Full text of "Poems and hymns"

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THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

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POEMS AND HYMNS
BY SAMUEL JOHN STONE

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POEMS AND HYMNS

SAMUEL JOHN STONE

WITH A MEMOIR BY
F. G. ELLERTON, M.A.

VICAR OF ELLESMERE

WITH A PORTRAIT

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

1903

CONTENTS

PAGE

Memoir . . . . . i

REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

Down Stream to London , . • • 77

Good-bye to Oxford

In Memoriam, E. B. Browning

The Bishop of Winchester

A Sea-side Reverie

Setting Sail

The Answer of the Hills

Lententide

102

Coming Holy Week

105

Easter Eve

107

Trust

III

"Where the Shade is" .

114

Meditation in a Night of Pain

116

LYRICAL POEMS

The Beautiful Death . . . , . 121

Christ's Knight

123

The Ebb of Tide

. 124

The Harvest of Souls

. 126

Ishmael's Song

128

Lullaby of Life

130

The Maiden at the Well

132

Holiday Ode to the North- West Wind

134

St. Columb of lona

135

A Lay of Port-na-Churaich

149

A Morning on lona

151

CONTENTS

NARRATIVE POEMS

The Knight of Intercession
Idylls of Deare Childe —
I. Deare Childe
II. "Morning Robert"
The Birdie
The Gate of Death

PAGE

155

163
171
185

193

SONNETS

The One Name

Four Poets : A Personal History —
I. Walter Scott
II. Elizabeth Barrett Browning

III. Alfred Tennyson

IV. John Keble

In Charterhouse Chapel
To Windsor Cemetery on May Day —
I. Through the Park
II. The Cemetery .
III. The Little Church
From Windermere
"The Garden of the Lord"'
Midnight in London
The Small-pox in the East End —
I. Spring and Easter
II. Holy Communion
A Sunday Confirmation in an East End Church
Frederick Arnold
Sancho : An Old Friend

202

203
204
205
206
207

209
210
211
212
213
214

215
216
217
2ig
220

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

The Soliloquy of a Rationalistic Chicken . . . 223

A Boy's Reverie . . ... 226

The Reason why Florence was called "The Duchess" . 229

A Holiday Ditty . . ... 233

Lines written in a Child's Bible . ... 234

Finis . . ... 235

CONTENTS

Vll

HYMNS

" I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the Communion

of Saints"
Battle Hymn for the New Year
Battle Hymn of Church Defence .
Hymn for Missions to the Jews
Hymn for Missions to the Heathen
The Proto-Martyr of Britain : A Hymn in Memory of

St. Alban
Hymn of the Diamond Wedding of the Queen with her

People
Hymn for the Lord's Day
Hymn for Day and Sunday-school Teachers
Hymns for Church Workers —

I. " I magnify mine office" .
H. "In Thee"
Hymn for Candidates for Ordination
Holy Communion
Hymn after Holy Communion
Hymn after Benediction
The " Athletes of the Universe " .
The Beating Down of Satan
Patience
The Ascension
The Perfect Day
" I believe in the Forgiveness of Sins "

Index of First Lines
General Index

PAGE

246
248

253
255
258

260
262
264
267
269
271

273

277

279
281

283

285
288

Say, when in pity ye have gazed

On the wreathed stnoke afar.
That o'er some tow7i, like f?iist upraised.

Hung hiditig sun and star.
Then as ye turned your weary eye
To the green earth and open sky.
Were ye not fain to doubt how Faith could dwell
Amid that dreary glare, in this world's citadel 1

There are in this loud stunning tide

Of human care and crime.
With whom the melodies abide

Of the ever las tifig chime ;
Who carry music ift their heart
Throtigh dusky lane and wrangling mart,
Flying their daily task with busier feet
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat.

John Keble.

DEO DANTE DEDI

A MEMOIR OF
SAMUEL JOHN STONE

EARLY DAYS

1839-1862

SAMUEL JOHN STONE was bom at Whitmore
Rectory, in Staffordshire, on St. Mark's Day —
Keble's birthday — 1839. The first thirteen years of
his life he spent in the country ; the rest, with the
exception of his residence at Oxford and a curacy of
eight years at Windsor, in London, where he worked
for thirty years in two different parishes — for twenty
years in St. Paul's, Haggerston, and for ten in All
Hallows', London Wall, He died in 1900.

Stone is generally known as the author of The
Church 's one Foundation and as a religious poet ;
hardly at all on his other side as a strenuous parish
priest. When we think of a religious poet, the fancy
calls up a picture of George Herbert in his tiny
church at Bemerton, or of John Keble at quiet
Hursley, or of John Henry Newman coasting along

2 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

Italian shores. Samuel John Stone, however, was
not only a poet, but also an East End parson.

All his childhood was spent in the depths of the
country, in remote Staffordshire rectories. From the
time he was five his home was at Colwich, a village
which lies hard by the water meadows of the Trent
just below Cannock Chase. Cannock Chase is a wide
^cretch of rolling moorland, all about the edges of
which there are little rounded heather -clad hills,
crowned here and there with a clump of Scotch firs,
alternating with softly -scooped -out hollows and
combes, which would very easily conceal a troop of
men. Where the garment of heather which covers
these little hills has been torn off, or the hillside has
been cut open by the hand of man, yellow gravel
gleams out underneath. Further on this moorland
country becomes wilder, and then there are collieries,
while beyond it are the red furnaces of the Black
Country.

This was just the sort of scenery to bring out all
the latent poetry of a romantic lad's nature, and it
had a very strong influence on Stone, an influence of
which he has left a record in the poem called The
Birdie, which gives expression to his boyish love of
romance. The sloping lawns of the vicarage garden
at Colwich, the river with its swans and moorhens,
the little rills and runnels bubbling up in tiny sand
fountains amongst the hills, were amongst his earliest
recollections.

EARLY DAYS 3

But if the spell of the hills and of the country-
side helped to call forth in him something of the
spirit of George Herbert, from the streams he soon
learned to be, what he remained to the end of his
life, an ardent votary of Izaak Walton. The sporting
vein in him, which made him not only Piscator but
Venator, had plenty of scope for early development.
As a boy he was " always doing something or other
with gunpowder or firearms," or climbing dangerous
trees, or tumbling into the river. He was full of
pluck, and full to the brim of the love of adventure.
Even at an early age these qualities were allied with
the imagination and the idealism of a poetical nature,
and with a strong strain of religious feeling, which
came out in childish sermons and verse.

His father was a learned and pious Evangelical of
the best type, who had taken honours at Oxford and
then settled down to quiet work as a country clergy-
man. He was a Hebrew scholar and a botanist ;
but what marked him most was, it was said, the
quiet repose of a mind which rested entirely in God,
and which seemed in consequence to be always
stored with beautiful thoughts. Whilst at Whit-
more he had published a sacred epic in six books,
and in later days he was the compiler of a hymn-
book, many of the hymns in which were from his
own pen.

His character is very well illustrated by a story
which his son used to tell of him. When the elder

4 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

man began his work as vicar of St. Paul's, Haggerston,
there was an endowment of only £i^ per annum,
and the heavy expenses of the parish became a great
and increasing burden upon him. " He kept his
quietness of mind," says his son, " in steady trust ;
and when one day," he goes on, " the news came that
the Ecclesiastical Commissioners would endow the
living with ;^300 a year and build a vicarage, I well
remember how he was the only one of us unexcited.
I came home late in the evening and heard the
recent news, and went up to his study. There I
found my father reading his Hebrew Bible in his
usual calm mood, and he only replied to my excited
congratulations by saying — with a serenity of feeling
and expression which made a most profound impres-
sion upon my mind — something to the effect that the
Lord always answers prayer and makes good His
promise to His people in His own good time. And
so he went on with his reading with the quietude of
one who, having been sure of the promise, is neither
amazed nor excited when it is fulfilled."

The influence of the father's saintly character
remained strong upon the son all his life through.
Meantime, as a boy he was encouraged by him to
give himself to the study of poetry and the cultiva-
tion of a literary taste, as well as to set his heart
on all things pure and noble. From his mother, of
whom it was said that " wherever she was there was
an atmosphere of the tenderest care and love," he

EARLY DAYS 5

inherited that rich store of sympathy which he after-
wards spent so lavishly in the cure of souls.

The boy had a sister two years younger than
himself, who was his constant companion both at
work and at play. The two children were taught
Latin by their father, whom they regarded as a very
storehouse of knowledge, from the fact that he had
the wisdom to answer, or to try to answer, all the
puzzling questions of childhood which they brought
to him, and indeed showed such unfailing readiness
in doing so, that as they grew older they used to refer
to him in talking to each other as " the Dictionary."
The boy had little other formal education until he
went to the Charterhouse.

