The Poems of 
 DIGBY MACKWORTH DOLBEN 
 
 edited 
 with a Memoir 
 by 
 
 ROBERT BRIDGES 
 
 Henry Frowde 
 Oxford University Press 
 London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne 
 
 ipii 
 
The Poems copyright in the United States 
 by Robert Bridges. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 1HAD not visited Eton for many years, when 
 one day passing from the Fellows' Library 
 into the Gallery I caught sight of the portrait 
 of my school-friend Digby Dolben hanging just 
 without the door among our most distinguished 
 contemporaries. I was wholly arrested, and as 
 I stood gazing on it, my companion asked me if 
 I knew who it was. I was thinking that, beyond 
 a few whom I could name, I must be almost the 
 only person who would know. Far memories 
 of my boyhood were crowding freshly upon me : 
 he was standing again beside me in the eager 
 promise of his youth ; I could hear his voice ; 
 nothing of him was changed ; while I, wrapt 
 from him in a confused mist of time, was 
 wondering what he would think, could he know 
 that at this actual moment he would have been 
 dead thirty years, and that his memory would be 
 thus preserved and honoured in the beloved 
 school, where his delicate spirit had been so 
 strangely troubled. 
 
 a 2 
 
iv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 This portrait-gallery of old Etonians is very 
 select ; preeminent distinction of birth or merit 
 may win you a place there, or again official con- 
 nection with the school, which rightly loves to 
 keep up an unbroken panorama of its teachers, 
 and to vivify its annals with the faces and figures 
 of the personalities who carried on its traditions. 
 But how came Dolben there ? It was because he 
 was a poet, — that I knew ; — and yet his poems 
 were not known ; they were jealously guarded 
 by his family and a few friends : indeed such of 
 his poems as could have come to the eyes of the 
 authorities who sanctioned this memorial would 
 not justify it. There was another reason ; and 
 the portrait bears its own credentials ; for though 
 you might not perhaps divine the poet in it, you 
 can see the saint, the soul rapt in contempla- 
 tion, the habit of stainless life, of devotion, of 
 enthusiasm for high ideals. Such a being must 
 have stood out conspicuously among his fellows; 
 the facts of his life would have been the ground 
 of the faith in his genius ; and when his early 
 death endeared and sanctified his memory, loving 
 grief would generously grant him the laurels 
 which he had never worn. 
 
 It falls now to me to tell his short story, and 
 to edit the poems which are his true and endur- 
 ing title to mortal fame. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 V 
 
 Digby Mackworth Dolben was born February 
 8, 1848, in Guernsey. His home was Finedon 
 Hall, in Northamptonshire. His father was 
 a Mackworth, his mother a Dolben. He was 
 the youngest of a family of three sons and a 
 daughter, who is now the only survivor. His 
 father, who inherited a strong protestant tradi- 
 tion, and had the reputation of maintaining it, 
 must have educated him from infancy in the 
 strictest religious creeds and motives : he sent 
 him also to a private school, Mr. Tabor's at. 
 Cheam, where religious instruction was made 
 much of. One of his fellow-pupils there has 
 publicly recorded his influence, and his efforts 
 to awaken in his schoolfellows the religious emo- 
 tion which, in his passionate regard of all things, 
 was to him, as it was to St. Francis, the only 
 meaning and the true poetry of life. Another 
 of them, Wentworth Beaumont Hankey, who 
 preceded him by one term at Eton, and to whom 
 he was much attached, has his own memoir. 
 Hankey was as worthy a companion as he could 
 ever have met with anywhere. Another, Robert 
 Bickersteth, whose friendship at both schools 
 was also loyal and admiring, remembers that the 
 first letter that he ever had from a school-friend 
 was one from Digby, generously congratulating 
 him on winning the prize for which they had 
 
vi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 both competed. These two and other friendships 
 that he made at Cheam lasted him till his death. 
 It was in January 1862 that he passed on to 
 Eton, and, being billeted in the same Dame's 
 house as myself, was recommended to my care. 
 
 I was related through my mother with both 
 Dolbens and Mackworths, indeed my mother's 
 great-grandmother in the direct male line was 
 a Dolben, so that I myself am in some fractional 
 part a Dolben ; and the names of Dolben, 
 Mackworth, and Finedon were familiar to me 
 as far back as nursery days, when my mother 
 used to amuse us younger children with tales of 
 her own childhood. A merry, gamesome spirit 
 was not the least of her charms, and that she 
 had been so universal a favourite in her girlhood 
 may have been greatly due to the original pranks 
 with which she would enliven any society whose 
 dulness or gravity provoked her. Among the 
 various scenes of her fund of stories Finedon was 
 one. Her grandfather had once been rector of 
 the parish, and the family associations were con- 
 tinued by occasional visits to Hall or Rectory, 
 in days that seemed to the younger generation 
 to have been unusually supplied with a dignified 
 and long-lived aristocracy of generals, baronets 
 and divines, whose features were familiar to me 
 among the many miniatures, silhouettes and 
 
ME M O I R 
 
 vii 
 
 other little portraits, mementos of personal 
 affection, that hung in my mother's rooms, and 
 in their eighteenth-century fashions, kindled our 
 imaginations of a strange and remote world. 
 
 A story which I well remember will exhibit 
 the keeping of these associations, — though I can- 
 not truly locate it at Finedon, — how my mother 
 espying one of these old-fashioned gentlemen 
 taking a nap by the open window of a garden- 
 room, drew his pigtail through to the outside, 
 and shut the sash down upon it. Her freak, 
 inspired by simple delight in the prospect of 
 the mighty anger and fuss that would ensue 
 when the hero awoke, was fully successful, and 
 the consequent disturbance went on rippling with 
 amusement in her memory for at least seventy- 
 five years. I should lack piety and humour if 
 I neglected this opportunity of according to the 
 absurdity a renewed lease of life. 
 
 I had never myself met any of his family until 
 Digby came to Eton, but our sisters were inti- 
 mate, and we could call each other cousin. As 
 I happened to be captain of the house, I was 
 able without inconvenience to discharge those 
 duties of elder relative which are so specially 
 obnoxious to Eton boys. I enrolled Dolben 
 among my fags, and looked after him. 
 
 Of the growth of our friendship during the 
 
viii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 school-terms between his first arrival at Eton 
 and my leaving in July 1863 I could give a 
 more circumstantial account, if the records of 
 my memory were in any order of time, but they 
 are not ; and were I to attempt to make a con- 
 secutive tale of them, I should be consciously 
 constructing it on inferences open to all the 
 tricks of memory, especially that incalculable 
 delusion due to shift of knowledge and feeling. 
 Except for a few main facts I shall therefore 
 avoid giving to my narration of his school-life 
 any sequence ; and in questioning my recollec- 
 tions I am persuaded that most of them are of 
 the last six months. I shall reproduce then only 
 that part of the picture which I clearly see. 
 It might have been possible to correct the dis- 
 order of my memory had there been existing 
 letters of this early date to help me; but his 
 family kept none, nor, with a few exceptions, have 
 I been able to discover any beside those which 
 I myself preserved ; and they do not begin until 
 August 1863, when our separation gave rise to 
 a written correspondence. After that date these 
 letters will be the basis of my memoir. 
 
 Of our first meeting I have no recollection ; 
 but I remember him very well as a lower-boy in 
 his broad collar and jacket. He was tall, pale, 
 and of delicate appearance, and though his face 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 ix 
 
 ^as thoughtful and his features intellectual, he 
 would not at that time have been thought good- 
 looking. Indeed he was persistently teased by 
 the little boys for his appearance, his neglectful 
 dress, his abstracted manner, and his incapacity 
 for games at ball. Not that he was inactive ; 
 he had his own pony at home and was fond of 
 riding ; he also became a good swimmer and 
 delighted in open-air bathing; but his short 
 sight excluded him from the common school- 
 games; and though the dreaminess which it 
 gave to his expression came to be a character- 
 istic and genuine charm, it was, until it won 
 romantic interpretation, only an awkwardness. 
 He was a boy who evidently needed both pro- 
 tection and sympathy, and I could not have 
 talked to him without discovering the attraction 
 of our similar inclinations and outlook on life. 
 
 For, different as we were in physical tempera- 
 ment, different as boys could be, we were both of 
 us terribly serious, determined, and of artistic 
 bent, and had come through the same sort of 
 home-teaching to the same mental perplexity. 
 We satisfied our natural bias towards art by 
 poetry, but the magnitude of the religious 
 problems which we had been led up to face was 
 occupying our attention ; it involved both our 
 spiritual and practical interests in life. A 
 
X' 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 sectarian training had provided us with premises, 
 which, so long as they remained unquestioned, 
 were of overwhelming significance : they domir 
 nated everything : the logical situation was 
 appalling : the ordinary conventions of life were 
 to us merely absurd : we regarded the claim of 
 the church in the same way as Cardinal Newman 
 had elaborated it in his writings ; and we were 
 no doubt indirectly influenced by his views, 
 though I had never myself read any contro- 
 versial books, and had little taste for them, 
 We were in fact both of us Pusey-ites, and if 
 we reacted somewhat differently to the same 
 influences, yet neither of us at that time 
 doubted that our toga virilis would be the cas^ 
 sock of a priest or the habit of a monk. How 
 I had first come to imbibe these notions I can- 
 not now perceive, unless, as I think, it was 
 the purely logical effect of Keble's 'Christian 
 Year', a book regarded in my family as good 
 poetry, and given to us on Sundays to learn 
 by heart. Dolben had lived under the in- 
 fluence of his mother's sister, his Aunt Annie^ 
 an intellectual and charming lady (as described 
 to me) with strong ecclesiastical sympathies of 
 a mystical sort. Finedon was her home, and 
 she only left it to undertake the charitable care 
 of an invalid friend in Belgravia, where, when 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xi 
 
 Digby visited her, he had full opportunities of 
 seeing and hearing whatever there was of the 
 most extreme high-church ritual and doctrine. 
 There too he met with his cousin the Rev. 
 Euseby Cleaver, of S. Barnabas Church, who 
 must have been a stark ascetic : and with these 
 advantages, as he would have called them, he 
 was naturally far more advanced in the definition 
 and complications of orthodoxy than I could be, 
 especially as my temper was impatient of con- 
 troversy. 
 
 In a school of eight hundred we were of 
 course not the only high-church boys, and there 
 were some ten or twelve who, though we in no 
 sense formed a ' set were known to each other, 
 and united by a sort of freemasonry. Scattered 
 among the different forms and houses, and with 
 different recreations and tastes, we seldom met ; 
 and I could name only three or four with whom 
 I was on actual terms of friendship. Among 
 these, Vincent Stuckey Coles — lately Principal of 
 the Pusey House at Oxford — was preeminent for 
 his precocious theological bent and devotion to 
 the cause, — for that was one incidental aspect of 
 our common opinions ; he was indeed the recog- 
 nised authority, and our leader in so far as 
 universal esteem and confidence could give any 
 one such a position amongst us : and I no 
 
xii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 sooner discovered Dolben's predilections than 
 I introduced him to Coles, who quickly became 
 much attached to him, and served him with 
 kind offices and sound advice on many occasions 
 when he sadly needed it. With such friends as 
 Coles, Hankey, Lionel Muirhead, Bickersteth 
 and Manning, he was well off, — he could not 
 have had more congenial companions ; but 
 without them he would have been miserably 
 isolated at Eton, for he had no common in- 
 terests of any kind with the average school-boy, 
 scarcely even the burning question of the quality 
 of the food provided to develop our various 
 potentialities. He seemed of a different species, 
 among the little ruffians a saint, among sportive 
 animals a distressful spirit. By what steps our 
 intimacy at first grew I cannot now tell. As 
 neither work nor play threw us together, I saw 
 but little of him during the day : he never 
 even in my last term accompanied me in my 
 frequent visits to S. George's Chapel, where it 
 was my custom to go on short after-fours and 
 sit in the north aisle or organ-loft, stealing out 
 at the end of the anthem in time to be not very 
 late for five o'clock school. Our meetings were 
 therefore generally after lock-up, when, if we 
 both had work to do, he would sometimes bring 
 his to my room, but more often I would go 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 uninvited to sit with him. His room looked 
 over the Slough road, a small narrow room 
 with the door at the end of one long side, 
 and a window at the opposite diagonal corner. 
 Against the wall facing the window stood his 
 plain oaken bureau, at which he would sit with 
 his back to the window, while I occupied most 
 of the rest of the room at right angles to him. 
 The clearest picture that I have of him is thus 
 seated, with his hands linked behind his head, 
 tilting his chair backward as he deliberated his 
 careful utterances: or sometimes he would 
 balance it on one leg, and steady himself by 
 keeping the fingers of his outstretched arms 
 in touch with the walls. There was moreover 
 a hole in the boards of the floor, and if the 
 chair-leg went through and precipitated him on 
 to the carpet, that was a part of the performance 
 and gave him a kind of satisfaction. The 
 bureau-lid lay open before him as a desk, and in 
 the top drawer on the right he kept his poems. 
 His face whether grave or laughing was always 
 full of thought : he would sometimes throw 
 himself backward as if to escape from the stress 
 of it, or he would lean forward with meditative 
 earnestness and appear to concentrate his atten- 
 tion on the tallow dip, which in its brazen 
 saucer was the only illumination, feeding it 
 
xiv. 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 anxiously with grease from the point of the 
 snuffers, or snuffing it to the quick till he put it 
 out. When he spoke it was with a gentle voice 
 and slowly as if he pondered every word. 
 
 One evening I remember his exhibiting to me 
 how he escaped the necessity of going to the hair- 
 dresser, by burning his hair when it got too long. 
 It was then rather curly rough hair that stood 
 off from his head. He set it alight with the 
 candle in one hand, and when it flared up, he 
 put it out with the other, gravely recommending 
 the practice on the professional theory of sealing 
 the ends of the hair.^ 
 
 1 Coles writes : ' My recollections of that room include 
 two scenes ; one described by Dolben, how standing— no 
 doubt in a dream — at the window with an inkpot in his 
 hand, he had begun to pour the ink into the road, when 
 he was startled by a remonstrance, " Boy, boy, what are 
 you doing ? " from Balston, whose hat was receiving the 
 stream. The other very characteristic. We had come 
 to know that there was such a thing as a " Retreat 
 though how to set about it rather puzzled us. We had 
 reduced our food, and had settled down to devotions con»- 
 sisting eminently of prayers for the soul of K. Henry VI, 
 but ** after four" our constancy broke down, and (could 
 Dolben have had a fag?) some one was sent for ices.* 
 
 [As to the first of these tales, the enormity of the con- 
 tretemps cannot be imagined by one who never knew the 
 beautiful Head-master. Dr. Balston was as sans reproehe 
 in dress as in everything else. If he had any blemish 
 it lurked somewhere in the obscurities of Greek syntax. 
 iThat Dolben emptied the dregs of his inkpot into the 
 
M EM 0 1 R 
 
 XV 
 
 That one's memory should so faithfully have 
 retained so foolish an incident, while it neglec- 
 ted to record any one of our many talks, may 
 be easily explained, but it is none the less 
 annoying. We may very often have spoken on 
 religious matters, but when I try to recall those 
 evenings, it is only of poetry that I think, of 
 our equal enthusiasm for it, and mutual diver- 
 gence of taste : the conversations themselves 
 perished no doubt of sheer immaturity. I was 
 then reading Shakespeare for the first time, and 
 my imperfect understanding hindered neither 
 my enjoyment nor admiration. I also studied 
 Milton, and carried Keats in my pocket. But 
 Dolben, though I cannot remember that he 
 had any enthusiasm for Shakespeare, was more 
 widely read in poetry than I, as he was also more 
 Abreast with the taste of the day. Browning, 
 M" Browning, Tennyson and Ruskin were the 
 authors of whom he would talk ; and among 
 the poets he ranked Faber, a Romanized clergy- 
 man, of whose works I have nothing to say, 
 except that a maudlin hymn of his, when Digby 
 showed it me, provoked my disgust. I used to 
 
 road, and that Balston was passing is credible enough ; 
 but that the mess fell on to his hat is exaggeration. It 
 is impossible. Providence would never have allowed it. 
 R. B.] 
 
xvi MEMOIR 
 
 think that he had written a good many hymns 
 in imitation of Faber, and that it was partly 
 my dislike of that sort of thing which made 
 him unwilling to show me his verses. My own 
 boyish muse was being silenced by my reading 
 of the great poets, and we were mutually coy of 
 exposing our secret productions, which were so 
 antipathetically bad. My last serious poem at 
 school was a sentimental imitation of Spenser, 
 and I remember his reading that. I was also 
 abhorrent towards Ruskin, for I thought him 
 affected, and was too ignorant of painting to 
 understand his sermonizing ; nor could I imagine 
 how another could presume to tell me what I 
 should like or dislike : and well as I loved some 
 of Tennyson's early lyrics, and had them by 
 heart, yet when I heard The Idylls of the Kmg 
 praised as if they were the final attainment of 
 all poetry, then I drew into my shell, contented 
 to think that I might be too stupid to under- 
 stand, but that I could never expect as good 
 a pleasure from following another's taste as I got 
 from my own. I remember how I submissively 
 concluded that it must be my own dulness 
 which prevented my admiring Tennyson as much 
 as William Johnson did, — and this no doubt 
 was a very proper conclusion ; and I yielded to 
 the vogue enough to choose from the Idylls my 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xvii 
 
 speech on the 4th of June, wherewith I indulged 
 the ears of his late majesty K. Edward VII on 
 the year of his marriage ; and I even purchased 
 as gifts to my friends the fashionable volumes 
 which I had never read through. As for 
 Browning, I had no leanings towards him ; but 
 when Digby read me extracts from Saul, I re- 
 sponded fairly well, and remember the novelty 
 of the impression to this day. Of Dolben's own 
 verse of this date no scrap remains. One 
 evening when I was sitting in his room and 
 moved to pull out the drawer where he kept 
 his poems, the usual protest was not made. 
 The drawer was empty ; and he told me that 
 he had burned them, every one. I was shocked, 
 and felt some remorse in thinking that it was 
 partly his dislike of my reading them that had 
 led him to destroy them ; and I always regretted 
 their destruction until the other day, when 
 having to consider all his poems in the order of 
 their composition, I realized for the first time 
 that there is nothing of merit dating so far back 
 even as a year after this holocaust. The poetry 
 began suddenly in 1865, when, after a few poems 
 of uncertain quality, the true vein was struck, 
 and yielded more and more richly till the end.^ 
 
 ^ Since writing the above, my correspondence has un- 
 expectedly recovered five of these burnt poems, preserved 
 
 b 
 
xviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 Our instinctive attitudes towards poetry were 
 very dissimilar, he regarded it from the emo- 
 tional, and I from the artistic side ; and he was 
 thus of a much intenser poetic temperament than 
 I, for when he began to write poetry he would 
 never have written on any subject that did not 
 deeply move him, nor would he attend to poetry 
 unless it expressed his own emotions; and I 
 should say that he liked poetry on account of 
 the power that it had of exciting his valued 
 emotions, and he may perhaps have recognised 
 it as the language of faith. What had led me 
 to poetry was the inexhaustible satisfaction of 
 form, the magic of speech, lying as it seemed 
 to me in the masterly control of the material : 
 it was an art which I hoped to learn. An in- 
 stinctive rightness was essential, but, given that, 
 I did not suppose that the poet's emotions were 
 in any way better than mine, nor mine than 
 another's : and, though I should not at that time 
 have put it in these words, I think that Dolben 
 imagined poetic form to be the naive outcome of 
 
 by a friend whom he had allowed to copy them. They 
 are altogether immature, but their discovery is useful in 
 sparing us any regret for their fellows. One of them is 
 given, in a note to poem 6, at the end of the volume, 
 because it strongly confirms what I have written con- 
 cerning the relation between the form and the sentiment 
 of his poems. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xix 
 
 peculiar personal emotion ; just as one imagines 
 in nature the universal mind conquering matter 
 by the urgence of life, — as he himself describes it 
 in his * Core ' 
 
 Poetry, the hand that wrings 
 (Bruised albeit at the strings) 
 Music from the soul of things. 
 
 There is a point in art where these two ways 
 merge and unite, but in apprenticehood they are 
 opposite approaches. The poem whence the 
 three lines are quoted, and others — for instance 
 17, 41, 46, and 49 — show complete mastery, but 
 in his earlier work, to press his own imagery, 
 the bruised fingers of the learner are often what 
 mars the music. And as he began by writing 
 ' sentimental trash ' so he sometimes relapsed 
 into it. I do not wish to pretend that I was 
 myself in those days free from foolish senti- 
 mentality, yet he always showed his poems to 
 me as artistic not emotional efforts, and in so 
 far as I could be of any service to him, my 
 criticism was on the right side. 
 
 Any chronicle of Dolben''s doings must record 
 both folly and extravagance, and I should think 
 it very foolish to disguise the characteristics 
 which during his life were so apparent to his 
 friends. I know that it will seem to some that 
 b 2 
 
XX 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 the portrait might have been as well done 
 without so many realistic touches, and that the 
 phenomenal aspects are illustrated at the expense 
 of his inner life of high purpose and devotion ; 
 but the temper of his spirit cannot be mistaken; 
 it is amply expressed and has its own perma- 
 nent witness in the poems ; whereas the actual 
 outward appearances are exactly what, if I do 
 not give them, can never be known ; and it is 
 only the existence of truthful detail that can 
 refute the irresponsible hearsay, which by natural 
 selection of its spontaneous variations grows up 
 at last to a coherent falsehood, — like a portrait 
 by Macaulay. His imprudent behaviour too, 
 which invited such lamentable gossip as I have 
 heard, was merely the consequence of his indulg- 
 ing his actual feelings and conscientious opinions 
 in contempt of convention, and in spite of cir- 
 cumstances, — as is often the way with a genius. 
 If I have any hesitation, it is only where I do 
 not sufficiently remember the facts, the actual 
 conduct for instance which drew upon him the 
 displeasure of the authorities. That I have 
 forgotten so much is a proof that I cannot 
 have thought these particular religious offences 
 of great moment ; I will describe their nature 
 when their crisis occurred. 
 
 But of the most romantic of all his extrava- 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xxi 
 
 gancies, that idealization and adoration of his 
 school-friend, which long after they were parted 
 went on developing in his maturer poems, I have 
 a better memory. It was well known to me in 
 1863, indeed the burning of the poems may 
 have been due to the existence among them of 
 poems to ' Archie ' : for Dolben would have been 
 almost as reluctant to submit them to me as to 
 the eyes of their unwitting object. However 
 that was, I cannot surely remember how far I 
 understood the situation at the time, and it was 
 not until after his death that I knew the full 
 measure of his passionate attachment, as that 
 must be gauged by the evidence of all the poems. 
 He had however not shrunk from speaking 
 openly of it at that date to Coles, whose advice 
 in any spiritual dilemma he constantly sought or 
 playfully provoked, although, as may be seen in 
 his letters, he made a show of resenting it, and 
 would not, I believe, have sought it, if he had 
 not reserved to himself the liberty of pretending 
 to scorn it. He also sent his poems, as fast as 
 he wrote them, to his father, who read them, 
 bad and good, aloud to the family with genuine 
 pride and admiration : and that he took them 
 as he did, and that Digby could rely on his 
 doing so, shows, I think, that there was a very 
 great natural sympathy and emotional likeness 
 
xxii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 between them, and that Digby may have been 
 conscious of inheriting the softness which was so 
 visible in his father's face. But, though not one 
 of us would ever have judged him by a common 
 standard, nor have sought to drag him down 
 from the imaginative heights where he lived above 
 us, yet he kept this one sentiment peculiarly apart, 
 and while we looked on it as a fugitive extrava- 
 gance, he was doing all that he could to rivet it 
 faster and deeper in his soul. 
 
 To understand this ideal affection one must 
 fully recognise that its object was not only alto- 
 gether worthy, but a person whom it was difficult 
 not to idolize, if one had any tendency that way. 
 Every one who knew Manning, whether as he 
 then was at school, or in manhood, or in his latest 
 years, or whether, as some did, they knew him 
 throughout his life, all without exception spoke 
 of him only in terms of love and admiration : nor 
 have I ever met with any one who knew him well, 
 who would admit that for combined grace, amia- 
 bility and beauty of person and character he had 
 an equal. 
 
 As a 'Pusey-ite' I knew him well, but less 
 intimately than did Coles : indeed our occasional 
 meetings had generally some musical motive. 
 I never accepted his invitation to stay with him 
 in the holidays ; but once, when we were both 
 
M E MO I R 
 
 xxiii 
 
 in London, he introduced me to his family. 
 He attracted me personally as much as any one 
 whom I ever met ; but our lines and general 
 tastes were so differently cast that I looked for 
 no more of friendship than our chance juxta- 
 position occasioned. He was a little older and 
 taller than Digby, but practically his contem- 
 porary, with features of the uncharactered type 
 of beauty, the immanent innocence of Fra 
 Angelico's angels ; and to have fallen into the 
 company of one of those supersensuous beings 
 was a delightful privilege. He was of gentle 
 and perfect manners, and unusual accomplish- 
 ments ; and if not of intellectual power, yet of 
 great good sense, and with a rare combination of 
 extreme scrupulosity with strong will, — qualities 
 severely tested in a successful public service, 
 where, in positions of high trust and responsi- 
 bility, he acted firmly and wisely, but none the 
 less fretted himself to death with afterthought 
 and fear lest he should not have done well. That 
 was his idiosyncrasy. He was naturally simple 
 and modest, and — at least in his schooldays — 
 full of fun, and affectionately attached to Digby, 
 though he never to the last had any suspicion 
 that his friend was making an idol of him ; no 
 more than Beatrice had of her identification with 
 the Divine Wisdom. 
 
xxiv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 Not that Dolben's idealization was at all 
 Dantesque: — he could never have symbolized 
 Christ as a Gryphon. He was readier to turn 
 symbols into flesh than flesh into symbols ; and 
 his sacramental ecstasies are of this colour. It 
 was his fervid realization of Christ's life on 
 earth, his love for Christ's human personality, 
 that was the heart and motive of his religious 
 devotion. Christ was his friend and his God ; 
 and his perpetual vision of the Man of Sorrows 
 calling him out from the world could not be so 
 vivid as this actual image of living grace that 
 made mortal existence beautiful. The human 
 face full of joy came up between him and the 
 shadowy divine Face, the ' great eyes deep with 
 ruth ' ; and this was the cause of his vain 
 scruples, as it is plainly exhibited in the 
 poems. 
 
 Of the exact day and hour when Dolben's Vita 
 nitova dawned there is no record, but already in 
 the summer of 63 the mutual friendship between 
 him and Manning was at its full height, and he 
 abeady perceived the vanity of it, foreseeing that 
 Manning was destined to go out into the world 
 with the certainty of admiration and distinction, 
 while he was pledged to renounce the world and 
 all its delights. The thought of complete sepa- 
 ration overclouded his present enjoyment : he 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 XXV 
 
 even found excuses for making a rule of not 
 going to Manning's room ; and when it was 
 doubtful whether or no he should return to Eton, 
 he showed no anxiety to return, though it was 
 only on that condition that he could hope to 
 enjoy his friend's society; and when he did 
 return he recorded his indifference. Manning 
 was never at Finedon — nor did Digby ever visit 
 Manning's home. His affection was of the kind 
 that recognises its imaginative quality, and in 
 spite of attraction instinctively shuns the dis- 
 illusionment of actual intercourse. In absence it 
 could flourish unhindered, and under that con- 
 dition it flowered profusely. But in the summer 
 of 63 it was of full growth, nor was anything 
 ever added to it except in his imagination. 
 
 Meanwhile the responsible authorities had 
 agreed among themselves that Eton was an un- 
 suitable residence for Dolben. Both John Yonge, 
 his tutor, and Thomas Stevens, our Dominie, 
 were men of common-sense and protestant con- 
 victions, and they were both of them fully aware 
 of Dolben's disaffection. He crossed himself at 
 meals, and left his queer books about, and be- 
 haved generally so as to make himself and his 
 opinions a ridiculous wonder to the boys, although 
 not a word was ever said by any of them in my 
 hearing. Dom, as we called Mr. Stevens, had 
 
XXVI 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 spoken with me about him, but I have no recol- 
 lection of his conversations, except that once, in 
 his kind and urgent remonstrances with Digby, 
 he invoked the shade of his illustrious ancestor 
 the Archbishop. As for Yonge, who no doubt 
 consulted with Stevens, there was probably a 
 serious correspondence between him and Digby''s 
 father ; but again of this I know nothing, and 
 no record remains. I remember that one of 
 Digby's grievances was that Johnny Yonge, — 
 as we called him, though Digby with chilling 
 respect always styled him John, — made his pupils 
 read Paradise Lost for ' private business ' on 
 Sunday. Milton was to Digby as Luther to 
 a papist : and if Johnny Yonge had thought 
 to engage the pius vates as a surreptitious 
 ally, he must have been much disappointed, 
 for he only gave Dolben an occasion for ex- 
 hibiting his ecclesiastical contempt. It was my 
 surprise at his unreasonable attitude towards 
 Milton that has caused me to remember these 
 facts : I had been dazed by the magnificence of 
 the first book of Paradise Lost, and gave no 
 more heed to its theology then than I do now ; 
 and I tried to bring Digby over to my artistic 
 point of view. My lot was to spend an hour 
 before breakfast on Sunday considering Bp. 
 Wordsworth's notes on the Greek Testament ; 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xxvii 
 
 the importance of which was impressed on 
 us by the size and cost of his quarto volumes, 
 incomparably bigger than any other book that 
 we carried under our arm into school; and I 
 envied Digby a tutor like Johnny Yonge with 
 a sound taste in poetry : but I argued in vain. 
 Sunday was altogether a field-day for Digby : 
 Sunday-questions gave him a grand opportunity 
 of airing his mediaeval notions ; and he must 
 have enjoyed exercising his malicious ingenuity 
 in dragging them in. He had plenty of humour 
 and wit, and was possessed with a spirit of mis- 
 chief as wanton as Shelley's. Quite apart from 
 any meaning or value which he may have at- 
 tached to the uncalled-for confession of his faith, 
 he would have indulged it merely for a natural 
 delight in whatever was unexpected or out of 
 place, and in the surprise and perplexity that 
 he knew it must cause. Our behaviour to the 
 Masters in those days was none of the best : we 
 found pleasure in provoking them by constant 
 petty annoyances. I look back with only regret 
 and shame to my share in it, and have welcomed 
 the gentler relations that now obtain. Our game 
 of being unmanageable had its time-honoured 
 forms and limits, but if any original fun could 
 be got out of mischievous contravention of rule, 
 the occasion was eagerly exploited. There were 
 
xxviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 naturally some whose character preserved their 
 manners from being contaminated by this local 
 folly ; and among these Coles was one, and Digby 
 should have been another ; he had however his 
 own way of making mischief, and the annoyance 
 that he purposely caused by his Sunday-ques- 
 tions was of a piece with the general fashion of 
 the place : his escapades too were of a like nature, 
 and owed a great part of their pleasure to their 
 being disapproved or forbidden ; if indeed he 
 did not, as I have often thought, take pleasure 
 in surprising and perplexing himself. Among 
 these things were more serious matters, which, 
 since I have no actual memory of them, I can 
 have thought of no importance at the time. 
 There was, as a matter of fact, an Anglican 
 Priory at Ascot, a Lodge of Jesuits at Old 
 Windsor, a Roman Catholic chapel at Slough, 
 and at Clewer a whole full-fledged high-church 
 establishment under Thomas Thellusson Carter, 
 a man of venerable aspect corresponding with 
 his ecclesiastical repute and saintly life. All 
 these institutions had attracted the pilgrim steps 
 of Digby, and to Clewer he had inveigled Man- 
 ning, though how it came to be known that 
 he went there I cannot guess. I fancy that he 
 sought Carter for confession. As for Ascot 
 Priory there is an amusing and authentic story, 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xxix 
 
 but that is of a later date. Johnny Yonge knew 
 about these things, and the crisis seems to have 
 arisen from his detecting Dolben in a stolen visit 
 to the Jesuits. Though the letters prove that I 
 knew all about this at the time, yet I had so 
 completely forgotten it that, had I trusted to 
 my memory, I might have sworn in court that 
 nothing of the sort ever happened within my 
 knowledge. The two friends however, who ac- 
 companied Dolben on that day, are both living 
 and remember every detail of their reception by 
 the Jesuits. It must in some way have come to 
 the ears of the authorities, and the result was a 
 decree that Dolben should leave Eton at Election 
 [July 30] 1863. It was probably due to his 
 father's anxiety, though his health may have been 
 made the ostensible motive, that he was absent 
 from school during the last weeks of the term. 
 He was in London on July 12th and on Saturday 
 the 13th he went thence to Finedon, and his 
 fate must have been determined on during this 
 absence from school, as he left behind him all 
 his books and chattels, which I packed up and 
 despatched after him. I was myself leaving at 
 Election, but I stayed on after term was over 
 in order to entertain my younger brother, who 
 came to spend a few days with me, in making 
 excursions on the river, and hearing the music 
 
XXX 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 at S. George's, where Dr. Elvey had allowed me 
 to compile the anthem-list for the week, so that 
 my brother, who was an enthusiastic musician, 
 might hear some of the earlier church music. 
 These facts will explain the letters which Digby 
 wrote to me at that time. The first is from 
 Finedon, probably dating August 1st. 
 
