Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

8o THE SPIRITUAL SIDE OF POETRY. [ill.
As one has lately said, 'Shakespeare may or may
not have been a religious man ; he may or may not
have been a Catholic or a Protestant. But whatever
his personal views and feelings may have been, the
light by which he viewed life was the light of Chris-
tianity. The shine, the shadow, and the colours of the
moral world he looked upon, were all caused or cast by
the Christian Sun of Righteousness.' There is hardly
a great character in his plays, no pitch of passion, no
depth of pathos, where the thought of the other world
is not present, to add intensity to what is done or
suffered in this.
Look at his finest representations of character, men
or women, and it will at once appear how true this is.
To take some of the best-known passages. When
Macbeth is on the verge of his dreadful act, the thought
of the future world intrudes —
' that but this blow
Might be the be-all and the end-all here, —
But here upon this bank and shoal of time, —
We'd jump the life to come.'
When Hamlet's thoughts turn towards suicide, what is
it ' gives him pause ' but
'the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country,'
where dreams may come to trouble him ? And in the
same play, how the sense of the upright judgment
hereafter disturbs the guilty King! —