Volume 7 — Newman's Poems. BY H. W. Wilberforce

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The little volume of poems published anonymously under this humble title, [Footnote 179] produced an impression immediately on its publication, not only among Catholics but among English readers in general, which could hardly have been caused by a volume of poems from any other writer of the day, with the exception, perhaps, of the Laureate. The explanation is to be found in the initials J. H. N. at the end of the preface—a signature long ago of world-wide celebrity.

There may be those who feel surprised to find that a man chiefly known as having been, under God's providence and grace, the main author of the Oxford movement of 1833, should be found to have possessed and exercised extraordinary poetical gifts. It may perhaps be partly a lurking feeling of envy, partly a just perception how rarely any one man combines numerous unconnected powers, which makes the world at large reluctant to admit that any man has greatly distinguished himself in a line far removed from that specially his own. But that feeling, be its origin what it may, does not in reason apply to the case before us, because it would seem that the gifts which specially qualify a man to produce a deep effect upon the hearts and consciences of his fellows, to be the founder and leader of any great school of thought, social, moral, political, or religious, are very much the same as those required for the making of a great poet.

This is at first sight so obvious, that we incline to think the only real argument against it would be, an appeal to experience. It will be said, there is a small class of men who have won among their fellows (as if it were a title of honor formally secured to them) the name of "the poet," and no one of them has been, except in his own special art of poetical composition, among the great leaders of human thought. But this is easily accounted for. A man immersed for years in public affairs of any kind, however richly his mind may have been stored with poetical images, and however natural it may have been to him to have sought for them a poetical expression, can rarely have had leisure to cultivate the merely artistic part of poetical composition to the degree necessary for success as a poet. It is hardly likely that in his case there should combine the many accidental circumstances necessary (over and above the possession of great poetical endowments) for the composition, publication, and general diffusion of any considerable poetical work. And even if all these should happen to meet, the mere fact of being very greatly distinguished in any other line is of itself, we strongly suspect, enough to prevent any man from being chiefly remembered as a great poet. The name of "the poet Cowper" is a household word in every English family. But if "William Cowper, Esq., of the Inner Temple" (as his name stands on the title-page) had risen to the woolsack, we believe that, even though he might have written the same poems, he would never have gained the title. If indeed mediocrity in everything else had sufficed to gain a high and permanent reputation for a man of equal mediocrity in poetical talents, we should now have talked of Cowper's friend as "the poet Hayley." But that the highest poetical genius does not obtain the title for a man otherwise conspicuous, is proved by the example of Shakespeare. Merely because he has left behind him dramatic works to which the world affords no rival, not even the preeminent poetical genius shown in his poems has caused the world at large to speak and think of him as "the poet Shakespeare." Nor would Dryden, despite of his matchless lyric poems, have attained the title, if among his numerous plays he had written Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear.

It seems to us that these considerations are enough to answer the objection from experience, which might perhaps be urged against our opinion, that the qualities which qualify a man to exercise a deep influence on his fellows and make him a leader of the souls of men, are in fact the same as those which qualify him for success as a poet.

We think this volume will convince most of those who read it that we are right. The weighty and touching thoughts of these poems bear the stamp of the same mint from which issued those volumes of sermons, which, far more than any other work, have impressed a permanent stamp upon the generation of English readers which is now tending, as Dr. Newman says of himself, "toward the decline of life." It is impossible to read them without feeling that, if his life had been one of mere literary leisure, his chosen employment would probably have been poetry. As it is, he has evidently resorted to it, not when he was thinking of others, but when he sought to relieve the fulness of his own soul. In this world he has written in prose; his poetry has been the record of his inner struggles and emotions, and has been written for himself and his God.

As long as any memory of the English nation and the English language remains among men. Dr. Newman, we doubt not, will be remembered and reverenced; not indeed as one of the few whom poetry has made great, but as one of the great men who have written poetry. And so far from deeming it strange that such should be the case with the great author of the movement of 1833, we, for our part, should have thought it strange if, in a man of the highest literary culture, the intense feelings in which that movement originated had not relieved themselves by poetical expression. We believe, indeed, that few if any great moral movements have taken place in which something more or less of the same kind has not been found. Perhaps the most remarkable exception was the change of religion in England in the sixteenth century; the leaders in which not only produced no great poetical work, but did not leave behind them so much as a hymn. This was a striking contrast, not only to the contemporary movement in Germany, and to that of the Methodists in the eighteenth century, but also to that of the earlier Lollards. The explanation, however, is not far to seek. Lord Macaulay says, "Ridley was perhaps the only person who had any important share in the English Reformation, who did not consider it as a mere political job." Now, attractive as jobbing is to many very clever men, it is hardly qualified to inspire any poetical afflatus. Cranmer was too busy getting what he could for himself, to be musing over poetical images. Besides, the Reformation in England appealed not so much to men's deeper feelings, as to their natural and reasonable dislike to have their property confiscated and themselves imprisoned, hanged, and cut up alive; and this last kind of appeal neither needed nor encouraged poetical powers.