 I 
 
 [2 enclosures with 
 this letter.] 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 The me at her is far too hot for fires ^ or I 'would 
 sit in the ashes ^ or in any other suitable manner express 
 my penitence for not having uuritten to you Before, In- 
 deed it was not chargeable to lack of time ^ for my only 
 occupations are going to sleepy teaching dirty little boys^ 
 and above all eating gooseberries !! The real reason 
 ivhy I have not written before^ is that I waited to 
 hear fir H from ^ as it is always pleas anteH to write 
 the second letter^ when all the news comes from one 
 side, j^* * * *] As you are going to Hay at 'Eton 
 till the 6^^ don't you think you could manage to come 
 to us for a few days on your way home. It would 
 be very convenient for you ^ and I should be very sorry 
 to mifs your visit. We shall not be going till about 
 the 1 2^^'. Home in anticipation is always delightful^ 
 in reality a little bit dull^ after all the excitement of 
 the latter part of my Bay at Eton. I have had a very 
 kind letter from the ReSior. He advises me to wait^ 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xxxi 
 
 etc, etc. My hooks ^ thanks I knoiv to your exertions ^ 
 arrived quite safely some time ago. Tell Coles that I 
 by no means approve of his conversation uuith John^ 
 my late lamented tutor : it ivas to say the leaB rather 
 covjardly.^ The poB is goings though I have much 
 more to say 
 
 ever yours ajfeBionately 
 
 D. Mackvjorth i>olben, 
 F lease write and tell me ivhether you can come. 
 
 After he had written the above, he must have 
 stuffed two enclosures into the envelope, in order, 
 I suppose, to save himself the trouble of detail- 
 ing facts. One is the letter which he says that 
 he has received from the Jesuit Rector. It is 
 so guarded in expression, that I have no tempta- 
 tion to violate its privacy. The other is a six- 
 page letter to him from Manning, dated Eton, 
 July 15th. Manning makes no allusion to 
 Dolben's leaving school, but narrates how he 
 had heard from me that I had visited Dolben 
 in London and found him in a 'melancholy 
 state with the fat poodle and the protestant 
 butler ; that he had himself been in town on 
 the Saturday and Sunday, and would have visited 
 Digby if I had not told him that he had already 
 
 1 Such expressions as this in Dolben's letters are 
 never unfriendly : it is the security of good feeling that 
 allows the liberties of speech. 
 
xxxii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 left for Finedon. The letter is in a light jocu- 
 lar vein, and is mostly concerned with the 
 triumphant recapture of some of Digby's con- 
 traband books, which had been discovered in 
 Manning's room and confiscated by his Dame. 
 . . . ' She called me back after dinner to-day, 
 and asked me about the Romish Popish and 
 Idolatrous books. . . . Unhappy Mr. Carter 
 came in for his share of the row. . . . She settled 
 to her own satisfaction that you were very 
 probably a very good and religious boy, but 
 must be rather weak in the head to read such 
 trash as the Garden [of the Soul], insinuating 
 that I was ditto \ . . etc. The bright local colour 
 justifies these extracts. As for the Jesuit, I 
 believe that his letter was never answered. 
 
 I responded to Dolben's invitation, and went 
 for a few days to Finedon on my way north, 
 making my first acquaintance with his family, 
 and this is fixed in my memory. Of his father 
 I retain a very strong impression, but the por- 
 trait that I should draw would be unrecog- 
 nizable to those who knew him as an active 
 country-gentleman, to be found at Northamp- 
 ton or Wellingborough two or three days of 
 the week, engaged on county committees or 
 more local business. As he did not ride to the 
 Pytchley, he had such a reputation as a scholar 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xxxiii 
 
 will get in a hunting district : and he must have 
 devoted much of his leisure to his fine house 
 and to the beautiful garden which under his care 
 had grown up about it. What my incorrigible 
 boyhood saw was a dignified old gentleman — 
 as I then reckoned age — not out of key with my 
 maternal traditions of Finedon. His handsome 
 features showed a very tender and emotional 
 nature, under the control of habitual severity or 
 anxiety, while his gravity of voice and manner 
 emphasized that part of him with which I could 
 least sympathize. It was my fault, and perhaps 
 due to some prejudice, that we never passed 
 beyond the first courtesies. 
 
 Mrs. Dolben was a fine example of one of the 
 best types of English culture, the indigenous 
 grace of our country-houses, a nature whose in- 
 describable ease and compelling charm overrule 
 all contrarieties, and reconcile all differences, 
 with the adjusted and unquestioning instinct 
 that not chaos itself could have disconcerted or 
 disheartened ; such a paramount harmony of the 
 feminine qualities as makes men think women 
 their superiors. Besides these personal impres- 
 sions, the picture of the long gabled house in 
 the hot sunshine, the gay garden, the avenue 
 in the summer-night, the early rambles before 
 breakfast, the fruit and the flowers and the family- 
 c 
 
xxxiv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 prayers are the abiding memories of my visit. 
 When I left, Digby asked me, I suspect at his 
 father's suggestion, to write them a commemora- 
 tive sonnet ; but I had lately outgrown my senti- 
 mental muse, and acquitted myself by putting 
 some comic rhymes together in the train. It is to 
 that which he refers in his next letter. 
 
 II 
 
 -}- Inf, Oct. S Laurentii. Di. 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 Many thanks for your letter ^ ive all admired the 
 sonnet. The rhymes 'were quite a la Broivning. I am 
 much distressed about 'what you say concerning Wales. 
 We go on Saturday, I 'will 'write again to you as soon 
 as 'we arrive at Penmanma'wr. We shall probably not 
 Hay there more than a month. Surely you might manage 
 to come for some part of that time 7 I have heard from 
 K» He does not tell me anything 1 cared to kno'w^ and 
 not a 'word about the ReBor^ luhom as yet I have not 
 'written to again. I am trying to convince my people 
 that Kuabon is on the 'whole the moH 'worth seeing 
 place in Wales, All ho'wever the guide-book says is 
 that ^ there is a fine marble monument of classic design 
 by Nollekins to Sir W. Somebody in the church ' there. 
 I have no time^ only 1 'wrote ^ 1 mean I only 'wrote ^ be- 
 cause I thought you 'would think it Hrange if I didn't 
 ans'wer your letter, ever yours affeBionately 
 
 D. Mack'worth Do I ben. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 XXXV 
 
 Digby wrote to me from Wales a letter describ- 
 ing the difficulty that his party of four had in 
 finding suitable lodgings. 
 
 Ill 
 
 I should have uoritten to you before^ but it is not 
 alivays easy to combine letter writing ivith travelling^ 
 and ive have been travelling almoH without intermis- 
 sion since we left home^ wandering all over N. Wales 
 from hotel to hotel in search of lodgings * * [various 
 details, then] * to Bangor where we found rooms in an 
 Hotel very^ very dirty indeed. Here I saw Manning 
 and went for a long walk with him on the hills. Also 
 was introduced to his father j^* * *J The next day we 
 went on to Llanberis^ where again the Hotel-maBer 
 offered^ as before at Llanfair^ one small bed. However 
 we got rooms in a cottage in the village. Hence we 
 ascended Snowdon^ which I enjoyed more than I ca7i 
 say. At lafi we heard of a vacant cottage here at 
 Aber^ where we came yeBerday. Strangely enough 
 juB outside the gate we met Manning and his father 
 [again]. He is coming to spend the day here some time 
 this week. I do wish you would come here^ 1 am sure 
 you would enjoy the mountains so muck^ and to me a 
 companion would make it perfeB. [He then regrets that 
 bis friend should have met his family for the first time 
 under such unfavourable appearances ^ but this is very 
 silly '] Flease write to me soon [* * *] 
 
 ever yours ajfeBionately 
 
 + D, M. Dolben, 
 
 c 2 
 
xxxvi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 The next letter is from Finedon in Septem- 
 ber (?), it carries on the history of his return to 
 Eton. 
 
 IV 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 Many thanks for your letter ^uhich however had 
 been expeBed and hoped for a long time before it arrived. 
 Seriously Idouoish yowwouldvjritetome a little of tener. 
 It does not matter hovj short the letter may be^ or hovj 
 little there may be to say. As to your que Hi on s^ it has 
 been decided after much deliberationthat the College of 
 our B. Lady of Eton is the beH and moH suitable place 
 for me. Therefore I am about to return. I cannot tell 
 vjhether I am glad or sorry ^ it has taken me altogether 
 so much by surprise. My fat her went douun to Eton tod ay^ 
 savj John^vjho ^vjos very glad 1 had overcome my silly 
 fancies ' etc. etc. Of course I shall be very discreet ^ and 
 generally unexceptionable (I hope) but^ alas^ vuho can 
 tell? The frailty of human nature is so great, Isn^t it? 
 My laH frailty ivas to go to see a Catholic chapel at 
 Bangor^ and as a lovj mafs uuas juB beginning^ can I 
 be blamed if I remained on my knees until it ivas con- 
 cluded? Ihave heard nothing from nor of Coles. Imill 
 write to you from Eton soon. I cannot hope to find the 
 house very pleasant^ and many things can never never 
 be as they have been, {however I have no wish to be 
 sentimental^ though I am afraid I have been) I should 
 like to see you ^ writing is of little use. 
 
 ever your ajfec friend 
 
 D, Mack worth Dolben. 
 [a P.S. about photographs omitted.] 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xxxvii 
 
 To complete the record of this year 1863, 
 with which it is convenient to make a period, 
 since no extant poem of Dolben's has so early a 
 date, he was during the Michaelmas term at 
 Eton, and I at Oxford. I had gone to Eton 
 one day to play in a football match against the 
 school ; the only letter that I have from him 
 during this term refers to that visit, its date is 
 Nov. 17th. 
 
 V 
 
 In FeB. S, Hugonis 
 Eton College, 
 
 My dear Bridges^ 
 
 I really feel ashamed to 'write toyou^ considering 
 houj long ago I ought to have done so, I have beeiz 
 busy with Trials lately^ vjhich may in some small 
 degree go for an excuse. I cannot hope to take high 
 since I have been avjay so much?- I am very glad 
 you are coming down here again soon^ for I will con- 
 fess to have been a little disappointed in seeing so little 
 of you at your la ft visit. Another things though I 
 had been looking forward to your visit for weeks ^ and 
 thinking how much I should have to tell you^ when 
 
 ^ This refers not only to the end of the summer term, 
 but also probably to absence at beginning of Michaelmas 
 term owing to his brother's death, mentioned later. At 
 least one letter to me must be missing. 
 
xxxviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 you uuere here 1 really could hardly think of ivhat to 
 talk about. It is Hrange, I may perhaps he excused 
 being in a rather dismal Hate of mind tonight^ for 
 * * * * [here a tale of how one of the young Puseyites 
 had got into disgrace, which, though the culprit was not 
 a friend of Digby's, had naturally distressed him.] * * * 
 i heard from Coles the other day : he is coming douun 
 here next Friday iveek. Has he come up to Oxford 
 yet ? I am going to be confirmed this time. John and 
 I get on 'very luell^ as I have quite given up ^ Catholic ' 
 Sunday queHions^ etc. and do7it go near Old Windsor^ 
 or even Cleuuer. I have no more time noixj. ever your 
 affec friend 
 
 D» Mackvjorth 'Dolben. 
 
 This was followed by a letter from home at 
 Christmas (VI.), in which he says that he has 
 been persuaded by his ^ S. Barnabas cousin, 
 {such a relation is a real treasure,) to join the 
 Confraternity/ of the Blefsed Sacramenf, and 
 he records a concert at Eton ' where Manning 
 played most heautifidly \ and then writes of his 
 recent confirmation thus. * * * 
 
 The chapel has been lighted ivith gas. It tuas 
 lighted for the fir B time the evening before the Con- 
 firmation : and the chapel ivas left open all the after- 
 noon. I and Coles spent some time there^ and the 
 effeBs of light and shade mere almoH more beauti- 
 ful than anything I have ever seen * * * I liked the 
 Bishop's charge very much. There was a little too 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xxxix 
 
 much ^morality' or ^ manly' Christianity in it * * not 
 exa&iy 'muscular' and by no means 'catholic'. Tou 
 mention Uddon get a print ofS Bernard (price is,) 
 and see the marvellous resemblance. Read ' Romola ' 
 by George 'Eliot [as the authoress calls herself). Be en- 
 thusiastic about Savonarola^ I am. "Read also a nem 
 'Life of Savonarola ' juft come out. F lease vjrite to me 
 again soon^ a long letter, ever your ajfeEl^^ 
 
 P. M. Dolben. 
 
 To Digby^s family, who were anxious about 
 his ' romanizing tendencies \ and to all his 
 friends, who were concerned in his welfare, his 
 conduct in this Michaelmas term was most 
 encouraging. In a contemporary letter Coles 
 wrote, 'Dolben dates his letter Eton College 
 'near Windsor (and Old Windsor, and Clewer 
 * and Slough), but I can't help thinking that he 
 ' has been tied down to behave himself.' Indeed 
 he seemed to be quieting down. Another of 
 his friends, with whom he was then most inti- 
 mate, has described him as he was at that time 
 in these words, 'there was developing in him 
 'a profound sense of personal un worthiness, 
 ' which I can only compare to what one reads 
 ' of Santa Teresa, or Saint John of the Cross ; 
 ' and I well remember the rigorous fasting with 
 ' which he prepared himself for his Confirmation 
 'and first Communion.' His Anglican confir- 
 
xl 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 mation satisfied him, and he had exerted him- 
 self to make other boys in his Dame's house 
 attend seriously to their preparation, even assist- 
 ing them so far as to steal their breakfast-rolls 
 away from them, so that they might go to the 
 Chapel fasting : a ruse of single-hearted inten- 
 tion ; but he could see the humorous side of it, 
 and allow one or two of his friends to share his 
 amusement. And there are no signs of any 
 poems having been written since the holocaust 
 earlier in the year. His letters of this date are 
 on black-edged paper, in mourning for his eldest 
 brother, William Digby, who was in the navy, 
 and had been drowned in crossing the bar at 
 Lagos. The mother had felt her loss very 
 heavily, and it was arranged for her consolation 
 that the other brother, who was also in the navy, 
 should come home on leave. This is alluded to 
 in the following letter written from Finedon in 
 the Christmas vacation. The opening sentence 
 must refer to some question of mine concerning 
 his poetic silence. 
 
 VII 
 
 [Jan. 64.] 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 I cannot even excuse myself by the literary labours 
 you suggeH for not having ivritten to you I can only 
 say that your firH conjecture is right. Indeed I am 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xli 
 
 in too profound a Hate of vegetation to he capable of 
 much animal life at all. This then is my excuse. 
 Many thanks for your letter [****] Tou uuill be 
 glad to hear that my brother luho is in New Zealand 
 has got leave to come home. It ivill be a great com- 
 fort to my Mother. I knoiv absolutely nothing about 
 him. Having seen him for ^ weeks in % years. It is so 
 Grange and uncomfortable. I look anxiously in the 
 Births^ Marriages and Deaths for some news ofColes^ 
 for I can get none in any other way. Have you heard 
 from him lately ? I think he muB be ill^ or else .... 
 Will you do me a great kindnefs? I hardly think so. 
 Merely to send me a copy of those verses of yours 
 called ^ Purely for my own gratifica- 
 tion. No one else shall see them if you had rather 
 not. [Then a request for a photograph to put into a new 
 album, which he describes.] I am to have an introduc- 
 tion to Brother Ignatius ^ of Clay don ! ! ! My S Bar- 
 
 ^ [Communicated.] The Rev. Joseph Leycester Lyne 
 began the observance of the Rule of St. Benedict in the 
 Reformed Church of England, at Claydon in Suffolk, at 
 about 1860. He took the name of Ignatius, and presided 
 as Abbot over a small number of monks and nuns. Later 
 he removed to Llanthony in Wales, where a mediaeval 
 Benedictine Abbey had existed. He had been ordained 
 deacon for a curacy in the diocese of Exeter before he 
 began his monastery, but only received priest's orders 
 late in life from a Bishop who derived his consecration 
 from some Eastern source. Father Ignatius was a 
 preacher of remarkable eloquence. He received some 
 encouragement from Dr. Pusey, and for a short time 
 took a curacy at Margate under Archbishop Tait. 
 
xlii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 nabas cousin knows him *well. When shall I see you 
 again? Tour visits to Eton are not satisfaBory^ would 
 that you would come to Fine don at EaBer. 
 
 your ever affeBlonate 
 
 D. Mackworth Del hen, 
 
 I remember that I sent him the verses. The 
 letters which he wrote to me in this Lent term 
 were destroyed by me because they referred to 
 a comic venture of my own, wherein my anony- 
 mity was essential: but I saved one of them 
 (VIII.)) probably on account of its opening sen- 
 tence — 
 
 ' Never that I can remember have I laughed so 
 immoderately, or broken that part of S. BenedlSi's 
 rule to such a degree,' 
 
 This letter is in good spirits but offers nothing 
 to my purpose except this first reference to the 
 rule of S. Benedict, and a slight difference in the 
 manner of his handwriting, due, it is said, to his 
 imitation of Savonarola's script ; and this change 
 is noteworthy as confirming the date of his earliest 
 extant MS. poems ; for it was about this time, 
 or the end of Lent, that he returned to poetry. 
 This must, I think, have been partly occasioned 
 by his enthusiasm for the O. S. B. : as will 
 appear when the poems are examined. I have 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xliii 
 
 two letters from him during the Easter vaca- 
 tion, and the second contains an appeal to me 
 to follow him and join the Order : — 
 
 IX 
 
 Maunday Thursday 
 Finedon [64] 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 Don't you ivonder that I have the face ^ or rather 
 the handy to lurite to you ^ after the disgraceful njay in 
 vjhich I have hehaved 7 I do — l>ut however if I ever 
 am to write to you again I mufi write afrft letter. 
 My only excuse is that I have heenmiserahly unwell for 
 the last few weeks ^ and utterly lazy and ftupid. I am 
 very sorry that we could not come to your sister s wed- 
 ding. I should so have enjoyed seeing you, hut my 
 brother has just come home^ and is only going to flay a 
 few weeks. I have not seen him for three years and a 
 half I am more than ever interested ijt the "English 
 O.S.B. I have joined the iij Order ^ and am B*" Domi- 
 nic O. S. B. iijy under which name you are not to direct 
 to me, iVf Stevens was much astonished by receiving a 
 letter for me with B*" Dom, in the corner. He doubt- 
 less thought it personal. I will send the Rules in a few 
 days J and I trust that you will join the Order. [* * *] 
 The Father Superior begged me to come and spend 
 EaBer with them^but I am^ as you may suppose ^not let 
 to. I hope to see you early in next half and at Mid- 
 summer you must come to Finedon. Have you heard 
 that Bp Chapman gave us lectures on the Sacramental 
 
xliv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 SyHem of the Church 7 Also that Manning played the 
 voluntary at SGeorges ? Also that JValford'^ hasmade 
 my acquaintance^ and uorites me letters commencing 
 ' My dear Friend ' ? I have been reading Uddon's 
 sermons. They are moFi ujonderful^ and beautiful, I 
 long to hear and see him. To think tha the was curate 
 here for ever so long^ ivhen I luas too juvenile to ap- 
 preciate my advantages! I hope to come up to Oxford 
 at the end of next term. [* * *] V lease write soon ^ very 
 soon, [* * *] 
 
 ever your affec 
 
 D. Mackworth Dolben. 
 
 A few days after this came a long letter. 
 X 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 Many thanks for your letter, I do like long letters ^ 
 and could have put up with it had yours been longer 
 than it was. Can you put up with a letter about the 
 O. S, B, ? I send you a copy of the Hi Order Rules. — I 
 do moH heartily wish that you would join it. [. . and 
 here follow four pages about the doings of Father Igna- 
 tius . . ^ Is it not marvellous ? Is it not glorious ? Is it 
 not miraculous?' .. and then a P. S. of interest.] *** 
 At times I almoH regret I went back to Eton. I have 
 been disappointed in so many ways — and my health 
 gets worse and worse in spite of Tonics^ beer^ wine 
 etc. etc. A quiet tutor near Oxford is what I should 
 
 See page c. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xlv 
 
 like. Continual ^Haying out' is such waste of time. 
 Tell me if you know of such a man — a Uo DERATE Catho^ 
 lie if possible. If 1 do not get better I certainly cannot 
 Bay at Eton, ^ Oh the bright suueet might have been, 
 bitter sweet as the smile of the Virgin Mother to the 
 penitent Magdalene.^ 
 
 ever your affec 
 
 4- Dominic O.S.B. iij. 
 
 The envelope also enclosed a tract concerning 
 the English Order of S. Benedict. My interest 
 in that society was Digby's connection with it, 
 which I deplored : and, though I answered him 
 kindly, I do not think that to this day I have 
 ever read the little tract, and I fear that I did 
 not study the Rules with the attention that his 
 devotion in copying them out for me should 
 have ensured. I omitted from the last letter a 
 rhapsody on the joys of Heaven, transcribed 
 verbatim from a letter of Father Ignatius to 
 himself. That he could be affected by its com- 
 monplace rhetoric shows his simplicity of heart 
 and genuine feeling. Such words not only left 
 me cold, but even chilled me. It was difficult 
 to take Ignatius as a prophet in touch with 
 humanity; and I knew him only by a carte 
 de visite portrait with extravagant tonsure and 
 ostentatious crucifix. But Digby's father was. 
 
xlvi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 no doubt, really distressed, and unwittingly sup- 
 porting his son's folly by the seriousness of his 
 opposition. As for Ignatius, he was, I suppose, 
 delighted to have caught a live Etonian, while 
 Digby, furnished with a correct habit, imagined 
 himself a mediaeval monk. A letter which Coles 
 has preserved is in order here. 
 
 XI 
 
 [Pen and ink 
 
 monogram of the Finedon Hall 
 
 Cross with PAX, etc.] 
 
 Dear Coles 
 
 It seems an age since I heard from you^ and 1 do 
 "want a I etter^ though I rather think you lurote last. But 
 then lhave nothing totell you^ and you have alt the In- 
 finite ' delights of Oxf or d\ I am not ivell enough to go 
 back to Eton yet ^ but lam afraid I muH go next iveek. 
 I don't knovj 10 hat you mean by any luork that I have 
 done pro Deo^ Ecclesld^ or anybody else [sic] at Eton. 
 I have done absolutely nothing^ nothing permanent. 
 I positively hate the place. It is full of mental temp- 
 tations that you knovj nothing of and you knouu It is 
 uuell nigh Impossible to attain to anything of the 
 Saintly Life there, I vjrote Walford as civil a letter 
 as I could^ and begged that he vjould shovj both my 
 letters on the subjeii to the Head MaBer, ItruB he 
 vjlll take no notice^ but as my father vol II go dovjn to 
 Eton vjlth me and see BalHon I expeSl there volll be 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xlvii 
 
 a hlovj-up, I took great pains uoith my letters to 
 and said nothing silly or rude, I sent Bridges the 
 Tract ^ A II for Jesus' and the Rules of iij Order'. 
 He seemed inclined to join it. I thought so at lea ft from 
 a letter I had from him the other day, * * * Why^ 
 uuhy^ do you not join it ? [Then an exhortation, as to me, 
 to join, because the reBoration of the relipom life can 
 alone save the English Church. * * Then about the 
 printing of his ' Prodigal's Introit ' in the Union Review. 
 Then] I am finishing some more verses called ' The 
 VrodigaVs BenediBion^ ^ which I hope to send him [the 
 Editor 1] soon. [Then an appeal for subscriptions to the 
 Order, and renewed exhortation to join.] I am going hack 
 to Eton next Thursday ^ not to Bay therelong^ I expeB^ 
 as I am hut little hetter. Will you tell me next time you 
 'Write of a nice tutor near Oxford 
 
 ever your loving friend 
 in JESU and S, Bene di 61 
 
 + Dominic O.S.B, iij. 
 
 His letters are now for some months signed 
 Dominic ; and the brief life of this signature may 
 limit the duration of his first enthusiasm ; but 
 
 1 The Editor of the Union Rev. was the Rev. F. G. Lee, 
 a notoriously eccentric high-church clergyman, a Doctor 
 of Salamanca ! I think he did not print these immature 
 verses. The above letter is interesting as referring to 
 Dolben's quixotic attempt to get Dr. Balston to deplore 
 and amend the secular tone of the school. He must have 
 been aware of the ineffectual quality of his machinery. 
 He never spoke to me of this. 
 
xlviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 he remained faithful to the Order much longer 
 than this sign would show. His profession in 
 a religious society was, I think, the immediate 
 cause of his return to poetry, for towards the 
 end of this Lent, and during the Easter vaca- 
 tion, and the following weeks, there is a good 
 deal of verse to be dated, written under the im- 
 pulse of the monastic motive. Besides a few 
 lyrics (of which I will speak later) there are two 
 long poems in blank verse, amounting altogether 
 to some 400 lines. V^ery little of all these is 
 worthy to be printed with his better work, and 
 I have no doubt that I am acting as he would 
 have wished in suppressing as much as I do : 
 but the suppression makes an account of them 
 desirable, since they are evidence of his mental 
 condition at this time. 
 
 The first of them is divided into two sections, 
 called respectively ' The Prodigal's Introit and 
 'The Prodigal's Benediction'. These are the 
 meditations of a returned sinner before and after 
 his reconciliation in sacramental communion; 
 and the words, directly addressed to the Divine 
 Paternity, are the expression of a sincere feeling, 
 and must be interpreted to mean that he con- 
 sidered the dedication of himself in the Order 
 of S. Benedict as a return to a path that he 
 had forsaken. But into what far country had 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xlix 
 
 he wandered away ? By what riotous living had 
 he qualified himself as Prodigal Son ? The ex- 
 planation is unquestionable. 
 
 The early childish love for Christ, into which 
 he had devotedly poured his whole being, con- 
 tained necessarily all the sentiment, the poetry, 
 and the young passion of his rich endowments. 
 It was therefore inevitable that the strong human 
 affection suddenly grown up in his heart, and his 
 consequent recognition of a mortal ideal, should 
 appear to his piety as an infraction of his love 
 for Christ ; as indeed, owing to the heterogeneous 
 nature of that emotion, it actually was. This 
 is even explicitly stated by himself in the verses 
 ' My love, and once again my love \ where he 
 begs his friend to measure the greatness of his 
 love for him by the fact that he had loved him 
 with the love which he had before devoted 
 wholly to Christ, and had thus for his sake lost 
 his love of Christ. — This then is the Prodigal's 
 sin, from which he now returns, — and he no 
 doubt fought the pain and difficulty of cutting 
 himself off from the natural attraction of human 
 affection by the external artifice of monkish 
 profession. The thought, as it was unhap- 
 pily conceived, is unsparingly and untruthfully 
 exaggerated : and the sacramental mysticism, 
 with its accessories of candles and incense, is 
 d 
 
1 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 in keeping with the self-imprisonment of the 
 thought. The verse is an undistinguished ex- 
 ample of the fashionable imitations of Tenny- 
 sonian fluency, no better than any of his for- 
 gotten imitators could write : a few selected 
 examples will suffice. 
 
 'From the ^IntroH* . 
 
 ' Thus by the loving touch 
 Of thy cool priestly hand restore to me 
 The weary years the greedy locust ate. 
 
 * * * * 
 That face I buffeted, and from those eyes 
 Lightnings will flash, those eyes I spat upon. 
 Ah no ! The fierceness of the noon-day blaze 
 Is paled by anguish, and the lightning's flash 
 Is quenched in streams of blood.' * * * 
 
 From the ^BenediHion 
 
 ' Behold, Eternal Father, from Thy Throne 
 The salutary sacrifice complete. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Peace, peace, the peace of God, that peace is here 
 
 And dwells for ever in these holy walls. 
 
 For here before the altar there is given 
 
 The peace I sought for long and wearily 
 
 Through all the peaceless world and never found, 
 
 Although I ransacked all its richest stores. 
 
 Dreaming the breath of poetry divine 
 
 Could heal my sin-sick soul, dreaming that art 
 
 Could rest these aching eyes, that Nature's voice. 
 
 Conscience, imagination, feeling, sense 
 
 Could help me.' 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 li 
 
 The reading of these poems makes one see 
 why schoolmasters wish their boys to play 
 games, and one is forced to confess that writers, 
 whose books can lead a boy of 17 to think in 
 this vein of false fancies and affected senti- 
 mentality, are as poisonous as simple folk hold 
 them to be. 
 