Both he and his sister, however, were passionately
fond of reading, and together they ranged far and
wide through the realm of letters. Among their
favourite books were the Pilgt'im's Progress and the
Holy War ; they devoured Scott's poetry, and of
their heroes Mr. Greatheart shared their affections
with Richard Coeur de Lion and Masterman Ready.
But it was first Sir Walter Scott, and afterwards
Mrs. Browning, who lent the glamour which the boy
longed for to glorify the world he lived in. He
peopled the Chase with many a flashing pennon and
many a bonnet and tartan as he went roving over
it, and he and his sister had privately come to an
agreement as to the exact corner by the Trent which
held the Swan's nest among the reeds.

6 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

They were just the imaginative sort of children
to find plenty of romance in their own garden. Had
they not got real York and Lancaster roses in it?
Were there not Canterbury bells to remind them
of Chaucer's Pilgrims ? They told in after years
how they longed for June to come to bring the
columbines, with the pigeons clustering at the top
of their stalks, and to let them hurry out before
breakfast to take the little pointed nightcaps off the
orange eschscholtzias.

These country days were destined to be brought
to an abrupt termination, for when the boy was
thirteen his father accepted a curacy in a north-
western suburb of London. It was a doleful change
from the streams and heaths of Staffordshire. To
live in an ugly house in the middle of a plain row,
with a strip of sooty earth at the back, calling itself
a garden, on which a few dusty laurels struggled
to exist, was at first a terrible shock ! The feature-
lessness, the monotony, " the clotted and coagulated
masses of houses," to use Ruskin's phrase, pressed
on the lad's spirit like one of Dante's leaden copes.
" Even a cathedral was not a cathedral." After the
grace of Lichfield, with her three spires lying always
reflected in the minster pool, the " storied windows
richly dight" of her lady chapel, and the warm
richness of her carved sandstone portals, it is perhaps
not to be wondered at that St. Paul's seemed a cold
and lifeless mass.

EARLY DAYS 7

St. Paul's Cathedral, as it was in 1852 and for
some years afterwards, has been described by Canon
Scott Holland as " a magnificent architectural monu-
ment waiting in dignified renown for the discovery
of its activities. Its main bulk," he goes on, "lay
practically idle, except for special occasions such
as the festival of the charity children, or on great
public functions such as the burial of a hero. At
all other times, over the length and breadth of its
large area, cold, naked, and unoccupied, mooning
sightseers roam.ed at large. Its daily services had
always been hidden away in the choir, behind the
thick organ screen against which Wren had so
vehemently protested. There, in seclusion, a tiny
body of cultivated musicians sang to a sprinkled
remnant of worshippers. Everything was done on
the smallest scale, and much was mean and slovenly
to the last degree."

Like cathedral, like churches. It is not too much
to say that the type of service, the standard of
devotion, the conception of the function of the parish
church in parochial life throughout a great part of
London only too faithfully mirrored the ideal which
was exhibited in the cathedral. It was no more
than eight years before this that Dean Close, the
then incumbent of Cheltenham, had declared that
the " devil was the architect and builder of Gothic
churches," and only one since Mr. Bennett, of
St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, had been called upon by

8 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

Bishop Blomfield to resign his living as a conse-
quence of the No Popery riots caused by his having
introduced into his church such unheard-of things
as a choral service, the eastward position, and an
altar cross.

In a word, the waves of the Church revival of the
middle of the nineteenth century were at this period
just beginning to flow out from the study and the
oratory into the street.

The newly awakened devotional spirit, so largely
inspired by Keble through the publication of the
Christian Year in 1827, was being translated into
active parochial work by Dr. Hook, "the apostle of
the Church to the great middle class," as Dean
Church has called him, who was Vicar of Leeds from
1827 to 1859. The boy who had now come with his
father and mother from the retirement of a country
vicarage into the stir of London was destined to
combine in his lifework both aspects of the revival.
Like Keble, he grew to be one of the poets of the
Church ; he became, like Hook, a devoted parish priest.

Meantime he was sent as a day-boy to the Charter-
house, still at that time in its original home in the
City. Charterhouse, with its Poor Brethren and its
air of venerable seclusion, had a charm which is
lacking to most public schools. He was as devoted
to it all his life long as Thackeray was, and all who
knew him would bear witness to the truth of the
description of himself in one of his sonnets as

EARLY DAYS 9

"Unchanged in this, at least, from boy to man.
That I am heart and soul Carthusian."

Thus, when shortly after his leaving school a great
football match was played between eight of Eton
and Harrow and seven of " The World," Stone wrote
to the papers in great pride and glory to inform all
and sundry that no less than six of " The World's "
seven were Carthusians. For years he never missed
the annual Charterhouse dinner, and no haven of
refuge could have brought him more peace than those
old walls, to which years afterwards he returned to
live out the remainder of his days.

At the Charterhouse he went up the school with
Sir Richard Jebb, who used, as it is not surprising to
learn, to be ahead of him in classics, but divided with
him the honours of the English Poem, the subject
being The Alhanibra. He was a steady worker who
always kept his place, but his chief distinction was
his faculty for verse. Though full of spirits, he seems
never to have got into school difficulties or scrapes,
and left with a high character. He used to take his
friends home with him to Hackney and for boating
expeditions on the Lea, where he learned to handle
an oar. He left school with a scholarship in 1858,
and shortly afterwards won a prize offered by the
editor of a paper called the Portico for a poem on Sir
Henry Havelock, himself a Carthusian. He was, in
fact, while still at school already graduating in verse,
so that to the tale of Carthusian poets — Crashaw,

lo MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

Lovelace, Addison, John Wesley — there is now to be
added the name of Samuel John Stone.

From Charterhouse he proceeded to Pembroke
College, Oxford, where he had the rooms in the
tower just above those of Dr. Johnson. At Pem-
broke he quickly took to the river, and soon became
captain of his boat, which he stroked more than once.
He was also an ardent volunteer, for those were the
days of the first beginnings of the volunteer move-
ment. The love of athletics and the patriotic senti-
ment were both characteristic. Years afterwards in
London he started a " Pembroke Rowing Club " on
the Lea, which still flourishes, and till the very end
of his life he was profoundly stirred by any great
national event, and found a ready expression in verse
for the feelings which it excited in him.

Of all the gifts which Oxford brings, the friend-
ships which are made there are amongst the most
precious. Stone was always enthusiastic in his
friendships, and to those which he had already
formed at Charterhouse he now soon added fresh
ones, some of which lasted with unimpaired warmth
throughout his life. He would often in after years
recall these friendships of his Oxford boating days by
quoting the well-known lines in Tennyson's Ulysses :

" My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd and wrought and thought with me —
That ever with a frohc welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old ;

EARLY DAYS ii

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil ;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done.
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods."

At Pembroke, Johnson's " nest of singing-birds,"
the college of Beaumont and Shenstone, not to
speak of Johnson himself or less-known poets,
Stone's poetical faculty continued to develop. He
wrote more than once for the Newdigate, which he
never succeeded in winning, though he was proxime
accessit in the year after it had been gained by his
cousin, John Addington Symonds. He was also
connected with one at least of those fugitive collec-
tions of verse which appear periodically in Oxford,
and it was Alma Mater who inspired two of the
poems in his earliest volume, Down Streajn to London
and Good-bye to Oxford. They express what a score
of Oxford poets from Clough and Matthew Arnold
onwards have expressed, on the one hand the " in-
effable charm " of the " beautiful city . . . steeped in
sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens to the
moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last
enchantments of the Middle Age," and on the other
the "joy of eventful living" which possesses the
healthy undergraduate in those halcyon years of
University life. But in the latter of the two poems a
note is struck which is not always heard in young
Oxford verse, a note which became the keynote
of all his words and all his actions, the note of
intense devotion to his Mother Church.

12 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

During part of his time at Oxford Stone was
disturbed to some extent by the Essays mid Reviews
controversy; but the disturbance was of short dura-
tion, and before he had taken his degree the ques-
tionings raised in his mind by the Liberal theology
had ceased, and he had planted his feet firmly in the
old paths which Hooker and Ken and Keble had
trodden, and in those paths he continued to walk
from that time forth with ever-deepening confidence
and assurance.

While he was still at Oxford, in fact, all the
energies of his ardent and enthusiastic nature were
gradually being turned into one deep channel, and
after he went down it was not long before he had
definitely made up his mind to take Holy Orders,
He went for a year to a tutorship at High Wycombe,
and there he received a fresh impress from the per-
sonality of Bishop Wilberforce, under whose influence
he had already fallen at Oxford. Wilberforce came
to hold a confirmation at High Wycombe, of which
Stone has left an account in a letter to a friend, which
is one more testimony to the spiritual power shown
by the Bishop on such occasions. He speaks of the
Bishop's directness with the candidates, of how he
bade them keep their eyes on him, as he told them,
with his marvellous power of narration, of the early
martyrs, of how they were asked tauntingly, " Do
you believe in Jesus Christ?" and of how they
answered, with their faces flashing with joy — " and

EARLY DAYS 13

his voice," says Stone, "was a diapason as he said the
words — ' I do ! I do ! ' " After the answer of the
candidates the whole congregation were invited to
kneel in silent prayer for them before the Imposition
of Hands, and " the whole place and people," he
writes, " seemed baptized with the Spirit of God."
After the service was over he spent the rest of the
day in a long walk with a friend, and from that time
his most earnest desire was to seek Ordination at the
hands of the Bishop, who, he wrote, " stands before
all men, except my father, in my reverence and
affection." There is no doubt that the impression
produced by this and other confirmations held by
Bishop Wilberforce had a very powerful effect in
shaping Stone's parochial ideals. Confirmation, with
him, was the great opportunity in a parish priest's
dealings with his flock, the formation of an intelligent
and devout body of communicants his highest work.
His desires saw their fulfilment before many
months were over. At that time a year at a theo-
logical college was not yet the common preliminary
to Ordination which it has since become, and in later
life Stone used to regret that he had not had the
advantage of it. He read quietly and steadily by
himself, and the result was that he was chosen as
Gospeller when on St. Matthew's Day, 1862, he was
ordained by Bishop Wilberforce in Lavington Church
to the curacy of Windsor.