To return to the volume before us, the poems were so evidently written only for the author himself that it is our signal good fortune that they have ever been published. The greater part of them first appeared in a series called the Lyra Apostolica, in many successive numbers of the British Magazine, edited by the late Hugh James Rose, in which several of Dr. Newman's earliest prose writings were originally published. It was afterward issued in the form of a small volume, the first edition of which appeared in 1836. By far the greater part of it was supplied by Dr. Newman; the other poems, by five of his intimate friends. [Footnote 180]

To these are added, in the present volume, a few of earlier and a good many of later date. All of them seem equally to have been composed without any view to publication, and considering that their illustrious author has always been remarkable for a dislike to put himself forward, and for an almost extreme susceptibility of feeling, some persons may wonder that he has ever been able to persuade himself to give them to the world. We do not share their wonder; for we long ago came to the conclusion that it is by men of the greatest natural reserve that the fullest confidences of their inner feelings are not unfrequently made. In the common intercourse of society such men display least of their real feeling. But being distinguished from others by the depth and strength of their thoughts and affections, more lasting convictions and emotions, and greater self-knowledge, they can, upon any call of duty, speak out most unreservedly and sincerely; and the pain it gives them to make any revelation of their inner selves is such that, to do it completely, costs them little, if anything, more than to speak of themselves at all. This, all the world sees, has been exemplified in the Apologia, and in its measure it has been the same with the Lyra Apostolica, and with the present volume. The poems in the Lyra were, nearly all of them, the expression of the thoughts which crowded into the mind of Dr. Newman during a tour in the Mediterranean, between December, 1832, and July, 1833. The present volume adds very greatly to their interest by giving the place and day of their composition. Thus, the poem headed "Angelic Guidance" was written on the day on which he left Oxford. In our days, in which a very few hours upon the Great Western takes Oxford men to Falmouth without trouble or fatigue, the date, "Whitchurch, December 3d, 1832," is interesting. Whitchurch is a somewhat dreary and secluded village, at which the direct road from Oxford to Southampton intersected the mail road from London to Exeter and Falmouth. There was in those days a coach to Southampton, to the top of which Mr. Newman mounted, (the present writer and other Oriel friends standing in the street, in front of the Angel Inn, to see the last of him.) Before midday he reached Whitchurch, and there had to wait till night for the Falmouth mail. We should be curious to know what has become of the large inn at Whitchurch which was maintained by this sort of traffic. It must long ago have been shut up. Mr. Newman's life had hitherto been almost entirely confined to one or two places, and now he was starting alone for distant lands, and began by waiting many hours at a lonely and (crede experto) sufficiently dreary inn. His thoughts turned to the guardian angel who, as he already believed, bore him company. The Apologia tells us how early in life his thoughts had run upon angels and their ministrations. He says of these lines: "They speak of 'the vision' that haunted me. That vision is more or less brought out in the whole series of these compositions." We need hardly say how much these circumstances add to the interest of the poem, which appeared in the Lyra without any explanation of the circumstances under which it was composed.

It is impossible to read these poems without feeling how much a man takes with him from home of the thoughts which are called out even by the most striking and memorable scene. The events going on in England—the evident decay of what he still believed to be the "reformed church"—formed the coloring medium through which he looked at all he saw. Thus, at sea, the day he left Gibraltar, he wrote the lines headed "England:"

"Tyre of the West, and glorying in the name More than in Faith's pure fame! O trust not crafty fort, nor rock renown'd Earn'd upon hostile ground; Wielding Trade's master-keys, at thy proud will To lock or loose its waters, England! trust not still. "Dread thine own power! Since haughty Babel's prime. High towers have been man's crime. Since her hoar age, when the huge moat lay bare, Strongholds have been man's snare. Thy nest is in the crags; ah! refuge frail! Mad counsel in its hour, or traitors, will prevail. "He who scann'd Sodom for his righteous men Still spares thee for thy ten; But, should vain tongues the Bride of Heaven defy, He will not pass thee by; For, as earth's kings welcome their spotless guest, So gives he them by turn, to suffer or be blest."