 The second blank-verse poem is called Voca- 
 tion, and is also divided into two parts, the first, 
 ' Vocation b. c' the second, * Vocation a. d.' ; and 
 there is a 'Sequel'. It would seem to have 
 been written later than 'The Prodigal', no 
 doubt at Eton during the summer term, the 
 Sequel latest of all ; and it is even more closely 
 interpretative of his religious dedication. ' Voca- 
 tion B.C.,' — the motive of which is to show how 
 a pagan might have had a mystical love of God, 
 analogous to a Christian's emotion, — is a strange 
 forecast of his own subsequent affinity with Greek 
 thought ; it begins thus 
 
 ' I was a shepherd's son, my father Uved 
 In Delos, half way up the Cynthian height 
 Our cottage stood,' 
 
 and the pagan boy tells of his love for Nature, 
 and how, attracted to a shrine of Apollo, he 
 had intimations of divinity, and he argues 
 
 ' If thus divinely fair 
 This image, carved in cold unfeeling stone 
 d 2 
 
lii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 What must he be, the living god himself ! 
 My whole soul longs to see him as he is 
 In all the glory of immortal youth, 
 Clothed in white samite.' i 
 
 then with Shelleyian use of a magic boat, he 
 
 makes voyage to Olympos, and after a vision of 
 
 heaven his rhapsody ends with this line, 
 
 ' Soon very soon, Apollo, O my love ! ' 
 
 the poem is concluded by a reflection of the nar- 
 rator ; and here is the meaning of the whole, 
 
 * Then was it all a waste that bright young life 
 
 And that long love an idle boyish dream ? 
 
 Or may it not have been that in that hour. 
 
 That bitter hour of most extreme despair. 
 
 The God of beauty came across the waste 
 
 Tingeing the frozen snow with Royal Blood, 
 
 That Brows crowned not with amaranth but with thorn 
 
 Bent over him,' etc., etc. 
 
 These verses were much admired by Mr. 
 Mackworth Dolben, and in them he received a 
 sign that his son was a poet. He was rightly 
 assured, but in the verses themselves, however 
 original or precocious they may have appeared, 
 there is nothing, except the poet's direct method, 
 and instinctive grasp of the matter : their very 
 smoothness, which was probably the imposing 
 quality, is of no artistic accomplishment ; and 
 'Vocation a.d.' though the subject is near to 
 
 1 It is strange to think of Cory copying out this. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 liii 
 
 him, and indeed the situation his very own, is 
 no better. This section begins thus, 
 
 ' I hear Him call — His Voice comes unto me. 
 As if a breeze from that warm Eastern shore 
 Had blown across the desert waste of time, 
 And thawed the bands which this cold century 
 Had frozen round ray heart,' etc. 
 
 But the third section, the ' Sequel is stronger. 
 The argument here is in the soliloquy of a monk 
 who was tired of the cloister, and longed after 
 pagan joys. Now this represents Digby's own 
 situation in what he considered his hours of 
 ' mental temptation which became, it may be 
 assumed, more and more frequent, and their 
 allurement stronger, as his school-books brought 
 him into contact with Greek poetry: and he 
 himself distinguished this poem above its fellows 
 by carefully revising it ; — there are four different 
 copies. Certain freaks of humour in the manner 
 of Browning damaged the earlier versions, but 
 these were gradually excluded, and other changes 
 made, until the whole took the form given below 
 on p. 4. The comparison of the beauty of Truth 
 to a vision of distant hills had full contemporary 
 appreciation. 
 
 Of the group of lyrical poems written between 
 Christmas 63 and July 64, the first in his MS. 
 book is Homo factiLS est, and it is printed the 
 
liv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 first in this collection. This hymn has been 
 the most generally known of all the poems. It 
 was much admired by William Cory, who 
 copied it ^ and the whole of Vocation, with the 
 Sis licet felix, and some other early poems ; 
 and from his MS. his friends took other copies. 
 
 The second is a poem of nine stanzas, begin- 
 ning / love the river as it slides. It has no 
 poetic merit, and adds nothing to the better 
 poems. 
 
 The third is a poem of ten stanzas, called My 
 Treasury ; the first two stanzas are as follows, 
 
 I do not think, or ask or fear 
 
 What may the future be, — 
 Knowing that neither time nor change 
 
 Can wrest the past from me : 
 
 1 This was after Dolben's death, in the summer of 
 1868. Mrs. Cornish tells me how she then witnessed 
 Wm. Cory's enthusiasm, as he appeared at his pupil- 
 room doorway in the Christopher Yard, crowquill in 
 hand, and heard him say that the Homo factus est was 
 * better than Newman \ He especially admired the 
 S. Michael stanza,* and marvelled that it could have been 
 written by a schoolboy. Whether or no it be better 
 than Newman's verse, which is said to have been 
 esteemed by Cory, I should give it no more praise than 
 to say that it is probably the best thing that Dolben did 
 in this earlier manner learnt or copied from Faber and 
 Neale. Later with his ' Tell me the men ' he transcended 
 anything of the kind that was ever done by a modern 
 mediaevalist. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Iv 
 
 That treasury of golden days 
 
 Those bright sweet hours that shine 
 
 Like stars amid a gloomy sky 
 Must be for ever mine. 
 
 at stanza 6 it continues thus 
 
 Like the islands of the Blessed 
 Where the sunbeams ever glow. 
 
 Where the winter never rages 
 And the wild winds never blow. 
 
 So stand those treasury-halls of mine. 
 * * * * 
 
 These verses are of no special excellence, — 
 the above quotation gives the best of them, — 
 but their sentiment is so unexpected, and so 
 unlike the picture which one might be led to 
 make of Dolben's mind, that they have a pecu- 
 liar interest : for he here deliberately states, in 
 almost prosaic terms, that his past experience of 
 human joys is the one solid pleasure of his life, 
 a memory which nothing can spoil or darken, 
 and he truthfully gives the lie to the false senti- 
 mentality of the lines quoted from Benediction 
 on p. 1. Now Dolben habitually lived in a world 
 of shifting and conflicting dreams and ideals, and 
 in his poetry he so very seldom allows himself to 
 appear to rest on what may be called the solid 
 satisfactions of life, that one is grateful for this 
 definite statement that they could and did appeal 
 
Ivi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 to him in their full force and significance, and 
 that, in his many-sided nature, their stronghold 
 was unshaken. This stands out now and again 
 in the poems, especially in the well-known lines 
 to his mother, and in the many tender references 
 to his home-life and friendships, conspicuous 
 among the most original beauties : and if this 
 field of emotion is generally concealed by the 
 anguish or ecstasy of his mental conflict, it 
 should still always be assumed as the solid basis 
 of his character ; for beneath all his vagaries 
 it made him a reasonable and sympathetic com- 
 panion ; and indeed without it his bright and 
 playful humour could not have existed, for that 
 quality presupposes a wide grasp of humanity. 
 I should be inclined to think that it was pre- 
 cisely because these 'human-hearted' truths were 
 solid and unquestioned, that they did not appeal 
 to him in those days as subjects for poetry : with 
 his appreciation of Greek art they all won poetic 
 aspect, and appear therefore in the later poems. 
 In one of which (No. 40) he actually remembers 
 his old Treasury and inserts it by name. To 
 me, as may be seen, he preferred to show his 
 reasonable note, and would apologise for his 
 sentimentality. 
 
 The fourth lyric of 24 lines, 
 O Love, first love, comes gently through the wood. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ivii 
 
 reveals, especially in this initial line, the charm 
 which was to characterise his best work, but it is 
 poorly written and adds nothing to * Sis licet 
 felix I have no hesitation in suppressing it. 
 
 The fifth poem of this batch consists of 
 29 accentual hexameters^ called 'His sheaves 
 with him \ It is an ecclesiastical view of the 
 Last Judgment, and has some connection with 
 the O. S. B. as these lines from it will show : 
 
 ' Then shall they ask and say " Who is this coming up 
 
 from the desert ? 
 And who are these that follow of eveiy nation and coimtry , 
 Of every people and tongue from the uttermost ends of 
 
 the wide world ? " 
 Then shall the answer be, " This is Benedict, Father of 
 
 Martyrs, 
 
 Father of countless Saints, of Bishops, Confessors, and 
 Virgins. 
 
 etc. . . etc. . . and it ends thus, 
 
 See, he leads them on with songs of triimiph Eternal 
 Not to an earthly convent, but Shushan, the palace of 
 lilies. 
 
 There to behold the Beloved for ever and ever and ever. 
 The sixt and last of these poems is a transla- 
 
 ^ I am told that this poem is somewhat closely imitated 
 from Dr. Neale's ' Seven Sleepers of Ephesus 
 
Iviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 tion of the hymn Amorem sensus. I have set it 
 in the book on account of the severity of its 
 style, which, as it is rare with him, forbids its 
 exclusion. 
 
 This digression on the early poems has been 
 no interruption of the memoir. It shows that 
 this period, up to the end of summer 1864, was 
 the apprenticeship of his poetry, and it gives an 
 unimpeachable account of his state of mind at 
 that time. There is evidence first of his simple 
 home-affections; secondly of his religious love 
 for Christ, which he had now thought to secure 
 by joining an Anglican monastic order ; thirdly 
 there is the idealization of his friend ; fourthly 
 the growing influence of Greek poetry and 
 thought. His subsequent history is the strife 
 of these elements, as shown in his poetry, itself 
 constituting a jifth element : for the full con- 
 sciousness of poetic power was now awakened 
 in him ; and this gave another aspect to all his 
 various moods, because he consciously used these 
 with artistic aim as poetic inspiration and mate- 
 rial ; and whatever mood of his own he chose 
 for poetic expression, he subordinates its actual 
 personal values to its most forcible representa- 
 tion, and for the sake of poetic effect, isolates it 
 and pushes it to its extreme. And the mood 
 thus heightened by indulgence must have re- 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 lix 
 
 turned again with greater force upon him. Now, 
 although in description we may be compelled to 
 separate off emotions and moods, and to cata- 
 logue them under different heads, yet we know 
 that a human soul or character is not composed 
 in this way by mixing, and we do not expect 
 our artificial analysis to look like the real thing. 
 But in Dolben\s poetry the various elements are 
 much more easily perceived than their harmony ; 
 and his moods may be quite fairly considered to 
 be separate forces really at strife within him, as 
 his reason consciously indulged them one at a 
 time, and thus heightened their discordance to 
 a romantic pitch, which became recognised by 
 him as itself poetic, and obstinately valued for 
 the bitter-sweet of its irreconcilable antinomies. 
 
 The poems just mentioned are the chief record 
 of this summer term. His sister who went 
 down to Eton on the fourth of June with some 
 friends, found him ill with neuralgia, and spent 
 most of the day sitting with him in his room. 
 In July he got leave for the Harrow match, 
 but broke parole, and ran off to his favourite 
 I'riory at Ascot, where the ecclesiastical attrac- 
 tions happened to lie thick. He had probably 
 heard of his opportunity from his 'Superior', 
 Ignatius. He refers to this escapade in his 
 next letter, and I am able to give a nearly con- 
 
Ix 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 temporaneous record of it from one of Coles' 
 letters, in which he wrote to me, 
 
 ' My Sunday at Eton was most charming. 
 ' Dolben gave me a full account of his meeting 
 ' with Father Ignatius and Dr. Pusey. It was at 
 ' Ascot Priory near Windsor, where Miss Sellon 
 * has a convent. . . . Dolben slept in an outhouse 
 ' with Ignatius, and was wakened by Dr. Pusey 
 ' " thumping at the door [Brothers Ignatius 
 ' and Dominic, he cried, I am waiting for you 
 'to celebrate the Holy Communion] He said 
 ' offices with them & Miss Sellon. She gave him 
 ' a solemn audience, sitting in her chair with her 
 'pastoral staff at her side — she is an ordained 
 ' Abbess. — All this took place when he had leave 
 ' for the Harrow match.' 
 
 To sleep in the outhouse of a nunnery when 
 you were supposed to be in Chesham Place, and 
 to be called in the morning by the great Dr. Pusey 
 himself 'thumping at the door', must have been 
 very satisfactory to the truant. I do not know 
 how the proceedings were actually condoned, — 
 Dr. Pusey may be wholly acquitted of com- 
 plicity. It was, I suppose, the occasion of his 
 admission into the ' Second Order of St. Bene- 
 dict', and it served, with similar excitements, 
 to make his conscience at ease in the Anglican 
 
MEMOIR Ixi 
 
 fold. I have no letter from him before the 
 summer holidays, when, apparently in answer 
 to an invitation from me, he wrote thus 
 
 XII 
 
 Derivent House^ Fortinscale. 
 Kesivkk. [Aug. 64] 
 
 -{-Pax 
 
 Of your charity pray for the second order of our 
 B, Father S, BenediSf. 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 It has been 'very 'wrong of me not to have ivritten 
 to you for so long, lam very anxious to see you, I wish 
 we could manage — we are at Fortingscale^ near Kes- 
 wick^ in Cumberland, We go back to Fine don about the 
 beginning of September^ for one of my cousins'* wedding. 
 There is nothing that I should like better than to come to 
 Rochdale ^but I do not see howl can — these holidays — 
 that is to say they will not let me. Tou see my brother 
 being away^ they like to have me with them as much as 
 possible — you will under Hand, But could not come 
 to Fine don in September, My father and mother would 
 both be delighted — and you know my feelings on the 
 subject, 
 
 I have so much to tell you about a certaiji visit I paid 
 to Ascot Priory — where I met my Superior^ MifsSellon 
 and jyPusey^ with whom 1 spent two delightful days. 
 If you are not yet converted to the Father^ I flatter my- 
 
Ixii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 self that I shall convert you. Do come if you possibly 
 ca?iy and write soon and let me knou^ though I dont 
 deserve it perhaps 
 
 ever yours ajfeBionately 
 + BT Dominic O.S.B. ij. 
 
 I had hoped that Digby, being in Cumber- 
 land, would pay me a visit in Lancashire on 
 his way home. My journey to Northampton- 
 shire was a more serious matter, and we did not 
 meet, as the next letters show. 
 
 XIII 
 
 Flemings Hotel 
 
 Rossthivaite [Aug. 64] 
 Kesiuick. 
 
 Pax + 
 
 Of your charity pray for the order 
 of our B Father S BenediB, 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 I have ^waited all this time in hopes of moving 
 my ' stern parients ' resolution^ but they ivill not let me 
 come to Rochdale these holidays^ declaring that they 
 cannot spare me. I am very sorry ^ as I had so much 
 looked forviard to coming to see you^ but it cannot be 
 helped. Will you not then come to Finedon^ as really 
 ImuB see you some time this summer ? F lease let me know 
 at once y left your visit should clash with Coles\ who I 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixiii 
 
 hope is coming some time in September ! On ly^ only let me 
 apply that little sentence of yours {yjJoich I mould digeB 
 if 1 could) to yourself you must come '. 1 have so much 
 to tell you J and ask you^ and it seems years since I saw 
 you i [* * * *] ive shall be back on the iB^ do ivrite^ 
 and tell me ivhen you uuill come by return of post 
 [though no one asked to ivrite in that manner ever 
 does) [Then the following quotation which he says is worth 
 all the reft of the Golden Legend put together^ 
 
 ^Alas the world is full of peril ! 
 
 The path that runs through the fair eB meads ^ 
 
 On the sunnieft side of the valley ^ leads 
 
 Into a region bleak and Bertie ! 
 
 Alike in the highborn and the lowly 
 
 The will is feeble^ and passion Brong, 
 
 We cannot sever right from wrong: 
 
 Some falsehood mingles with all truth ; 
 
 Nor is it Brange the heart of youth 
 
 Should waver and comprehend but slowly 
 
 The things that are holy and unholy ! 
 
 But in this sacred and calm retreat 
 
 We are all well and safely shielded 
 
 From winds that blow^ and waves that beat^ 
 
 From the cold and rain and blighting heat^ 
 
 To which the BrongeB hearts have yielded. 
 
 Here we Band as the virgins seven 
 
 For our CeleBial Bridegroom yearning : 
 
 Our hearts are lamps for ever burning 
 
 With a Beady and u?iwavering flame ^ 
 
 Pointing upwards ever the same^ 
 
 Steadily upwards towards the Heaven^ 
 
Ixiv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 I have copied these lines leH you should never have 
 noticed them. They are such a beautiful description of 
 the religious life, 
 
 ever your affec 
 Return ofpoft, -^Dominic O. S,B, ij, 
 
 I had gone to Wales, whence I wrote to him 
 as this reply shows. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Finedon Hall 
 
 [Sept. 3 64] 
 
 Dear Bridges 
 
 Many thanks for your letter. I quite see that I 
 could not have had an ansiver hy return ofpoft, I hope 
 you enjoyed Wales, Please thank Mr, O — very much 
 for me. I wish that I could have accepted his kind in- 
 vitation — But vjhat can I do? I am allowed to go 
 absolutely nowhere. Give my befl love to Coles and 
 Manning when you see them. It would have been so 
 delightful ifl could have come. [* * * *J As to your 
 coming to Finedon. We shall be delighted to see you 
 any day after the 8"". Tou must come for a week^ 
 longer if you will, Tlea^e write soon and tell me what 
 day you will come. Are you not made happy by Tenny- 
 son^ s new volume ? It was worth all one*s long wait- 
 ing and expeBation indeed. Will you pardon a little 
 disquisition on the Assumption ? 
 
 [Here follows the disquisition of nearly 4 pages, 
 intending to persuade that the body of the Virgin Mary 
 had been taken up uncorrupted into Heaven ; and de- 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixv 
 
 fending himself from Mariolatry, which I possibly had 
 imputed to him.] 
 
 I do so look fovward to your coming. We ijoill go to 
 the old BenediEiine Abbey of Feterbro\ Tell Coles 
 that I am sorry he has not managed to come to Fine don ^ 
 ujhich he either cannot or ujill not do 
 ever your ajfec 
 
 + Dominic O. .J. B. ij 
 
 Tennyson's volume was Enoch Arden. I re- 
 member reading it, without all Digby's enthu- 
 siasm, in the hot sun on a treeless cricket-field 
 waiting for my innings. 
 
 I did not go to Finedon, and he returned to 
 Eton for the Michaelmas term, and finally left 
 the school at Xmas. I have no record of the 
 date of this term. His next letter implies in- 
 termediate correspondence : it was written from 
 London in December, probably on his way home. 
 
 XV 
 
 [Dec. 64 
 London] 
 
 My dear Bridges . 
 
 I do not know whether you have gone down yetj 
 but I send this to Oxford to be forwarded. If you really 
 wish me to come to Rochdale I think the only chance of 
 their letting me come would be for Al" Molesworth to 
 write to my Mother on the subjeB. Ida not [see'\ what 
 possible excuse there could then be for not letting me go. 
 e 
 
Ixvi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 A miserable man has been found in Rutlandshire^ 
 named Pritchard^ ofujhom the neiv Bishop of Peter ^ 
 bro' (/) has a high opinion ^ but I shall do all I can not 
 to go to him. Coles says that perhaps Vrquhart 
 would take me^ but I am afraid he u^ould be too extreme 
 for my father. If I could get to Oxford I should not 
 much care who the tutor was, I am at present with F*" 
 Cleaver in Gower S\ but go home on Tuesday, Might 
 I come to you after Xmas, [here follows an account of 
 some of the ecclesiastical attractions of his cousin's con- 
 nection, with a discussion of the practicability of a scheme 
 to promote some kind of alliance between Churchmen at 
 the different public schools.] 
 
 ever your aff D. M, Dolben, 
 
 Do not call me JB*" Dominic, It is only Brothers 
 O. S, B, who should do so. 
 
 Eton had never agreed with Digby ; he was 
 constantly ailing, and it was judged that if he 
 was to be up to the standard of Balliol scholar- 
 ship, he must spend some months with a private 
 tutor. The difficulty of finding one who should 
 be acceptable to both father and son at once arose, 
 and at intervals recurred : but this was a piece 
 of bad luck, for the ' miserable man ' who was 
 first chosen soon won Digby's respect and affec- 
 tion : he was comfortable with him, and never 
 met with an unkinder mishap than when in the 
 following summer Mr. Pritchard was compelled 
 by severe illness to dismiss all his pupils. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixvii 
 
 Digby's generic contempt would in his irre- 
 sponsible chat have been applied to any unknown 
 clergyman who had not ' catholic views But 
 before he went to Constantine Pritchard, he paid 
 me a visit at Oxford. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Finedon Hall [Feb. 65] 
 FeaH of the Furiji cation. 
 
 My dear "Bridges 
 
 I am really very sorry not to have 'written to you 
 for such an age. I can assure you that my holidays have 
 heen as dull as your vacation can possibly have been. 
 About Rochdale^ I was so much disappointed that I 
 could not make up my mind to write to you afterwards. 
 I had looked forward very much to making acquaint 
 tance with your (mu^i I use the word?) ^ people'^ and 
 mo ft of all your brother. Besides there is yourself with 
 whomi think I am only acquainted to a certain degree, 
 lam about to go to a moH dreary tutor ^ with grey hair^ 
 situated in the midH of a vaB ploughed field with a 
 young wife^ one other pupil^ and endlefs Greek gram- 
 mar. But I have got leave firB to come up to Oxford 
 for a few days, A very ancient individual of the name 
 of Whit e^ living by herself is I believe to take me in. 
 If not could 1 sleep at Corpus or Balliol .? F lease let me 
 know this. I feel rather alarmed at the prospeB of my 
 visit in some respeBs. I think I shall come on Monday 
 week^but am not sure [* * *]. 1 think it muH be plea- 
 sant to be able {like Coles) to be continually jubilant over 
 e % 
 
Ixviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 the spread of Catholicity — yet sometimes I fee I so tired 
 of it ally luhich is uurong. Will M"" O be at Oxford 
 vjhen I come ? I have heard so much about him that I 
 njjant to judge for myself In conclusion let me a f sure 
 you that you are quite right ^ and that I never can be 
 offended {yjith you) 
 
 ever your affec^ 
 
 D. M, Dolben. 
 
 Of this visit to Oxford I have but a hazy 
 remembrance. He came there to me at mv 
 invitation, that we might meet at last after all 
 our vain attempts, and also to see Oxford — now 
 the favourite ideal home of his more immediate 
 and practical hopes, — and to make personal ac- 
 quaintance with the friends of his friends, whom 
 he knew only by name. Manning was still at 
 Eton, Coles was at Boughrood with De Winton, 
 so that, except Muirhead, I was almost his only 
 intimate link with the place. That I have no 
 special impression of him as he then appeared 
 to me, after a separation of sixteen months, 
 shows that he had not changed much in the 
 interval; and we no doubt spent our time in 
 matters as familiar to me as they were new to 
 him. It was at this visit, and only then, that 
 he met Gerard Hopkins : but he must have 
 been a good deal with him, for Gerard conceived 
 a high admiration for him, and always spoke 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixix 
 
 of him afterwards with great affection. It was 
 understood that he would be coming up again 
 later in the term ; but he did not, and his next 
 letter to me was from Mr. Pritchard's, his pri- 
 vate tutor, at LufFenham ; whence his maturer 
 poems now begin to be dated, and where I had 
 addressed him letters at the beginning of the 
 Easter vacation, having heard nothing from him. 
 
 XVII 
 
 S. Luffenham ReBory 
 
 Leicefter. [Spring 65.] 
 
 My dear Bridges 
 
 It seems someuuhat odd^ that from a certain morn- 
 ing laB February^ ujhen I departed from C.C.C. Ox- 
 fordy until ye fterday afternoon^ I should neither have 
 seen anything ofy nor heard anything from you. I found 
 your letters aivaiting me here as I have been spending 
 the laH iveek in London ^ ivhere I luent to consult the 
 celebrated Bo^wman^ for the range of my vision^ 
 never very long^ ivas getting so rapidly shorter ^ that I 
 began to be afraid that I should never see some plea- 
 sant things any more^ vjhich idea {though universally 
 laughed at) proved to be more possible than even I my- 
 self had believed. What I alivays thought merely 
 short-sight ivas something the matter ivith the eyes 
 themselves, Houever it is hoped that it may be 
 flopped. I tell you of these faBs {though certainly not 
 
Ixx MEMOIR 
 
 ^ circumstances of general intereft') fir ft ^ that you may 
 knoiu hoin nearly an EHahlishment^ uohich I ijuill not 
 more particularly mention ^missed havinga hlindprieft. 
 Secondly^ because this affair prevented my visit to Ox- 
 ford — for my chance of getting into Balliol is so very 
 smally that it ivas insisted that I should return at once 
 to this Bronghold of Greek grammar and Euclid, But 
 lam determined that nothing shall prevent my coming 
 to Rochdale this year^ probably in August. This sen- 
 tence^ please underHand^ refers to parental scruples^ 
 not to my forcing the doors ofjy Molesvjorth^s Vicar- 
 age ^ as might at fir ft sight appear, I hope the long let- 
 ter ^ ivhich you could have vjritten but didn't^ is ftill 
 possible. — Ihatetohear the very name of Oxford now 
 there is no chance of my seeing it before the Autumn, — 
 but a large sheet ^ such as Coles^ monogrammed paper ^ 
 filled with news of that town^ would be truly accept- 
 able. However London was charmino , S. Albans and 
 
 o 
 
 the Academy moH satisfactory^ not to speak of other 
 more worldly and less intellectual enjoyments. Will 
 Coles write to me^ or will he not ? Ask him, 
 ever y"' affec 
 
 D. Mackworth Do I ben. 
 
 In the above letter ' the Establishment which 
 he will not more particularly mention' is the 
 first allusion to a Brotherhood, or the scheme 
 of a Brotherhood, among himself and his friends; 
 and this, as will appear in other letters, was to 
 him a very real prospect. My memories of it 
 are conflicting, but I will put them together 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxi 
 
 here. The essence of this brotherhood was, of 
 course, nothing more than the natural pro- 
 jection into the future of the present conditions 
 of friendship and religious conviction already 
 binding us together. In so far as it was in any 
 sense a deliberate scheme or plan, it no doubt 
 appealed with different force to each one of us. 
 It was, I suppose, the same sort of idea that 
 had grown up between Wm. Morris and his 
 friends, ten years earlier, at Oxford. For my- 
 self I can say that the only definite plan of the 
 kind which had seriously influenced me, was an 
 understanding between my younger brother and 
 myself that we would always live together ; and 
 such was our affection that I think now that 
 nothing but his early death could have pre- 
 vented its realization : and it is possible that 
 Digby found a promise of stability in this to 
 serve as a nucleus for his much wider projects. 
 Whether that were so or not, he had built up 
 with varying detail a very active and desirable 
 society, of which I might remember more had 
 I looked forward to it more confidently. He 
 was to decide everything, and I, who was to 
 be the head of the community, could never 
 of course disagree with him. These castles or 
 monasteries in the air were a source of pleasure 
 to him, and he would even choose their sites. 
 
Ixxii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 For though it was plain there could be but one, 
 yet the charm of the future lies in its indefinite 
 possibilities, and there were at different times 
 a good many : Finedon Hall itself could not 
 escape. I remember very well, as we sat one day 
 chatting together in his little room at Stevens', 
 he began scheming how, like St. Gregory, he 
 would make a monastery of his father's house, 
 if ever it should fall into his possession. So 
 he would rejoice openly if any of the ' Brothers ' 
 had prospects of wealth ; it added to the many 
 mansions of his ideal establishment. How far 
 others shared in these dreams I cannot say, but 
 there exists a pre-rafaelite painting made by one 
 of them of the ' Foundation of Eton College \ 
 wherein, on a fair and flowery water-mead, the 
 attendant witnesses are the patron or name- 
 saints of some of the future brothers of this 
 society, for which Dolben had already invented 
 a title. He and Coles and I are all there, under 
 that disguise, with the orthodox habits and 
 emblems. 
 
 As for his eyesight, Bowman's treatment seems 
 to have been successful, for I do not think that 
 he ever had further need to consult him. 
 
 After this Lent term at Lnffenham, he went 
 again with his family to the lakes, whence his 
 next letter is dated. Gerard Hopkins whom I 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxiii 
 
 had invited to Rochdale with him, repHed that 
 he could not come, adding, ' else nothing could 
 have been so delightful as to meet you and Coles 
 and Dolben [* *] I have written letters with- 
 out end to the latter without a whiff* of answer.' 
 
 XVIII 
 
 The TouriHs Hotel 
 RosHhivaite 
 
 Cumberland [ Aug 65] 
 
 My dear "Bridges 
 
 I repeatiJjith sorrow 'RosHhwaite Cumberland', 
 1 certainly ought to haveuuritten toyou^ but I have been 
 going about so much that I do not think I ever got your 
 laft letter. They mould not let me come to Rochdale 
 on my luay here^ but I may go luhen nve return^ but, 
 but that 'will be at the beginning of September. I 
 could come to you any day from the 8''' //// the 1 1}^, I 
 do hope this mill do for you, I should like to have 
 seen Coles for some things very much^ but it mas quite 
 impossible for me to come about his time, lam afraid 
 I remember something you said about going am ay in 
 September, but perhaps you may have changed^ and it 
 may be possible for me to come after all. perhaps if 
 you mould believe^ could rather knom^ hom very much 
 I have desired to come you mould try and make it 
 possible. I knom nothing about mhy or mhere you 
 are goings but could you not go firii and come back 
 aftermards? Infiead of going [erasure] I mean to say 
 
Ixxiv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 now. I am so sorry that your "Br ads ham extraBs are 
 of no use to me, I cannot 'write a letter — having 
 travelled 9 hours yeHerday, But do ivrite and let 
 me knovj juB vjhether after all you can have me. A 
 servant has juB entered uuith Coles' letter, J ap- 
 pealed to my father in despair vjhen I got it vjhether 
 Rochdale luas very far off. He vjos juB going out^ 
 but I think y I truBy I shall be able to write tomorrow 
 to say that I am coming in two or three days. It is 
 a great pity so much fuss is necessary^ and 'very absurd 
 yours with a bad headache 
 but hopefully 
 Love to Coles. D. M. D. 
 
 The ensuing letter does not exist ; but it must 
 have been shortly after this last that he paid his 
 first and only visit to Rochdale. In his delight- 
 ful companionship the few days passed quickly, 
 and as we were alone I had much talk with 
 him. I remember especially his modest surprise 
 and genuine pleasure at my enthusiastic praise 
 of his poetry, for he was not satisfied with his 
 own artistry, and did not expect me to be. But 
 there was more than promise in the beauty of 
 his best work. He told me about his life at 
 Luff*enham enough to give me a very favourable 
 idea of Mr. Pritchard, and a definite picture 
 of his personality which I retain to this day. 
 He had won Digby's esteem, and, when such 
 a relation was established, Digby's natural sym- 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxv 
 
 pathies would reconcile him to the limitations 
 and inevitable commonplaces of a small country 
 circle. It was evident too that his tutor treated 
 him with great tenderness and skill : he met his 
 mediaevalism with courteous complaisance, and 
 never troubled him with displeasure or opposi- 
 tion ; but when occasion offered would gently 
 state his own attitude, and then, if Digby ac- 
 cepted the challenge, he would advance his 
 reasons. When it came to argument Digby con- 
 fessed to me that he found him unanswerable ; 
 and I saw that his dogmatic confidence had 
 received a shock. For minds nurtured from 
 childhood in unquestioning submission to a 
 system of religious dogma it is very difficult 
 to break sufficiently away from their position 
 to see the full bearing and breadth of the philo- 
 sophic objections ; and this step Pritchard had 
 led Digby to take. He now saw that his logical 
 position was indefensible, or, at least, that he 
 was not sufficiently armed to defend it. Some- 
 thing had to be shifted, and he did not know 
 what. 
 