WINDSOR

1862-1870

WINDSOR was a place which exactly suited
the young man, and appealed to almost
every part of his nature. The Vicar of Windsor
was Canon Ellison, well known as the founder of
the Church of England Temperance Society, which
first saw the light there a few years later. There
was a large parish with plenty of work to do, both
amongst the labouring classes and also amongst
those in better circumstances. There were good
Church schools and all sorts of parochial organisa-
tions. He found pleasant society and a delightful
country. Past the town flowed the river on which
he had spent so many hours, and above it the Castle
reared its stately walls, a perpetual reminder of the
antiquity of the Throne, to which he was always
attached with the most passionate loyalty. Such a
place could not fail to be an inspiration to a man of
Stone's nature, and during his seven and a half years
at Windsor he did some of his not least successful

WINDSOR 15

pastoral work and wrote many of the best of his
hymns and poems.

The centre of his work at Windsor was a little
mission church in the outlying district of Spital.
The mission church was the chapel of the cemetery,
and when he was put in charge of it he found it a
cold and lifeless place, as even now many of our
cemetery chapels are wont to be. He set himself
with his usual vigour to beautify it, and before very
long succeeded in effecting a complete transformation.

During the very early days of his work at Windsor
an incident occurred which may be related here.
There was a certain idle corner on the way from the
school to the church which was the favourite resort
of the rough lads of the place, who used to annoy
the children on their way to church. One Sunday
as he went by he saw one of his little girls doubled
up with pain from a blow given her by a big, hulking
fellow. All Stone's impulsive chivalry at once caught
fire. Perhaps he remembered how, under similar
circumstances, Keats had given a butcher a thrashing.
At any rate, he strode up to the young rough, and
not only gave him a piece of his mind, but a sound
cuff to finish up with. The fellow was so ill-advised
as to strike him back, whereupon Stone fell upon
him like an avenging angel, and literally beat him
black and blue. He said afterwards that he was
thankful that he had nothing but nature's weapons
at hand, so much carried away was he by his

1 6 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

righteous indignation. Fortunately his action was
endorsed by the lad's parents and also by the police,
and it had a very salutary effect on the rough
element in the district, but he was himself the first
to recognise that his knight-errantry had taken a
wrong form, and to resolve never again to be judge
and executioner at the same time.

Henceforward he found more legitimate means of
disposing of his superfluous physical energy. " I am
getting up my strength and muscular condition," he
writes, "in an apostolic manner — on the water and
among the fishes." We get a glimpse of him at
this time on his holiday in the garden of a Sussex
vicarage, where he was helping his father, who was
acting as locum tenens there. He was reading for his
priest's orders, and was keenly interested in the
Fathers, whose acquaintance he was making for the
first time. In the hot weather he was to be found
lying on his back in the orchard, a gun by his side,
and Jacobson's Apostolic Fathers on his knee. When-
ever there was a chance of a shot at something,
" down went the Fathers and up went the gun."

It would be a very great mistake to suppose that
Stone was merely what used to be called a "muscular
Christian." A strong and athletic frame was coupled
with a highly sensitive and emotional temperament,
a temperament so responsive and sympathetic that,
while full of virile force and energy, it had at the
same time all the tenderness of a woman. Such a

WINDSOR 17

nature was bound to feel the stress and strain of
work, and especially of parochial work, in an unusual
degree. In later years he paid dearly for it. " You
have the muscles of a prize-fighter," said Sir William
Jenner, when he went to consult him, "but," he
added, "the nerves of a violin."

It was just these qualities, however, which gave
Stone his great influence as a parish priest. There is
evidence that while he was still in his first curacy his
spiritual powers were considerable. His pastoral
instincts were from the first quick to assert them-
selves, and he soon began to have that personal hold
on those with whom he was brought into contact
which so remarkably distinguished his work in East
London. Thirty years afterwards a member of one
of his Windsor Bible-classes wrote to him recalling
the class, and testifying to the permanence of his
teaching.

In the day-schools he took the greatest delight,
especially in the infants' school, and he was beloved
both by children and teachers. He had inherited his
love of children from his father, to whom he used to
apply the words of the poem in the Christian Year
for Innocents' Day, saying that he, like his Master,

" Ever lov'd to trace
" The ' innocent brightness ' of an infant's face "

— words that were as applicable to the son as they
were to the father. When he left Windsor he spoke
in his farewell words of "those dear children of the
c

1 8 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

schools, whom I love, not least, in the Lord," and
through all his after work the children had a fore-
most place in his thoughts and his affections.

He was fond of telling the story of what he used
to say was one of the few cases in which he had come
across a parent who objected to the religious teaching
in a Church day-school, and of his successful re-
moving of his scruples. It appears that one morning
when he was in the schools at Windsor an angry
father asked to see him, who began to complain that
his child was taught the Catechism, which he, as a
Dissenter, objected to his learning. By way of
answer Stone asked the man if he had ever read the
Catechism, and on his replying that he had not, per-
suaded him to take a copy home with him, and to
come again and give him his opinion about it. In a
few days the man reappeared, and on being asked
the result of his studies replied, " Why, sir, I find it
tells him his duty towards God and his duty towards
his neighbour. Teach it him, sir, and if he won't
learn it, you wallop him ! "

There was another and a most important side
of his work at Windsor, and this was what he began
to do there for the Church at large through his
hymns and sacred poems. Allusion has already
been made to the manner in which his father fostered
his boyish love of poetry and to his early enthusiasm
for Scott and for Mrs. Browning. Later on had
come the influence of Tennyson, which acted so

WINDSOR 19

powerfully on most of the poets of the middle of the
Victorian era. His inspiration is manifest in a good
deal of Stone's poetical work. The idealism of the
Idylls of the King, that epic of the human soul, as
Tennyson conceived it, took hold of his being, and
King Arthur, viewed as the embodiment of the soul's
battle for whatsoever is pure and lovely and of good
report, became half-canonised in his imagination.
It was not wholly in jest that he compared his many
fights at Haggerston with the encroaching School
Board to Arthur's " nine great battles in the west,"
and his delight was extreme when a friend gave him
a beautiful little copy, carved in wood, of the noble
statue of King Arthur from the monument of
Maximilian I. at Innsbruck.

Knight-errantry, in fact, had a perpetual fascina-
tion for him. He was always ready, as we have
seen, to take up arms on behalf of a child or a
woman. So too when he wrote one can imagine
him ready to begin like Keats : —

" Lo ! I must tell a tale of chivalry;
For large white plumes are dancing in mine eye."

But just as the militant instincts in his nature came
to be subordinated to the pastoral, so in his poetry
his knight -errant becomes The Knight of Inter-
cession, and his idylls are not idylls of the camp and
court but of the country parish.

There was yet another poetical influence which
left its mark on Stone's verse, and that was the

20 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

influence of Keble. As he was thoroughly in accord
with Keble's ecclesiastical position, the Christian
Year appealed to him as n:iuch as it could have
appealed to anyone who belonged to the generation
after Keble. The best of its poems he would con-
stantly quote in the pulpit, and in later days he
probably seldom let a Good Friday pass without
reciting in the course of his sermon some part of
the poem for that day.

It was no doubt the scheme of the Christian Year
which suggested to Stone the idea of illustrating the
Apostles' Creed by writing a series of hymns upon
its several Articles. In his preface to the Christian
Year Keble had said : —

" The object of the present publication will be
attained, if any person find assistance from it in
bringing his own thoughts and feelings into more
entire unison with those recommended and ex-
emplified in the Prayer-book."

Stone had found that many, especially of the
cottagers, used the Creed in their private prayers,
and in the preface to his little book he mentions
this fact and appeals to the experience of other
clergy, who, he says, " cannot but feel how this
excellent use, as also its utterance in public worship,
is too often accompanied by a very meagre compre-
hension of the breadth and depth of meaning con-
tained in each Article of the Confession of Faith.
Such a feeling," he continues, " first suggested to the

WINDSOR 21

author the probable usefulness of a simple and
attractive explanation of the Creed in the popular
form of a series of hymns, such as might be sung
or said in private devotion, at family prayer, or in
public worship."

