion of its own,also known to its members, the "Humble Enquirers after Truth,"as "the Church of God" or "Freethinking Christianity." (6) Initiated by Thompson in 1798, the firstmeetings proper of the new group were held in 1799, wherein a kind ofhierarchy was established to categorize associates. Following the formof organization instituted by the Apostles, "the Church"appointed ordained elders or overseers rather than clerics (the former"brothers among brethren" rather than mediators betweenbelievers and God); deacons, who assisted the elders; and messengers,whose role consisted of personally communicating the mission of"the Church" to other parishes (Brief Account, p. 74).Imperative to Thompson was that no one assume the stance of teacher orpriest within the association, members taking turns to speak at meetingsrather than lead prayer or meditation. Indeed, "the Church"believed public social prayer, Sabbaths, holy days, and all other formsof religious ceremony both pointless and devoid of sanction from theirmain focus of debate, the New Testament. Moreover, any hint at dogma,doctrine, or creed was entirely at odds with the being of "theChurch," which had only two guiding directives: the right toprivate judgment; and the sufficiency of the scriptures to establishbenevolent action in society. Certainly Thomas Paine's The Age ofReason (1794-96) seems to have effected a profound impact on Thompson, atext which he quotes in Evidences of Revealed Religion as largelyaccurate in its assumption that "Jesus Christ founded no newsystem: he called men to the practice of moral virtues and the belief ofone God. The great trait in his character is philanthropy." (7)

Thompson centralized the figure of Jesus Christ both as a humanexemplar to which members of "the Church" should aspire; andalso a guarantee of the genuine benevolence, "goodness" andcharity to be ideally found at the heart of faith. As George Dawsonechoed in a lecture on Holman Hunt's "The Light of theWorld" (1853): "Christ, and not Christianity, is to save theworld.... The only thing that will ever save this world is thepassionate dependence on the man Christ Jesus. And a picture like this,overflowing with endless humanity and sweet charity, is worth a wholebundle of dissertations about election and reprobation, fate and freewill." (8) Dobell assented, declaring that while as humans we mayfeel deficient and worn down by worldliness, God "has given onebright example of what" we "might become, one shining proof,that the trials of this world are not, though heavy, too weighty to beovercome" (Jolly, 1:44). Collectively, these statements sound likea denial of the divinity of Christ, but there are two important andconnected factors inherent to "Church" philosophy whichcounter such a suggestion. First, Thompson wished to distance "theChurch" as much from any of those systems associated with thedenial of Christ's divinity, like Unitarianism, as he did from"supernatural" beliefs like Trinitarianism. Here is Thompsonattempting to remove his community from the fraught religious debate ofthe time:

 I do not, then, mean to defend the articles, creeds or dogmas, of established churches, or of any of those sects and parties who take their religion from the priest;--I do not mean to defend sacraments, pulpit preaching, public social worship, nor an order of men called priests or preachers; as the administrators of religion;--I do not mean to defend the doctrine of the trinity, the miraculous conception, original sin, atonement, predestination, or endless torment;--I do not mean to defend the Bible as the word of God, and as being all written by divine inspiration, because I am fully convinced that the Scriptures do not teach or lay claim to any such things. (Brief Account, p. 17)

Throwing out systems, doctrines, mysteries, and even the divinebasis of the Bible, Thompson seems more attuned to his secularcontemporaries, Paine and Godwin, than to his Christian peers. Yet Paineand Godwin are valued by Thompson because he regarded them ascontributing to a process by which the world is gradually made fit"for the reception of pure religion," one grounded in virtueand compassion (Brief Account, p. 33). The Bible might not have beendivinely related and recorded, but the messages inherent in its wordscan only be understood through what he consistently refers to as"revelation."