The Apologia tells us that the golden lines, "Lead, kindly light," were composed when the "orange-boat" in which the author sailed from Palermo to Marseilles was becalmed in the straits of Bonifacio. It is not mentioned, we think, that it was in the darkness of the night. They are here headed, "The Pillar of the Cloud:'

"Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home— Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet: I do not ask to see The distant scene,—one step enough for me. "I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Should'st lead me on. I loved to choose and see my path; but now Lead Thou me on! I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears. Pride ruled my will: remember not past years. "So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on. O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

"Off Algiers," in sight of the grave of that great African church which produced St. Augustine, St. Cyprian, and Tertullian, is the date of "The Patient Church," in which, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, the writer, relying on the promise of Christ, looked forward to the ultimate victory of the church, and which begins:

"Bide thou thy time! Watch with meek eyes the race of pride and crime; Sit in the gate and be the heathen's jest. Smiling and self-possest, O thou, to whom is pledged a victor's sway, Bide thou the victor's day!"

On December 28th, 1832, Mr. Newman caught his first sight of a Greek shore. It is highly characteristic that the first thought which it inspired to the most finished classical scholar of his day in Oxford, was not of Thucydides, not even of Homer, but of "the Greek fathers:"

"Let heathens sing thy heathen praise, Fall'n Greece! the thought of holier days In my sad heart abides; For sons of thine in truth's first hour. Were tongues and weapons of his power. Born of the Spirit's fiery shower. Our fathers and our guides. "All thine is Clement's varied page; And Dionysius, ruler sage, In days of doubt and pain; And Origen with eagle eye; And saintly Basil's purpose high To smite imperial heresy, And cleanse the altar's stain. "From thee the glorious Preacher came, With soul of zeal and lips of flame, A court's stern martyr-guest; And thine, O inexhaustive race! Was Nazianzen's heaven-taught grace; And royal-hearted Athanase, With Paul's own mantle blest."

At Corfu, the narrative of Thucydides brought to his mind the thought which he worked out in the sermon on "The Individuality of the Soul," published six years later; and in which he says: "All who have ever gained a name in the world, all the mighty men of war that ever were, all the great statesmen, all the crafty counsellors, all the scheming aspirants, all the reckless adventurers, all the covetous traders, all the proud voluptuaries, are still in being, though helpless and unprofitable. Balaam, Saul, Joab, Ahitophel, good and bad, wise and ignorant, rich and poor, each has his separate place, each dwells by himself in that sphere of light or darkness which he has provided for himself here. What a view this sheds upon history! We are accustomed to read it as a tale or a fiction, and we forget that it concerns immortal beings who cannot be swept away, who are what they were, however this earth may change." The germ of that sermon is contained in the lines headed "Corcyra," January 7th, 1833.

The Lyra contains some beautiful and well-known lines:

"Did we but see, When life first open'd, how our journey lay Between its earliest and its closing day. Or view ourselves as we one day shall be, Who strive for the high prize, such sight would break The youthful spirit, though bold for Jesus' sake. "But thou, dear Lord! While I traced out bright scenes which were to come, Isaac's pure blessings, and a verdant home, Didst spare me, and withhold thy fearful word; Willing me year by year, till I am found A pilgrim pale, with Paul's sad girdle bound."

They are headed, "Our Future. What I do, thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter." It gives them a new interest to find that they were composed at Tre Fontane, the spot of the martyrdom of St. Paul.

The verses called "Day Laborers," composed while waiting at Palermo for a passage home, (as is described in the Apologia,) show the author's deep sense of having a work to do. They are headed, "And He said. It is finished:"

"One only, of God's messengers to man, Finished the work of grace which he began; ...... List, Christian warrior! thou whose soul is fain To rid thy mother of her present chain;— Christ will avenge his bride; yea, even now Begins the work, and thou Shalt spend in it thy strength; but, ere he save, Thy lot shall be the grave."