 Now I rejoiced at this, for I had an uncon- 
 querable repugnance to the full-blown Roman 
 theology, whither, as I feared, Digby was drifting; 
 and in those talks with him I made also the 
 same step that he had made ; and if I might 
 
Ixxvi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 not perceive the full significance at the time, yet 
 I know the very spot in the garden where we 
 were walking when I saw certain familiar ideas 
 in a new light. The exact tone seems to me to 
 be perfectly caught and fixed in the magical 
 simplicity of his half-suppressed utterance 
 
 Suppose it but a fancy that it groaned. 
 This dear Creation. 
 
 Looking back now to those days I see what a 
 disaster it was that at that moment Mr. Pritchard 
 was lying ill with pneumonia, and sending a 
 notice to Mr. Mackworth Dolben that he would 
 be unable to continue the tuition of his son. 
 
 That was the news in store for Digby when 
 he returned to Cumberland, and he immediately 
 wrote to my mother, who had meanwhile gone 
 into Suffolk, asking her if she would have any 
 objection to his joining my brother in Yorkshire, 
 if my brother's tutor would take him. The 
 question foresaw the objection, and my step- 
 father dictated a judicious reply, which my 
 mother sent to Digby, very kindly but firmly 
 pointing out that they feared his influence on 
 a somewhat predisposed character ; — she did not 
 wish her son to become a Papist. This letter, 
 until its true provenance was revealed, distressed 
 Digby, who was on affectionate natural terms 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxvii 
 
 with my mother, and he made a bold effort to 
 turn it, with promises of discreet behaviour ; ^ 
 but the objection could not be obviated by 
 assurances of intention, and the scheme was 
 abandoned, whether on the plea also of other 
 difficulties, which certainly existed, or only for 
 this one, I do not remember. Digby was thus 
 again searching the world for a tutor. He took 
 me into counsel, and his next letters are all con- 
 cerned with these affairs. If I give more of them 
 than their interest would seem to justify, it is 
 because, no other letters of his having been pre- 
 served, they provide the only actual contact now 
 attainable. 
 
 XIX 
 
 Governor s House 
 
 Keswick [Sept. 18 (?) 65] 
 
 My dear Bridges 
 
 Under the cir cum fiances I should like to call you 
 Father Robert^ as I write to you for a little af si fiance 
 and direBion^ such as it will one day he your duty to 
 afford me^ and which now I hope you will give me for 
 kindness sake. M"" Frit chard has been^ and is Bill^ 
 so ill from a fresh attack of inflammation of the lungs ^ 
 as to render it impossible for me to go back to him at 
 present, and as time is so import ant .y if I am ever to 
 
 1 Passages omitted from letters. 
 
Ixxviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 getintoBalllol^myfatherthinks it better that 1 should 
 go to another tutor. Of course the difficulty ivas to find 
 one in a sufficiently healthy and bracing locality . Then 
 it occurred to me that perhaps it be possible for M'' 
 Walker to take me^ and the situation of Filey seemed 
 as if it 'would be so good for me. I inrote to M" Moles ^ 
 ivorth asking her to tell me ivhether she thought I 
 should be able to go there^ and received the letter 
 lohich I send you. It is most kind, and I can quite 
 under Hand ho^ it is that she should think and feel as 
 she does. Neverthelefs it diHrefsed me considerably, 
 [* * * *] Moreover for the present I do ivish to live 
 as much as may be as a Catholic, and leave talking for 
 those ivho knoiv more — for the present. [* * * * j 
 Flease do not think that I consider myself a Martyr^ 
 for my reasons for voishingto go to Filey voere entirely 
 selfish, I certainly do feel sometimes the vuant of some 
 one to sympathise 'with me and help me a little — for 
 my people look on such things as these almoB 'with 
 satis faBion — they muB sho'w me the great disadvan- 
 tage of 'extreme vie'ws\ hovoever ' Veritas eB magna'. 
 
 1 hope you 'will under Band diBinSily that I 
 think your mother {to 'whom I am moB grateful for her 
 great kindness to me) has done quite right according to 
 her vie'w of the subjeB. It is of course unpleasant^ but 
 that is no one's fault. I am not and cannot be sorry 
 for anything out'wardly Catholic 'which I have done^ 
 though I do repent moB sincerely of going to R. C. 
 Chapels and services ^ 'when at Eton — but that is long 
 ago no'w. Still it is right that I should be punished 
 for it. And no'w I cannot tell 'whether you 'will think 
 'well to tell your mother 'what I have said^ as to pro- 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxix 
 
 mis'mg etc, ... J only luishyou to do as you think 'will be 
 beH. but of course if it could be arranged for me to go 
 to "Filey 1 should be 'very glad. I am sorry to bother you 
 uuith such a long piece ofivork all about myself I send 
 you some verses^ as you ivere kind enough to ivish for 
 them. I send these particular ones partly because some- 
 thing you said at Rochdale reminded me of them. If 
 possible I hope you will lurite soon. Thanking you for 
 my 'very pleasant visit to Rochdale believe me 
 
 ever y' ajfec 
 
 D. M. D. 
 
 XX 
 
 Finedon Hall 
 [Sept. 65.] 
 
 (P. 5. ^ week ivith X . 
 
 X, ivill be very rich — ^nd so 
 shall theCanons and Brothers 
 of the Holy Name) 
 My dear Bridges. 
 
 Thank you for your letter^ which was very satvs- 
 faBory to me. I confess that^ though the letter I sent 
 you 1 was very kindly worded^ I did perceive a dijfer- 
 ence in it when comparing it in my mind with the other 
 letters of your mother — to my mother and myself not 
 only in sentiment but also in Byle and exprefsion — a 
 comparison not favourable to the document in your pos- 
 session, I could wish that I had written to you fir 
 for as you think I had better not go to W,^ all this 
 has been useless. But if you could find me a good tutor 
 both my father and I would be very grateful. He is 
 ^ Dr. Molesworth's. 
 
Ixxx 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 fortunately of opinion that confidence may be placed in 
 your judgement — an idea 'which I quite coincided in. 
 I do not think that he ujould care uahat his ' vieius ' 
 ivere^ provided he ivas really a good tutor. For myself 
 I should not like to go to a thorough proteHant — except 
 this I dont mind. Antagonism is all very uuell for a 
 time — and perhaps to Sirong-minded people may he a 
 real help, but I am utterly tired of it ^ and mould like a 
 man uho uoould let me alone. Moreover it is some- 
 iv hat sad to find oneself differing more and more en- 
 tirely from all one's relations in every religious thought 
 and feeling. 
 
 To go back to the tutor. The great point is that he 
 should be found at once. I go up to matriculate this 
 l^ovember year — so that 1 should be more than a year 
 vjith him. It certainly vjould not do to have one at 
 home. If he vjere near Oxford I should like it — or on 
 the sea. In Oxford ivould not do. If you could hear of 
 one and write back to me quickly it would be very kind. 
 The money vjould not matter — My father does not 
 mind £ zoo — and I suppose few tutors are much more. 
 If none can be found I perhaps may try going to De 
 Winton^s. but there seem reasons againft it — that 
 is^ one of his pupils (* * by name) I used to know very 
 well^ and do not wish to be with. And now my dear 
 Father R. it is entirely left to you^ and I feel it is a 
 natural Hate of things — a good omen for the future. 
 [* * *] /<? JJs on Friday so if you write after then 
 direa\there'\. 
 
 What do you mean about ^ crof ^ings \^ Do you think 
 
 1 I had probably suggested that this had been the 
 offence in Dr. Molesworth's eyes. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxxi 
 
 H luould be heH to give them up in proteHant society ? 
 Please let me knouo. I am uncertain. I hope you uuill 
 njrite soon. I heard from Coles the other day. He is 
 diHressed as to his father s living — thinks it mould be 
 ujrongfor him to take it. But as the Rev Gentleman 
 is in good healthy this seems an unnecessary anxiety for 
 the present. He will never do for us^ I think.^ 
 
 ever your affec D, M. D. 
 PS Tour letter did me a great deal of good. 
 
 The next is in pencil on a scrap of paper. 
 XXI 
 
 My dear Bridges 
 
 One line to ask you to vurite to Finedon. My visit s^ 
 are poBponed^ I being in bed in a dark room, fed on 
 grapes and tea. a sort of feverish attack. Please 
 write soon. Read this if you can and excuse it. ever 
 your affec D M D 
 
 XXII 
 
 Finedon Sept 30 [65[ 
 
 My dear Bridges 
 
 Much again ft the advice of the DoSior^ and the 
 vjill of my Mot her ^ I have believed myself able to 
 vurtte a letter^ and have desired a large fire ^ and par- 
 tially dressed myself to sit by it. but after having been 
 
 1 This tilt at Coles' prudence is characteristic. He 
 remembers it to make retractation in a subsequent letter.. 
 ' us ' is of course the Brotherhood. 
 
 f 
 
Ixxxii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 for a iveek in a dark room you muB not expeEt my ivhs 
 to he very hrilliant, I got your letter forivarded from 
 L. t/pjs afternoon, ujhy it did not come sooner I cannot 
 say. As to the tutors P sounds lue//. J think my 
 father uoill uorite, Perhaps after all De Winton 'will 
 he my fate. For my part N . sounds nice to me^ hut 
 if he cannot teach of course it ivould not do, I muff 
 thank you for having taken so much trouhle. At the 
 same time if you ivould uorite again giving a feiu more 
 particulars ahout N. uohich I could shouo to my fat her ^ 
 I sh^ he glad. To tell you all ahout it — there are more 
 important things in this uoorld than getting into 
 alii ol even, and indeed there is a place into ivhich 
 ive hope to get some day — ivhich needs harder pre- 
 paration than Oxford^ and is uell vjorth all uue can 
 give it, Noiv to go doavn to Hereford^ and remain 
 there a year, ivith a tutor such as De Winton^ and a 
 companion at any rate not Catholic — vjithout a Con-, 
 fessor^ vjithout any means of more than monthly Com- 
 munion^ ivithout {muH I use it) any ' Catholic advan^ 
 tages\ this may he a good ivay to get into Balliol^ hut 
 not^ I think ^ into Heaven, If I mere near Oxford all 
 this vjould he avoided.^ therefore if N and V hetvjeen 
 them could teach me^ I should prefer it to any one else. 
 
 I am surprised at your liking my U. R. verses. They 
 mere mritten more than a year ago. The ivant ofcon^ 
 centration or anything like pomer is painful, [a passage 
 concerning a fellow-contributor to the U. R.] I send or 
 mill send you for I am not sure if I can mrite them 
 to-day) tmo little pieces of secular verse ^ seleBed {out 
 
 ^ N. a high-church clergyman near Oxford. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxxiii 
 
 of a mass of religious and sentimental trash in rhyme 
 by me) by Jean Ingeloiv^ — 'which lady^ uuith ujhom 
 uje have picked up an acquaintance^ was kind enough 
 to look over my verses III in jufiice to her there ivas a 
 selection made beforehand — and these are to be printed 
 somewhere or other. Verse-ivriting is a vanity^ I think 
 — notwithstanding it is very kind of you to ask to see 
 more of mine, [* * an ecclesiastical paragraph These 
 sentiments if not original are really very orthodox. 
 What did Nihil I ask about me? F*" Ignatius^ I sup- 
 pose you know is better — but his life was despaired of 
 at one time . The Monastery is governed by an Etonian : 
 iV. . . now B** PlaciduSj is all in all to them now. 
 I do hope and think that his vocation will prove to be 
 a real one. In a few years perhaps the names of Monk 
 and Etonian may not seem so far apart as they do now. 
 Coles shall not be excluded from the MonaSiery {of 
 which you speak irreverently) but how and where 
 
 could Mifs be admitted? Her only hope would be 
 
 a Flatonic affeBion^ on the model of S Jerome and S 
 Vaula^ under the black habit of a Canoness O. S.N, 
 I wish you could get me a little money for the Monaftery 
 chapel at Norwich. It will really be disgraceful if the 
 work has to be ^ven up^ — now the walls are half" 
 built — and I think it would be a very good thing for 
 the Cause if it were finished by the time of the Congress ^ 
 for all the clergy will afsuredly visit the Monks. Coles 
 has sent me £i, but nobody else thinks they have any- 
 thing which they could give. It is very odd. and my 
 
 1 Miss Ingelow's poems had at that time considerable 
 vogue. The notes of admiration just below are not, 
 I think, marks of modesty. 
 
 f 2 
 
Ixxxiv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 otun resources are in a bad may. and the Rev Mother 
 Hilda writes touching letters to her dear B' Dominic^ 
 and Dominic writes Slill more touching letters to 
 MotherHilda — Siatingthat he is her servant and her 
 brother, but no money comes of it. I wish you Would 
 write again direBly and say something favour able about 
 
 N. I want to do something for as he will also 
 
 have to leave M' Pritchard. 
 
 ^ Shall we come out of it all^ some day^ as one does 
 
 from a tunnel? 
 Will it be all at once^ without our doing or asking^ 
 We shall behold clear day^ and the trees and meadows 
 about us 
 
 And the faces of friends^ and the eyes we loved look- 
 ing at us — 
 
 Who knows? Who can say? It will not do to suppose it.'' 
 These make up for the whole correspondence of Geor- 
 ginas and Marys^ and all the other trash contained in 
 Foems by A. H. C. But will it not do to suppose it? 
 
 ever your ajfec 
 
 D. M. D. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Finedon Sunday 
 
 My dear Bridges 
 
 It has been so good of you to take so much trouble 
 about tutors for me. I really hope that I am to go to 
 M' N. My father went to see M' Findar fir ft who 
 was at Bath^ but he afterwards wrote to say that his 
 examining work was so ^eat that he could not take 
 me with proper conscience. If my father goes to see 
 M' N, I am afraid the caf wck will be fatal. I truH 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxxv 
 
 he does not alivays vjear it, I should have written 
 to you before^ but that I have not been quite so well 
 again. Should I like this H. V. . ? It would be a 
 great objeHion if he turned out unpleasant. However 
 I am in for it now — my father writes tomorrow. One 
 more thing I muH ask you to find out {that is if I go to 
 
 Al' N.) whether he can take two more pupils^ 
 
 and . 1 fancied that he was anxious to get as many 
 
 as he could, I am afraid that I muB not write any 
 more for my head^s sake. Thanking you again 
 
 ever y"" ajfec 
 D. M. D. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 Sunday [Nov. 65] 
 
 My dear "Bridges 
 
 My relatives being at Churchy having left me 
 nothing but Breviary^ ^^S-) beef-tea^ medecine^ and 
 thoughts^ I muH write to you with such pen and paper 
 as I can find, I cannot accuse myself of not remember- 
 ing your birthday'^j since 1 never heard of its date 
 until this morning when I received your letter — nor 
 can 1 wish you '■many happy returns of the day\ 
 which is a cuBom I objeB to. but I do moH sincerely 
 wish you as ma?iy returns as may be well — saying 
 nothing of happiness, i " because the wishing neither 
 brings ity or keeps it away either, (which in i\ years 
 you have doubtlefs found out^ since I have in 1 7|) i'"* 
 
 1 Nor can I have reproached him. It was probably ray 
 telling him of my ' coming of age ' that provoked this 
 sad account of ' happiness '. 
 
Ixxxvi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 became happy people are apt to forget something about 
 the prince of this 'world ^ and perhaps find It out too 
 late, adding only a hope that In four years I may 
 receive your blessing. Ton 'were very 'welcome to see 
 my verses^ though I certainly should not have selected 
 them to sho'w you. Did Coles or Hopkins give them you. 
 and why? F lease remember to tell me, I 'will read D 
 Pusey's book, I am glad + * * considered healthy^ 
 but am much afraid left my father 'will not like ikf N. 
 even though the cassock may not appear^ other things 
 may prevent my going, ho'wever I hope for the belt, 
 lam getting 'well very slo'wly^ since you ask, 
 
 ever ajfec D. M, D. 
 
 [added] 
 
 I am afraid all hope is over^ for my father hasjuft 
 settled to call on D'" Lightfoot^ to enquire about M'' 
 N, before seeing him. 
 
 These particular incommodities are not worth 
 sorting out. It is enough to say that Mr. N., 
 who was recommended to me by a college tutor, 
 was certainly too high-church and probably not 
 a sufficiently good scholar to please Mr. Dolben. 
 Canon Liddon was hunting with me. What 
 strikes one most is the total want of communi- 
 cation between demand and supply. The Com- 
 mittee of Appointments was not founded in 
 Oxford until 1892, and now any conditions are 
 quickly suited. The result in Digby's case was 
 that a tutor was selected with whom he was so 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxxvii 
 
 uncomfortable that he remained with him for 
 only one term. The next letter is from this new 
 tutor's residence in Lincolnshire. Its opening 
 sentences are paradoxical. 
 
 XXV 
 
 [undated, Nov 25 (?) 1865] 
 
 My dear Bridges. 
 
 I really have very little to say^ and feel more in^ 
 dined to apologize forniritingnouothan for not having 
 ujritten before. 'But re ally luoant a letter from you, it 
 being a very long time since I heard. It is my fir ft 
 evening at 
 
 Vicarage 
 
 Unco In. 
 
 uuhich direSiion please soon make use of, I had dreaded 
 foolishly but inexpressibly going among these utter 
 
 Strangers^ and M' andM'" and the one other pupil 
 
 vjere continually presenting themselves to my mind in 
 all kinds of diHref sing forms. However the realities 
 might be ivorse^ though also Oh hovj much better. 
 Still I mean to be very contented. I have seldom had 
 a greater disappointment than my father's decision as 
 to M"" N. How to spend a year here I cannot think. 
 Pity me. I should not mind even being called ^ Poor 
 child' ^ It would be reasonable now. As to Oxford I 
 don^t expeSi ever to see it^ or anybody belonging to it^ 
 till I matriculate — Lincoln Minfter is glorious — but 
 of all the miserable men that these laB days produce is 
 not the jocose verger the mofl revolting? What can be 
 
Ixxxviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 the reason that VroteHants build neu) Cathedrals as 
 they do in the Colonies! since they have absolutely no 
 use for them, I sauj Chapel after Chapel which are 
 never entered from one year' s end to another. I savj 
 the anointed Altar^Hones put as paving-^ ones near the 
 doors that all might tread on them : the ruins of shrines 
 innumerable in honour of Saints whose relics were 
 thrown away by order of Henry VIII, On the whole 
 a visit to an English Cathedralis not a pleasure. Little 
 S, Hughy the boy Martyr ^ Bill lies under the remains 
 of his shrine. Might we not in our MonaHery have a 
 shrine in honour of the boy Martyrs of the Churchy S.S. 
 Pancras^ William and Hugh 7 And the choriBers^ 
 ablates and little monks should be taught to love them 
 as Catholic boys of all ages have done. I don't know 
 how I should get on but for the thought of the O.S.N. 
 I know J I cannot help feeling sure that it will not come 
 to nothing, I beg of your charity that you will write. 
 Tour letters always do me good. One must look on the 
 future^ and not back to the past 
 
 ever y* affec 
 D. M. D. 
 
 After this there is a gap of eight months in 
 the series of Dolben's letters to me. My younger 
 brother died in Feb. 1866, and among the 
 miscellaneous letters that I have kept I have 
 none that makes any reference to that event, 
 which plunged me into deep sorrow at the time, 
 and considerably altered the hopes and prospects 
 of my life. All letters written to me both 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 Ixxxix 
 
 immediately before and for months after seem 
 to have shared the same fate, whatever it was ; 
 so that there is no actual written record of these 
 eight months ; and Dolben's history depends on 
 the recollection of friends who were with him at 
 that time, and on the dating of the poems, which 
 are now frequent and often full of beauty. 
 
 Dolben remained but one term with this tutor 
 in Lincolnshire, and after Easter, in spite of his 
 insuperable prejudice was sent to De Wintonat 
 Boughrood in Radnorshire. The event in a 
 manner justified his prejudice, for tutor and 
 pupil were too utterly incongruous to profit by 
 association. Henry De Winton was a firstrate 
 scholar and a good teacher, with such an active 
 habit of mind that a country living would have 
 been intolerable to him had he not contrived 
 opportunities for exercising his talent. He 
 therefore took as many pupils as he could 
 accommodate ; and if he was really happy only 
 with advanced and promising scholars, and 
 naturally grudged the wasteful expenditure of 
 his ability on pass-men, some of them felt the 
 distinction which he could not altogether dis- 
 guise. His pupils were treated as members of 
 his family, itself a small community, and all 
 testify to his kindness, to his skill and pains in 
 teaching, and to his enthusiasm for the best 
 
xc 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 classical literature. He was also a keen sports- 
 man. The present Provost of Eton, Dr. Warre, 
 who as an old pupil speaks of him with 
 gratitude and affection, and could equally enjoy 
 work and play, has, among many lively recollec- 
 tions of the river, one sporting story, which, told 
 in his own words, will give a picture of the place. 
 'One evening (says the Provost) we had seen 
 a big fish rising in the pool close by the house, 
 and De Winton said the time to catch him would 
 be in the morning just as it was getting light. 
 Next morning, about five o'clock, an indescribable 
 howling mixed itself with my dreams, and there 
 dawned upon my half-awakened mind a vision 
 of salmon, and the sound of a far-off cry Warre, 
 bring the gaff! Needless to say, I was out of 
 bed at once, and just as I was, barefooted in my 
 nightshirt, rushed out over the rocks to the 
 catch. It was a bitterly cold morning, cold 
 enough to prevent my ever forgetting our 
 triumph.' With such exhilarating incidents, 
 plenty of freedom, and no more severity than is 
 inseparable from grammatical study, the Rectory 
 must have been a model establishment of its 
 kind ; while the host's conventional orthodoxy 
 and perhaps rather irritable manner — for which 
 there is some evidence — were matters of no 
 moment. It is plain that to such a man Digby 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xci 
 
 must have seemed a most undesirable pupil ; for 
 his scholarship was not sufficiently advanced to 
 be of interest, while he was full of notions which 
 De Winton must have regarded as an unreason- 
 able annoyance and distraction. ' What is the 
 reAos of it all ? ^ he would murmur : ' The re'Aoj, 
 the reAo?, I ask. What is the reAo? ?' If the 
 disadvantages of their mutual incompatibility be 
 balanced, one side against the other, no one 
 would judge that De Winton had the best of 
 the bargain. In any case Dolben was glad to 
 escape from Lincolnshire, where he was actually 
 unhappy, and Boughrood was not far from 
 Llanthony, where his ' Father Ignatius ' was 
 established. The mixed society he met without 
 discomposure: as one of them testified very 
 happily in these words, 'Dolben was a really 
 good fellow, and took being laughed at by the 
 others ever so well.' It was in such surround- 
 ings that he wrote the most of his best poems. 
 
 To attend now to the evidence of these 
 poems : — while Dolben's mediaevalism remained 
 unshaken, and was alienating him more and 
 more from the Church of England, the progress 
 of his acquaintance with Greek thought was 
 building up in him a pagan ideal of beauty, 
 which, though it was mainly if not entirely 
 aesthetic and artistic, was conquering his mind : 
 
xcii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 and he could keep these two ideals quite apart. 
 Some of the poems are in purely mediaeval 
 sentiment, others are purely pagan, untouched 
 by any Christian influence. Both ideals were 
 felt in their full force, and as his art developed 
 them separately in the poems their antagonism 
 became more active, and the victory, though 
 it was not at all times fully assured, lay with 
 Christianity. It thus followed most naturally, — 
 from the previous leaning of his ideas, and from 
 their present development, — that the earthly 
 ideal of his human afi^ection, which had at first 
 invaded the peace of his religious life, came 
 to be associated with his perfected pagan ideal, 
 and to be considered (at least for poetic pur- 
 poses) as pagan in essence, and therefore of the 
 nature of sin ; and so we find it in the poems 
 at one time revelled in as aesthetic paganism, at 
 another repudiated as spiritual disorder : and he 
 even goes so far as to implicate his friend in 
 these fantastic meshes, and, in a poem which in 
 places recalls the frenzied stanzas of Sir Eustace 
 Grey^ he exhorts his friend to Repent with him. 
 This must, no doubt, be taken for a somewhat 
 dramatic exhortation to adopt the religious 
 profession, as the only salvation in a world 
 where happiness was a snare of the Devil,^ yet, 
 ' See letter XXIV. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xciii 
 
 even so, the extravagance is inconceivable, and 
 except as poetic imagination it is insincere : for 
 not only were these religious exhortations to his 
 friend never intended for his eye or ear, — which 
 destroys their sincerity — but it is certain that 
 he had never ventured to show him even the 
 earlier sentimental verses written in his praise. 
 Manning had never any notion that Digby 
 indulged in all this trouble and passion on his 
 behalf, and after Digby 's death was among those 
 Avho were first to urge that the poems should be 
 published. He was not much of a judge of 
 poetry, but he was a firm and aflf'ectionate be- 
 liever in Dolben's genius ; he knew his early re- 
 ligious verses, and had been seriously influenced 
 by him to embrace the logical consequences of 
 his mediaeval creed. Though in ordinary society 
 he passed for a born artist, yet he had not the 
 artist's profound insight, and lacked apprecia- 
 tion of the severer excellences. His instinctive 
 taste, which was fine and cultivated, was for 
 the slighter forms of art, grace, brightness and 
 pleasant lucidity. He would never have under- 
 stood the absorbing devotion of Dolben's pas- 
 sion, on whatsoever it might be directed : the 
 strange strife of his friend's emotions would, 
 except as a note of genius, have had little 
 meaning for him. If these facts be considered. 
 
xciv 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 the poetry which Dolben wrote to describe those 
 emotions cannot escape the reproach of courting 
 misrepresentation. It is indefensible : but it 
 should be remembered that he would not himself 
 have defended it. He would over-indulge the 
 poetic sentiment of the moment, and afterwards 
 condemn the extravagance. He would often 
 laugh at himself (his sister wrote to me of him) 
 ' as if he saw that his poetry had got out of 
 hand \ And the fault is really a failing in his 
 artistry. Just as a philosopher, when he has 
 chosen his premises will argue out his system 
 to conclusions altogether at variance with his 
 convictions, so an artist in developing his con- 
 ceptions may perplex his intention, and be led 
 into extravagant and unpremeditated positions. 
 When Dolben went to Boughrood he was just 
 eighteen years old, and I should say — though I 
 do not wish to anticipate the estimate of his 
 genius — that the poems which he now began to 
 produce will compare with, if they do not as I 
 believe excel, anything that was ever written by 
 any English poet at his age ; and the work is not 
 only of rare promise but occasionally of the rarest 
 attainment, and its beauties are original. If then 
 we find the perplexity of his ideas sometimes 
 leading him astray, this is nothing to wonder at, 
 and there is no place for reproach. The late 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xcv 
 
 poem ' Dum agonizatur "* is a full illustration of 
 his perplexities. 
 
 But of his Greek sympathies he showed little 
 or nothing to his comrades at Boughrood ; to 
 them he appeared as a monk, and there are only 
 such memories to record of him. Two of his 
 fellow-pupils have sent me their recollections of 
 him, and allow me to quote their own words. 
 The first, to whom poem 37 was addressed, 
 writes thus, — 
 
 ' Dolben was in my division at Eton, but we were not 
 much thrown together till we were fellow pupils at 
 Boughrood. When he came there the Rectory was very 
 full, with five pupils as well as a large family of children, 
 so that he was lodged in the village of Llyswen, the other 
 side of the Wye, and consequently was rather outside our 
 life. In September of that year I went back early to 
 work for matriculation at Balliol, and we two were alone 
 together reading for the same purpose. I remember his 
 rebuking me for wanting to read the Odyssey with him 
 after dinner : he said that even Monks did not work after 
 dinner. . . . He was greatly taken up with Father Ignatius 
 at that time, and his ideal of life was monastic. He was 
 most amusing about his distaste for going into society, 
 and the feeling of despair which came on him when the 
 carriage drew up at a house where he had to go to a 
 ball. We walked a great deal together, and his talks 
 were always of the religious hfe, and the associations he 
 looked to form at Oxford. . . . He was most regular at our 
 early bathing in the river a few yards from the house : 
 which cannot, I think, have been good for him. ... I went 
 into residence at Oxford in October, and I do not think 
 
xcvi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 that I ever saw him again. . . . There remains with me a 
 vivid recollection of a pale serious man, rather than boy, 
 of pure and blameless life, looking forward intently to 
 devoting himself to a religious life. He often spoke of 
 
 one of his friends ( ) to me : and I believe he had an 
 
 ardent admiration for Manning. Some lines of his that 
 I had referred, I think, to Manning.' 
 
 The other, writing to a friend of mine, has 
 the same picture. 
 
 ' My recollections of Mackworth Dolben are of a young 
 monk of mediaeval times. ... In appearance he was tall 
 and slight, with a complexion of transparent pallor. He 
 had good features, and fine dark melancholy eyes. Do 
 you remember Dore's picture of a young monk sitting in 
 chapel among a lot of older men, & gazing sadly into 
 vacancy ? he was rather like that. Also Clifford's picture 
 of Father Damien before he left for the leper settlement 
 in Hawaii reminds me of him. . . . He had arranged the 
 upper part of a bureau in his room with crucifix and 
 candles and vases of flowers, & used to pray there after 
 donning his monastic habit. His religion seemed to me 
 a passion, and I was much affected at times by his fervour. 
 . . . One day we took a holiday and rode sixteen miles over 
 the Black Mountains to Llanthony Abbey, he dressed in 
 the full habit of a Benedictine Monk, and I riding by his 
 side in ordinary costume. You can imagine the sensation 
 he created passing through the Welsh villages. ... I think 
 he found me more in sympathy than the other pupils, and 
 we became good friends ; though I don't think he was 
 intimate with any of us ; but he used to write to me from 
 time to time till he died ; and I always preserve an affec- 
 tionate remembrance of his gentle and kindly nature. I 
 think of him as a young saint so soon called to his rest.' 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xcvii 
 
 In the summer of 1866, on his way home from 
 his tutor in Wales, he paid a clandestine visit to 
 Birmingham. Of this he tells in a later letter. 
 Meanwhile in August of that year Gerard 
 Hopkins came to me at Rochdale, and stayed, 
 I think, some weeks. We read Herodotus to- 
 gether. He was so punctilious about the text, 
 and so enjoyed loitering over the difficulties that 
 I foresaw we should never get through, and 
 broke off from him to go my own way. He had 
 not read more than half of the nine books when 
 he went in for ' Greats ' ; this did not however 
 prevent his success, and my tutor. Professor 
 Wilson, who was one of the examiners, told me 
 that * for form ' he was by far the best man in 
 the first class. 'Form'' was an all -pervading 
 esoteric cliche of that hour. Gerard and I had 
 schemed for Dolben to join us at Rochdale, but 
 the following undated scrap from him records 
 the monotony of the situation. 
 
 XXVI 
 
 Finedon Hall 
 H'tgham Ferrers 
 Dear Bridges [Aug 16. 66.] 
 