In those days it was the custom to give to a
collection of sacred verse the name of Lyra. Besides
the Lyra Apostolica and the Lyra Innocentium, there
were the Lyra Messianica, the Lyra Eucharistica,
and others. Stone accordingly called the little book,
which appeared at Christmas, 1865, by the name of
Lyra Fideliuni.

In this small volume, put forth by a curate who
had only been three years in Holy Orders, were two
hymns which are now familiar everywhere. The
ninth Article of the Creed — The Holy Catholic
Church: The Communion of Saints — was illustrated
by a hymn upon "The Nature of the Universal
Church and the Fellowship of the Saints." The
hymn was The Church's one Foundation. Similarly
the tenth Article, The Forgiveness of Sins, was illus-
trated by a hymn upon "The Remission of Sins."
This was Weary of earth. The other ten hymns,
although one or two of them are to be found in the
hymn-books, have never come into general use, nor
are they likely to do so. Some of them are not
without considerable merit, but nearly all exhibit the
faults from which only the best hymns are exempt.

For, in point of fact, it is one of the rarest things

22 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

in the world to find a really perfect hymn. A certain
poise of mind, a certain holy tact, if one may use
such an expression, is necessary in order to avoid the
pitfalls which beset the hymn-writer's feet. The
common criticism which an educated man will make
upon a hymn is that it is mere doggerel. That is
no doubt too often the case, but then this criticism
does not by any means go all the way. It is true
that one of the first requisites in a hymn is that it
should be the work of a poet, but it is to be
remembered that it is not merely as a poem that a
hymn is to be judged, nor even merely as a religious
poem. Indeed, one of the faults of many hymns is
— though it may sound paradoxical to say so — that
they are too poetical. Sometimes this is seen in an
excessive quaintness of expression, the quaintness
of George Herbert or of Christina Rossetti ; some-
times in the too frequent use of metaphor and simile
and of words and phrases which, however apt and
beautiful in themselves, belong too exclusively to the
domain of poetry.

This may best be seen by an example. No one
had more of the true spirit of the hymn-writer than
Mrs. Alexander. Such hymns as

" There is a green hill far away "

"Jesus calls us o'er the tumult"

have been caught up into the main current of
hymnody. But being herself a true poet and the

WINDSOR 23

wife of a poet, she had the defects of her quahties,

and sometimes would introduce the special language

of poetry where we feel at once that a simpler strain

is needed. Such lines as

" Give us Thy grace to rise above
The glare of this world's smelting-fires "

might be well enough in a religious poem ; they are a
distinct blot in a hymn.

There is a quite opposite fault, which chiefly besets
those hymn-writers whose first aim it is to make the
hymn a vehicle for teaching the great truths of
religion. The hymns of such writers tend to become
so dogmatic as to be nothing else than miniature
treatises of theology. The Latin hymn-writers,
having a language at their command which is un-
equalled in its power of exact and terse expression,
revelled in this sort of composition ; in the greatest
of them there are heights of grandeur and depths of
pathos worthy of Isaiah himself. Unfortunately a
large part of the numerous Latin hymns in our
books are spoiled in the course of translation — which
is indeed an almost impossible process in the case of
a Latin hymn — so that it is hardly fair to charge
them with being cold and prosaic. One of the
greatest of all, the Dies Irae, becomes a shadow only
of the original, for what Trench calls " the solemn
effect of the triple rhyme, which has been likened to
blow following blow of the hammer on the anvil,"
simply cannot be reproduced in English, because we

24 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

have so few trisyllabic rhymes. Many translators
have tried it in more or less current versions, and the
result is of the baldest. Stone was fairly successful
in his translations from Thomas a Kempis, one of
which is included in this selection, but in his original
hymns the truth is that through his anxiety to be
dogmatic he sometimes lost his inspiration.

Yet a third fault is conspicuous in — one is almost
tempted to say — a majority of hymns. That fault is
an excess of sentiment. Now if there is one thing
needful in a hymn it is devotional feeling, the accent
of personal conviction. The writer must be able to
give the tender colouring of emotion to his theme,
whatever that theme may be. But religious emotion,
if not curbed and controlled, may on the one hand
shoot up into unmeaning ecstasy and on the other
descend into feeble sentimentality. Beautiful as is
the Rhythm of St. Bernard, and possibly congruous
as it may have been to the times and the circum-
stances in which it was composed, who can doubt
that it is grotesquely inappropriate to bid a general
congregation to sing —

" For thee, O dear, dear country,
Mine eyes their vigils keep ;
For very love, beholding
Thy happy name they weep."

At the date when Stone began to write, the
Rhythm had been only recently translated into
English by Neale, and the different portions of it —

WINDSOR 25

Brief life is here our portion, feriisalent the golden,
For thee, O dear, dear country — were being sung
everywhere. It is probable that it had a not altogether
favourable effect upon his hymn-writing.

But whatever the flaws to be found in some of
Stone's hymns, their positive merits are very con-
siderable. Their fire and ardour, their tenderness
and reality of devotion, are conspicuous. The two
hymns especially by which he has come to be chiefly
known as a hymn-writer are worthy representatives
of the two great types of hymns — The Church'' s one
Foundation of the objective hymns, the hymns which
sing of the glory of God and of His great purposes
for mankind, Weary of earth of those of a subjective
order, the hymns of personal devotion, in which the
soul pours itself out before its Maker. Both classes
have their prototypes in the Psalms, and no better
praise could be given to these two hymns than to say
they breathe much of the spirit of the Psalmists. In
The Church's one Foundation we seem to hear the
accents of him who wrote —

" God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be re-
moved :
God shall help her, and that right early."

In Weary of earth there is the same cry of self-
abasement which has its most perfect expression in
the Miserere.

It is an interesting fact that Weary of earth, the
main idea of which was taken from a sermon of

26 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

Bishop Jeune's, was written wiiile the author was
suffering from an attack of severe physical pain.
Like the Aleditation in a Night of Pain, which he
wrote in the Charterhouse during the constant suffer-
ing of the last year of his life, it is a testimony to
the sacramental virtue which pain discloses when it
visits a religious nature. It ranks with Abide with me,
d.r\djesu, lover of my soul, as one of those hymns which
have a vis medicatrix about them, and which are not
so much for use in the public worship of the Church
as in the private devotions of her sons and daughters,
and most especially in her ministrations to the sick,
the penitent, and the departing.

" I am personally most thankful," said Stone,
" about Weary of earth, because of the private testi-
monies I have had of its use in bringing home to
individual souls the doctrine of the Atonement. One
such was to this effect : a poor dying woman told a
lady who visited her daily that her favourite verse,
* the lines that comfort me and m.ake me ready and
happy to go,' was the fourth, beginning —

'" It is the voice of Jesus that I hear.'"

It may be added that the comfort which the hymn
gave to another deathbed brought Stone one of his
most constant and valued helpers, who, before un-
known to him, sought him out and became the
devoted friend of his parish and the supporter of
every good work in it.

WINDSOR 27

The hymn written for the Article, " The Holy
Catholic Church : the Communion of Saints," was,
as has already been said. The ClmrcJi's one Founda-
tion. All the twelve hymns had printed against
each line a verse of Holy Scripture. A sound
scriptural groundwork is without doubt an import-
ant essential in a hymn, and a comparison of the
texts out of which the first verse of The ChurcJUs
one Foundation is woven with the verse opposite
them will show how successfully Stone has em-
ployed that groundwork in this the most famous of
his hymns.

"The Church's one Foundation "Other foundation can no
Is Jesus Christ her Lord ; man lay than that is laid, which

is Jesus Christ."

She is His new creation, " Except a man be born of

By water and the Word : water and of the Spirit, he

cannot enter into the Kingdom
of God."

From heaven He came and " Even as Christ also loved

sought her the Church, and gave Himself

To be His holy Bride, for it, that He might sanctify

and cleanse it."

With His own Blood He " The Church of God, which

bought her, He purchased with His own

And for her life He died." Blood."

There were originally two more verses than there
are at present. The third verse, which ran thus, has
been omitted —

28 MEMOIR iW S. J. STONE

"The Church shall never perish !

Her dear Lord to defend,
To guide, sustain, and cherish,

Is with her to the end.
Though there be those who hate her,

And false sons in her pale,
Against or foe or traitor

She ever shall prevail "

and the last two verses have been thrown into one.
They were as follows —

" Yet she on earth hath union

With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion

With those whose rest is won.
With all her sons and daughters

Who, by the Master's Hand
Led through the deathly waters,

Repose in Eden-land.

*' O happy ones and holy !

Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly.

On high may dwell with Thee :
There, past the border mountains,

Where in sweet vales the Bride
With Thee by living fountains

For ever shall abide ! "

The hymn has undoubtedly gained by compres-
sion. In its altered shape it was included in the first
Appendix to Hymns A ncient and Modern, which was
published in 1868, set to Sebastian Wesley's tune
Aurelia, which was written for it and is now indis-
solubly connected with it.

