Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/60

40 were too liberal. He was turned out as an Arminian, and led a wandering and troubled life till his death at Dokkum, where he had worked as a flax-spinner. Camphuysen's poems are all religious, and include a paraphrase of the Psalms. His aim is like Cats', "te stichten en met een vermaken," to edify while pleasing; but his religion was of the more inward and finer type of our own Herbert's and Vaughan's, though he expresses his feelings in a less conceited style and in simpler melody. His poems are written to be sung as well as read: "Zoo wel leezelijk als zingelijk, zoo wel zingelijk als leezelijk," are his own words. His Maysche Morgenstond, a beautiful song of returning spring, and the Christelijk Gevecht, are the best known of his poems to-day, but they are not the only ones in which feeling and melody are both alike arresting, and void of conceit or convention as his art is, it is by no means naïve. Witness the structure of such a verse as this:—

"Hoe lang, ach Heer!     Hoe lang noch mist mijn ziel den zoeten stand                     Van 'twaar verheugen!                     Helaas, wanneer      Wanneer zal ik eens 'teeuwig vaderland                     Bestreden meugen?      Jeruzalem des hoogsten Konings stad      Des deugd-betrachters hoop en hartenschat      Die u maar kend is licht des levens zat                     Te lang, te lang valt bang!"

This power of writing flowing musical verse echoing each mood of feeling belongs to another religious poet, the Catholic Johannes Stalpert van der