 I have matted all this time hoping to give you an 
 ansvuer to your mo ft kind invitation, hut now I do 
 inrite lam sorry that it is only to say that it is all hut 
 certain that 1 am not to come. My father is anxious 
 
 g 
 
xcviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 that I should read re^larly . This is the reason^ and I 
 am obliged to do so if I am ever to get into Balliol in 
 the spring, I shall probably come up in the Autumn for 
 the scholarship. Tou cannot imagine ^ and if I told you ^ 
 you would not believe either hoiv much I hoped or hoiv 
 much Iivas disappointed. I cannot miss another poH^ but 
 I will write this evening and send a letter tomorrow, 
 
 ever your ajfec 
 
 D. M, D. 
 
 The next that I have, written a month later, 
 rather implies that the promised letter was never 
 written. He had gone with his family to 
 Malvern. 
 
 XXVII 
 
 Harrow Cottage [Sept P* (?) 66] 
 Welf Malvern. 
 
 My dear Bridges 
 
 I am quite aware that I have been inexcusably 
 rude^ to say nothing of ingratitude^ in not having 
 written to you before. Tou muH forgive me because 
 there is really no reason why you should — which goes 
 some way. At any rate you muH know that neither 
 are my pleasures so various nor my chances of seeing 
 my friends so many^ but that I would have given a 
 month atleaH of ordinary existence for a week at Roch' 
 dale. The fact is that my father likes me to be with 
 him all the time that I am at home — and now we are 
 here it is quite impossible that I should come. Malvern 
 being intended to ^set me up\ which no place succeeds 
 in doingj — something unknown obBinately persisting 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 xcix 
 
 in keeping doivn. I do hope though that you ivill be 
 persuaded to come to Finedon at ChriHmas^ It being 
 already about a year since I saw you. Rememberingthe 
 iveek I spent at Rochdale lafi year I think that I am 
 somewhat unfortunate^ therefore 1 am entitled to pity^ 
 and Finedon to your consideration. Is it not so? , . 
 . . .^I return to De Winton' sin a fortnight and shall not 
 come up to Oxford till January for matriculation^ as I 
 am absolutely unable to work hard^ even if I wished to 
 do so, I was in Birmingham on my way home from 
 Wales and made acquaintance with our Third Order 
 B" there. They are exceedingly nice^ and might be 
 called^ earnest young men* Of^^ ^^SS^^ ^^^^ 
 
 unpleasant persons) — for their quiet earneftness is a 
 very remarkable contrail to the noisiness of the BriHol 
 B". My habit and bare feet created some astonishment 
 in the choir at S. Albans — but on the whole I made 
 great friends with the clergy etc. — One of the priefls 
 gave me his blessing in the sacriHy after service in a 
 very kind manner. F' Pollock has been a true friend to 
 our Order ^ and the greater part of his choir are B" of 
 our order. I visited the Oratory. Newman was away ^ 
 but F*" Ryder was moB civil, and not at all contemp- 
 tuous. Tou have probably heard that the Father Sup' 
 has been ftayingwiththe Archbishop, and that the Abp 
 has promised to sanBion his new conHitution etc. Also 
 that the Bp of London has removed the inhibition, and 
 given his ^special consent* to his preaching at S. 
 Michael' sShoreditch. I saw F' Basil there when I was 
 in London. Father is with him. In great hafie 
 
 everyr affec 
 D. M. D. 
 
 g2 
 
c 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 He did not tell his family of this visit to Bir- 
 mingham, and it may have been the unconscious 
 lessening of confidence that made his father keep 
 him so close. ('Father' in the last letter is 
 Ignatius.) There was a fear lest he might run 
 off some day and be irrevocably received into 
 the Roman Communion by Cardinal Newman. 
 And he plainly had contemplated an interview 
 with Newman on this occasion. But his visit 
 was ostensibly to his Anglican brothers of the 
 O. S. B. The link with the Oratory was the 
 presence in Birmingham of Mr. Walford, who as 
 one of the junior masters at Eton had first made 
 Dolben's acquaintance there in 1864, and had 
 since Romanized. As a schoolmaster he had 
 found himself as much out of place at Eton as 
 Dolben was. He had a truer vocation for the 
 religious life, and was thus a great admirer of 
 Dolben there, and encouraged him in his religious 
 leanings : and on one occasion at least they had 
 said offices together. But Dolben, though grate- 
 ful for his sympathy, had never made a friend of 
 him ; and the notion that at this later date he 
 had any influence in drawing Dolben to the 
 Roman communion is, I think, a mistake. Very 
 shortly after this Gerard Hopkins, who was now 
 a Roman Catholic and had been on a visit to 
 Cardinal Newman at the Oratory, wrote to me 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 ci 
 
 as follows. [Sept. 24 — 66] ' Walford believed 
 that Dolben had been mobbed in Birmingham. 
 He went in his habit without sandals barefoot. 
 I do not know whether it is more funny or 
 affecting to think of.' 
 
 This was, so far as I know, Digby's only visit 
 to Birmingham ; Hopkins was at that time fre- 
 quently at the Oratory, and he never heard of 
 any other. But he was present at a Candlemas 
 service in 1867 somewhere with Walford, who 
 gave Coles a circumstantial account of his 
 meeting with him on that occasion. 
 
 This letter from Malvern is the last that I 
 have, and whether Dolben ever wrote to me 
 again I cannot say. There is much the same 
 gap in Coles' recollection, dating with him from 
 a visit that he paid to Dolben in the summer. 
 Coles, who had also been De Winton's pupil 
 and was a welcome visitor at Boughrood, went 
 there in July or August of 66 especially to see 
 Dolben, and he remembers finding him living 
 apart in the small house across the river among 
 cornfields, where the landrails craked a cease- 
 less accompaniment to their long talks, as he sat 
 with him of an evening. Digby would try to 
 detain Coles beyond the hour when he was 
 strictly expected by his host to return to head- 
 quarters. He was then still conciliated with the 
 
cii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 Anglican church, and would dress himself in his 
 monk's habit and prowl about the country at 
 night : and he made on one occasion a long 
 excursion to a neighbouring parish in order to 
 extort absolution from the Vicar, who, to his 
 disgust, would not incur the unusual responsi- 
 bility of hearing the confession of a minor. 
 Digby told Coles that he thought it high time 
 he was out of his ' stat. pup, "* 
 
 It was probably in the Michaelmas term that 
 he began seriously to consider the practical step 
 of Romanizing ; and, if so, that would fully ac- 
 count for his silence ; indeed the difficulty of 
 explaining, apart from the knowledge that I 
 should be uncongenial, would have prevented his 
 writing ; for only active sympathy could over- 
 come his dislike of letter- writing : and it must 
 have been in the winter (66-67) that he told his 
 father that he intended to join the Roman com- 
 munion. His father, in his distress, said words 
 which widened the breach between them : but 
 he exacted a promise from his son that he would 
 not be received until he should have left Oxford, 
 hoping that something might yet arise to prevent 
 the disaster. Dolben never told me of this treaty. 
 
 On May 1 he came up to Oxford to matricu- 
 late. He was in weak health and actually fainted 
 in the examination on the next day, and was thus 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 ciii 
 
 thrown out. He lodged at the Randolph Hotel, 
 and must have left at once after his failure. 
 Neither Hopkins nor I knew of his visit at the 
 time : he had told no one but Coles ; and the 
 chance coincidence of date with a short-lived 
 diary of his old friend alone preserved the facts. 
 Coles was distressed by his talk : he found him 
 in the dilemma depicted in the contemporary 
 poems. His father, disappointed in the plans for 
 Balliol, entered his name at Ch: Ch:, and Digby 
 approved of the change of programme. It was 
 also decided that he should leave De Winton's, 
 and Mr. Pritchard being now re-established in 
 health agreed to receive him again. His sister 
 tells me that Digby surprised his father by re- 
 questing what seemed a somewhat excessive al- 
 lowance of money in the event of his going to 
 Ch: Ch:, intending apparently to live at the Uni- 
 versity, if he went there, in a style very different 
 from his old negligent way of life. Lastly, after 
 his death, there was found among his papers the 
 beginning of a letter to his father asking to be 
 absolved of his promise not to be baptized, in 
 case of any dangerous accident or illness. This 
 was not dated, but was almost certainly written 
 at Mr. Pritchard\s after his arriving there on 
 June 15th. Thirteen days later he was drowned 
 when bathing in the river Welland, two miles 
 
civ 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 away from South Luffenham Rectory. I make 
 the following extracts from the little memoir of 
 his last days that Mr. Pritchard wrote at the 
 time, and sent to the family at Finedon. Mr. 
 Pritchard was one of the wisest and kindest of 
 Digby's friends ; and, as he knew him well, his 
 evidence is valuable apart from its being the 
 only picture of Dolben during those last days. 
 
 FROM MR. PRITCHARD'S MEMORANDUM. 
 
 " Dear Digby Mackworth Dolben came to us on Satur- 
 day, June 15 1867, it being intended that he should stay 
 here during the summer and read preparatory to going 
 to Oxford in October. We both had looked forward 
 with the greatest pleasure to his return, having become 
 so much attached to him when he was here two years 
 ago. Once or twice we had seen him since, but only for 
 a passing visit. We had sent the carriage to the train 
 for him earlier in the day, but he had not come, and we 
 had given up expecting him, when we heard a ring at 
 10 o'clock at night. He was received very gladly, and 
 with a good deal of laughing, in which he joined, as we 
 were accustomed to say that he generally missed his 
 train, and came at unexpected hours. He had grown 
 a good deal since he was here : he was very pale, and to 
 a stranger might have looked in ill health, but I do not 
 think his appearance expressed this. 
 
 * * * 
 
 On Monday we talked over his reading. He told me 
 what he had been doing lately. His box of books was 
 brought up and unpacked, and we found room in the 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 cv 
 
 drawingroom shelves for his books of poetry etc. We 
 dined at half-past one or two. he generally read on 
 until nearly that time, sitting in the same room with me, 
 as his own room was not ready, * * * If he had read 
 enough he used to construe before dinner : if not, in the 
 afternoon. He seemed to wish to lose no time, and to 
 do thoroughly what he had to do * * * Before dinner 
 I used sometimes to ask him to go into the garden for 
 air and exercise. . . He would begin a game of croquet, 
 or walk about and talk to Alice, or to the children. 
 
 * ♦ * 
 
 The younger children used to come in for a few minutes 
 each to say their Latin to me. I asked him if it disturbed 
 him, and he said Oh ! no. as if he Uked it. And I could 
 see that he was sometimes much amused by their questions 
 or remarks. He was always gentle and kind with chil- 
 dren ; perhaps a little reserved towards them, but his 
 manner expressed tenderness. While reading, myself, 
 in the same room I used sometimes to talk to him, as 
 I could count on his being interested, and on his quick- 
 ness of apprehension * * * 
 
 Our life was very even and uneventful during this 
 fortnight. He seemed quite happy ; much more so than 
 when here before, though then he was not unhappy. 
 But now there was a continual play of mind, as if he was 
 at peace, and had leisure for such enjoyments as his 
 studies and books and conversation gave him. He knew 
 and felt that we all loved him. His playfulness in con- 
 versation and quiet perception of humour were great* * * * 
 
 In the evenings he sometimes played chess, which he 
 was learning, or read poetry. On Sunday evenings he 
 read Paschal, and seemed pleased with the extreme 
 beauty of the language. 
 
 ♦ * ♦ 
 
 [When] they had all gone upstairs to bed, Dolben used 
 
cvi 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 to sit on a box at the top of the stairs, outside his room, 
 with quite a levee round him, amusing them, and I some- 
 times heard their laughter downstairs, 
 
 * * * 
 
 He did not strike me as looking forward with any 
 particular interest to his Oxford life. He said that he 
 thought he should like Ch : Ch : better than Balliol ; but 
 that he had been much annoyed at not getting into the 
 latter. He did not tell me — what was the case— that he 
 had been so ill that he had fainted the same day. 
 
 I have never known any one of his age, — perhaps none 
 at all — whom it was such a pleasure to converse with and 
 teach. On his own subjects of poetry and knowledge of 
 art his mind was far in advance of mine * * * But on 
 general topics, history, philosophy, classics etc, I felt 
 that he was interested in gaining ideas. His Latin 
 writing was rather drudgery to him * ♦ he took much 
 pains with it. * * his appreciation of classical poetry was 
 very great. Sophocles was not, I think, his favourite 
 author, but he spoke of the great beauty of the descrip- 
 tions in the CEdipus Coloneus. The last piece he construed 
 to me was the speech of Ajax taking leave of the world 
 before his death. On my asking him whether it was not 
 beautiful, he said "very beautiful" emphatically. I re- 
 marked that one could have been content if the play had 
 ended there. He said ' yes and then added with a 
 smile * In the Persae, which I read with you when I was 
 here before, there were some scores of lines at the end, 
 with little but aiai in them.' 
 
 These were the last words I heard him say in a lesson ; 
 I rather think the last I heard him speak." 
 
 This was on Friday, June S8th, and after he 
 had read the speech of Ajax, he went, late in 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 cvii 
 
 the afternoon to bathe with Mr. Pritchard's son 
 Walter. The boy could not swim, but had 
 learned to float on his back. Digby was a good 
 swimmer. They had bathed together before, 
 and there was so little thought of danger that no 
 apprehension was felt when they did not return. 
 Mr. Pritchard's memorandum tells the story as 
 it came to be known to him, with all the terror, 
 confusion and distress of the moment. What 
 happened was that when they were bathing Digby 
 took the boy on his back and swam across the 
 river with him- Returning in the same fashion 
 he suddenly sank within a few yards of the bank 
 to which he was swimming. The boy, who was 
 the only witness, had the presence of mind to 
 turn on his back and keep himself afloat, and 
 shout to some reapers in the riverside meadows. 
 They did not at once take alarm, but on the 
 boy's persistently calling they ran to the bank 
 and got him out with difficulty and delay : the 
 water was deep, and none of them could venture 
 in. Digby's body was not found until some hours 
 after. He was buried under the altar at Finedon 
 on July 6th. 
 
 * * * 
 It was the year of the French Exhibition, and 
 I was just starting for Paris, engaged, much 
 against my natural inclinations, in an eight-oared 
 
cviii 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 race on the Seine. The incongruity of these con- 
 secutive paragraphs is sufficient. I was spared, 
 it is true, the distress of witnessing the incon- 
 solable grief of his home, but it was an added 
 distress not to be able to take one's share in it, 
 and to be absent from the last scene. I did 
 not however at the time feel any of the remorse 
 which, since I came to know the history of his 
 last months, I have never been able quite to 
 shake off, the regret, I mean, that I had for eight 
 months allowed myself almost to lose sight of 
 him. It seems that he hid from me the growing 
 motive of his silence : and I cannot now deter- 
 mine how I interpreted his conduct. He was so 
 irregular a correspondent that his silence, if he 
 did not write, would have suggested nothing : 
 and he had plenty of other friends for whose 
 sake he might well have been neglecting me. 
 Again, his coming up to Oxford had been so 
 constantly imminent, that the expectation of it 
 made other considerations insignificant. I was 
 myself, it is true, drifting fast away from our old 
 religious sympathies in a different direction from 
 him, but I had not even at the time of his death 
 made any change that could have affected our 
 correspondence ; and I should have looked in 
 him for a similar effect from the same course of 
 philosophical study. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 cix 
 
 The last poems, found in his desk and written 
 presumably during the last weeks of his life tell 
 all that is known. For final words I will let 
 Gerard Hopkins speak. He wrote to me in 
 August 1867 as follows. 
 
 ' I heard of Dolben's death the day I returned 
 ' from Paris by a letter from which had been 
 
 * a week waiting for me. B * * * has since written 
 'me a few more particulars. I have kept the 
 
 * beginning of a letter to you a long time by me 
 
 * but to no purpose so far as being more ready to 
 ' write goes. There is very little I have to say. 
 'I looked forward to meeting Dolben and his 
 
 * being a Catholic more than to anything. At the 
 ' same time from never having met him but once 
 ' I find it difficult to realise his death or feel as 
 ' if it were anything to me. You know there 
 ' can very seldom have happened the loss of so 
 
 * much beauty (in body and mind and life) and 
 
 * of the promise of still more as there has been 
 ' in his case — seldom, I mean, in the whole world, 
 ' for the conditions not easily come together. 
 ' At the same time he had gone on in a way wh. 
 ' was wholly and unhappily irrational. I want 
 ' to know whether his family think of gathering 
 ' and publishing, or at least printing, his poetry. 
 ' Perhaps you will like to hear what D"^ Newman 
 ' says. " Yes, we heard all about Dolben. The 
 
cx 
 
 MEMOIR 
 
 ' account was very pleasant. He had not given 
 ' up the idea of being a Catholic, but he thought 
 ' he had lived on excitement, and felt he must 
 ' give himself time before he could know whether 
 ' he was in earnest or not. This does not seem 
 ' to me a wrong frame of mind. He was up to 
 'his death carefiil in his devotional exercises. 
 *I never saw him." Some day I hope to see 
 ' Finedon and the place where he was drowned 
 ' too. Can you tell me where he was buried ? — 
 ' at Finedon, was it not ? If you have letters from 
 ' him will you let me see them some day ? "* 
 
 No one ever wrote words with more critical 
 deliberation than Gerard Hopkins, and I am 
 glad to have preserved the letter which he then 
 wrote, having met Dolben but once, for it must 
 give some idea of the grief which his more inti- 
 mate friends suffered at his death ; some measure 
 too of the shock to their hopes, since it records 
 the full appreciation which his genius received 
 from them during his life. This was, no doubt, 
 chiefly due to the great charm of his personality, 
 for his character was transparent ; nor did the 
 strange spontaneous beauty and significance, that 
 invested the actions of his life, desert him in the 
 circumstances of his death. It was beautiful 
 and strange that, after all his unceasing mental 
 perplexity, he should die unconsciously, — for he 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 cxi 
 
 must have fainted in the water, — without pain, 
 in one of his rare moments of healthy bodily 
 enjoyment : and premature as his end was, and 
 the stroke of it unlooked for, and apparently 
 sudden, yet his last poems show him waiting 
 and expectant, and his last action had all the 
 dignity and fitness of artistic preparation. 
 
 My story of the accidents of his life can give 
 no picture of his charm ; his perpetual humour 
 and light merriment are what will least appear : 
 though I may hope that the truthfulness of the 
 story reveals more than I can myself perceive. 
 As he went his way enthusiastically pursuing 
 his imaginations, all intercourse with him was 
 delightful, and all my remembrance of him is 
 happy. 
 
 R. B. 
 
 Chilswell, Jan. 1911. 
 
POEMS 
 
 I 
 
 HOMO PECTUS EST 
 
 COME to me, Beloved, 
 Babe of Bethlehem ; 
 Lay aside Thy Sceptre 
 And Thy Diadem. 
 
 Come to me. Beloved ; 
 
 Light and healing bring ; 
 Hide my sin and sorrow 
 
 Underneath Thy wing. 
 
 Bid all fear and doubting 
 From my soul depart, 
 
 As I feel the beating 
 Of Thy Human Heart. 
 
 Look upon me sweetly 
 With Thy Human Eyes ; 
 
 With Thy Human Finger 
 Point me to the skies. 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Safe from earthly scandal 
 
 My poor spirit hide 
 In the utter stillness 
 
 Of Thy wounded Side. 
 
 Guide me, ever guide me, 
 With Thy pierced Hand, 
 
 Till I reach the borders 
 Of the pleasant land. 
 
 Then, my own Beloved, 
 Take me home to rest ; 
 
 Whisper words of comfort ; 
 Lay me on Thy Breast. 
 
 Show me not the Glory 
 Round about Thy Throne ; 
 
 Show me not the flashes 
 Of Thy jewelled Crown. 
 
 Hide me from the pity 
 Of the Angels' Band, 
 
 Who ever sing Thy praises. 
 And before Thee stand. 
 
 Hide me from the glances 
 
 Of the Seraphin, — 
 They, so pure and spotless, 
 
 I, so stained with sin. 
 
POEMS 
 
 Hide me from S. Michael 
 With his flaming sword : — 
 
 Thou can'st understand me, 
 O my Human Lord ! 
 
 Jesu, my Beloved, 
 
 Come to me alone ; 
 In Thy sweet embraces 
 
 Make me all Thine own. 
 
 By the quiet waters. 
 
 Sweetest Jesu, lead ; 
 'Mid the virgin lilies, 
 
 Purest Jesu, feed. 
 
 Only Thee, Beloved, 
 
 Only Thee, I seek. 
 Thou, the Man Christ Jesus, 
 
 Strength in flesh made weak. 
 
 B 2 
 
POEMS 
 
 X 
 
 FROM THE CLOISTER 
 
 Brother ferome seated in the clolHer 
 
 OTO have wandered in the days that were, 
 Through the sweet groves of green Aca- 
 deme — 
 
 Or, shrouded in a night of olive boughs. 
 Have watched their starry clusters overhead 
 Twinkle and quiver in the perfumed breeze — 
 That breeze which softly wafted from afar, 
 Mingled with rustling leaves andfountain's splash, 
 The boyish laughter and the paean songs ; 
 Or, couched among the beds of pale-pink thyme 
 That fringe Cephissus with his purple pools, 
 Have idly listened while low voices sang 
 Of all those ancient victories of love. 
 That never weary and that never die, — 
 
POEMS 
 
 B 
 
 Of Sappho's leap, Leander's nightly swim, 
 Of wandering Echo, and the Trojan maid 
 For whom all ages shed their pit3ring tears ; — 
 Or that fair legend, dearest of them all. 
 That tells us how the hyacinth was born ; 
 Or to have mingled in the eager crowd 
 That questioning circled some philosopher, 
 Young eyes that glistened and young cheeks 
 
 that glowed 
 For love of Truth, the great, Indefinite — 
 Truth beautiful as are the distant hills 
 Veiled in soft purple, crags whereon is found 
 No tender plant in the uncreviced rock. 
 But clinging lichen, and black shrivelled moss; — 
 So should day pass, till, from the western skies, 
 Behind the marble shrines and palaces, 
 The big sun sunk, reddening the Aegean Sea. 
 So should life pass, as flows the clear-brown 
 
 stream 
 
 And scarcely moves the water-lily's leaves. 
 This sluggish life is like some dead caneil, 
 Dull, measured, muddy, washing flowerless banks. 
 O sunny Athens, home of life and love, 
 Free joyous life that I may never live, 
 Warm glowing love that I may never know, — 
 Home of Apollo, god of poetry. 
 Dear bright-haired god, in whom I half believe, 
 
6 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Come to me as thou cam'st to Semele, 
 Trailing across the hills thy saffron robe, 
 And catch me heavenward, wrapt in golden 
 mists. 
 
 I weary of this squalid holiness, 
 I weary of these hot black draperies, 
 I weary of the incense-thickened air, 
 The chiming of the inevitable bells. 
 My boyhood — hurried over, but once gone 
 For ever mourned, — return for one short hour ; 
 Friends of past days, light up these cloister 
 walls 
 
 With your bright presences and starry eyes. 
 And make the cold grey vaulting ring again 
 With tinkling laughter. — Ah ! they come, they 
 come: 
 
 I shut my eyes and fancy that I hear 
 The sun-lit ripples kiss the willow-boughs. . . . 
 So soon forgotten that all lovely things 
 Which this vile earth affords — trees, mountains, 
 streams, 
 
 The regal faces, and the godlike eyes 
 
 We see, — the tender voices that we hear. 
 
 Are but mere shadows ? — the reality 
 
 A cloud- veiled Face, a voice that 's lost in air, 
 
 Or drowned in music more intelligible ? 
 
 From every carven niche the stony Saints 
 
POEMS 
 
 Stretch out their wasted hands in mute reproach, 
 And from the Crucifix the great wan Christ 
 Shows me His thorny Crown and gaping 
 Wounds. 
 
 Then hark ! I hear from many a lonely grave, 
 From blood-stained sands of amphitheatres, 
 From loathsome dungeon, and from blackened 
 stake 
 
 They cry, the Martyrs cry, ' Behold the M an ! ' 
 
 Is there ho place in all the universe 
 
 To hide me in ? no little island girt 
 
 With waves, to drown the echo of that cry : 
 
 * Behold the Man, the Man of Calvary ! ' 
 
 Brother "Francis^ crossing the cloiHer^ sings 
 
 As pants the hart for forest-streams 
 
 When wandering wearily 
 Across the burning desert sand, 
 
 So pant I, Lord, for Thee ! 
 Sweetest Jesu ! Thou art He 
 
 To whom my soul aspires ; 
 Sweetest Jesu, Thou art He, 
 
 Whom my whole heart desires. 
 
8 
 
 POEMS 
 
 To love Thee, Oh the ecstasy, 
 
 The rapture, and the joy ! 
 All earthly loves shall pass away, 
 
 All earthly pleasures cloy ; 
 But whoso loves the Son of God 
 
 Of Love shall never tire ; 
 But through and through shall burn and glow 
 
 With Love's undying Fire. 
 
 He enters the chapel. 
 
POEMS 
 
 9 
 
 3 
 
 AMOREM SENSUS 
 
 Translation 
 
 AUTHOR of pardon, Jesu Christ, 
 xXExtend Thy love to us, and deign 
 To show Thy mercy upon us, 
 And cleanse our hearts from every stain. 
 
 Most tender and most gracious Lord, 
 Thou knowest whereof man is made ; 
 Thou knowest whereunto he falls. 
 If thou withdraw thy saving aid. 
 
 My every thought to Thee is clear. 
 My inmost soul unveiled to Thee ; — 
 Disperse and drive away the dreams 
 Of worldliness and vanity. 
 
 We wander exiled here below, 
 Through this sad vale of sin and strife ; 
 O lead us to the Holy Mount, 
 The home of everlasting Life. 
 
10 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Thou Who for us becamest poor, 
 Thou Who for us wast crucified, 
 Wash out the past in that dear Stream 
 That floweth from Thy pierced Side. 
 
 Thrice blessed Love that satisfies 
 Its thirst in Thee, 0 Fount of Grace : 
 Thrice blessed eyes that through all time 
 Shall see Thy Glory face to face. 
 
 Thy Glory, Lord, surpasses thought, 
 And yet Thy Love is infinite ; — 
 That Love to taste, that Glory see, 
 My heart to Thee has winged her flight. 
 
POEMS 
 
 U 
 
 Sis licet felix ubicunque mavis 
 Et memor noilri . . . vivM 
 
 ON river banks my love was born, 
 And cradled 'neath a budding thorn, 
 Whose flowers never more shall kiss 
 Lips half so sweet and red as his. 
 Beneath him lily-islands spread 
 With broad cool leaves a floating bed : 
 Around, to meet his opening eyes, 
 The ripples danced in glad surprise. 
 I found him there when spring was new, 
 When winds were soft and skies were blue ; 
 I marvelled not, although he drew 
 My whole soul to him, for I knew 
 That he was born to be my king, 
 And I was only born to sing 
 With faded lips and feeble lays 
 His love and beauty all my days. 
 Therefore I pushed the flowers aside 
 And humbly knelt me by his side. 
 And then I stooped, and whispered—* Come, 
 
 * O Long-desired, to your Home ; 
 
 * How much desired none can know, 
 
12 
 
 POEMS 
 
 * But those who wander to and fro 
 
 * Through unknown groups and careless faces^ 
 ' And seek in vain for friendship's graces, 
 
 ' Until the earth's rich beauties seem 
 
 ' The bitter mockery of a dream : 
 
 ' Nor shall they wake, nor shall they see 
 
 ' This life's most sweet reality, 
 
 ' Until before them there arise 
 
 ' A loving, answering pair of eyes. — 
 
 ' So had I wandered, till you came ; 
 
 ' Spring, summer, autumn were the same ; 
 
 ' For winter ever held the skies 
 
 * Clouded with earth's sad mysteries ; 
 ' And on my heart the chilly hand 
 
 * Of grief I could not understand. 
 
 ' Those looks, those words of scorn I felt, — 
 ' Never was frost so hard to melt : — 
 
 * Yet, as from gardens far below, 
 
 * Sweet breezes through a sick room blow, 
 ' So from the Future that should be, 
 
 ' Faint hopes were always wafted me ; 
 
 * Till all my heart and soul were full 
 ' Of longing undefinable. 
 
 * You came — you came. 
 
 ' No lilies can I offer you, 
 ' Nor gentian, nor violets blue : 
 ' The only flower that I own 
 ' Is, was and shall be, yours alone, — 
 
POEMS 
 
 * A flower of such a glowing red 
 
 * It seems as if each leaf had bled.' 
 
 He took my flower ; I saw it pressed 
 With loving care against his breast. 
 But on that robe it left a stain, 
 Which never shall come out again. 
 He heeded not, but clasped my hand 
 And led me through enchanted land. 
 On we went — the flowers springing. 
 Turtle- voices ever singing ; 
 On we went — I understood 
 Lake and mountain, rock and wood, 
 Hidden meanings, hidden duties. 
 Hidden loves, and hidden beauties ; 
 On we went — the ceaseless chorus 
 Of all nature chanted o'er us ; 
 On we went — the scented breeze 
 From the bright Hesperian seas 
 Striking ever on our faces, 
 Bringing from those blessed places 
 A foretaste of the spirit's rest 
 Among the Islands of the blest ; 
 Till the griefs of life's old story 
 Faded in a mist of glory. 
 Came there with that glorious vision 
 Throbbing notes of songs Elysian, 
 Echoing now as deep and loud 
 As the thunder in the cloud ; 
 
14 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Then again the music sank 
 Soft as ripples on the bank ; 
 And the angels, as they passed, 
 Whispered to me * Loved at last.' 
 
 Gone — gone — O never nevermore. 
 Standing upon the willowy shore, 
 Shall it be mine to watch his face 
 Uplifted westward, all ablaze 
 With sunset glory, and his eyes 
 Catching the splendour of the skies, 
 Then softly downward turned on mine. 
 As stars in turbid waters shine. 
 
 I cannot think, I cannot weep, — 
 But as one walking in his sleep, 
 I wander back through well-known ways, 
 As once with him through summer days. 
 Again I see the rushes shiver, 
 And lines on dying sunlight quiver 
 Across the waters cold and brown, 
 O'er which our boat glides slowly down. 
 Again, again I see him stand 
 With red June roses in his hand ; 
 Again, again within those walls 
 We loved so well, the sunlight falls 
 From blazoned windows on his head. 
 In streams of purple and of red. 
 Gone — gone. — 
 
POEMS 
 
 15 
 
 So take my flowers, dear river Thames, 
 And snap, oh snap the lily stems. 
 I throw my heart among those flowers 
 You gave to me in boyish hours : 
 Spare it and them nor storm nor mire ; 
 But sink them lower, toss them higher, 
 I care not, — for I know that pain 
 Alone can purify their stain. 
 So only, only may I win 
 Some pardon for my youthful sin, — 
 Vain hopes, false peace, untrustful fears, 
 Three wasted, dreamy, happy years ; — 
 So only may I stand with him. 
 When suns have sunk and moons grown dim, 
 And see him shining in the light 
 Of the new Heaven's sunless white. 
 
 Beloved, take my little song : 
 The river, as he rolls along. 
 Will sing it clearer far than I ; 
 And possibly your memory, 
 When looking back on what has been, 
 Will tell you what these verses mean. 
 