WINDSOR 29

The Churches one Foundation soon sprang into
universal notice. It was sung on December 23rd,
1869, at the enthronement of Bishop Wilberforce at
Winchester, when the Times, quoting the second and
third verses, observed that " the words, though drawn
from one of our oldest collections," had "a singular
appropriateness to the present occasion." This very
complimentary error on the part of the Times gives
the key to the success of the hymn. The hymn said
what English Church people had been learning for
some time past to feel about the Church, after genera-
tions of forgetfulness. Now, when it was said, and
everybody found themselves singing the words, they
came home with the force of familiarity, because they
were recognised as the expression of what had been
for so long the inarticulate faith of multitudes of
people, who had only been waiting for a vates sacer
to put it into language.

These two hymns are the utterance of Stone's
dearest and deepest convictions. He was, before all
things, a devoted Churchman, caring far more for the
Church than for any party in it, and regarding the
Church of England with all and more than all the
reverential filial feeling which he manifested towards
his parents, his school, and his university. The other
great characteristic of his religious life was his in-
tense personal devotion to his Saviour. He would
constantly quote the passage from Bishop Ken's will
which has been adopted by Church Bells as its

30 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

motto : " The Communion of the Church of Eng-
land as it stands distinguished from all Papal and
Puritan innovation, and as it adheres to the doctrine
of the Cross."

So these two hymns represent the two great
aspects of the Church — the Church as seen in her
pastoral relation, in her cure of souls ; and the
Church as St. Paul and St. John saw her, the
"Jerusalem which is above . . . the mother of us
all," " the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down
from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned
for her husband." Weary of earth has whispered its
message of hope and of healing in the ear of many
a labouring and heavy-laden soul, while the ringing
lines of The Church's one Foundation have kindled an
ideal of the Church in ten thousands of hearts all
over the world. They caused the Bishop of Nelson
to apostrophise their author in these terms : —

" Now in the desert, now upon the main,
In mine and forest, and on citied plain;
From Lambeth's towers to far New Zealand coast,
Bard of the Church, thy blast inspires the host."

The hymn will remain his best visible monument.

These years at Windsor also saw most of the
poems written on which Stone's claim must rest
to be numbered amongst our religious poets. For
his verse, even when it was not actually sacred verse,
never strayed far into other fields. A number of the
poems were directly inspired by incidents in his paro-

WINDSOR 31

chial work ; in most of them a religious vein is ap-
parent.

Some of his first poems were the Idylls of Deare
Childe, two of which will be found here. Deare Childe
itself was suggested by seeing the words on a tomb-
stone in a country churchyard in Buckinghamshire.
They would appear to have been copied from a stone
in Westminster Abbey of two hundred years ago.
Morning Robert is a Wordsworthian portrait of old
age. It was taken from life, the subject being an
old man who was gatekeeper of the cemetery where
Stone's little mission church was situated. The
name " Morning Robert " was given him in allusion
to his fancy for rising every morning in all weathers
and seating himself beneath an oak tree to see the
day break. The Knight of Intercession, which served
as title poem to his first published volume, owed its
origin in outline to a story of Whyte Melville's,
which however Stone altered, both " in detail and
significance."

In 1866 he won the Oxford Sacred Poem, on
Sinai, but had the ill-fortune to be subsequently
disqualified by a technicality which the University
authorities had overlooked. Lyra Fidelium had been
warmly received by the press, and Stone's name be-
came increasingly widely known by occasional poems
and hymns which saw the light from time to time,
especially by his clever and humorous Ratiottalistic
Chicken, which, first published in Home Words, was

32 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

afterwards printed separately and had an enormous
sale, being even translated into French under the
title of Le oussitt Ratiotialiste, His first collected
volume, The Knight of Intercession, was not published
until after he had left Windsor, by which time there
was a large public ready to welcome it, as is proved
by the fact that he lived to see it go through six or
seven editions.

In estimating the worth of a hymn it is necessary,
as has already been remarked, that the critic should
remind himself — or, indeed, in some cases inform
himself — as to what it is wherein the virtues of a
hymn consist. A hymn is something sui generis,
a particular form of composition under laws and
restrictions of its own. But with regard to a
religious poem the case stands otherwise. That
must conform to the ordinary standards by which
all poetry is to be judged, and it will live or die
according as it does so. No amount of religious
feeling will ensure a poem's salvation unless it also
possesses the grace of right poetic inspiration. But
at the same time it is to be remembered that the
muse sings in a thousand tones, and that the critic
may easily condemn a poem because his own sym-
pathies are too narrow, because the conception which
he has framed of poetry is not sufficiently catholic.
And where the catholicity of the ordinary lover of
poetry is perhaps most apt to fall short is where
the religious element is in question. Many people

WINDSOR 33

appreciate Shakespeare who are blind to the sub-
limity of the Paradiso ; are alive to the charm of
Herrick, while they turn a deaf ear to the notes of
George Herbert and Henry Vaughan ; can quote the
Dream of Fair Women, but have hardly read the
Dream of Gerontins. Yet what is this after all but
to say that religious poetry is only to be appreciated
by religiously minded people? To these Stone's
work has appealed from the first, and no doubt, in
the first instance, because it was religious more than
because it was poetical. It is from a belief that
many of his poems still retain their value that the
present selection is made. It is Time only, that
incorruptible judge, which can decide whether they
contain enough of the vital essence of poetry to
make them classic.

Twenty-five years later a second volume of poems
came out under the name of Lays of lona. The
character of St. Columba and the romance asso-
ciated with lona had very early taken hold of
Stone's imagination. The poem St. Columb of lona
dates from Windsor days. In later life he was more
and more drawn to the subject and to the place
itself, for he spent several of his holidays on lona.
The result was a long poem in the Spenserian metre,
which he called Lyric of Lona : Past, and To Be. It
is in seven cantos, divided by songs after the manner
of Tennyson's Princess. His design was to show
that " the cradle of one branch of the Catholic

34 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

Church is to be identified with the two holy islands
of lona and Lindisfarne, and with the names of
St. Columba and St. Aidan and their spiritual sons,
more than with those of St. Augustine and his
followers." The poem contains some fine lines and
images, but still is not altogether a success. Stone
was no doubt drawn in the first instance to Columba
by a sense of spiritual affinity. The affectionate
and impulsive Celtic lad, athletic and ruddy, with
his curling brown hair and kind grey eyes — for so
Columba is described to us — with his skill in poetry
and his love of animals, with a temper originally
quick and hasty, but chastened and subdued by his
monastic life until he became a great winner of souls,
indeed resembled in many ways the subject of this
memoir. Stone, very characteristically, became so
carried away by his affection for Columba and so
enamoured of lona and the Scotic missionaries, that,
although he tries his hardest to do justice to the
work of the Roman missionaries, he cannot help
ascribing almost all that is good and sound in the
Church of England to the Celtic spirit, which he
is even able to perceive in the Reformation !

This volume also gathered up his later poetical
writing, including the sonnets and poems which were
inspired by his work in the East End and the hymns
which he had written from time to time, some of
which again were written especially for his people
at Haggerston, others for special occasions, such as
the Jubilee of Queen Victoria,

WINDSOR 35

During his last long illness at the Charterhouse he
wrote the beautiful little Meditation in a Night of
Pain, the last poem which came from his pen.

Thus the poetic spirit remained unquenched in
him through all his long years of heavy and anxious
clerical work, and it contributed in no small measure
to his spiritual influence. It is now time to give
some account of what that influence was.

Ill

ST. PAUL'S, HAGGERSTON

1870-1890

IN 1870 Stone left Windsor for East London,
which was to be the scene of his work for just
twenty years. He went to act as curate to his
father, who was the first vicar of St. Paul's, Hagger-
ston, a parish carved out of St. Leonard's, Shore-
ditch, and lying to the north of it. There were no
well-to-do people there at all. Numbers were em-
ployed in the City or other parts of London in offices,
shops, or trades. But a great many more, and these
the poorest, worked at home ; some at the different
processes of bootmaking, others at one or another of
the extraordinary crafts which are carried on in the
East End. Thus at one time a maker of clay pipes
and a maker o{ papier-mache dolls' heads lived almost
next door to each other. The population was about
7,000, and Stone was fond of saying that you could
walk right round the parish in sixteen minutes. The
poorest street of all is marked black in Mr. Booth's
maps of the poverty of London, black expressing

ST. PAUL'S, HAGGERSTON 37

the lowest stratum of all. In this street the popula-
tion was constantly migratory, and used almost
entirely to change — in many houses two or three
times over — in the course of three or four years.

During his father's incumbency the church, schools,
and vicarage were built and various kinds of work
set on foot. The church was the first built by Mr.,
afterwards Sir Arthur Blomfield, and with the school
and vicarage formed a compact block of buildings.
Blomfield gave an offering of ^100 — a considerable
portion of his fee — as the firstfruits of his professional
earnings, towards the completion of the church, and
Stone would always refer to this fine act as the
source of no small part of Blomfield's after success
as an architect.