This brings us to the second reason Thompson was not interested inrefuting Christ's divinity: namely, his dependence on the necessityof revelation to any belief in God. In this context, revelationsignifies both the "truth" that God imparted through Christ aswell as the process or method by which such communication is achieved.Thompson called revelation the "grammar" by which onedeciphered the language of the Bible, indicating its primacy to themultiple interpretations that might be forwarded by the"freethinking" members of "the Church." Ifrevelation describes the process of understanding, then it might referto faith, feeling, insight, sense, or any inner impression of God thatthe believer experienced. It is worth noting that Thompson'sdiscussion of revelation stretches into a rather convoluted discussionof the historical reality of the Resurrection by which all othermysteries could technically be proven. Briefly stated, he argues thatChrist's death, burial, and resurrection were publicly recognizedby the Jews and Roman government, two factions who would have beenotherwise invested in recording this chain of events differently (BriefAccount, p. 87). For Thompson, Christ's resurrection is natural,rather than supernatural, because it was enacted by the same God whom*obilized "twelve illiterate men and their followers" toestablish their belief-system through "the whole civilizedworld" (Brief Account, p. 108). We know the latter task wasmotivated by something, so it makes sense that the same power mighteffect equally miraculous happenings. While this makes little logicalsense, the core of Thompson's convictions might be rescued, asdeclared above, in the form of revelation as feeling, instinct, impulse,divination. Dobell called this the "spiritual sense" and it isthis that he attempts to beat out in his religious lyrics by invoking akind of rhythmic numinousness that mimics that revelatory process bywhich divinity is uncloaked by the believer.

Certainly Dawson believed that religion had to be initially"clothed" in order to be decoded and so make sense to humans,declaring that "all spiritualism must consent to clothe itself inform," poetical or otherwise. (9) The only real betrayal of"Christian religion" for Dawson was "the ChristianChurch," an institution which ideally offered a "scaffold bywhich to erect a nobler building" but so often degenerated into alaw of its own (Demands, pp. 3, 5). Spirituality and faith of the kindThompson advocates dwells "in the heart" rather than "anyoutward temple," Dawson argues, the Bible granting believers afeeling of love rather than "a code or formulae" (Demands, pp.5-6). The preacher calls for a new "idea of a Church" able to"reach our sympathies" and "in nowise whatsoever limit,hinder, or make difficult, full FREEDOM OF THOUGHT," echoing thefreethinking philosophy of "the Church" itself (Demands, pp.8, 10). For Dawson, the moderation of the age may permit outwardfreedom, emancipation, and relief bills liberating Roman Catholics andJews, but it fails to allow for private autonomy: "Is there nosoul-freedom?" he asks (Demands, p. 16). The greater Christiancommunity simply made matters worse by instituting priesthoods orleaders, Dissenting communities as much like "a temple ofmoney-changers" as Anglican or Catholic establishments (Demands, p.23). Religion rings with "Mammonic sound" rather thanspiritual feeling, rendering the whole arena of faith dry and lethargic(Demands, p. 23). As Dawson feared in his essay on Tennyson's"Idylls of the King": "Who can now feel a new affection,or suffer a new emotion?" (Shakespeare, p. 472). This was thepressing question that Gilfillan believed Dobell could meet, and whilethe poet defended Dawson against Gilfillan's accusations that hewas a charismatic fraud, he confessed to the critic that Dawson's"idea of a Church seems to me an amiable chimera, a benevolentimpossibility, ludicrously unscriptural, and equally at variance withDivine dispensation and human nature." Dobell nevertheless admiredand respected Dawson for setting "the middle classesthinking," for denouncing the idea of the Church as institution andclub, and for modelling instead a "moral hospitable" which hehad no doubt "does unspeakable good" (letter to Gilfillan, May1850, in Jolly, 1:130).

Dobell's matured religious stance shifts between Thompson andDawson, although technically he remained a member of "theChurch," reconverting his wife Emily despite her worries that theyalienated their non "Church" neighbors. Certainly Dobellloosened his earnest dedication to "the Church," reminiscingon a long-gone youthful and ascetic self in a letter to his eldestsister: "I cannot look back without a melancholy interest to theyears when I never thought a thought or said a word but under the veryeyes of God" (letter to eldest sister, 1850, in Jolly, 1:113). Yethis mid-twenties was precisely the period wherein he began to expresshis faith, not in "Church" meetings, but in poetry, which herendered religious by casting it in spasmodic terms. As he assured hisfriend, Reverend Paton in 1852: "If, therefore, my next book hasless of the Christian and the Scripture, do not infer that I am lessChristian or Scriptural" (letter to Paton, April 5, 1852, in Jolly,1:256). Dobell realized that if religion was to be communicated at all,it had to move the individual, allowing the experience of that new kindof affection Dawson doubted could be sparked. All Dawson's talk ofsoul-freedom, however, coupled with Thompson's stress on revelationas a package of faith, insight, and feeling, confirmed for Dobell thatthe only religious mission worth pursuing was emotional. In 1853, hedecided to share his premise with "the Church" at their weeklymeeting:

 I do hope and trust that we are all beginning to feel more than we did, the very social and personal character of "Church" union; to recognise more and more that "the Church" is not a mere machine for theoretical religious instruction, but an association for purposes. A church, not a congregation; a body, not a crowd; an association, and not only that, but an association for purposes. (Jolly, 1: 283)

The emphasis on an association of people who would effect realchange in society seems directly to echo Dawson's andThompson's insistence on moral action here. Yet Dobell'srepetition of the idea of "association" itself reveals morethan an interest in good works, pointing to his almost Hartleyanfascination in connectedness and association between people and betweenideas. Such association was poetry itself when rhythmically conveyed,lyrical chains of words lulling the reader into a higher, benevolentfeeling.

All thoughts or feelings, then, however oblique or confusing,became for Dobell signifiers of God's presence which in turncreated in his head "lines of thought" which passed"behind the scenes, in my brain." This "mentalfeeling," as he called it, relaxed and reshaped his mind in such amanner that new trains of thought were able to emerge easily,"larger, warmer, clearer, nobler, better, brighter than anything Ican think of in my ordinary hours" (letter to Sam Brown, 1852, inJolly, 1:193). Association, then, is a word that for Dobell conveyedboth the manner by which "words rhythmically combined" on thepage as well as the impact such words had on "the feelings of thepoetic hearer or utterer." In one sense, the meaning of these wordswas rather beside the point given that all readers, and believers, wereto interpret language as they saw fit, being as they are true"freethinking" individuals. What could be rendered was thefeeling behind the rhythm, a feeling that overflows in Dobell'spoetry but often in a jerky and convulsive manner that betrays theintensity (rather than, as he wrote to Emily's father,tranquillity) of faith. Before finally looking at this verse, we mightwant to turn to Dobell's own explicit statements regarding religionin his prose criticism, significant because of the way in which itlinks, or associates, religion, poetry, and feeling. As Dobell suggestedin response to his mother's concern that poetry was "merevanity" when compared with religious preaching, "She forgetsthat the nature of poetry is precisely the question that underlies themost difficult and serious questions that concern the human mind, andthose human thoughts and feelings with which religion has to do"(letter to eldest sister, 1857, in Jolly, 2:71).

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Dobell was sure that the nature of poetry and religion were thesame, thus satisfying Gilfillan's hope that he might become a tutorto a rising and notably utilitarian age in which Christianity, likepoetry, was increasingly interrogated. Dobell's devout mother wasnot alone in her fear that writing poetry was a vain pursuit, but manysecular critics challenged religion for the same reason: what did it doin a period of real material reform and change? The answer resided inthe realm of feeling, which while no less strongly experienced by theoften sentimental Victorians, was certainly supposed an aspect of thehuman to be held back and controlled. In his "Lecture on the'Nature of Poetry'" (1857), Dobell agreed that the"ideal mind weaves order" and restraint, yet asserted too thatpoetry spoke to something else within us, "our Divinestfaculties," he wrote, "our material flesh and blood."(10) As Jason Rudy's work conveys, Dobell believed that because thebody beats time like a poem, our experience of reading such poetry isnecessarily affective, uniting the "inward" heartbeat with the"outward" sound of rhythmic language (Thoughts, p. 53).Moreover, this experience is "religious" for Dobell because itreconciles the "spirit" with "Matter," securing ourphysical reality in a world we only come to know through the immaterialfeelings that give rise to language (Thoughts, p. 53). Elsewhere, Dobellintimates that "the universe" is a "Divine Language"and so if poetry formalizes the universe, "clothes it," asDawson would say, it performs the same function as any religious systemthat strives to square the spiritual with lived reality. This, I think,is the reasoning behind Dobell's statement that "Poetry shouldbe Religious" (Thoughts, p. 66).