We have insisted on the peculiar value of the poems written during this short tour, (the only one of the kind in which the illustrious author has ever indulged himself,) because it adds a new and special interest to compositions which, even when published without any such interest, attained a wide and deserved celebrity. He seems at the time to have felt that that tour was to be the only distraction of the kind in a life of toil; and that he was enriching himself with images of beauty (worthy, as he says, in itself rather of angelic than mortal eyes) which were to last him for many a long year:

"Store them in heart! Thou shalt not faint 'Mid coming pains and fears. As the third heaven once nerved a saint For fourteen trial years."

That the remembrance has been fresh and keen, we see in the lines on "Heathen Greece" written in 1856, and first published in that exquisite volume Calista:

"Where are the islands of the blest? They stud the AEgean sea; And where the deep Elysian rest? It haunts the vale where Peneus strong Pours his incessant stream along, While craggy ridge and mountain bare Cut keenly through the liquid air. And, in their own pure tints arrayed. Scorn earth's green robes which change and fade. And stand in beauty undecay'd. Guards of the bold and free."

It is worth notice that the pregnant lines on "The Sign of the Cross" were written before the author left Oxford, and while he was as yet, as he expressly tells us, so ignorant of Catholic doctrine that even when waiting at Palermo, just before he returned home, he says: "I began to visit the churches, and they calmed my impatience, though I did not attend any services. I knew nothing of the presence of the blessed sacrament there."

We might linger equally upon many poems which equally deserve it, but pass on to those written since the author was a Catholic. Among these are not to be reckoned the translations from the Latin Hymns of the Breviary, which were made "in 1836-8." There are a few which bear the date "Littlemore," a date full of touching recollections to the friends of the author. It is a hamlet locally separated from the parish of St. Mary's, of which he was vicar, but belonging to it. He had built a church there for the use of his parishioners, and retired there from time to time for his own as well as their benefit. When he gave up his connection with the Oxford movement, (as the Apologia shows,) he retired there altogether, and staid there till he became a Catholic in 1845. Of those written since the author became a Catholic the best known, probably, are "The Pilgrim Queen," and "The Queen of the Seasons." It is indeed cheering to find a great genius, who had so long been more or less crippled by the chill, stiff system of Anglicanism, opening out, like a flower beneath the spring sun—beneath the genial teaching of the Catholic Church:

"But I know one work of his infinite hand. Which special and singular ever must stand; So perfect, so pure, and of gifts such a store, That even Omnipotence ne'er shall do more. "The freshness of May, and the sweetness of June, And the fire of July in its passionate noon. Munificent August, September serene, Are together no match for my glorious Queen. "O Mary! all months and all days are thine own. In thee lasts their joyousness, when they are gone; And we give to thee May, not because it is best. But because it comes first, and is pledge of the rest."

Apart from the freedom of thought which the author has gained from the Church, ("Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,") there seems to us an ease and flow about the very language and metre of these Catholic hymns which we do not find equalled in the author's earlier poems, sublime as are their conceptions. But it is remarkable that the poem which unites both these qualities in the highest measure, is that which was composed last, "The Dream of Gerontius." Like the others it seems to have been written for the author alone, and to have been published merely as an act of friendship to the editor of The Month. Is it too much to hope that the high sense of its exceeding depth and beauty which has been shown by the whole English world may not only encourage the author, as he tells us it did, to publish his collected poems in the volume before us, but to compose more? For it is plain that as yet at least his arms are not dimmed or his force abated.

"The Dream of Gerontius" begins with the thoughts of one who feels himself at the gate of death and the prayers of the assistants by his bedside. Then Gerontius says:

"Novissima hora est; and I fain would sleep. The pain has wearied me. ... Into thy hands, Lord, into thy hands. ..."

And the priest says the commendation. Then follows:

Soul Of Gerontius. "I went to sleep; and now I am refreshed— A strange refreshment: for I feel in me An inexpressive lightness, and a sense Of freedom, as I were at length myself. And ne'er had been before. How still it is! I hear no more the busy beat of time, No, nor my fluttering breath, nor struggling pulse; Nor does one moment differ from the next. I had a dream; yes, some one softly said, 'He's gone;' and then a sigh went round the room. And then I surely heard a priestly voice Say, 'Subvenite;' and they knelt in prayer. I seem to hear him still; but thin and low." ......

He does not yet know whether he is living or dead. Then he finds himself held,

"Not by a grasp Such as they use on earth, but all around Over the surface of my subtle being. As though I were a sphere, and capable To be accosted thus, a uniform And gentle pressure tells me I am not Self-moving, but borne forward on my way. And hark! I hear a singing; yet in sooth I cannot of that music rightly say. Whether I hear, or touch, or taste the tones. Oh! what a heart-subduing melody."