For four years Stone helped his father to carry out
the organisation of the young parish, the Evangelical
vicar and the High Church curate working harmoni-
ously side by side, after which the old man retired to
the Sussex village of Alfriston, well known for its
fourteenth-century vicarage (which has since become
the property of the National Trust), and Stone was
appointed by Bishop Jackson to succeed him. He
had two years before this published his volume The
Knight of Intercession, and in the same year had
written the hymn for the Thanksgiving for the Prince
of Wales' recovery, which was sung in St. Paul's
Cathedral on February 27th, 1872. His name had thus
become very generally known throughout the country.

38 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

However, it is not of his poetical but of his paro-
chial work that we are now to speak. And his work
as a parish priest was — who but One can say whether
less or more valuable than his work as a poet? It is
a common thing to hear expressions of regret when
a scholar or a man of letters exchanges the student's
life for active practical work. Lamentations were
uttered when Lightfoot went to Durham, and so
deprived the Church of the completion of his com-
mentary on St. Paul's Epistles. But nobody who
knows what he did for the diocese of Durham would
for one moment endorse this feeling. So it may be
that had Stone lived a quiet country life he might
have given us other hymns as fine as The Churches
one Foundation. But nobody who knew anything
of his work at St. Paul's, Haggerston, would grudge
the loss to the hymnody of the Church.

To this work Stone came in the full plenitude of
his powers. He was just thirty-five,

" Nel mezzo di cammin di nostra vita,"

in vigorous health and full of high spirits. His
athletic build and active movements showed the
vital force which resided in him. He was at this
time of medium height, he had deep brown eyes set
in a fresh-coloured face, a firm nose, brown curling
beard and moustache, with hair of a darker shade,
brushed back with a sort of decision from a well-
shaped forehead. There was an air of refinement.

ST. PAUKS, HAGGERSTON 39

an indefinable suggestion of cultivation and of Oxford
about him, which he always preserved in the midst of
his hardest work in the unloveliest surroundings.
And there was set upon all this the unmistakable
stamp of the parish priest.

The outer man was a true index of the inner.
Stone was indubitably and unfailingly of the san-
guine temperament. His vigour of body was matched
by a vigorous mind. He was obstinate to a fault in
the pursuit of his objects, and he had an immense
power of work. He had the sensitiveness and also the
quickness and impulsiveness of the poet and the self-
confidence of the idealist. He overflowed naturally
with love, and his intensely religious mind turned
that love into two channels, along which it constantly
ran, the one of perpetual devotion to Christ, the other
of unfailing attachment to his people.

His health was robust, until with years of work his
nerves gradually became worn out. But in his best
days there was a breeziness and go about him which
were very infectious. He was full of fun and of
good stories, and when he started off for a holiday
was as young as the youngest. Whenever he could
get a day he would carry off some of his parishioners
for a fishing excursion, either in the Lea or in more
distant waters, and for years he kept up an eight on
the Lea amongst his elder lads. He used, in the days
before bicycles, to thread the London traffic on a
tricycle, enjoying the tonic of steering in a crowded

40 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

thoroughfiire. The vicarage itself bore witness to

this side of his nature. The drawing-room was full

of cases of stuffed birds and fishes. For a long time

he had an old brown Irish retriever, Sancho by name,

whose declining years he watched over with the most

tender and assiduous care. When at last his end

came he was laid to rest in the little piece of garden

at the back of the vicarage. Stone immortalised his

memory by the sonnet on p. 220, and by the following

epitaph : —

" In the centre of this lawn lies

SANCHO

a gentleman in all but humanity ; thoroughbred,
single in mind, true of heart ; for seventeen years
the faithful and affectionate friend of his master,
who loved him, and now for him 'faintly trusts
the larger Hope ' contained, it may be, in Romans
viii. 19-21.

He died April 2b, 1883."

This he caused to be cut on a stone let into the
wall of the adjacent school, where the Virginia creeper
managed; in spite of East End fogs, to throw its
trailing tendrils over it.

His main holiday, year after year for forty years,
was always taken in a most lovely spot in Shrop-
shire. His friend, the Rev. Donald Carr, was Vicar
of Woolstaston, a tiny village of some eighty people
which nestles in a nook on the slopes of the Long
Mynd hills between Church Stretton and Shrewsbury.
Lovely as these hills are in summer, in winter they

ST. PAUL'S, HAGGERSTON 41

are dangerous travelling. On January 29th, 1865,
Mr. Carr was caught in a snowstorm when crossing
them, and spent " a night in the snow " — ^a title which
he afterwards gave to a little book in which he
described his adventure. Thither as soon as June
came in everyone knew that he would betake himself
for a week or two's trout fishing. Thither, when the
dusty summer had exhausted the air of the sultry
Haggerston streets, and exhausted too, for a time,
the power of the vicar, his parishioners knew that
he would repair for another week or two's partridge
shooting. There soon came to be a " Haggerston
gorse" at Woolstaston, and many long days he spent
with rod or gun in those happy hunting-grounds
either alone or with his friends. He writes of one of
his shooting expeditions that it was " a day to be
remembered (as the old Romances say) ' right
joyously.' "

From these holidays he would return with a tre-
mendous fund of energy. His power of work was
enormous. For many years he would write letters
up to 3.0 a.m. for the late post — until, to the relief
of his friends, the hour of collection was changed
to midnight — and would be down to breakfast next
morning at eight. He would throw himself with
gusto into a fight, for he certainly did like, perhaps
because he was a soldier's grandson,

" To drink delight of battle with [his] peers,"
as much as most men. But it was not only for the

42 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

joy of fighting : the causes he fought for were very
dear to him, and he was prepared to make, and made,
the greatest sacrifices for them, just as his ancestors
had done for the RoyaHst cause in the days of
Charles I. The times and the circumstances were
different, but the chivalrous spirit was still there.
Again and again he came into conflict with the
London School Board, one part}' in which made it
its avowed policy to introduce a system of universal
board schools. More than once sites were scheduled
for board schools close to the St. Paul's Schools, and
when that happened Stone was in a moment off on
the warpath. Bishops and statesmen would be bom-
barded with letters, the Education Department and
the School Board itself would be personally inter-
viewed, and he would allow no one any rest until the
matter was decided — and decided time after time in
his favour. If it came to a decree from the Depart-
ment that he should make some alteration in the
schools involving considerable outlay, he would write
whole sheaves of begging letters, till those who ad-
dressed his appeals for him would tell how the neigh-
bouring pillar-boxes were choked with their volume.
Again and again he staved off the advent of the board
schools, and managed to keep them at such a distance
from his own schools as to prevent their draining
them of their numbers, as the lower fees which their
access to the rates enabled them to charge would
very speedily have done. For though in the days

ST. PAUL'S, HAGGERSTON 43

before free education some of the better-class parents
preferred to pay the higher fee at St. Paul's Schools
for the sake of the Church teaching, and also for the
sake of the refinement which was to be found there,
of course the majority wished to send their children
where they had least to pay. After one such victory
over the Board, Stone came home in the very highest
spirits, having picked up on his way home some snipe
and some Smyrna figs, on which he bade his curates
— who lived in the vicarage — to regale with him as at
a bump-supper ! It is not surprising that one of the
keenest supporters of the Board School system spoke
of him as "the most tyrannical priest in East London."
Whenever there was a School Board election he was
always to the fore with letters to the local papers
and diligent canvassing of his parish. This vigour
of character enabled him to keep up his schools
when many another would have let them go, and
to succeed in enlarging them until they held eight
hundred children. This was done by sheer hard
work in collecting money.

He also built in the same way in the poorest
quarter of the parish a beautiful little mission church,
with a tiny chancel separated from the body of the
church by a pointed arch of brick with good mouldings,
behind which a heavy curtain was dropped when the
place was used for mothers' meetings or for Sunday-
school — a Sunday-school where the boys would
come in summer in their shirt sleeves, and the girls

44 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

were hardly less wild than the boys, so that the task
of exercising much control over them on the annual
summer excursion into the country was much like
trying to lead young leopards on a silken chain.
This fresh development of work, together with the
maintenance of that already in existence, meant a
constant burden of financial anxiety. It is this strain
which wears out so many of our finest parish priests.
And in the end it wore Stone out.

For alongside of all this force and energy there
was the sensitive poetic temperament, which, just
because it keenly felt and sympathised, had such
power to elevate and to inspire. He saw poetry
everywhere, and carried a poetical atmosphere about
with him, so that he even managed to create it in his
East End parish. Like the setting sun, his imagina-
tion gilded and glorified common things and common
natures. He brought, just as did his friend Bishop
How, a breath of the country with him into the East
End. Bishop How came from his lovely Shropshire
parish to be Bishop of Bedford in 1879. Haggerston
was not at first included in the Bishop's special dis-
trict, as it was later, or we should no doubt have had
a portrait of Stone from his pen amongst his series of
sonnets entitled Jkfy Clergy. Bishop How always had
much of the country atmosphere about him, and it
came like water in the desert to the dweller in the
East End. The country, especially in its wilder and
more romantic aspects, naturally appealed to Stone.