POEMS 
 
 s 
 
 A SEA SONG 
 
 IN the days before the high tide 
 Swept away the towers of sand 
 Built with so much care and labour 
 By the children of the land, 
 
 Pale, upon the pallid beaches. 
 Thirsting, on the thirsty sands, 
 
 Ever cried I to the Distance, 
 Ever seaward spread my hands. 
 
 See, they come, they come, the ripples. 
 Singing, singing fast and low, 
 
 Meet the longing of the sea-shores. 
 Clasp them, kiss them once, and go, 
 
 ^ Stay, sweet Ocean, satisfying 
 
 All desires into rest — ' 
 Not a word the Ocean answered. 
 
 Rolling sunward down the west. 
 
 Then I wept : ' Oh, who will give me 
 
 To behold the stable sea. 
 On whose tideless shores for ever 
 
 Sounds of many waters be ? ' 
 
POEMS 
 
 17 
 
 6 
 
 GOOD NIGHT 
 
 THE sun has set. 
 The western light 
 And after that 
 The starlit night 
 Still tell of Him, 
 Who, far away, 
 Is Lord of night 
 As well as day. 
 Now do you wonder. 
 Dear, that I 
 
 Wished you ' Good night ^ 
 And not * Good-bye ? 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 POEMS 
 
 7 
 
 A POEM WITHOUT A NAME 
 I 
 
 SURELY before the time my Sun has set : 
 The evening had not come, it was but noon, 
 The gladness passed from all my Pleasant Land ; 
 And, through the night that knows nor star nor 
 moon, 
 
 Among clean souls who all but Heaven forget, 
 Alone remembering I wander on. 
 They sing of triumph, and a Mighty Hand 
 Locked fast in theirs through sorrow's Mystery ; 
 They sing of glimpses of another Land, 
 Whose purples gleam through all their agony. 
 But I — I did not choose like them, I chose 
 The summer roses, and the red, red wine, 
 The juice of earth's wild grapes, to drink with 
 those 
 
 Whose glories yet thro' saddest memories shine. 
 I will not tell of them, of him who came ; 
 I will not tell you what men call my land. 
 They speak half-choked in fogs of scorn and sin. 
 
POEMS 
 
 19 
 
 I turn from all their pitiless human din 
 To voices that can feel and understand. 
 
 O ever-laughing rivers, sing his name 
 To all your lilies ; — tell it out, O chime, 
 In hourly four-fold voices ; — western breeze 
 Among the avenues of scented lime 
 Murmur it softly to the summer night ; — 
 O sunlight, water, music, flowers and trees. 
 Heart-beats of nature's infinite delight, 
 Love him for ever, all things beautiful ! 
 A little while it was he stayed with me. 
 And taught me knowledge sweet and wonderful. 
 And satisfied my soul with poetry : 
 But soon, too soon, there sounded from above 
 Innumerable clapping of white hands. 
 And countless laughing voices sang of love, 
 And called my friend away to other lands. 
 Well — I am very glad they were so fair, 
 For whom the lightening east and morning skies ; 
 For me the sunset of his golden hair. 
 Fading among the hills of Paradise. 
 
 Weed-grown is all my garden of delight ; — 
 Most tired, most cold without the Eden-gate, 
 With eyes still good for ache, tho' not for sight. 
 Among the briers and thorns I weep and wait. 
 Now first I catch the meaning of a strife, 
 A great soul-battle fought for death or life. 
 Nearing me come the rumours of a war, 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 POEMS 
 
 And blood and dust sweep cloudy from afar, 
 And, surging round, the sobbing of the sea 
 Choked with the weepings of humanity. 
 
 Alas ! no armour have I fashioned me, 
 And, having lived on honey in the past, 
 Have gained no strength. From the un fathomed 
 sea 
 
 I draw no food, for all the nets I cast. 
 I am not strong enough to fight beneath, 
 I am not clean enough to mount above ; 
 Oh let me dream, although to dream is death, 
 Beside the hills where last I saw my Love. 
 
POEMS 
 
 21 
 
 8 
 
 IN THE GARDEN 
 
 THERE is a garden, which I think He loves 
 Who loveth all things fair ; 
 And once the Master of the flowers came 
 To teach love-lessons there. 
 
 He touched my eyes, and in the open sun 
 
 They walked, the Holy Dead, 
 Trailing their washen robes across the turf. 
 
 An aureole round each head. 
 
 One said, with wisdom in his infant eyes, — 
 
 ' The world I never knew ; 
 * But, love the Holy Child of Bethlehem, 
 
 ' And He will love you too.' 
 
 One said — ' The victory is hard to win, 
 
 ' But love shall conquer death. 
 ' The world is sweet, but He is sweeter far, 
 
 'The Boy of Nazareth.' 
 
n 
 
 POEMS 
 
 One said — ' My life was twilight from the first ; 
 
 ' But on my Calvary, 
 ' Beside my cross, another Cross was raised 
 
 ' In utter love for me.' 
 
 One said — 'The wine-vat it was hard to tread, 
 
 ' It stained my weary feet ; 
 ' But One from Bozra trod with me in love, 
 
 ' And made my vintage sweet.' 
 
 One said — ' My human loves were pure and fair, 
 
 ' He would not have them cease ; 
 ' But, knit to His, I bore them in my heart 
 
 ' Into the land of peace.' 
 
 One came, who in the groves of Paradise 
 
 Had latest cut his palm ; 
 He only said — ' The floods lift up their voice, 
 
 ' But love can make them calm.' 
 
 I heard a step — I had been long alone, 
 I thought they might have missed me — 
 
 It was my mother coming o'er the grass ; 
 I turned — and so she kissed me. 
 
POEMS 
 
 9 
 
 AFTER READING AESCHTLVS 
 
 1WILL not sing my little puny songs. 
 It is more blessed for the rippling pool ' 
 To be absorbed in the great ocean-wave 
 Than even to kiss the sea-weeds on its breast. 
 Therefore in passiveness I will lie still, 
 And let the multitudinous music of the Greek 
 Pass into me, till I am musical. 
 
POEMS 
 
 lO 
 
 AFTEJ( READING HOMER 
 
 HAPPY the man, who on the mountain-side 
 Bending o'er fern and flowers his basket 
 mis: 
 
 Yet he will never know the outline-power, 
 The awful Whole of the Eternal Hills. 
 
 So some there are, who never feel the strength 
 In thy blind eyes, majestic and complete, 
 Which conquers those, who motionlessly sit, 
 O dear divine old Giant, at thy feet. 
 
POEMS 
 
 25 
 
 II 
 
 THERE was one who walked in shadow, 
 There was one who walked in light : 
 But once their way together lay, 
 Where sun and shade unite, 
 
 In the meadow of the lotus, 
 
 In the meadow of the rose. 
 Where fair with youth and clear with truth 
 
 The Living River flows. 
 
 Scarcely summer stillness breaking, 
 Questions, answers, soft and low — 
 
 The words they said, the vows they made. 
 None but the willows know. 
 
 Both have passed away for ever 
 From the meadow and the stream ; 
 
 Past their waking, past their breaking 
 The sweetness of that dream. 
 
POEMS 
 
 One along the dusty highway 
 Toiling counts the weary hours. 
 
 And one among its shining throng 
 The world has crowned with flowers. 
 
 Sometimes perhaps amid the gardens. 
 Where the noble have their part, 
 
 Though noon 's overhead, a dew-drop 's shed 
 Into a lily's heart. 
 
 Tliis I know, till one heart reaches 
 Labour's sum, the restful grave, 
 
 Will still be seen the willow-green, 
 And heard the rippling M^ave. 
 
POEMS 
 
 IX 
 
 What is good for a bootless bene ? 
 The Falconer to the lady said. 
 
 FROM the great Poet's lips I thought to take 
 Some drops of honey for my parched mouth, 
 And draw from out his depths of purple lake 
 Some rill to murmur Peace thro' summer 
 drouth. 
 
 Hail, sweet sad story ! Noble lady, hail ! — 
 
 Who, sorrowing wisely, sorrowed not in vain,, 
 When Love and Death did strive, but Love 
 prevail 
 
 To turn thy loss to Everlasting gain. 
 
 But what of Love, whose crown is not of bay, 
 Whose yellow locks with asphodel are twined ? 
 
 And what of him, who in the battle-day 
 Dare not look forward, for the foes behind ? 
 
POEMS 
 
 13 
 
 GOOD FRIDAY 
 
 WAS it a dream — the outline of that Face, 
 Which seemed to lighten from the Holy 
 Place, 
 
 Meeting all want, fulfilling all desire ? 
 A dream — the music of that Voice most sweet, 
 Which seemed to rise above the chanting choir ? 
 A dream — the treadings of those wounded Feet, 
 Pacing about the Altar still and slow ? 
 Illusion — all I thought to love and know ? 
 
 Strong SoiTow- wrestler of Mount Calvary, 
 Speak through the blackness of Thine Agony, 
 Say, have I ever known Thee ? answer me ! 
 Speak, Merciful and Mighty, lifted up 
 To draw those to Thee who have power to will 
 The roseate Baptism, and the bitter Cup, 
 The Royal Graces of the Cross-crowned Hill. 
 
 Terrible Golgotha — among the bones 
 Which whiten thee, as thick as splintered stones 
 Where headlong rocks have crushed themselves 
 away, 
 
 I stumble on — Is it too dark to pray ? 
 
POEMS 
 
 ANACREONTIC 
 
 ON the tender myrtle-branches, 
 In the meadow lotus -grassed, 
 While the wearied sunlight softly 
 
 To the Happy Islands passed, — 
 Reddest lips the reddest vintage 
 
 Of the bright Aegean quaffing. 
 There I saw them lie, the evening 
 
 Hazes rippled with their laughing. 
 Round them boys, with hair as golden 
 
 As Queen Cytherea's own is. 
 Sang to lyres wreathed with ivy 
 
 Of the beautiful Adonis — 
 (Of Adonis the Desired, 
 
 He has perished on the mountain,) 
 While their voices, rising, falling. 
 
 As the murmur of a fountain. 
 Glittered upwards at the mention 
 
 Of his beauty unavailing ; 
 Scattered into rainbowed teardrops 
 To the at 6.L of the wailing. 
 
POEMS 
 
 IS 
 
 1SAID to my heart, — ' I am tired, 
 Am tired of loving in vain ; 
 Since the beauty of the Desired 
 Shall not be unveiled again/ 
 
 So we laid our Longing to rest, 
 To sleep through the endless hours. 
 
 And called to a breeze of the west 
 To kiss the acacia flowers ; 
 
 To kiss them until they break 
 
 And hide him beneath their bloom, 
 
 That our Longing for Love's sweet sake 
 Be shrouded fair in the tomb. 
 
 But the Memories arose in light. 
 From meadow and wharf and wave, 
 
 And sang through the gathering night. 
 As we turned to leave the grave. 
 
POEMS 
 
 Of Longing they sang, son of Love, 
 Love patient as earth beneath. 
 
 As the heavens immortal above, 
 And mightier than time or death. 
 
 They sang till they woke him at morn 
 Arisen he stood by my bed, 
 
 In his face the glory of dawn. 
 The gold and purple and red. 
 
 He is mine thro' the depth of pain, 
 Is mine through the length of ways 
 
 But a death awaits him again. 
 In the Triumph of Patient Days. 
 
32 
 
 POEMS 
 
 16 
 
 STRANGE, all-absorbing Love, who gatherest 
 Unto Thy glowing all my pleasant dew, 
 Then delicately my garden waterest. 
 Drawing the old, to pour it back anew : 
 
 In the dim glitter of the dawning hours 
 ' Not so,' I said, ' but still these drops of light, 
 ' Heart-shrined among the petals of my flowers, 
 ' Shall hold the memory of the starry night 
 
 ' So fresh, no need of showers shall there be.' — 
 Ah, senseless gardener ! must it come to pass 
 That neath the glaring noon thou shouldest see 
 Thine earth become as iron, His heavens as brass ? 
 
 Nay rather, O my Sun, I will be wise. 
 Believe in Love which may not yet be seen. 
 Yield Thee my earth-drops, call Thee from the 
 skies. 
 
 In soft return, to keep my bedding green. 
 
 So when the bells at Vesper-tide shall sound, 
 And the dead ocean o'er my garden flows, 
 Upon the Golden Altar may be found 
 Some scarlet berries and a Christmas rose. 
 
POEMS 
 
 17 
 
 FROM SAPPHO 
 
 THOU liest dead,— lie on : of thee 
 No sweet remembrances shall be, 
 Who never plucked Pierian rose. 
 Who never chanced on Anteros. 
 Unknown, unnoticed, there below 
 Through Aides' houses shalt thou go 
 Alone, — for never a flitting ghost 
 Shall find in thee a lover lost. 
 
POEMS 
 
 i8 
 
 Osculo oris sui osculetur me, 
 
 CHRIST, for whose only Love I keep me clean 
 Among the palaces of Babylon, 
 I would not Thou should'st reckon me with them 
 Who miserly would count each golden stone 
 That flags the street of Thy Jerusalem — 
 Who, having touched and tasted, heard and 
 seen, 
 
 Half-drunken yet from earthly revelries. 
 Would wipe with flower- wreathed hair Thy 
 
 bleeding Feet, 
 Jostling about Thee but to stay the heat 
 Of pale parched lips in Thy cool chalices. 
 
 ' Our cups are emptiness — how long ? how long 
 ' Before that Thou wilt pour us of Thy wine, 
 'Thy sweet new wine, that we may thirst no 
 more ? 
 
 * Our lamps are darkness, — open day of Thine, 
 
 * Surely is light to spare behind that door. 
 Where God is Sun, and Saints a starry throng.' 
 
POEMS 
 
 35 
 
 But I, how little profit were to me 
 Tho' mine the twelve foundations of the skies, 
 With this green world of love an age below : — 
 The soft remembrance of those human eyes 
 Would pale the everlasting jewel-glow ; 
 And o'er the perfect passionless minstrelsy 
 
 A voice would sound the decachords above, 
 Deadening the music of the Living Land — 
 Thou madest, Thou knowest, Thou wilt under- 
 stand. 
 
 And stay me with the Apples of Thy love. 
 
 My Christ, remember that betrothal day ; 
 Blessed he He that cometh was the song : 
 Glad as the Hebrew boys who cried Hosanna, 
 O'er hearts thick- strewn as palms they passed 
 along. 
 
 To reap in might the fields of heavenly manna — 
 These were the bridesmen in their white array. 
 
 Soon hearts and eyes were lifted up to Thee : 
 Deep in dim glories of the Sanctuary, 
 Between the thunderous Alleluia-praise, 
 Through incense-hazes that encompassed Thee, 
 I saw the priestly hands Thyself upraise — 
 Heaven sank to earth — earth leapt to heaven 
 for me. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Rise, Peter, rise ; He standeth on the shore, 
 The thrice-denied of Pilate's Judgement Hall : 
 His hand is o'er the shingle lest thou fall ; 
 He wipes thy bitter tears for evermore. 
 
 ' Lovest thou ? ' My beloved, answer me, 
 Of Thine all-knowledge show me only this — 
 Tarrieth the answer ? Lo, the House of Bread ; 
 Lo, God and man made one in Mary's kiss 
 Bending in rapture o'er the manger bed. 
 I with the holy kings will go and see. 
 
POEMS 
 
 37 
 
 19 
 
 ON THE PICTURE OF AN ANGEL BT 
 ERA ANGELICO 
 
 PRESS each on each, sweet wings, and roof 
 me in 
 
 Some closed cell to hold my weariness, 
 Desired — as from unshadowed plains to win 
 The palmy gloaming of the oases : 
 
 Glad wings, that floated ere the suns arose 
 Down pillared lines of ever-fruited trees. 
 
 Where thro^ the many-gladed leafage flows 
 The uncreated noon of Paradise : 
 
 Soft wings, in contemplation oftentime 
 
 Stretched on the ocean-depths that drown 
 desire, 
 
 Where lightening tides in never-falling chime 
 Ring round the angel isles in glass and fire : 
 
S8 
 
 POEMS 
 
 From meadow-lands that sleep beyond the stars, 
 From lilied woods and waves the blessed see, 
 
 Pass, bird of God, ah pass the golden bars. 
 And in thy fair compassion pity me. 
 
 O for the garden city of the Flower, 
 Of jewelled Italy the chosen gem, 
 
 Where angels and Giotto dreamed a tower 
 In beauty as of New Jerusalem : 
 
 For there, when roseate as a winged cloud 
 Upon the saiFron of the paling east — 
 
 A glowing pillar in the House of God — 
 That tower was born, the Very Loveliest, 
 
 Then shaking wings, and voices then that sang. 
 Passed up and down the chased jasper wall. 
 
 And through the crystal traceries outrang. 
 As when from deep to deep the seraphs call. 
 
 O for the valley slopes which Arno cleaves 
 With arrowy heads of gold unceasingly. 
 
 Parting the twilight of the grey-green leaves 
 As shafted sungleam on a rain-cloud sky : 
 
 For there, more white than mists of bloom above 
 When sunset kindles Luni's vineyard height, 
 
 Strange Presences have paced the olive grove, 
 And dazed the cypress cloister into light. 
 
POEMS 
 
 39 
 
 But not for me the angel-haunted South : 
 I spread my hands across the unlovely plain, 
 
 I faint for beauty in the daily drouth 
 Of beauty, as the fields for August rain. 
 
 Yet hope is mine against some Eastern dawn, 
 
 Not in a vision but reality. 
 To see thy wings, and in thine arms upborne, 
 
 To rest me in a fairer Italy. 
 
POEMS 
 
 RE^^ESTS 
 
 1 ASKED for Peace— 
 My sins arose, 
 And bound me close, 
 I could not find release. 
 
 I asked for Truth — 
 My doubts came in, 
 And with their din 
 
 They wearied all my youth. 
 
 I asked for Love — 
 My lovers failed, 
 And griefs assailed 
 
 Around, beneath, above. 
 
 I asked for Thee — 
 And Thou didst come 
 To take me home 
 
 Within Thy Heart to be. 
 
POEMS 
 
 41 
 
 XI 
 
 BEAUTIFUL, oh beautiful— 
 In all the mountain passes 
 The plenteous dowers of April showers, 
 
 Which every spring amasses, 
 To bring about thro"* summer drought 
 The blossoming of the grasses. 
 
 Beautiful, oh beautiful — 
 
 The April of the ages. 
 Which sweetly brought its showers of thought 
 
 To poets and to sages. 
 Now stored away our thirst to stay 
 
 In ever-dewy pages. 
 
POEMS 
 
 THE ETERNAL CALVARY 
 
 The clouded hill attend thou Slill^ 
 And htm that went within. 
 
 A. Clough. 
 
 NOT so indeed shall be our creed,— 
 The Man whom we rely on 
 Has brought us thro' from old to new, 
 
 From Sinai to Zion. 
 For us He scaled the hill of myrrh. 
 
 The summits of His Passion, 
 And is set down upon the throne 
 Of infinite Compassion. 
 
 He passed within the cloud that veiled 
 
 The Mount of our Salvation, 
 In utter darkness swallowed up 
 
 Until the Consummation. 
 The clouds are burst, the shades dispersed ; 
 
 Descending from above 
 With wounded hands our Prophet stands, 
 
 And bears the Law of Love. 
 
POEMS 
 
 Receive it then, believe it then, 
 
 As childlike spirits can ; 
 Receive, believe, and thou shalt live, 
 
 And thou shalt Love, O man ! 
 
 Not so indeed shall be our creed, — 
 
 To wait a new commission. 
 As if again revealed to men 
 
 Could be the heavenly Vision ; 
 The priceless thing He died to bring 
 
 From out the veil, to miss. 
 While Host and Cup are lifted up 
 
 On countless Calvarys. 
 
 ' Among the dead,' an angel said, 
 
 ' Seek not the living Christ.' 
 The type is done, the real begun. 
 
 Behold the Eucharist ! 
 The curse is spent, the veil is rent, 
 
 And face to face we meet Him, 
 With chanting choirs and incense fires 
 
 On every altar greet Him. 
 
 Receive it then, believe it then, 
 
 As childlike spirits can ; 
 Receive, believe, and thou shalt live, 
 
 And thou shalt Love, O man ! 
 
POEMS 
 
 X5 
 
 WE hurry on, nor passing note 
 The rounded hedges white with May ; 
 For golden clouds before us float 
 To lead our dazzled sight astray. 
 We say, ' they shall indeed be sweet 
 ' The summer days that are to be ' — 
 The ages murmur at our feet 
 The everlasting mystery. 
 
 We seek for Love to make our own. 
 
 But clasp him not for all our care 
 
 Of outspread arms ; we gain alone 
 
 The flicker of his yellow hair 
 
 Caught now and then through glancing vine, 
 
 How rare, how fair, we dare not tell ; 
 
 We know those sunny locks entwine 
 
 With ruddy-fruited asphodel. 
 
 A little life, a little love, 
 
 Young men rejoicing in their youth, 
 
 A doubtful twilight from above, 
 
 A glimpse of Beauty and of Truth, — 
 
 And then, no doubt, spring-loveliness 
 
 Expressed in hawthorns white and red. 
 
 The sprouting of the meadow grass. 
 
 But churchyard weeds about our head. 
 
POEMS 
 
 45 
 
 24 
 
 THE PILGRIM AND THE KNIGHT 
 
 HERE in the flats that encompass the hills 
 called Beautiful, lying, 
 O Beloved, behold a Pilgrim who fain would be 
 sleeping. 
 
 Did not at times the snows that diadem summits 
 above him 
 
 Break on his dreams, and scatter the slumberous 
 
 mists from his eyelids. 
 Flashing the consciousness back, by weariness 
 
 half overpowered. 
 Of journeying unfulfilled and feet that have 
 
 toiled but attained not. 
 Then, in a sudden trance, (as the man whose 
 
 eyes were opened 
 But for a little while, then closed to night 
 
 everlasting,) 
 High on the slopes of the terraced hills a goodly 
 
 procession : 
 
 White are the horses and white are the plumes 
 
 and white are the vestures. 
 White is the heaven above with pearls that the 
 
 dawning is scattering. 
 
46 
 
 POEMS 
 
 White beneath the flowerless fields that are 
 
 hedged with the snowdrift. 
 These are the Knights of the Lord, who fight 
 
 with the Beast and the Prophet. 
 
 Ho for the Knight that rides in the splendour 
 
 of opening manhood, 
 Calm as Michael, when, out from the Beatifical 
 
 Vision, 
 
 Bearing the might of the Lord, he passed to 
 conquer the Dragon. 
 
 Yet, in those passionless eyes, if hitherward 
 turned for a moment. 
 
 Might not some memory waken of him whom 
 he loved in the Distance, 
 
 Ere from Holy Land the voice of the trumpet 
 had sounded — 
 
 'O Beloved' — Enough; the words unechoed, un- 
 answered. 
 
 Fade with the vision away on the slopes of the 
 Beautiful Mountains. 
 
 Yet — remember me. Thou Captain of Israel's 
 
 Knighthood, 
 Thou to John made known in the Revelation of 
 
 Patmos. 
 
POEMS 
 
 47 
 
 BREFI TEMPORE MAGNUM PERFECIT 
 OPUS 
 
 WAS not in shady cloister that God set 
 
 X His chosen one, 
 But in the van of battle and the streets of 
 Babylon : 
 
 There he in patience served the days of his 
 captivity, 
 
 Until the King made known to him the City of 
 the Free. 
 
 There One who watched in Salem once beside 
 
 the Treasury, 
 And reckoned up the riches of the widow's 
 
 penury, 
 
 Received the offering of him who counted not 
 the cost, 
 
 But burnt his soul and body in a living holocaust. 
 
 1 
 
48 
 
 POEMS 
 
 His life was in the Sanctuary and like a fountain 
 sealed ; 
 
 He to the Master's eyes alone its height and 
 
 depth revealed ; 
 Of that which every motion spoke he seldom 
 
 told in word, 
 But on his face was written up the secret of the 
 
 Lord. 
 
 Through many fiery places in innocence he 
 trod; 
 
 We almost saw beside him one like the Son 
 of God : 
 
 Where'er he went a perfume about his presence 
 hung. 
 
 As tho' within that shrine of flesh a mystic 
 censer swung. 
 
 We never heard him laugh aloud, we know 
 he often wept : 
 
 We think the Bridegroom sometimes stood be- 
 side him as he slept, 
 
 And set upon those virgin lips the signet of 
 His love. 
 
 That any other touch but His they never should 
 approve. 
 
POEMS 49 
 
 He grew in grace and stature, he felt and under- 
 stood 
 
 The stirring of the passions and the movement of 
 the blood, 
 
 And clung with deepening tenderness about the 
 
 wounded Feet, 
 And nestled in the Master's Breast with rapture 
 
 new and sweet. 
 
 He stayed till seventeen Aprils here had budded 
 into May, 
 
 Along the pleasant hedgerows that he knew not 
 far away : 
 
 But scarcely seventeen summers yet the lily-beds 
 had blown, 
 
 Before the angels carried him to gardens of their 
 own. 
 
 II 
 
 They set the window open as the sun was going 
 down : 
 
 Beneath went on the hurry and roar of London 
 town. 
 
 But in the narrow room above the rush of life 
 was done, 
 
 In silence, once for ever, the victory was won. 
 
 £ 
 
50 
 
 POEMS 
 
 He came, the Strong, the Terrible, whose face 
 
 the strongest fear, 
 (O world, behold thy Spoiler spoiled, the 
 
 Stronger Man is here) 
 He came, the Loved, the Loveliest, whose Face 
 
 the Saints desire. 
 To be his Fellow-pilgrim thro' the water and the 
 
 fire. 
 
 Henceforth no more beneath the veils. Viaticum 
 no more. 
 
 But Rest and Consummation upon the other 
 Shore. 
 
 The bell was ringing Complin, the night began 
 to fall ; 
 
 They laid him in the ashes and waited for the 
 call. 
 
 'Come up, come up from Lebanon,"* he heard 
 
 the Bridegroom say, 
 • Come up, my Love, my sister, for the shadows 
 
 flee away.' 
 
 And as upon his face they caught the breaking 
 
 of that morn 
 They spread his arms to fashion the Cross that 
 
 he had borne. 
 
POEMS m 
 
 A smile, a whispered * Jesus then the fulness 
 of the day : 
 
 Made perfect in a little while his spirit passed 
 away ; 
 
 And leaning on the Bridegroom's arm he scaled 
 
 the golden stair 
 Through all the baffled legions of the powers of 
 
 the air. 
 
 Beneath the secret Altar now he tarrieth the End. 
 From earth he hears the pleadings of holy Mass 
 ascend, 
 
 From heaven the voice of Jesus, Who bids the 
 
 angels haste 
 To gather in the chosen to the Marriage and the 
 
 Feast. 
 
 £ 2 
 
POEMS 
 
 x6 
 
 A PRAYER 
 
 FROM falsehood and error, 
 From darkness and terror, 
 From all that is evil, 
 From the power of the devil, 
 From the fire and the doom. 
 From the judgement to come — 
 Sweet Jesu, deliver 
 Thy servants for ever. 
 
POEMS 
 
 5d 
 
 X7 
 
 THE LILT 
 
 ONCE, on the river banks we knew, 
 A child, who laughing ran to choose 
 A lily there, essayed to tread 
 The lawn of leaves that outward spread 
 To where the very fairest blew. 
 And slipped from love and life and light, 
 Into the shiny depth beneath ; 
 While through the tangle and the ooze 
 Up bubbled all his little breath. 
 
 Above, the lilies calmly white 
 Were floating still at eventide, 
 When, as it chanced, a boat went down 
 Returning to the royal town, 
 Wherein a noble lady lay 
 Among the cushions dreamily, 
 Who leant above the gilded side 
 And plucked the flower carelessly. 
 And wore it at the ball that night. 
 
54 
 
 POEMS 
 
 X8 
 
 A LETTER 
 
 MY Love, and once again my Love, 
 And then no more until the end, 
 Until the waters cease to move. 
 Until we rest within the Ark, 
 And all is light which now is dark, 
 And loves can never more descend. 
 And yet — and yet be just to me 
 At least for manhood ; for the whole 
 Love-current of a human soul. 
 Though bent and rolled through fruitless ways, 
 Tho' marred with slime and choked with weed, 
 (Long lost the silver ripple-song. 
 Long past the sprouting water-mead,) 
 Is something awful, broad and strong. 
 Remember that this utterly, 
 With all its waves of passion, set 
 To you y that all the water store, 
 No second April shall restore. 
 
POEMS 
 
 55 
 
 Was so to broken cisterns poured, 
 And lost, or else long since had met 
 The ocean-love of Christ the Lord. 
 My Brother, hear me ; for the Name 
 Which is as fire in my bones 
 Has burned away the former shame ; 
 Held I my peace, the very stones 
 Would cry against me ; hear me then. 
 Who will not bid you hear again. 
 Hear what I saw, and why I fled, 
 And how I lost and how I won, 
 I, who between the quick and dead, 
 Once chose corruption for my own. 
 
 I saw, where heaven's arches meet, 
 One stand in awfulness alone, 
 With folded robe and gleaming feet 
 And eyes that looked not up nor down. 
 It was the archangel, drawing breath 
 To blow for life, to blow for death. 
 The glow and soft reality 
 Of love and life grew cold and grey. 
 And died before the Eternity 
 That compasseth the Judgement day. 
 I said, * My sin is full and ended ' ; 
 While down the garden that we tended. 
 As in a heavy dream, I turned 
 Thro' lilied glades that once were sweet. 
 Trampling the buds that kissed my feet, 
 
56 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Until the sword above me burned. 
 My hair was shrivelled to my head, 
 My heart as ashes scorched, and dead 
 As his who ere its beating died. 
 The life imprisoned in my brain 
 Burst to my eyes in throbs of pain. 
 And all their tender springs were dried. 
 For miles and miles the wilds I trod. 
 Drunk with the angry wine of God ; 
 Until the nets of anguish broke. 
 Until the prisoner found release. 
 
 I mused awhile in quietness 
 Upon that strangest liberty : 
 Then other fires intolerably 
 Were kindled in me — and I spoke ; 
 And so attained the hidden Peace, 
 The land of Wells beyond the fire. 
 The Face of loveliness unmarred. 
 The Consummation of desire. 
 
 O vesper-light ! O night thick-starred ! 
 O five-fold springs, that upward burst 
 And radiate from Calvary 
 To stay the weary nations'* thirst. 
 And hide a world's impurity ! — 
 How one drew near with soiled feet. 
 Through all the Marah overflow. 
 And how the waters were made sweet 
 That night Thou knowest, — only Thou. 
 
P O EMS 
 
 57 
 
 Repent with me, for judgement waits. 
 Repent with me, for Jesus hung 
 Three hours upon the nails for you. 
 Rise, bid the angels sing anew 
 At every one of Sion's gates 
 The song which then for me they sung. 
 
POEMS 
 
 X9 
 
 THE ANNUNCIATION 
 
 ON the silent ages breaking 
 Comes the sweet Annunciation : 
 The eternal Ave waking, 
 
 Changes Eva''s condemnation. 
 
 How at Nazareth the Archangel 
 Hailed the dear predestined maiden 
 
 Read from out the Great Evangel 
 We, the sin and sorrow-laden. 
 