One might respond to this argument by claiming that Dobell, likeArnold, wished to replace religion with feeling, and might not beclassed as a defender of Christianity in any of its guises. EvenUnitarianism was an empty and cold system to the poet who wrote in hisnotebook: "Religion is philosophy made human" (in Jolly,1:150). Protestantism was even worse, however, a "narrow, ugly,impudent, unreasonable, inconsistent ... babel of logomachy andliteralism," Dobell wrote, anathema to a believer more interestedin feelings than ongoing debates over signifiers. On visiting the Southof France in 1864, his aversion to Protestantism was confirmed when hewitnessed an evangelical "pasteur" refuse to perform amarriage ceremony between a young Protestant girl and her Catholic beau,unless she promised never to convert. As a freethinker, Dobell washorrified and claimed that while Protestants had no problem with afelony like lying, which they do "morning, noon and night," to"fail in an iota of the creed, that is mortal sin" (letter tofather, March 6, 1863, in Jolly, 2:206). Catholicism seemed morefavorable to Dobell, who was attracted to the "rhythmicundulation" of its sung prayer, as well as its "great,beautiful, wise powerful" myths and mysteries (letter to father,March 6, 1863 in Jolly, 2:255; Poetical Works, p. 154). Of course, theprojected but unwritten second part of Balder was intended as an attackon the "Church of Rome" which Dobell considered too emotive,lacking any kind of educative foundation and riddled with corruptpriests. Like Thompson, Dobell despised the idea of the priest, anoffice which not only led to the hierarchization of faithfulcommunities, but usurped the role of the poet by pronouncing"absolution" and "release" on believers (Thoughts,p. 186). If Protestant clerics were mechanical and pompouslyenlightenment, Catholic priests were corrupt storytellers who envelopedthe Scriptures in such dark passions that they were stripped of theiruse-value in working through the feelings of humankind (Thoughts, pp.187-188).

The problem with organized religion was that it was prescriptiveand controlled, leaving no space for soul-freedom, spiritual sense, ordeveloped trains of emotive thought that revealed God's presence inthe world. Echoing Thompson, Dobell argued that if Christianity wasintended to be a "permanent undevelopable outward system,"then the Apostles would have made considerable effort to "engrave the formula on tables of stone." Christianity was not to be thrownout, however, for its representative figure, Jesus Christ, still glowedas the perfected model of human benevolence and charity; instead, Dobellargued Christianity was to be reshaped as feeling:

 Supposing there were no such thing as words what idea should we have of an Invisible God? We should have ideas of His effects and of such of the Attributes producing such effects as we could feel in ourselves by our possession of the same. But of the Total Agent what? I think only a dim Image, the reflection of our consciousness of our own existence: or the result of the effort of the mind to conceive, which effort may produce the vague figure of its own action; a shape on the corrugating brain; and impression on the soul, like that of the wind on water. Therefore in reality none. A spiritual world, then, could only be directly apprehended in so far as it agreed with our own faculties and experience. Dismissing, therefore, as mere shadows and reflections of ourselves, all intellectual notions of the spiritual world, what, apart from words, remains as testimony to it? This: that from the top and culmen of all perception the mind as it were stretches up arms into vacancy, desires towards--what? The testimony therefore to the unknown is of feeling. (Thoughts, pp. 147-148).

This is Dobell's most important statement regarding religiousbelief. In it, he claims that religion's current mode of evincingGod's reality and the power of spirituality is to express itthrough human language. Without words, the individual can only conceiveof God through thoughts already buried in the mind, producing aspiritual world that mirrors or reproduces the conditions of "ourown existence." Such a statement works for Dobell in that healready regarded religion as humanized philosophy. Yet he is at the sametime concerned that testifying to God by rendering him a part of thehuman risks reducing the numinous either to mortal experience, or tosomething so immaterial ("the wind on water") that it resistsall definition. If God is not a reflection of the human, then, he isinstead that emotional part of the self that strives toward that whichlies beyond it, grounded in the individual but morphing into those"lines of thought" Dobell argued originated in the brain andreached up to reveal God's presence. This seems to be what thenarrator of "To the Same" implies when he renders the soul as"A god that, for being god, believest in God / The more"(11,12-13). That implicit connection between the believer'simmaterial self (the soul) and God is not only affective, however, butspasmodic, convulsive, and a little desperate, grounded in a desire forsomething unknowable but deeply felt.