ST. PAUL'S, HAGGERSTON 45

He travelled little, and was only once or twice on the
Continent, but every year he found fresh inspiration
in the Shropshire hills, for his holidays there were
not only dedicated to sport but also produced poetry
as well. London, too, had an unending fascination
for him, and he would not have wished to live or die
away from it. He delighted in going through the
silent streets at night, and especially when there had
been a sudden fall of snow, which, as yet unmarked
by wheel or footstep, hid with its " saintly veil of
maiden white" everything ugly and foul. In his
later years lona became a sort of fairy isle to him.
He went there again and again, usually staying in a
very rough little inn, but later on with the Bishop of
Argyll and the Isles in the house which he had built
there. To the little chapel of the house Stone gave
an altar-cross and candles, and he was made intensely
happy by being able to celebrate the Eucharist in the
isle of saints. He rejoiced in the wild scenery, the
bare rocks and the waves, and grew to be inspired
with almost a worship for Columba and his work, as
is to be seen in his last volume of poems, the Lays of
lona.

He brought poetry to bear as an educative force in
his parish. Amongst his workers he found many
whom he was able to inspire with something of his
own love for the poets of his choice, for Tennyson
and the Christian Year and Mrs. Browning. He had
a great belief in poetry as a valuable instrument of

46 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

elevation and refinement, especially when united with
Church teaching, on the refining influence of which
he would constantly insist. He gave theoretical ex-
pression to this idea in a paper he once wrote on The
Connexioft between Poetry and Church Revival, and the
practical outcome of it was to be seen in many of
the band of workers which he gathered round him.
Added to this there were his own hymns and poems,
which were largely interwoven with his parish work
and had much influence upon it. Did anyone of note
in the life of the parish die, he would embalm their
memory in a sonnet ; did his teachers or his guild
need a hymn, the vicar wrote it. It is easily seen
that this was a great source of influence in his parish.
But his poetical temperament had other issues than
in writing. It blended with the highest spiritual
qualities in his nature and gave them a good part
of their effect upon his people. The result was seen
in his chivalry, in his idealism, and in his love of
souls. No one was more ready than he to champion
the oppressed or to give the fallen a helping hand.
He would spare neither pains nor time nor money
in such a cause. Anyone who claimed his help found
that he gave it with both hands. His generosity was
amazing ; he was ready to give away all he had, and
instance after instance might be quoted of the
pecuniary help he gave to people, some of whom
had no sort of claim upon him. Cases which others
dismissed as impossible he was willing to take up ;

ST. PAUKS, HAGGERSTON 47

when others had despaired he was the last to aban-
don hope. His care for women and children was
one of his most notable characteristics. In a woman
or a child there was something which irresistibly
appealed to him. It has been already said how
specially he loved his infants' school. At Haggers-
ton, if he visited it near closing time he would beg
the mistress to keep the children back for a few
minutes until he got away, for otherwise he knew
that legs, arms, pockets, and even shoulders would be
besieged by the little creatures. On one occasion a
somewhat harsh inspector had visited the infant
school, and when Stone entered he found the teachers
reduced to tears and general gloom prevailing. Out
rushed the vicar, and in a few minutes returned laden
with two hundred and fifty bags of sweets, which he
proceeded to distribute amongst the children. Such
a vicar was obviously irresistible.

His chivalrous loyalty to his people was warmly
reciprocated ; it was of a piece with his loyalty to
his Church, his Queen, and his parents. It was in
part due to his unquenchable idealism. Idealism
has, as the world is always forward to point out, a
weak side, and there were those who were quite
ready to say that Stone was so blind that he got
terribly imposed upon. This, no doubt, was some-
times the case. But if it was, the harm which came
in some instances from his taking geese for swans
was very far outweighed by the good which resulted

48 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

in many others, for Stone had an unique power of
setting before people an ideal standard. He idealised
the Church, and he made people see the grandeur
and beauty of his own conception. He idealised his
parish, and brought his communicants to feel their
relation to him and to each other and to their Lord,
and to realise in practice the meaning of Christian
brotherhood. But, above all, he had the power of
seeing the ideal in the most unpromising natures,
of seeing what by grace they might become, and,
by imparting to them his own vision, of making
them rise to heights which they never thought them-
selves capable of attaining. Where his idealism
acted on sympathetic natures it acted as the most
potent stimulus. By appealing to their spiritual
imaginations, he taught them to glorify the grey
monotony and dulness of their lives. What he most
admired in character was the union of strength and
tenderness. He exhibited this union in his own
nature, and he called forth the same combination of
qualities in many others.

From what has been said it will be sufficiently clear
that Stone's great power as a parish priest lay in
dealing with individuals. He had, indeed, a real and
deep love of souls, and this was the outcome of his
fervent love of his Master, a love to which he would
give constant expression in his sermons, as also in his
hymns and poems. " Who loved me and gave Him-
self for me" were words which were constantly on

ST. PAUUS, HAGGERSTON 49

his lips. A personal love for Christ was what he
would hold up to his people as the heart and centre
of a Christian life. It was the centre of his own,
and it meant for him not only personal devotion to
a Saviour, but a like devotion to those He came to
save. His incessant care for an individual was some-
thing very remarkable. In sickness he would throw
into his visits all the intensity he possessed, and if
the sick person were one of his workers he would
be untiring in his ministrations. In one case where
one of his teachers was for some time lying between
life and death he used not only to pay a pastoral
visit once or twice a day, but would also make a
point of calling to inquire for a last message between
one and two o'clock in the morning as he went out
to post his letters. In fact, for his teachers and
workers he showed the most solicitous care. He
would, for instance, remember their birthdays and
mark them by some small gift. " I know," said one
of them, " that almost every book or picture I may
wish to show to a visitor is a present from my vicar."
In the case of the day-school teachers he would take
care to tell their successes to parents and visitors,
and he was always desirous to do everything he
could to inspire and encourage them in what, with
all its rewards and advantages, must always remain
a difficult and monotonous profession.

His influence over individuals became in Stone's
hands the chief weapon in his attack on the masses

50 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

of his large parish. It may be said that, broadly
speaking, there are two methods of working a parish,
the method of working from the centre to the
circumference, or else from the circumference to the
centre. In some parishes the chief effort will be
concentrated in gathering a devout band of com-
municants whose influence shall be as leaven, and
from amongst whom the workers in the parish and
the teachers in the schools shall be recruited. In
others effort will be rather directed towards filling
the church and the mission rooms by such means
as open-air services and house-to-house visiting
combined with popular services and sermons, and
then to gradually forming out of this general con-
gregation the inner band of communicants. The
ideal parish, if such there be, would perfectly com-
bine both these methods. Every parish priest will
obviously desire to adopt them both, only one man
will naturally give himself more, as he feels a greater
gift for it, to direct evangelistic work, another more
to the task of instructing and building up the faithful
and to working through them upon others. Now
Stone's great strength lay in "confirming the faithful."
Browning's well-known line —

"Tis the taught already that profit by teaching" —

might very well have served as a motto for him.
Not that he had no influence in reclaiming the
prodigal — in some cases he had most remarkable

ST. PAUUS, HAGGERSTON 51

influence— but his real forte lay in imparting to the
elder brother of the parable, to him who never had
strayed from the right way, all the treasures of his
Father's house. He was, in short, first of all the
pastor and only after that the evangelist.

This was seen in his parochial methods and also in
his teaching. Curates, churchwardens and sidesmen,
lay readers, day and Sunday-school teachers, and the
rest of the workers and Church officials he bound to
himself in the closest possible way. For his curates
and his day-school teachers there was week by week
a short devotional service. For the Sunday-school
teachers there was the same every month. Then
there was a Church Society and Guild with frequent
meetings and a rule of Communion. Thus he was
brought into constant touch with all the communi-
cants.

Of his care for the day-school teachers something
has already been said. They reflected his influence
in the school. He pledged them to bring unbaptised
children to Baptism, so that from the infants' school
upwards the children were in the atmosphere of the
Church and under the influence of the religious tone
which pervaded the schools. Thus the schools for
which he fought so often and so manfully became the
seed-bed of the Church, and in them many sons
indeed grew up " as the young plants," many
daughters became " as the polished corners of the
temple." When Stone accepted the living he nailed

52 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

his colours to the mast with respect to the schools.
" I must tell you plainly," he said to a public meeting
of parishioners, " if I cannot carry on the schools I
will not give them up to the School Board, but I will
give up my charge of the parish. I say most
solemnly, and I make the vow before God — believing
that any clergyman who with his eyes open gives up
his schools to the Board and puts them out of the
protection of the Church, the one true keeper of the
Word, the true testifier of the Incarnation, is putting
an offence in the way of these little ones from coming
to Christ, and that it were therefore ' better for him
that a millstone were hanged about his neck and that
he were cast into the depths of the sea ' — believing
that I say, May God do so to me, and more also, if I
give up my schools, or so depart from my interpreta-
tion of the truth of the Church of Christ."