Then follow the songs of the guardian angel over the soul which he was set to tend. After a long while Gerontius takes courage and says:

Soul. "I will address him. Mighty one, my Lord, My guardian spirit, all hail! Angel. "All hail, my child! My child and brother, hail! what wouldest thou? ...... Soul. "I ever had believed That on the moment when the struggling soul Quitted its mortal case, forthwith it fell Under the awful presence of its God, There to be judged and sent to its own place. What lets me now from going to my Lord? Angel. "Thou art not let; but with extremest speed Art hurrying to the just and holy Judge; For scarcely art thou disembodied yet. Divide a moment, as men measure time. Into its million-million-millionth part. Yet even less than that the interval Since thou didst leave the body; and the priest Cried 'Subvenite,' and they fell to prayer; Nor scarcely yet have they begun to pray."

We must not linger on the converse between the soul and its guardian angel, nor at the marvellous description of the demons in "the middle region," their impotent rage—impotent against one who has now no traitor within. Then he comes within the reach of the heavenly choirs. We have the hymns of the successive choirs. At length, as they approach "the veiled presence" of God, the soul hears again the voices it left on earth, for in that presence the voices of prayer are heard:

Soul. "I go before my Judge. Ah! .... Angel. .... "Praise to his name! The eager spirit has darted from my hold. And, with the intemperate energy of love, Flies to the dear feet of Emmanuel; But, ere it reach them, the keen sanctity Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes And circles round the Crucified, has seized. And scorch'd, and shrivell'd it; and now it lies Passive and still before the awful throne. O happy, suffering soul! for it is safe, Consumed, yet quickened by the glance of God. Soul. "Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be. And there in hope the lone night-watches keep, Told out for me. There, motionless and happy in my pain, Lone, not forlorn, There will I sing my sad, perpetual strain. Until the morn. There will I sing, and soothe my stricken breast, Which ne'er can cease To throb, and pine, and languish, till possest Of its sole peace. There will I sing my absent Lord and love;— Take me away. That sooner I may rise, and go above, And see him in the truth of everlasting day."

Then follow the words of the angel, and those of the souls in purgatory. At length the angel concludes:

"Angels, to whom the willing task is given, Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest; And masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven, Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest. "Farewell, but not for ever! brother dear. Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow; Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here, And I will come and wake thee on the morrow."

Any one who has read this wonderful poem will complain that we have omitted this, and this, and this, which especially deserved to be quoted. It is most true. It would be impossible to give any idea of its matchless weight and beauty, except by transcribing the whole of it; and we have wished only to give a sample which may direct to it the attention of any reader to whom it may yet be unknown.

The preface contains a dedication of the volume of Mr. Badeley, one of Dr. Newman's Oxford friends and followers, who before this time knows far more of that world of spirits than even the gifted eye of the most illustrious seer has ever pierced; for he had hardly received this dedication when he received his summons to it. He was the son of a Protestant physician at Colchester, who, many years ago, was the medical adviser of a convent in that neighborhood, and created a good deal of suspicion among his fellow religionists, by bearing testimony to the supernatural nature of a cure of one of the nuns who was his patient. Mr. Badeley himself graduated with high honors at Oxford in 1823, and afterward studied the law, in which he attained a high reputation and great success. He directed his special attention to ecclesiastical questions, and hardly any case connected with them came before the courts in which he was not retained. In this preface Dr. Newman bears testimony to the fidelity with which he followed the religious movement in which the volume originated from first to last. He was counsel to the Bishop of Exeter in the celebrated Gorham case, and his argument upon it was published in a pamphlet which attracted much notice. He also published a book against the alteration of the law of marriage. At last a new light shone upon his path; he followed it faithfully, and it led him into the Catholic Church. He was, perhaps, the only lawyer from whom was actually accepted, on his conversion to the church, a sacrifice of his worldly interests, nearly equal to that made by many Protestant clergymen. The loss of practice has no doubt been risked by all who have become Catholics; by him, owing to the nature of his principal business, it was in a great measure incurred, nor did he ever recover what he had lost. But the time is short. It is but a few weeks since he was cheered by Dr. Newman's words, "We are now both of us in the decline of life; may that warm attachment which has lasted between us inviolate for so many years, be continued, by the mercy of God, to the end of our earthly course, and beyond it;"—and his earthly course is already over; the sacrifice is gone by. He is now able to estimate its real value.