 For to-day the Church rejoices 
 
 In the angelic salutation. 
 And to-day ten thousand voices 
 
 Hail the Mother of salvation. 
 
 Hail, amid the shades descending 
 Round our humble oratory ! 
 
 Hail, amid the light unending 
 Of the beatific Glory ! 
 
POEMS 
 
 59 
 
 Hail, in city Galilean 
 
 To the maid of lowly station ! 
 Hail, in city empyrean 
 
 To the Queen of all creation ! 
 
 Hail, O Mother of compassion ! 
 
 Hail, O Mother of fair love ! 
 Hail, our Lady of the Passion ! 
 
 Hail beneath and hail above ! 
 
 Where she stands, our mother Mary, 
 
 In her human majesty, 
 Nearest to the sanctuary 
 
 Of the awful Trinity. 
 
 May she prove once more a Mother, 
 Plead that He, her dearest Son, 
 
 Who through her became our Brother, 
 Would His sinful brethren own. 
 
 With the Father and the Spirit, 
 Son of Mary, Thee we praise ; 
 
 By Thine Incarnation's merit 
 Turn on us a Brother's face ! 
 
 Amen. 
 
60 
 
 POEMS 
 
 30 
 
 SISTER DEATH 
 
 MY sister Death ! I pray thee come to me 
 Of thy sweet charity, 
 And be my nurse but for a little while ; 
 
 I will indeed lie still, 
 And not detain thee long, when once is spread. 
 
 Beneath the yew, my bed : 
 I will not ask for lilies or for roses ; 
 
 But when the evening closes, 
 Just take from any brook a single knot 
 
 Of pale Forget-me-not, 
 And lay them in my hand, until I wake. 
 
 For his dear sake ; 
 (For should he ever pass and by me stand. 
 
 He yet might understand — ) 
 Then heal the passion and the fever 
 With one cool kiss, for ever. 
 
POEMS 61 
 
 31 
 
 CAVE OF SOMNUS 
 Translation 
 
 "EAR the Cimmerian land, deep-caverned, 
 lies 
 
 A hollow mount, the home of sluggish Sleep ; 
 Where never ray from morn or evening skies 
 Can enter, but where blackening vapours creep, 
 And doubtful gloom unbroken sway doth keep. 
 
 There never crested bird evokes the dawn, 
 Nor watchful dogs disturb the silence deep. 
 Nor wandering beast, nor forest tempest-torn, 
 Nor harsher sound of human passions born. 
 
 Mute quiet reigns ; — but from the lowest cave 
 A spring Lethean rising evermore 
 Pours through the murmuring rocks a slumber- 
 ous wave. 
 
 The plenteous poppy blossoms at the door. 
 And countless herbs, of night the drowsy store. 
 
POEMS 
 
 3^ 
 
 DIANAE MUNUSCULUM 
 
 After Catullus 
 
 HEAR the choir of boy and maid, 
 Mighty child of mightiest Jove, 
 Thou whom royal mother laid 
 In the Delian olive grove — 
 
 That thou mightest be the lady 
 Of all woods that bud in spring, 
 Of all glades remote and shady, 
 Of all rivers echoing. 
 
 Thou wert cradled mid the seas. 
 Guarded was thine infant state 
 With the glistening Cyclades, 
 With the wave inviolate — 
 
 That thou mightest be the warden 
 Of all holy loves and pure, 
 When, as in a fenced garden. 
 Chaste affections bloom secure. 
 
 Hear the choir of boy and maid. 
 Mighty child of mightiest Jove : 
 Take the wreath before thee laid, 
 Take the incense of our love. 
 
POEMS 
 
 33 
 
 ANACREONTIC 
 Translation 
 
 DRINK, in the glory of youth ; 
 love, crowned with roses of summer 
 So be it only with me 
 
 be mad, be wise as thou listest. 
 
 34- 
 
 FROM MARTIAL 
 Translation 
 
 IN vain you count his virtues up. 
 His soberness commend ; 
 I like a steady servant, 
 But not a steady friend. 
 
POEMS 
 
 3r 
 
 POPPIES 
 
 IILIES, lilies not for me, 
 -iiFlowers of the pure and saintly — 
 I have seen in holy places 
 Where the incense rises faintly, 
 And the priest the chalice raises, 
 Lilies in the altar vases, 
 Not for me. 
 
 Leave mitouched each garden tree, 
 Kings and queens of flower-land. 
 When the summer evening closes, 
 Lovers may-be hand in hand 
 There will seek for crimson roses. 
 There will bind their wreaths and posies 
 Merrily. 
 
POEMS 
 
 65 
 
 From the corn-fields where we met 
 Pluck me poppies white and red ; 
 Bind them round my weary brain. 
 Strew them on my narrow bed, 
 Numbing all the ache and pain. — 
 I shall sleep nor wake again. 
 But forget. 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 POEMS 
 
 ^6 
 
 BErOND 
 
 BEYOND the calumny and wrong, 
 Beyond the clamour and the throng. 
 Beyond the praise and triumph-song 
 
 He passed. 
 Beyond the scandal and the doubt, 
 The fear within, the fight without, 
 The turmoil and the battle- shout 
 He sleeps. 
 
 The world for him was not so sweet 
 That he should grieve to stay his feet 
 Where youth and manhood's highways meet. 
 
 And die. 
 For every child a mother's breast, 
 For every bird a guarded nest ; 
 For him alone was found no rest 
 
 But this. 
 
POEMS 
 
 Beneath the flight of happy hours, 
 Beneath the withering of the flowers 
 In folds of peace more sure than ours 
 He lies. 
 
 A night no glaring dawn shall break, 
 A sleep no cruel voice shall wake, 
 An heritage that none can take 
 Are his. 
 
 F 2 
 
POEMS 
 
 37 
 
 TO 
 
 1SAID — ' Tis very late we meet ; 
 ' A guest long since has filled each seat 
 ' About my hearth ; yet rest 
 ' A little while beside the door ; 
 ' Although the east shall glow no more, 
 ' Some light is in the west, 
 
 ' And gathers round the wayside inn, 
 ' Whence all the mountain paths begin : 
 
 ' Pause, ere you onward go, 
 ' And sing, while gazing up the height, 
 ' The guarded valley of delight 
 
 ' We both have left below.' 
 
 Was it not somewhat thus, my friend ? — 
 But now your rest has reached its end, 
 
 And upwards you must strive. 
 Ah now I thank you that you stayed. 
 That you so royally repaid 
 
 All that I had to give. 
 
POEMS 
 
 69 
 
 For the sweet temperance of your youth, 
 Unconscious chivalry and truth, 
 
 And simple courtesies ; 
 A soul as clear as southern lake, 
 Yet strong as any cliffs that break 
 
 The might of northern seas ; 
 
 For these I loved you well, — and yet 
 Could neither you nor I forget. 
 
 But spent we soberly 
 The autumn days, that lay between 
 The skirts of glory that had been, 
 
 Of glory that should be. 
 
 Unlike the month of snowy flowers, 
 Unlike my ApriPs rainbowed showers, 
 
 My consummate July 
 Those autumn days ; and yet they wept 
 Tears soft not sad, for all they kept 
 
 Of summer's greenery. 
 
 We loved the tarn with rocky shore, 
 We loved to tread the windy moor. 
 
 And many a berried lane ; 
 But most where, swollen with rains and rills, 
 The waters of a hundred hills 
 
 Go hurrying down the plain ; 
 
70 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Where plenteous apples wax and fall. 
 And stud o'er many a leafy hall 
 
 The vaults with fiery gems : 
 But often through their golden gleams 
 Flowed-in the river of my dreams, 
 
 The lilied river Thames. 
 
 Then on another arm I leant, 
 
 And then once more with him I went 
 
 Thro' field and wharf and town ; 
 And love caught up the flying hours, 
 And eyes that were not calm as yours 
 
 Were imaged in my own. 
 
 A grave good-bye I bid you now ; 
 Not lightly, but as those who know 
 
 Fair hospitality. 
 O loyal heart, be loyal still, 
 And happy, happy where you will. 
 
 And sometimes think of me. 
 
POEMS 
 
 38 
 
 PRO CASTTTATE 
 
 VIRGIN bom of Virgin, 
 To Thy shelter take me : 
 Purest, holiest Jesu, 
 
 Chaste and holy make me. 
 
 Wisdom, power and beauty, 
 These are not for me ; 
 
 Give me, give me only 
 Perfect Chastity. 
 
 By Thy Flagellation, 
 
 Flesh immaculate — 
 By Thine endless glory, 
 
 Manhood consummate — 
 
 By Thy Mother Mary, 
 By Thine Angel-host, 
 
 By the Monks and Maidens 
 Who have loved Thee most, 
 
POEMS 
 
 Keep my flesh and spirit, 
 Eyes and ears and speech, 
 
 Taste and touch and feeling. 
 Sanctify them each. 
 
 Through the fiery furnace 
 Walk, O Love, beside me ; 
 
 In the provocation 
 
 From the tempter hide me. 
 
 When they come about me. 
 Dreams of earthly passion. 
 
 Drive O drive them from me, 
 Of Thy sweet compassion : 
 
 For to feed beside Thee 
 With the Virgin choir. 
 
 In the vale of lilies, 
 Is my one desire. 
 
 Not for might and glory 
 
 Do I ask above. 
 Seeking of Thee only 
 
 Love and love and love. 
 
POEMS 
 
 39 
 
 FLOWERS FOR THE ALTAR 
 
 TELL us, tell us, holy shepherds. 
 What at Bethlehem you saw. — 
 
 * Very God of Very God 
 
 * Asleep amid the straw.' 
 
 Tell us, tell us, all ye faithful. 
 What this morning came to pass 
 
 At the awful elevation 
 
 In the Canon of the Mass. — 
 
 * Very God of Very God, 
 
 * By whom the worlds were made, 
 
 * In silence and in helplessness 
 
 ' Upon the altar laid.' 
 
 Tell us, tell us, wondrous Jesu, 
 AVhat has drawn Thee from above 
 
 To the manger and the altar. — 
 All the silence answers — Love. 
 
 I 
 
74 
 
 POEMS 
 
 II 
 
 Through the roaring streets of London 
 Thou art passing, hidden Lord, 
 
 Uncreated, Consubstantial, 
 In the seventh heaven adored. 
 
 As of old the ever- Virgin 
 
 Through unconscious Bethlehem 
 Bore Thee, not in glad procession. 
 
 Jewelled robe and diadem ; 
 Not in pomp and not in power. 
 
 Onward to Nativity, 
 Shrined but in the tabernacle 
 
 Of her sweet Virginity. 
 
 Still Thou goest by in silence, 
 Still the world cannot receive, 
 
 Still the poor and weak and weary 
 Only, worship and believe. 
 
POEMS 
 
 75 
 
 40 
 
 A POEM WITHOUT A NAME 
 II 
 
 I pray you this my song to take 
 Not scornfully^ for Boyhood's sake ; 
 It is the laH^ until the day 
 When your kind eyes shall hid me say 
 Take^ Archie^ not of mine hut me^ 
 And he mine only Voetry* 
 
 THE PAST 
 
 METHOUGHT the sun in terror made 
 his bed, 
 
 The gentle stars in angry lightning fell, 
 And shuddering winds thro' all the woodland 
 fled, 
 
 Pulling in every tree a passing bell. 
 That night, on all the glory and the grace 
 There rolled a numbing mist, and wrapped from 
 sight 
 
 The greening fields of my delightsome land, 
 
 Mildewing every tender bud to blight, — 
 
 As the grey change overspreads a dying face — 
 
76 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Till, corpse-like, stretched beneath a pall of skies, 
 Earth stared at heaven with open sightless eyes ; 
 Then in the hush went forth the soul of life, 
 Drawn through the darkness by a gleaming hand : 
 The strength of agony awoke, and strove 
 Awhile for mastery to hold it back. 
 But comet-like, beyond the laws of love, 
 Branding the blackness with a fiery track 
 It passed to space ; and, wearied of the strife, 
 In the great after calm, I passed to sleep. 
 
 Did they not call ambrosial the night 
 And holy once ? when (from the feet of God 
 Set on the height where circles round and full 
 The rainbow of perfection) starry troops 
 Came floating, aureoled in dreamy light, 
 And gracious dews distilling, as they trod 
 The poppied plains of slumber. — Ah too dull 
 My sense, such visions for my aid to call, 
 My sleep too dry with fever, for the fall 
 Of those strange dews, which quicken withered 
 hopes. 
 
 THE PRESENT 
 
 And yet why strive to syllable my loss 
 In chilly metaphors of night and sleep ? 
 Leap in, O Love, O Flame divine, yea leap 
 Upon them, shrivel them like paper ; so, 
 In that refining fire, the encircling dross 
 Of words shall melt away ; then will I keep, 
 
POEMS 
 
 77 
 
 Stored in a silent Treasury I know, 
 
 The pure reality, that in the spring — 
 
 The resurrection of all loveliness — 
 
 For me a star shall pierce the eastern cloud, 
 
 And western breezes bear the tender rain ; 
 
 For me a crocus flower shall burst its shroud. 
 
 My Love, my buried Love, shall rise again. 
 
 Blow, winds, and make the fields a wilderness ; 
 Roar, hurrying rivers to the weary sea ; 
 Fall, cruel veils of snow, as desolate 
 As human hearts, when passion fires have burnt 
 To greyest ash ; — I shall nor hear nor see. 
 
 Within that Treasure-house of mine I wait, 
 I wait, with Eros glowing at my side ; 
 From him, the mighty artist, I have learned 
 How memories to brushes may be tied ; 
 And tho' I moistened all my paints with tears, 
 Yet on my walls as joyous imagery, 
 With golden hopes inframed, now appears 
 As e'er of old was dreamed to vivify 
 Ionian porticoes, when Greece was young, 
 And wreathed with glancing vine Anacreon sung. 
 Here, on the granite headland he is set. 
 Like Michael in his triumph, and the waves 
 In wild desire have tossed about his feet 
 Their choicest pearls ; — and, here, he softly laves 
 Limbs delicate, where beechen boughs arc wet 
 With jewelled drops and all is young and sweet; — 
 
78 
 
 POEMS 
 
 And here, a stranded lily on the beach, 
 My Hylas, coronalled with curly gold. 
 He lies beyond the water's longing reach 
 Him once again essaying to enfold ; — 
 Here, face uplifted to the twinkling sky 
 He walks, like Agathon the vastly-loved, 
 Till with the dear Athenian I cry, 
 ' My Star of stars, would I might heaven be, 
 Night-long, with many eyes, to gaze on thee I ' — 
 And here, like Hyacinthus, as he moved 
 Among the flowers, ere flower-like he sank 
 Too soon to fade on green Eurotas' bank. 
 
 But it is profanation now to speak 
 Of thoughtless Hellene boys, or to compare 
 The majesty and spiritual grace 
 Of that design which consummates the whole. 
 It is himself, as I have watched him, where 
 The mighty organ's great Teutonic soul 
 Passed into him and lightened in his face, 
 And throbbed in every nerve and fired his cheek. 
 
 See, Love, I sing not of thee now alone, 
 But am become a painter all thine own. 
 
 THE FUTURE 
 
 Ah now in truth how shall we, can we meet ? 
 Or wilt thou come to me through careless eyes, 
 Loveliest 'mid the unlovely, in the street ? 
 Or will thy voice be there, to harmonize 
 
POEMS 
 
 79 
 
 The clanging and the clamour, where beneath 
 The panting engines draw their burning breath? 
 Or shall I have to seek thee in a throng 
 Of noble comrades round thee ? — have to pass 
 The low luxurious laugh, or merry song. 
 The piled golden fruit, and flashing glass ? 
 I care not much ; however it may be, 
 Eyes, ears and heart will compass only thee. 
 Yet could I choose, then surely would I fix 
 On that half-light, whose very name is sweet, 
 The gloaming, when the sun and moonbeams 
 mix, 
 
 And light and darkness on each other rest 
 Like lovers' lips, uncertain, tremulous ; 
 And the All-mother's heart is loth to beat 
 And break their union : then, I think, 'twere 
 best 
 
 To find thee pacing 'neath the sprouting boughs 
 
 Of lime, alone — for so I saw thee first. 
 
 When scarce my rose's crimson life had burst 
 
 In blushes, from its calix to the sun. 
 
 Alone — throughout my love has been apart ; 
 
 When seen, then misconceived so utterly, 
 
 I liken it (forgive the vanity) 
 
 To those vermilion shades since light begun 
 
 Existing, but which Turner only drew, 
 
 While pointing critics had their little say, 
 
 And all the world cried out, of course they knew 
 
80 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Much better than the sun, could tell the way 
 To colour him and his by proper rules, 
 And Claude was great, great, great in all the 
 schools 
 
 As once Ephesian Dian. — Matters it 
 
 To him, or you, or me ? While truth is truth. 
 
 And love is love, you'll answer — Not a whit. 
 
 FOR EVER 
 
 Enough, the yearning is unsatisfied, 
 
 Resolved again into a plea for faith. 
 
 Believe the true elixir is within, 
 
 Although I sought to draw from that full tide 
 
 Some crystal drops of evidence, to win 
 
 A little vapour only — yet believe, 
 
 Believe the essence of a perfect love 
 
 Is there, and worthy. Not a tinge of shame 
 
 My words can colour. Of thiyie own receive, 
 
 Yes, of thy very being. It shall prove 
 
 Indeed a poem, though without a name. 
 
POEMS 
 
 81 
 
 4-1 
 
 THE SHRINE 
 
 THERE is a shrine whose golden gate 
 Was opened by the Hand of God ; 
 It stands serene, inviolate, 
 
 Though millions have its pavement trod ; 
 As fresh, as when the first sunrise 
 Awoke the lark in Paradise. 
 
 Tis compassed with the dust and toil 
 Of common days, yet should there fall 
 
 A single speck, a single soil 
 Upon the whiteness of its wall. 
 
 The angels' tears in tender rain 
 
 Would make the temple theirs again. 
 
 Without, the world is tired and old. 
 But, once within the enchanted door. 
 
 The mists of time are backward rolled, 
 And creeds and ages are no more ; 
 
 But all the human-hearted meet 
 
 In one communion vast and sweet. 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 POEMS 
 
 I enter — all is simply fair, 
 
 Nor incense-clouds, nor carven throne ; 
 But in the fragrant morning air 
 
 A gentle lady sits alone ; 
 My mother— ah ! whom should I see 
 Within, save ever only thee ? 
 
POEMS 
 
 4X 
 
 (1) 
 
 ONE night I dreamt that in a gleaming hall 
 You played, and overhead the air was sweet 
 With waving kerchiefs ; then a sudden fall 
 Of flowers ; and jewels clashed about your feet. 
 Around you glittering forms, a starry ring. 
 In echo sang of youth and golden ease : 
 You leant to me a moment, crying — ' Sing, 
 * If, as you say, you love me, sing with these/ — 
 
 In vain my lips were opened, for my throat 
 Was choked somewhence, my tongue was sore 
 and dry, 
 
 And in my soul alone the answering note ; 
 Till, in a piercing discord, one shrill cry, 
 As of a hunted creature, from me broke. 
 You laughed, and in great bitterness I woke. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 POEMS 
 
 (2) 
 
 1 THANK thee, Love, that thou hast over- 
 thrown 
 
 The tyranny of Self ; I would not now 
 Even in desire, possess thee mine alone 
 In land-locked anchorage : nay rather go, 
 Ride the high seas, the fruitless human seas, 
 Where white-winged ships are set for barren 
 shores. 
 
 Though freighted all, those lovely argosies. 
 And laden with a wealth of rarest stores. 
 
 Go, draw them after thee, and lead them on 
 With thine own music, to the ideal west. 
 Where, in the youth of ages, vaguely shone 
 The term of all, the Islands of the Blest. 
 
 I too dare steer, for once-loved haven's sake, 
 My tiny skiff along thy glorious wake. 
 
POEMS 
 
 85 
 
 (3) 
 
 A BOYISH friendship! No, respond the 
 chimes, 
 
 The years of chimes fulfilled since we parted, 
 Since ' au revoir "* you said among the limes, 
 And passed away in silence tender-hearted. 
 I hold it cleared by time that not of heat, 
 Or sudden passion my great Love was born : 
 I hold that years the calumny defeat 
 That it would fade as freshness off the morn. 
 
 That it was fathered not by mean desire 
 Of eye and ear, doth cruel distance prove. — 
 My life is cleft to steps that lift it higher. 
 And with my growing manhood grows my Love. 
 
 Then come and tread the fruits of disconnection 
 To the sweet vintage of your own perfection. 
 
86 
 
 POEMS 
 
 (4) 
 
 OCOME, my king, and fill the palaces 
 Where sceptred Loss too long hath held her 
 state, 
 
 With courts of Joyaunce, and a laughing breeze 
 Of voices. — If thou wiliest, come ; — I wait 
 Unquestioning, no servant, but thy slave. 
 I plead no merit, and no claim for wages. 
 Nor that sweet favour which my sovereign gave 
 In other days, of his own grace : but pages 
 Are privileged to linger at the door 
 With longing eyes, while nobles kiss the hand 
 Of him the noblest, though elect no more 
 To touch the train, or at the throne to stand. 
 
 But come, content me with the lowest place, 
 So be it that I see thy royal face. 
 
POEMS 
 
 87 
 
 4-3 
 
 DUM AGONIZATUR ANIMA^ ORENT 
 ASSISTENTES 
 
 Think^ kind Jesu^ my salvation 
 Caused Thy 'wondrous Incarnation^ 
 "Leave me not to reprobation. 
 
 Faint and iveary Thou hast sought me^ 
 On the Cross of anguish bought me ; 
 Shall such grace be vainly brought me ? 
 
 BEHOLD me will-less, witless in the night ; 
 With hands that feel the illimitable dark 
 I walk, untouched, untouching ; every face 
 Is senseless as a mask, save when I cry 
 * O little children turn away your eyes.' — 
 This for the day ; but when the hush is spread 
 Wherein Thou givest Thy beloved sleep, 
 I call Thee to my witness — though I sin, 
 I suffer : I confess, do all we can 
 Thou art not mocked, nor dost Thou mock at us. 
 Who laughs to scorn, the anger of a babe ? 
 Or who despises infants, if they play 
 At build ing houses ? so we storm and toil, 
 
88 
 
 POEMS 
 
 And squander all our passion and our thought. 
 And Thou regardest not ; for on us lies 
 The weight of everlasting nothingness. 
 War with the angels ; neither war nor peace 
 With us, who flutter willing to our doom, 
 And need no sword to drive from Paradise. 
 See, I believe more fully than the Saint 
 Who trod the waters in the might of love. 
 See, I believe, and own him for the fool 
 Who saith * there is no God and therefore sins» 
 Believe — what profit in it ? I have loved : — 
 Ay, once I strained and stretched thro' haze of 
 doubt, 
 
 If haply I might catch with passionate hand 
 The garment-hem of Thee : I half believed. 
 But wholly loved; once (Thou rememberest) 
 prayed, 
 
 * I love Thee, love Thee ; only give me light. 
 And I will follow Thee where'er Thou goest.' 
 ' I will ' I said and knew not ; now I know 
 And will not, cannot will. 
 
 What ? Is a way cleft thro' the stony floors. 
 And dost Thou stand Thyself above the stair, 
 In Thine old sweetness and benignity. 
 Spreading Thy wounded hands, and saying 'Son, 
 Thou sinnest, I have suffered. Mount and see 
 The fulness of my Passion : though these steps 
 
POEMS 89 
 
 Be hard to flesh and blood, remember this, 
 
 That along all intolerable paths 
 
 The benediction of my feet hath passed. 
 
 To gentleness so inexpressible. 
 To love so far beyond imagining 
 I answer not ; but in my soul fill up 
 The faint conception of the artist monk. 
 Who soared with Paul into the seventh heaven, 
 But could not paint the anger of the Lamb. 
 I seem to lie for ever in some porch, [dirge. 
 While down the nave there creeps the awfiil 
 And writhes about the pillars — whispering 
 The uttermost extremity of man : 
 Till the low music ceases ; and a scream 
 Breaks shuddering from the choir, ' Let me not 
 Be burnt in fires undying.' * * * 
 * * * • 
 
 And some are there unscathed of flame or sword. 
 Yet on their brows the seal of suffering, 
 And in their hands the rose of martyrdom, 
 (Have pity upon me, ye that were my friends) 
 With arms about each other, — aureoles 
 That mingle into one triumphant star ; 
 A fount of wonder in their pensive eyes. 
 Sprung from the thought that pain is consum- 
 mate — 
 
90 
 
 POEMS 
 
 ' To him that overcometh — half forgotten 
 The victory, so long the battle was, 
 Begun when manhood was a thing to be : 
 Not as they send the boyish sailor out, 
 A father's lingering hand amid his hair, 
 A mother's kisses warm upon his cheek. 
 And in his heart the unspoken consciousness 
 That though upon his grave no gentle fingers 
 Shall set the crocus, yet in the old home 
 There shall be aye a murmur of the sea, 
 A fair remembrance and a tender pride. 
 Not so for these the dawn of battle rose. 
 
 So one by one the knights were panoplied. 
 
 But now they enter in where never voice 
 
 Of clamorous Babylon shall vex them more, 
 
 To Syon the undivided, to the peace. 
 
 The given peace earth neither makes nor mars. 
 
 Beyond the angels, and the angels' Queen, 
 
 Beyond the avenues of saints, where rests, 
 
 Deep in the Beatifical Idea, 
 
 The sum of peace, the Human Heart of God. 
 
 Sfc 5jc 5jc jjc jjc ^ 5{C 
 
 Ah ! whose is that red rose that only lies 
 Unclaimed * * 
 
POEMS 
 
 91 
 
 Five knots of snowdrops on the garden bank 
 Beneath the hill — how satisfied they seem 
 Against the barren hedge, wherein by this 
 The pleasant saps and juices are astir 
 To work the greening snowdrops do not see. 
 I leaning from my window am in doubt 
 If summer brings a flower so loveable, 
 Of such a meditative restfulness 
 As this, with all her roses and carnations. 
 The morning hardly stirs their noiseless bells ; 
 Yet could I fancy that they whispered * Home \ 
 For all things gentle all things beautiful 
 I hold, my mother, for a part of thee. 
 
 As watered grass beyond the glaring street, 
 
 As drop of evening on a fighting field, 
 
 As convent bells that chime for complin-tide 
 
 Heard in the gas-light of the theatre. 
 
 So unto me the image of a face, 
 
 A certain face that all the angels know. 
 
 Bright are the diadems of all pure loves. 
 But none so bright as that whereon are set 
 The mingled names of Father and of Mother. 
 Dear are true friends, and sweet is gratitude 
 For grateful deeds ; but what the sum of all 
 To that perennial love we hardly thank 
 
92 
 
 POEMS 
 
 More than the sun for shining while 'tis day,. 
 Or at the dusk the cheerful candlelight ? 
 
 How wholly fair is all without my soul, 
 The evershifting lights upon the hills, 
 The eastern flush upon the beechen stems. 
 And the green network of ascending paths 
 Wherein again the spring shall bid us ride, 
 With all the blood aglow along our veins, 
 And every mountain be ' delectable 
 And every plain a pleasant land of Beulah. 
 
 Suppose it but a fancy that it groaned. 
 This dear creation, — rather let it sing 
 In an exuberance and excess of gladness. 
 
 * Jfc * * ^ :ic * 
 
 Suppose a kindly mother-influence . 
 
 And sin alone a transitory fever, 
 For which in some mysterious Avilon 
 Beyond the years, some consummate Hereafter, 
 A fount of healing springs for all alike. 
 
 * * * sic 
 
 No, Love ! Love ! Love ! Thou knowest that I 
 cannot, 
 
 I cannot live without Thee. Yet this way — 
 
POEMS 
 
 93 
 
 Is there no other road to Calvary 
 Than the one way of sorrows ? * * 
 ******* 
 I thought I lay at home and watched the glow 
 The ruddy fire-light cast about my bed ; 
 Upon me undefinable the sense 
 Of something dreadful, till I slept and dreamed. 
 
 The Dream. 
 
 I stood amid the lights that never die, 
 The only stars the dawning passes by, 
 Beneath the whisper of the central dome 
 That holds and hides the mystic heart of Rome. 
 
 But in mine eyes the light of other times, 
 And in mine ears the sound of English chimes ; 
 I smelled again the freshness of the morn. 
 The primal incense of the daisied lawn. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 * * * * 
 
 * * * I said 
 
 * And have I come so very far indeed ? ' 
 
 The everlasting murmur echoes * Far 
 As from green earth is set the furthest star 
 Men have not named. A journey none retrace 
 Is thine, and steps the seas could not efface."* 
 
94 
 
 POEMS 
 
 ' How cold and pitiless is the voice of Truth,"* 
 I cried ; 'Ah ! who will give me my lost youth ? 
 Ah ! who restore the years the locust ate, 
 Hard to remember, harder to forget ? ' 
 
 A multitude of voices sweet and grave, 
 A long procession up the sounding nave. 
 
 ' The Lion of the tribe of Judah, He 
 Has conquered, but in Wounds and Agony. 
 The ensign of His triumph is the Rood, 
 His royal robe is purple, but with Blood. 
 
 And we who follow in His Martyr-train 
 Have access only thro"* the courts of pain. 
 Yet on the Via dolorosa He 
 Precedes us in His sweet humanity. 
 
 A Man shall be a covert from the heat, 
 Whereon in vain the sandy noon shall beat : 
 A Man shall be a perfect summer sun, 
 When all the western lights are paled and gone. 
 
 A Man shall be a Father, Brother, Spouse, 
 A land, a city and perpetual House : 
 A Man shall lift us to the Angels' shore : 
 A Man shall be our God for evermore.' 
 
POEMS 
 
 95 
 
 Christ, God, or rather Jesu, it is true, 
 True the old story of Gethsemane. 
 Remember then the unfathomed agony 
 That touched upon the caverns of despair. 
 Whence never diver hath regained the sun. — 
 Thou knowest, but I know not ; save me then 
 From beating the impenetrable rock. 
 By that Thine hour of weakness be my Strength, 
 And I will follow Thee where'er Thou goest. 
 
96 
 
 POEMS 
 
 44 
 
 A SONG OF EIGHTEEN 
 
 STRAIN them, O winds, the sails of the years, 
 Outspread on the mystic sea ; 
 Faster and faster, for laughter or tears, 
 
 O bear my story to me ! 
 Waft it, O Love, on thy purple wings. 
 
 The dawn is breaking to pass : 
 Strike it, O Life, from thy deeper strings. 
 And drown the music that was. 
 
 Yet lovely the tremulous haze 
 That curtained the dreamful afar. 
 Thro' the which some face, like a star, 
 Would lighten, too sudden for praise. 
 And white were our loves on their way 
 As morn on the hills of the south ; 
 The kisses that rounded their mouth 
 As fresh as the grasses in May. 
 They passed ; but the silvery pain 
 Of our tears was easily told, — 
 For the day but an hour was old. 
 At noon we should meet them again. 
 