"The Harps of Heaven" puts into poetry what Dobelltheorized in Thoughts, framed by the story of a believer who scramblesup into the highest part of heaven in order to understand those feelingsthat motivate him in mortal life. Within this empyrean world, thenarrator interrogates a seraph (those angels able to dwell with God inthe furthermost point of heaven) in an attempt to solve the puzzle offaith as well as its origin. Before dwelling on this part of the poem,it is worth assessing how the narrator enters heaven, a process which isachieved in the same way Dobell intimated he experienced the divine,that is, as a mental feeling that forges a pathway to God. The narratorhere declares that he ascends the "bulwark" between earth andheaven by scaling it with a rope made of his own prayer, an utterancewhich when articulated explodes ("flecks") across the sky tocreate a sort of spiritual web on which he steadies himself:

 On a solemn day I clomb the shining bulwark of the skies: Not by the beaten way, But climbing by a prayer, That like a golden thread hung by the giddy stair Fleck'd on the immemorial blue. (11,1-6)

The speaker specifically avoids the "beaten way" by whichbelievers conventionally access God--organized religion--and followsinstead a trail only the "brave and few," united by theirability to feel, might endeavor to mount (l. 7). For only those who canemotionally sense God attempt the venture, "stirr'd by echoesof far harmonies," and then so overcome with religious feeling thatthey "Must either lay ... down and die of love, / Or dare / Thoseempyrean walls" (11,8-11).

As the narrator advances, his footing slips and he becomessuspended "in the swaying air" between Earth and Heaven, a"sheer eternal precipice" on either side of him. Thispredicament does not induce the pleasurable fear of sublime terror butinstead instills an anxiety that God might be forever cut off. Caught ina moment of extreme anguish, the narrator declares:

 Then when I, Gigantic with my desperate agony, Felt even The knotted grasp of bodily despair Relaxing to let go, A mighty music, like a wind of light, Blew from the imminent height, And caught me in its splendour; and, as flame That flickers and again aspires, Rose in a moment thither whence it came; And I, that thought me lost, Pass'd to the top of all my dear desires, And stood among the everlasting host. (11,22-34)

The climactic pitch and increasingly dense syntax of this passagereiterates Dobell's sense that the individual is connected to Godthrough feeling: only when the dangling narrator decides to relax hisbody and let emotion flow through him does God respond by releasing hisdivinity through music. The sensation of these majestic melodies blowsthrough the narrator in the same manner that Dobell depicted God'spresence in Thoughts, "the wind on water" becoming "awind of light." Now lifted to the heavens and firmly located on arock of amethyst, the narrator is confronted with a scene ofharp-playing seraphs who produce the music that so allured him. Like hisown prayer, the notes that the angels strike roll from their harps toform a "sea of choristry" that bursts over the earth givingintimations of divinity. The music,

 like an odorous luminous mist, doth leap the eternal walls, And falls In wreaths of melody Adown the azure mountain of the sky; And round its lower slopes bedew'd Breathes lost beatitude; And far away, Low, low, below the last of all its lucent scarps, Sprinkles bewildering drops of immortality. (11, 72-80)

The beauty of this passage is intensified further when the narratorlearns that the angels are deaf to the "sound of harpers harping ontheir harps," a revelation confessed through the tears hisseraph-guide sheds at the mention of these sacred tunes (l. 83). The"rapt celestial auditory" is reserved for the "sweetlower air" and, while the seraph mourns the loss of this harmonioussolace, he is given "back his bliss" by the dazzling"glory of immortal light" which makes visible his music. Theglittering realms of heaven, then, serve to flesh out God'spresence by lighting up his divine refrain, one which emanates fromangelic harps and is understood by mortals as lyricism.