POEMS 
 
 97 
 
 Weary am I of ideal and of mist, 
 
 The shroud of life that is dead ; — 
 And, as the passionate sculptor who kissed 
 
 The lips of marble to red, 
 Ask I a breath that is part of my ovrny 
 
 Yet drawn from a soul more sweet ; — 
 Or, as the shaft that upsoareth alone 
 
 Undiademed, incomplete, 
 Claim I the glory predestined to me 
 
 In the Mother Builder's will. 
 Portion and place in the Temple to be 
 
 Till the age her times fulfil. 
 
POEMS 
 
 4r 
 
 LAST WORDS 
 From the Italian 
 
 I, LIVING, drew thee from the vale 
 Parnassus' height to climb with me. 
 I, dying, bid thee turn, and scale 
 Alone the hill of Calvary. 
 
POEMS 
 
 46 
 
 A SONG 
 
 THE world is young today : 
 Forget the gods are old, 
 Forget the years of gold 
 When all the months were May. 
 
 A little flower of Love 
 Is ours, without a root, 
 Without the end of fruit. 
 
 Yet — take the scent thereof. 
 
 There may be hope above, 
 There may be rest beneath ; 
 We see them not, but Death 
 
 Is palpable — and Love. 
 
 H 2 
 
POEMS 
 
 4-7 
 
 ENOUGH 
 
 WHEN all my words were said, 
 When all my songs were sung, 
 I thought to pass among 
 The unforgotten dead, 
 
 A Queen of ruth to reign 
 
 With her, who gathereth tears 
 From all the lands and years. 
 
 The Lesbian maid of pain ; 
 
 That lovers, when they wove, 
 The double myrtle-wreath, 
 Should sigh with mingled breath 
 
 Beneath the wings of Love : 
 
 *How piteous were her wrongs. 
 Her words were falling dew. 
 All pleasant verse she knew. 
 
 But not the Song of songs." 
 
 Yet now, O Love, that you 
 Have kissed my forehead, I 
 Have sung indeed, can die. 
 
 And be forgotten too. 
 
POEMS 
 
 101 
 
 4-8 
 
 O, a moon face 
 
 In a shadouuy place, 
 
 IEAN over me — ah so, — let fall 
 -i About my face and neck the shroud 
 Thatjthrills me as a thunder-cloud 
 Full of strange lights, electrical. 
 
 Sweet moon, with pain and passion wan. 
 Rain from thy loneliness of light 
 The primal kisses of the night 
 
 Upon a new Endymion ; 
 
 The boy who, wrapped from moil and moan, 
 With cheeks for ever round and fair, 
 Is dreaming of the nights that were 
 
 When lips immortal touched his own. 
 
 I marked an old man yesterday. 
 
 His body many-fingered grief 
 
 Distorted as a frozen leaf ; 
 He fell, and cursed the rosy way. 
 
 O better than a century 
 
 Of heavy years that trail the feet. 
 More full of being, more complete 
 
 A stroke of time with youth and thee. 
 
102 POEMS 
 
 4-9 
 
 HE WOULD HAVE HIS LADY SING 
 
 SING me the men ere this 
 Who, to the gate that is 
 A cloven pearl uprapt, 
 The big white bars between 
 With dying eyes have seen 
 The sea of jasper, lapt 
 About with crystal sheen ; 
 
 And all the far pleasance 
 Where linked Angels dance. 
 With scarlet wings that fall 
 Magnifical, or spread 
 Most sweetly over-head, 
 In fashion musical, 
 Of cadenced lutes instead. 
 
 Sing me the town they saw 
 Withouten fleck or flaw, 
 
POEMS 
 
 Aflame, more fine than glass 
 Of fair Abbayes the boast, 
 More glad than wax of cost 
 Doth make at Candlemas 
 The Lifting of the Host : 
 
 Where many Knights and Dames, 
 With new and wondrous names, 
 One great Laudate Psalm 
 Go singing down the street ; — 
 Tis peace upon their feet. 
 In hand 'tis pilgrim palm 
 Of Goddes Land so sweet : — 
 
 Where Mother Mary walks 
 In silver lily stalks, 
 Star-tired, moon-bedight ; 
 Where Cecily is seen. 
 With Dorothy in green. 
 And Magdalen all white. 
 The maidens of the Queen. 
 
 Sing on — the Steps untrod. 
 The Temple that is God, 
 Where incense doth ascend. 
 Where mount the cries and tears 
 Of all the dolorous years. 
 With moan that ladies send 
 Of durance and sore fears : — 
 
104 
 
 POEMS 
 
 And Him who sitteth there, 
 The Christ of purple hair, 
 And great eyes deep with ruth, 
 Who is of all things fair 
 That shall be, or that were, 
 The sum, and very truth. 
 Then add a little prayer. 
 
 That since all these be so. 
 Our Liege, who doth us know, 
 Would fend from Sathanas, 
 And bring us, of His grace. 
 To that His joyous place : 
 So we the Doom may pass, 
 And see Him in the Face. 
 
POEMS 
 
 SO 
 
 CORE 
 
 WHERE in dawnward Sicily 
 Gentle rivers wed the sea, 
 Bitter life was given me. 
 
 Gods that are most desolate 
 For their loveliness and state 
 Being made the mock of fate, 
 
 Mingling wine with ruddy fire 
 And the passion of the lyre, 
 Filled my veins with all desire. 
 
 Twain the robes they fashioned me, 
 Dainty, delicate to see. 
 Girt about with mockery : 
 
 Dowers twain for me they planned. 
 Holding in their other hand 
 All my times, an hour's sand ; — 
 
106 
 
 POEMS 
 
 Love, the mystic rose of life, 
 Grafted with a sanguine knife 
 On the thorns of sin and strife ; 
 
 Poetry, the hand that wrings 
 (Bruised albeit at the strings) 
 Music from the soul of things. 
 
 But to either gift a mate 
 Added they in subtle hate — 
 This the trick they learned of Fate 
 
 Shame, to draw the tender blood 
 From the palm of maidenhood, 
 Leaving it a yellow rod ; 
 
 Weariness of all that is, 
 Tired sorrow, tired bliss, — 
 Nothing is more sore than this. 
 
 Therefore turn thy eyes on me, 
 O Thou Praise of Sicily, 
 Honey-sweet Persephone, 
 
 Who, beyond all ban and bale. 
 With supreme compassion pale, 
 Spreadest quiet for a veil. 
 
POEMS 
 
 In the soft Catanian hills. 
 Gleaming by the gleaming rills 
 Yet are blown thy daffodils ; 
 
 See, I bear them as is meet, 
 Lay them on thy pallid feet, 
 Where in marble thou art sweet. 
 
 Hear the story of my wrong. 
 Thou to whom all perished song 
 And departed loves belong. 
 
 Even as the maiden grass, 
 Recreating all that pass, 
 Mine exceeding beauty was. 
 
 Men, who heard me singing, said 
 
 * Bays are heavy on thy head ; 
 
 * Take a myrtle leaf instead \ 
 
 * How shall Eros' call be still — 
 Ever answered I — * until 
 
 * Anteros the song fulfil ? "* 
 
 Once at vesper-tide I sat 
 In a bower of pomegranate. 
 Where it was my use to wait, 
 
POEMS 
 
 Till the hour of phantasies 
 Bade my soul's desire arise 
 Veiled, against the blinded skies : 
 
 But unveiled he came to me. 
 With the passion of the sea. 
 That night, by the scarlet tree. 
 
 Lightly from the boat he leapt ; 
 Snowy surge the shingle swept ; 
 Whiter were his feet that stepped 
 
 Up the jewelled beach ; — and on 
 As a pillared flame he shone, 
 Clear, and glad to look upon. 
 
 Was he one whom years alloy, 
 Or the god of ageless joy, 
 Dionysos, or a boy ? 
 
 Never was such hair, I wist, 
 
 Lighted as a water-mist. 
 
 In the noons of amethyst ; — 
 
 Eyes, of colour only seen 
 
 AVhere the far waves' palest green 
 
 Faints into the azure sheen. 
 
POEMS 
 
 109 
 
 There his eyes were full on me 
 With the passion of the sea, 
 That night, by the scarlet tree. 
 
 * Lily of the amber west, 
 
 ' Whither over ocean's breast 
 
 * Suns and heroes drop to rest, 
 
 ' From the morning lands I come, 
 
 ' Laughing through the laughing foam, 
 
 ' Seeking Love in Vesper's home. 
 
 * Sudden as the falling star, 
 ' Winged as the victor car, 
 
 ' Nears the doom to blight and mar. 
 
 ' Full desire, and faint delight, 
 
 ' Words that leap, and lips that bite 
 
 * With the panther lithe and light, — 
 
 ' These — while blushes bud and blow, 
 ' While life's purple torrents flow — 
 ' If we know not, shall we know ? 
 
 * Are they hid beyond the hours ? 
 ' Shall they feed on lotus-flowers ? 
 ' Warm us in the sunless bowers ? 
 
110 
 
 POEMS 
 
 ' Thou art beautiful, and I 
 ' Beautiful ; I know not why, 
 ' Save to love before we die.' 
 
 But a day — a year is sped 
 
 Since these words were sung or said, 
 
 Since he loved me — he is dead. 
 
POEMS 
 
 FAR above the shaken trees, 
 In the pale blue palaces, 
 Laugh the high gods at their ease : 
 We with tossed incense woo them. 
 We with all abasement sue them. 
 But shall never climb unto them, 
 Nor see their faces. 
 
 Sweet my sister, Queen of Hades, 
 Where the quiet and the shade is, 
 Of the cruel deathless ladies 
 Thou art pitiful alone. 
 Unto thee I make my moan. 
 Who the ways of earth hast known 
 And her green places. 
 
 Feed me with thy lotus-flowers. 
 Lay me in thy sunless bowers. 
 Whither shall the heavy hours 
 Never trail their hated feet, 
 Making bitter all things sweet ; 
 Nevermore shall creep to meet 
 The perished dead. 
 
POEMS 
 
 There mid shades innumerable, 
 There in meads of asphodel, 
 Sleeping ever, sleeping well, 
 They who toiled and who aspired, 
 They, the lovely and desired, 
 With the nations of the tired 
 Have made their bed. 
 
 There is neither fast nor feast, 
 None is greatest, none is least ; 
 Times and orders all have ceased. 
 There the bay- leaf is not seen ; 
 Clean is foul and foul is clean ; 
 Shame and glory, these have been 
 But shall not be. 
 
 When we pass away in fire. 
 What is found beyond the pyre ? 
 Sleep, the end of all desire. 
 Lo, for this the heroes fought ; 
 This the gem the merchant bought. 
 This the seal of laboured thought 
 And subtilty. 
 
POEMS 
 
 113 
 
 UNTO the central height of purple Rome, — 
 The crown of martyrdom. 
 Set as a heart within the passionate plain 
 
 Of triumph and of pain, 
 Where common roses in their blow and bud 
 
 Speak empire and show blood — 
 From colourless flowers and from breasts that 
 burn, 
 
 Mother ! to thee we turn. 
 The phantom light before thee flees and faints, 
 
 O City of the Saints ! 
 In whom, with palms and wounds, there tarrieth 
 
 The unconquerable faith ; 
 Where, as on Carmel, our Elijah stands 
 
 Above the faithless lands ; 
 But conscious of earth's evening, not of them. 
 
 Lifts toward Jerusalem, 
 Where is the altar of High Sacrifice, 
 
 His full prophetic eyes. . . . 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 POEMS 
 
 METHOUGHT, through many years and 
 lands, 
 
 I sped along an arrowy flood, 
 That leapt and lapt my face and hands, 
 I knew not were it fire or blood. 
 
 I saw no sun in any place ; 
 
 A ghastly glow about me spread, 
 Unlike the light of nights and days, 
 
 From out the depth where writhe the dead. 
 
 I passed — their fleshless arms uprose 
 To draw me to the depths beneath : 
 
 My eyes forgot the power to close. 
 As other men''s, in sleep or death. 
 
 I saw the end of every sin ; 
 
 I weighed the profit and the cost ; 
 I felt Eternity begin. 
 
 And all the ages of the lost. 
 
POEMS 
 
 The Crucifix was on my breast ; 
 
 I pressed the nails against my side ; 
 And unto Him, Who knew no rest 
 
 For thirty years, I turned and cried : 
 
 ' Sweet Lord ! I say not, give me ease ; 
 
 Do what Thou wilt, Thou doest good ; 
 And all Thy saints went up to peace, 
 
 In crowns of fire or robes of blood." 
 
 I 2 
 
NOTES 
 
NOTES ON THE POEMS 
 
 There exist original MSS. of all the poems in this 
 volume with exception of numbers 46, 48, and 50. These 
 three are edited from copies. 
 
 The writing is plain, so that there is never any doubt 
 about a word. The punctuation is so careless as to be 
 generally worthless. There are commas and full-stops, 
 but these are often misplaced, and all kinds of pauses are 
 frequently indicated by a dash. My rule in punctuation 
 has been to observe the original where possible, — inter- 
 preting the dashes, where they merely disfigure the text, 
 in the simplest manner : but in those cases where an 
 ambiguity in the grammar or the concatenation of clauses 
 would be resolved by systematic punctuation, I have left 
 it unresolved, if there was any uncertainty as to which of 
 two constructions was intended. Examples of this are 
 p. 46, the fourth and fifth verses from the end, which have 
 their original stopping ; and the second stanza of Core, 
 p. 105. 
 
 There is a free use of initial capitals in the MS. While it 
 is easy to write small unpretending capitals, the translation 
 of them into type often disfigures the text. But, though 
 I see no advantage in this, I have respected the MS. and 
 retained most of the capitals. Dolben's practice however 
 was not consistent, and I have found precedent in it some- 
 what to reduce their number. He also commonly wrote 
 Oh for the vocative 0. I have in some places altered this 
 to the usual form. I have hyphened more words than he 
 did, but the unusual hyphens are his own, e. g. pale-pink, 
 p. 4. And I have occasionally indented a line to mark a 
 new section in poems written without a break. I have 
 
NOTES 
 
 119 
 
 now enumerated all the grammatical liberties that I have 
 taken. The poems are printed in the order of an existing 
 MS. collection, which is approximately chronological, 
 since it was originally made by transcribing the poems as 
 he sent them to his family : and though a few of the poems 
 are manifestly out of order, the exact dates of others are 
 too uncertain to make an accurate sequence possible. I 
 give what is known of their dates in the notes. The poems 
 are printed word for word, except for the change of one 
 word on p. 84, and the omission of some Unes from the 
 unfinished poem No. 43. These alterations are described 
 in the notes to those poems. Wherever there is more than 
 one version of the same poem, I have (with the exception 
 of one line in No. 2) always chosen the latest version, 
 since that is invariably the best : but I should add that 
 considerate emendation is generally the main evidence of 
 its being the later version. 
 
 My poetical judgement, jealous for Dolben's poetical 
 reputation, would have led me to exclude some of the 
 poems here given, e. g. 25, 29, 34. Their presence may 
 be some assurance that nothing good has been omitted. 
 Of the earlier immature poems an account is given in the 
 Memoir : of the later poems all are given but three very 
 unworthy pieces, two of which are comic. The following 
 notes on the several poems are as few and as short as the 
 conditions allow. 
 
 1. This and the three following poems were written at 
 School dating 1864. 
 
 2. An account of the three blank-verse pieces called 
 * Vocation of which this is the last, will be found in the 
 Memoir, pp. xlviii seq. — when I wrote that, I knew only 
 the first draft of this poem {From the Cloister), which was 
 originally styled ' Sequel to Vocation ' ; and in deciding 
 to print this and not the other two, I was unaware that 
 Dolben himself had distinguished it above the others by 
 
120 
 
 NOTES 
 
 a careful revision. It turned out that there were three or 
 four copies of it, showing different readings ; and that the 
 latest of these had been overlooked, probably because 
 it was shorter than the others. But it is no doubt his 
 ultimate revision : and it is so well amended that, when 
 I substituted it for the older version, I had to alter my 
 critical description, which was already typed in the proofs 
 of the Memoir. And since Dolben in his revision discarded 
 the old title, this separates it from the other two sections, 
 and in some measure impHes that he had discarded them. 
 I have printed this latest version, except in one hne, where 
 I have retained his original 
 
 But clinging lichen and black shrivelled moss. 
 The revision transposes clinging and shrivelled : manifestly 
 because shrivelled does not describe moss. But the emenda- 
 tion is not satisfactory, so that I agreed to his sister's desire 
 that the familiar old line should be kept in this place. 
 On p. 6 the last nine lines are punctuated in the MS. by 
 the question being made at forgotten, thus : willow-boughs. 
 So soon forgotten ? I have removed the quether to the end 
 of the sentence and repeated it there. 
 
 3. I give the original Latin hymn. In this as in his other 
 translations it may be seen that his method is poetical. 
 Amorem sensus erige 
 ad te, largitor veniae, 
 ut fias Clemens cordibus 
 purgatis inde sordibus. 
 Benigne multum, Domine, 
 Tu lapsum scis in homine, 
 infirma est materia, 
 versamur in miseria. 
 Causa tibi sit agnita, 
 nulla mens est incognita ; 
 aufer a nobis omnia 
 fallentis mundi somnia. 
 
NOTES 
 
 Dives pauper efFectus es, 
 pro nobis crucifixus es ; 
 lavans a tuo latere 
 nos munda vita vetere. 
 Externi hue advenimus, 
 in exilio gemiraus, 
 tu portus es et patria, 
 due nos ad vitae atria. 
 Felix, qui sitit caritas 
 te fontem vitae Veritas, 
 beati valde oculi 
 te speculantis populi. 
 Grandis est tibi gloria 
 tuae laudis memoria, 
 quam sine fine celebrant, 
 qui cor ab imis elevant. 
 From Mone I, p. 97, who notes 'Amoris sensum ware 
 besser 
 
 5. This and the following 13 poems, i. e. Nos. 5-18, were 
 written after he left school, and nearly all at Luffenhara 
 in 1865. 
 
 6. Under this poem, which is dated Dee. 1864, Dolben 
 has written ' Impromptu, written at a railway-station at 
 night '. It was in London. Among the earliest poems 
 spoken of in the Memoir, p. xvii, as being recovered from 
 the ' holocaust the following exists. 
 
 Goodnight, dear — , and not goodbye, I say. 
 All must be night to me while you're away : 
 Yet ever in this present night of sorrow 
 Memory will point to me a bright tomorrow. 
 Whether or no he remembered his burnt poem, this is an 
 example of his art. The actual emotion was years old, and 
 had already taken form, but the poetic suggestion was 
 consciously or unconsciously awaiting a worthier artistic 
 
NOTES 
 
 expression. I print the old lines here because, while they 
 may serve as a specimen of his earliest schoolboy verses, 
 they confirm the account which I give of his artistic habit. 
 There is another example in the note to No. 43. 
 
 7. The other poem with this title is No. 40. Though they 
 are numbered I and II, I have left them in their chrono- 
 logical order among the rest. 
 
 8. His father asked him one day to write a poem on the 
 garden of Finedon Hall, and this was the result. 
 
 10. The second hne is, I think, his later correction of the 
 variant 
 
 ' His basket with fruit ferns and flowers fills '. 
 
 11. In the original MS. the punctuation of the 4th stanza 
 shows only a comma after waking and a full-stop at dream. 
 There is a little speck on the paper above the comma which 
 is most like the upper part of a semicolon. The grammar 
 is uncertain, and I give it as an example. 
 
 14. Date is Summer 1865, at the lakes. There are two 
 or three copies, in which the last 6 Hues differ. The text 
 given seems the ultimate revision. I have not found any 
 Greek original for these lines, though the difficulty in ex- 
 pressing the thought suggests translation. The word desired 
 makes its three syllables out of the double vowel sound in 
 the second syllable, as Tennyson pronounced, and would 
 have written it, desierd, not desired. 
 
 15. There are two versions of this. The differences are 
 few and unimportant, chiefly affecting the penultimate 
 stanza. 
 
 17. Dated summer 1865. The original is 
 KarOavoiaa Keiaeai irora kuiv fivafiocrvva ffeOev 
 ecaer ovre tot' out' vOTepov ov yap TrfSexets PpoSuv 
 TU)v eK Ilteptas, dA\' d<pdvr)i Krjv ^A'i'da dofxois 
 (poiTaacis 7re5' dp-avpuv veKvoov (fcireiTOTapi^va. 
 
NOTES 
 
 123 
 
 18. Of this poem there are 4 copies slightly differing. I 
 take that which I believe to be the latest. Dolben was not 
 satisfied with the poem, and took much pains to amend it. 
 It was, I beUeve, published in a periodical. 
 
 19. This poem and 29 (which is out of place) and prob- 
 ably 20and21, were written during the Lincolnshire period. 
 
 stanza 3, 1. 3. never-falling, sic, but unhyphened in MS. 
 stanza 10, 1. 2. A description of the Lincolnshire 
 landscape. Memoir, p. Ixxxvii. 
 
 22. Here begins a series of poems all written in 1866, 
 and mostly at Boughrood. This parody of Clough may be 
 taken as a tribute atoning in some measure for the harsh 
 judgement in his letter on p. Ixxxiv. 
 
 23. Stanza 2, 1. 8. Ruddy-fruited asphodel. I cannot 
 explain this epithet. 
 
 24. 11. 20, 21. There is no quether in the MS. I have 
 left the punctuation as I found it, not perceiving what was 
 intended. 
 
 25. This is one of the poems which I would willingly have 
 omitted : and I could not print it without protest. 
 
 28. This poem illustrates very clearly much that I have 
 written in the Memoir. In line 6 ' And loves can nevermore 
 descend ' is the simplest statement of his own experience. 
 His love had descended from Christ to a man, which in 
 the next life would be impossible. ' The love-current of a 
 human soul ' (line 9) should be devoted to God. In lines 15 
 and following, ' Remember this ' etc. , he here begs his 
 friend to measure the greatness of his love for him by the 
 fact that he loved him with the same love-current which he 
 had before devoted to Christ ; and had thus, for his sake, 
 lost his love of Christ.— Going on, he narrates a vision or 
 ecstasy, in which he returns to Christ, and his earthly love 
 then appears as bitterness ; and he concludes by inviting 
 his friend to devote himself to Christ. 
 
NOTES 
 
 29. This poem is of the same date as 19. 
 
 31. The Latin lines are as follows : 
 
 Est prope Cimmerios longo spelunca recessu, 
 Mons cavus, ignavi domus et penetralia Sorani : 
 Quo nunquam radiis oriens, mediusve, cadensve 
 Phoebus adire potest. Nebulae caligine mixtae 
 Exhalantur humo, dubiaeq: crepuscula lucis. 
 Non vigil ales ibi cristati cantibus oris 
 Evocat auroram : nee voce silentia rurapunt 
 SoUicitive canes, canibusve sagacior anser. 
 Non fera, non pecudes, non raoti flamine rami, 
 Humanaeve sonum reddunt convicia linguae. 
 Muta quies habitat ; saxo tamen exit ab imo 
 Rivus aquae Lethes : per quem cum murmure labens 
 Invitat somnos crepitantibus unda lapillis. 
 Ante fores antri fecunda papavera florent, 
 Innimieraeq: herbae : quarum de lacte soporem 
 Nox legit, et spargit per opacas humida terras. 
 
 Ov. Met. xi. 592 seq. 
 
 32. The original, Catullus xxxiv, is as follows. Only 
 the first 3 stanzas are followed. 
 
 Dianae sumus in fide 
 Puellae et pueri integri : 
 Dianam pueri integri 
 
 Puellaeque canamus. 
 O Latonia, maximi 
 Magna progenies lovis, 
 Quam mater prope Deliam 
 
 Deposivit olivam, 
 Montium domina ut fores 
 Silvarumque virentium 
 Saltuumque reconditorum 
 
 Amniumque sonantum. 
 
 It is interesting that this translation and No. 17 should 
 
NOTES 
 
 125 
 
 have been written by a boy who was unable to pass his 
 entrance examination at Balliol college. 
 
 33. The original is an anonymous scholion cited by 
 Athenaeus xv. 695. D. I owe this reference to my friend 
 J. W. Mackail. 
 
 ^vv HOI itivf, cvvrjfia, 
 
 avvepa, (xvaTe<pavr](p6p(i, 
 'Svv not fuuvofiivq) ixaivfo, 
 
 Gvv aaxppovi acocppovd. 
 
 34. The original is Martial xii. 30. 
 
 Siccus, sobrius est Aper, quid ad me ? 
 Servum sic ego laudo, non amicum. 
 
 36. This poem dates Autumn 1866 : and the following 
 poems are in place. 
 
 37. This is the poem alluded to in Memoir p. xcv. 
 
 40. The title makes this poem a sequel to No. 7. A few 
 lines before its third section (The Future) on p. 78, it passes 
 from its poetic form into an epistolary address and gradu- 
 ally sinking falls very low in the unfortunate passage about 
 Turner, which must be traced to Ruskin. The only date 
 which it bears is however Dec. 1866. 
 
 41. *The Shrine', which is dated Oct. 1866, has been 
 printed in various collections. There is on the back of the 
 MS. , an epigram that has escaped the collection. I give it 
 here. 
 
 MAXIMIAN 
 An unashamed tyrant in every vice — 
 An abject slave in cringing cowardice — 
 Child, in all things save in simplicity — 
 Brute, save in irresponsibility — 
 Believer but in sense and taste and touch — 
 My God, and can it be Thou diedst for such ? 
 
126 
 
 NOTES 
 
 42. Second sonnet, p. 84, line T. The MS. has 
 ' Though freighted all with lovely argosies.' 
 
 As I cannot make sense of this I have printed those for 
 loithy and inserted a comma ; not as a possible correction 
 but to remove an obstacle to the reader. 
 
 In the third sonnet, p. 85, in the last line To is the 
 MS. reading. 
 
 43. Here begin the poems of 1867. 
 
 This poem was never completed, and the original MS. 
 has several lacunae which are represented in the text by 
 asterisks. The dots in the text represent omissions which, 
 considering the imperfect state of the poem, I thought 
 myself justified in adding to the original lacunae. The 
 reason for these omissions will be understood if poem 40 be 
 remembered. It seems as if, when writing these blank- 
 verse poems, Dolben unconsciously fell back into the 
 earlier manner of his old blank- verse poems, which are de- 
 scribed in the Memoir (pp. 1 and seq.). They show a ten- 
 dency to deteriorate under the influence of the earlier 
 associations, and I would willingly have omitted a good 
 part of the end of No. 40. I had however no justification : 
 but in this case the unfinished condition of the poem in- 
 vited the omission of the worser parts, which greatly de- 
 tracted from the dignity and beauty of the whole. Though 
 the excluded passages were condemned wholly on artistic 
 grounds, it may be noted that they contain some verses of 
 an ecclesiastical tone, which might have been welcome to 
 sectarian curiosity : and it might be supposed that I had 
 omitted them for that reason. But the two things natur- 
 ally coincide : it is exactly where he falls into this vein that 
 he faUs from poetry. I have not omitted a word which I 
 would willingly have printed, nor a word which I could not 
 have persuaded him to delete. 
 On p. 94 is this couplet : 
 
 Ah ! who restore the years the locust ate. 
 Hard to remember, harder to forget ? 
 
NOTES 
 
 127 
 
 On the fiftieth page of the Memoir the original of these lines 
 will be found. It is another instance of an old expression 
 being worked upon (as described in note to poem 6) ; and 
 also I think it is a further indication that he had discarded 
 the Vocation poems. 
 
 45. There is no one mentioned in the memoir to whom 
 this can have been addressed. It is a rather improved 
 version of the epitaph which Chiabrera wrote for his own 
 tomb in San Giacomo at Savona. Dolben found it no 
 doubt in Father Faber's books where it is used as a motto 
 in its original sense. 
 
 Amico, io vivendo cercava conforto 
 
 Nel monte Parnasso : 
 Tu, meglio consigliato, cercalo 
 Nel Calvario. 
 
 49. This poem is dated May 1867, which locates it at 
 Finedon. But for it his Greek lyrics would have indis- 
 putably outdone the Christian. This master-piece some- 
 what restores the balance. The flush of its sincerity carries 
 the fanciful mediaevalism without a trace of affectation. In 
 stanza 4, last line, the word Hol^/ has got into the text of the 
 copies in the place of GoddeSy which is in my copy, and 
 (whether original or due to recension) altogether preferable. 
 
 50. I had not the original MS. of this for collation, and 
 have avoided determining ambiguous constructions by 
 punctuation. In stanza 10 tired is tierd not tired. 
 
 31. This and the two following poems were found in his 
 desk after his death. In the last line of this poem the MS. 
 has * And suhtility '. But the word is intended for a tri- 
 syllable, to be pronounced subtle-ty^ so that I have cor- 
 rected the spelling to avoid error. 
 
128 
 
 NOTES TO THE MEMOIR 
 
 p. V. Dolben had other font-names, but as he invariably 
 suppressed them I have followed his own use. 
 
 xviii. I was eleven years of age in the lower school in 
 the division called Sense when I first read Ovid ; and 
 some elegiacs of his opened my eyes to poetry. 
 
 xxviii. Coles tells me that ' as a matter of fact there was 
 not a Roman-catholic chapel at Slough I must leave this 
 matter of local history open. 
 
 XXX. The letters. I have printed almost every scrap that 
 I have, because they are the only actual relics, and afford 
 a picture which would be weakened by selection. 
 
 ex. Except it were Walford, I do not know from whom 
 Newman can have * heard of ' Dolben in the sense impHed: 
 and since, in my opinion, his kindly words do not show 
 accurate knowledge, this fact was of weight with me in 
 balancing the evidence of Walford's influence over Dolben. 
 If they two had been intimate together, then Newman 
 would have been better informed ; whereas his words are 
 like the practised utterance of one who, accustomed to 
 have admirers hanging on his speech, is skilful in formu- 
 lating what will satisfy without offence. Coles tells me 
 that, wishing to know whether Dolben had acted under 
 Newman's advice, and being anxious to learn any facts, 
 he wrote a letter of enquiry to the Cardinal : but that 
 Newman, either mistaking his meaning, or perhaps be- 
 cause he had no real information to give, replied most 
 courteously by discussing the question concerning which 
 he imagined a friend would be most likely to wish for in- 
 formation, namely whether, since Dolben had not been 
 received into the Roman communion, his soul could be 
 saved. This clerkly opinion is lost. 
 
129 
 
 THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 The dra\ving of the Curfew Tower, which was made by 
 George Howard, the late Earl of Carlisle, my contemporary 
 at Eton, shows it as it was before its restoration. His 
 lamented death while this book was being put together, 
 leaves rae to record his kindness in wishing to associate 
 himself with these reminiscences of our schooltime. This 
 picture, which Lionel Muirhead saw him painting, re- 
 cords both his boyish skill in draughtsmanship, and the 
 aspect of the castle as we were accustomed to see it, and 
 brings the date of the memoir before the eye : for a 
 few years later the appearances were utterly changed to 
 their present condition. George Howard did not know 
 Dolben, but his devotion to serious art and his affection 
 towards his old school assured his interest in this book. 
 
 Of the two portraits of Dolben I have not been able to 
 establish the dates. The tradition is that they were both 
 done at the same time before he left Eton. They are 
 from the firm of Hills and Saunders. 
 
 K 
 
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