Communicating the significance of religious feeling through aspasmodic poetics, Dobell captures the jerky manner by which God castshis light on the world, a light that is absorbed, fragmented, andinclined by the bodily being of believers: standing under a ray or sparkonly jars its trajectory. Such jarring also points to the kind ofrelation the freethinker might have with God, individually shaped andsometimes offbeat. For Dobell, God's light only becomes uniform andstagnant when closeted within the institutional church-space, an idea headdresses in "To a Cathedral Tower, on the Evening of theThirty-Fifth Anniversary of Waterloo." When the narrator does lookup toward the sun from his cathedral-tower vicinity, it is "As ababe smiles into his murderer's face" to forge a destructivebond from which issues a "palpitat[ing] light" that ushers inthe poem's central scene of war and "red Waterloo" (11.16, 19, 82). It is typical of Dobell to versify on organized orinstitutional religion through images of war and death, couplingwar's empty glory with Old Testament dogmatism and its associatedvengeful God. Here is the narrator of "In War-Time: A Psalm for theHeart" calling on the "Lord of Thunder" (l. 139) to

 SCOURGE us as Thou wilt, oh Lord God of Hosts; Deal with us, Lord, according to our transgressions; But give us Victory! Victory, victory! oh, Lord, victory! Oh, Lord, victory! Lord, Lord, victory! (11, 1-5)

The ostensible war-mongering quickly gives way to a tumult ofhysteric references to the "sick and crazed," "Strainedand cracked" vision of the soldier, "swarmed and foul withcreeping shapes of midnight"; "the strings" of wartimelife "strung to the twang of torture"; and the"stench" of "Weevils, and rots, and cankers"tormenting those who bear any strength to fight (11, 19-21, 35-36, 41).The plea that God should "fear not to bless" such horror seemsdarkly ironic, invoking a hypocritical master figure willing toencourage the believer's faith in victory from war.

The same correlation is made by the narrator of "To aCathedral Tower," but it is notable that he steadily distanceshimself from the tower; "I am not moved / To frenzy" heclaims, thus intimating his rejection of rancorous church-trappeddivinity (11, 4-5). The cathedral tower itself also appears dead, itsdepiction as an "Unchanging Pile," a "Grey Pile,"evoking a funereal atmosphere that lingers into the vision of Waterloo."War" and "Death" are figures directly set againstFreedom and Christ ("the genius of his race"), crushing all intheir wake and setting their newly dead captives back on those"tyrants" who invoked the conflict (11, 38, 59). Death is evengranted the power to resurrect the "bloody dust" ofslaughtered warriors, now rising as "obscene shapes" who,"like / A swoop of black thoughts thro' a stormy soul"attack everything around them (11, 51, 56-57). As they "snatchjoys" from "the Victor" only to confer it on "allthe tyrants of the darkened globe," all forms of rulership andpower are gloomily ridiculed to elevate indirectly democratic, peacefulforms of government (11, 58-59). The poem is by no means specificregarding what form this government should take, and instead concernsitself with shifting readers' feelings and perceptions of God inorder to root them in a different way of experiencing religion. Even theangels are castigated for gazing upon God with "averted eyes / (Asone who feels the wrong he will not see)," and only Dobell'sallusion to Christ as a personification of "Freedom" seem toevade the brand of hypocrisy:

 And the genius of his race, Pale, leaning on a broken eagle, dies. High in the midst departing Freedom stands On hills of slain; her wings unfurled, her hands Toward heaven, her eyes turned, streaming, on the earth, In act to rise. (11, 38-43)

Standing between God and the war-torn landscape, Freedom appears toevince real feeling through her tears, but she is nevertheless ready toflee the scene and rise up toward heaven. Christ is almost entirelyburied in the poem, shattered but propped up against the alreadyredundant and damaged image of Christianity suggested in the eagle, andthen erased from the scene as another "king of men" who mightotherwise yield to the "Warmarish, Victory and Glory" (11. 29,36).

The frenzy initiated here, as in the poems discussed above, isarguably disturbing and unsettling to any reader even without the addeddismantling of Christian tradition, and it certainly upset many ofDobell's contemporaries. For not only was Dobell using a spasmodicturn of expression to enact religious experience in poetry, but he wassuggesting that the feelings such expression sparked might replacedoctrine itself to render religion a matter of convulsive affect.Certainly Edward Knight Everett's sermon, "Spasmodic ChristianZeal" (1883) seems to respond directly, if belatedly, toDobell's proposition, with a paper that rails against such feelingas a twisted mode of enthusiasm. For Everett, any "excitedephemeral emotion and energy" is "alien to the very spirit ofChristianity," attaching itself only to those who focus the soul onthe "Unknown." (11) The believer might well pour out a"perfect 'volcano' of zeal," but this inevitablyfades to become nothing more than "the petrified lava of areactionary indifference" (Everett, p. 4). Echoing Dobell'sdour father-in-law, Everett claims that Christianity should instead be"a permanent force":

 Its current, a regular current. Its vitality, a sustained vitality.... Have your revival meetings, but let your activity then be a fair and honest sample of your regular serving in the Master's course; which is promoted best, not by spurs, and spurts, and spasms, not by the ardour of fine feeling, which bums the soul's energy to ash, but by the more uniform yet no less real devotion, which to many a pastor is the strength of his hands and the joy of his heart. (Everett, p. 5)

Without such moderation, Everett predicted that religion wouldliterally expire, degenerating gradually into "fever" and"chattering chills" of the kind that inflict Dobell'sChrist figure in "To a Cathedral Tower" (Everett, p. 5).Dobell's poetry clearly stands on the opposite side of such anargument, breaking its readers from their tranquil restraint to stirthem into a re-examination of faith fuelled by fine feeling. LikeWordsworth, who used the lyric form to train the readers' thoughtsinto the transcendent and beyond the poem, Dobell shaped his verse intoa catalyst of emotion so intense that readers are cast up with theangels like the narrator of "The Harps of Heaven." How to getback down again was not the most pressing of issues for a poet sopassionately attached to God, and yet it is perhaps this very nihilistic desire that troubled the Victorians, even as it has distracted modernreaders from Dobell's beliefs.

Notes

(1) George Gilfillan, A Second Gallery of Literary Portraits(Edinburgh, 1850), p. 393.

(2) George Gilfillan, review of The Roman, Eclectic Review 91(1850): 678-679.

(3) All quotes from Dobell's poetry from The Poetical Works ofSydney Dobell, 2 volumes (London, 1875).

(4) W. David Shaw, "Poetry and Religion," in A Companionto Victorian Poetry, ed. Richard Cronin , Alison Chapman, and Antony H.Harrison (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), p. 466.

(5) E[mily] J[olly], The Life and Letters of Sydney Dobell, 2volumes (London, 1878), 1:6. Hereafter cited in text as"Jolly" with volume and page number.

(6) See Samuel Thompson, A Brief Account of the Church of God,Known as Freethinking Christians: Also, an Abstract of the Principleswhich they believe, and the law of church fellowship they have adopted.Reprinted in Jolly, 1:68-76.

(7) Samuel Thompson ("Christophilus"), Evidences ofRevealed Religion on a new and original Plan being an Appeal to Deists on their own Principles of Argument (London, 1814), p. 17.

(8) George Dawson, Shakespeare and other Lectures, ed. George St.Clair (London, 1888), p. 457.

(9) George Dawson, The Demands of the Age upon the Church: ADiscourse delivered on the Opening of the "Church of theSaviour" Edward Street, Birmingham, on August 8, 1847 (London,1847), p. 4.

(10) Sydney Dobell, Thoughts on Art, Philosophy, and Religion;Selected from the Unpublished Papers of Sydney Dobell, intro. JohnNichol (London, 1876), pp. 7, 22.

(11) Edward Knight Everett, '"Spasmodic ChristianZeal': A Paper Read at the Meeting of the Lancashire and CheshireAssociation of the Baptist Churches held at Preston, June 14, 1883"(Burnley, 1883), p. 4.