The schools were the nursery ground. From them
he drew the majority of his Confirmation candidates.
Confirmation was, in Stone's view, the great oppor-
tunity of the parish priest. Then, if ever, the bias
was to be given which should direct the whole future
life. He regarded Confirmation not so much as a
turning-point — though that it must be in the first
instance — as a new starting-point, the beginning of
the communicant life. To his classes he would
almost literally compel the lads and girls to come in,
not necessarily, by any means, to be confirmed, but
in order to be instructed, and very likely after that to

ST. PAUKS, HAGGERSTON 53

be put back for another year. The preparation
lasted at least a couple of months, and each candi-
date, besides the instruction in class, was most
carefully dealt with individually. Then, after Con-
firmation, there were the Guild and Church Society
ready to receive them. As time went on he saw
many weddings between members of the Church
Society — " communicant," as he used to say, " wed-
ding communicant" — and a new generation of
children born in the very bosom of the Church,
beginning, as their parents had done, in the babies'
room of the infant school.

All this, it will be said, is to be found in many
parishes, and it may thankfully be admitted that a
good deal of it is. But there can be few parishes
in which so marked a family feeling exists as existed
in St. Paul's, Haggerston. Stone was exceedingly
open about himself, and would tell his people many
intimate details of his life which most men would
not talk about even to those nearest to them. But
he meant what he was saying when he called his
people "my sons" or "my daughters." He always
regarded them as standing in this spiritual relation to
himself One little sign of it was his habit of calling
even quite old people by their Christian names. He
told his people all about himself and his doings, and
in return he expected a similar unreserve and open-
ness on their side, and he got it. Stone was always
entirely human, and his people, living on the terms

54 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

which they did with him, thoroughly knew his weak-
nesses as well as his strength, and they only loved
him the more for them. In this way there came to
be established in a very striking form between vicar
and congregation that beautiful and sacred pastoral
relationship which every parish priest must desire to
see existing in his parish. Stone became in a truly
Pauline sense the father of his people.

The congregation of St. Paul's, Haggerston, was
mainly, in fact almost entirely, a congregation of
communicants, and at the great festivals several
hundreds would come to the altar. Nothing, per-
haps, was a better evidence of Stone's influence
than the two hundred or more who would com-
municate very early in the morning, before their
day's work, on Ascension Day. It was a sight not
to be forgotten. One of the striking features of a
festival celebration was always the presence of three
or four blind people, each of whom would be led up
to the altar and back by a friendly hand.

It was to a congregation of this kind that Stone
addressed himself in his sermons. It has been said
with much truth that each preacher has his own
particular audience, and will appeal to one particular
class of hearers. This may not be all the truth, but
no doubt most preachers cannot get into touch with
every congregation, and certainly it is only the con-
gregation which is in perfect sympathy with the
preacher which will draw out what is best in him.

ST. PAULAS, HAGGERSTON 55

This was the case at St. Paul's, Haggerston. Stone
far preferred talking to his own people to preaching
elsewhere. He had no desire at all for fame as a
preacher. His sermons as a general rule were for
the most part addressed to those who were already
taught in the Faith. They made for edification
rather than conversion. Yet, on the other hand, he
had a great power of drawing people out of luke-
warm and conventional churchmanship into fervour
and reality, as, for instance, of inducing elder people
to offer themselves for Confirmation — a step which
means so much when it is taken in mature life. And
on a special occasion, as on Good Friday or at the
midnight service on New Year's Eve, he knew how
to appeal with the most telling force to " them that
are without," and he used to say in reply to those
who found fault with midnight services as tending to
unhealthy sensationalism, that it was nearly always the
case that one at any rate of those who had strayed
into the church that evening was permanently won.

His intensity of conviction it was which gave him
this power, and it was this same intensity which held
his congregation attentive for sometimes forty or fifty
minutes. In his exposition of Scripture he had great
power of drawing out the depths of spiritual mean-
ing in a passage. Sometimes, indeed, the sermon
would be merged in a meditation. His poetry
asserted itself in full force in his preaching, and
would sometimes move him to great eloquence. But

56 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

it was usually seen in his choice or presentment of
a subject. Thus he would frequently take some
hymn or poem and comment upon it. In a volume of
his Parochial Sermons, which has been published since
his death, there is a sermon on "November." In
another sermon he quaintly compares the company
of All Saints to a great picture-gallery, admission to
which is gained by payment of the three coins of
Faith, Hope, and Love. But he was never merely
eloquent or merely poetical. Underneath there was
always burning that flame of personal love for Jesus
Christ which the dullest hearer could not fail to see
and feel.

A word must be said of one branch of work which
was carried on in connexion with his parish. Stone
inherited from his father a deep interest in God's
ancient people, the Jews, and for many years the
Rev. M. Rosenthal, now Vicar of St. Mark's, White-
chapel, whose self-denying life-work amongst the
Jews of East London has come to be generally
known in the Church of England, was licensed to
him as his curate. It was a strange sight to see the
boys' schoolroom filled with a frowsy crowd of un-
kempt Polish Jews, singing in Yiddish, Lord, I hear
of showers of blessing : it was a still stranger sight
to see an adult baptism, when the converts would be
followed into church by a fierce-eyed, muttering crowd
of their fellows, who would threaten acts of personal
violence alike to priests and converts, threats which,

^Ri

ST. PAUL'S, HAGGERSTON 57

happily, they seldom if ever managed to put into
practice. Strangest and most moving of all it was
to be present at a choral Hebrew Eucharist, when
one seemed, as it were, to be hearing the Church
of Jerusalem in the first days lifting up " their voice
with one accord" in praise of the Crucified. This
Jewish work, which had its headquarters at St. Paul's,
Haggerston — though there were few, if any, Jews
living within the limits of the parish — made, as might
be expected, a deep impression upon the parishioners.

So for twenty years Stone laboured in the East
End. He refused every offer of work elsewhere, in-
cluding a colonial bishopric, and every year drew
him closer to his people, who indeed showed them-
selves not unworthy of their parish priest. "The
Church folk of East London," he wrote in the preface
to his last volume of poems, " are among the noblest
of the sons and daughters of the Church, not only
as regards the much endurance and long patience
of their lives, their sincerity, high-mindedness and
courage, their freedom from self-indulgence and in-
dolence on the one hand and from narrowness and
stolidity on the other . . . but also because of their
keen and animated interest in all that concerns their
Mother in Christ, and their consecrated zeal for His
sake in her service."

In the case of a man like Stone, whose power lay
so much in the strong personal ties by which he
bound his people to him, it may be asked whether,

58 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

when those ties were relaxed by his leaving the
parish, the result was not that the congregation was
dispersed. This is the weak point of some ministries,
but it was not so at St. Paul's, Ilaggerston. Stone's
successor, the Rev. H. W. Goodhart, a man of a beau-
tiful nature though of quite a different type, wrote
thus after Stone's death, which took place ten years
after he left the parish : " You may have thought
that his influence here was not felt so greatly since
he went from here. Yet, even though he had left, he
had so influenced the lives of those who came in
contact with him, that that influence has been handed
on through them to others, and his name is as much
known here, I believe, as ever it was." That some
part of this was due to the influence of Mr. Goodhart
himself — who also was called early to his rest only a
few months later — cannot be doubted ; but his words
are a strong witness to the fact that Stone attached
people not merely to himself, but also through him-
self to his Master.

All this twenty years' work — " work which," wrote
Temple (then Bishop of London), with that economy of
commendation which was more eloquent than another
man's elaborate praise, " few men could have done as
you have done it " — had left its mark upon him, and
he was fast breaking down in health, and indeed there
were threatenings of an utter nervous collapse, when
in 1890 he was presented by the Lord Chancellor to
the Rectory of All Hallows', London Wall.

IV
ALL HALLOWS', LONDON WALL

1890-1900

A LL HALLOWS', London Wall, is a small City
JL\. church a few hundred yards from Broad Street
and Liverpool Street stations. It is not a new
church, but it is a dingy brick building with classic
tower of the time of George II. The ugliness of
its exterior is, however, relieved by one or two trees
which stand in its strip of churchyard, and are as
refreshing to the eye as the tree immortalised by
Wordsworth, which happily still stands in Wood
Street, Cheapside. The church is built on the site
of a part of London Wall, in the street of that
name, and its octagonal vestry marks the shape of
a bastion of the wall. Though the present building
is only Georgian, there was a church on the same
site from very early times.

One of the first things the new rector discovered
were some most precious churchwardens' accounts,
which were lying hid in a coffer in the vestry, and
which were found actually to date back to the reign

6o MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

of Henry IV. They are written on paper, and the
writing is usually beautifully clear. They contain
many interesting details, and amongst much else
there are references to one " Symon the anker,"
whose cell occupied the site of the present vestry.
This anchorite was an M.A. of Oxford, a man of
means, who made many and liberal gifts to the
church and also left money to it in his will. He was
the author of A Treatise on the Fruites of Redemp-
tion, a copy of which is to be found in the British
Museum. These meditations are most simple and
spiritual addresses, probably preached during Lent,
and afterwards printed, as he says, in English, for
the sake of the ignorant. He tells us that the book
had been " overseen " and approved by the Bishop of
London, and he concludes the treatise thus : " If
there are any," he says, " who have been comforted
by these simple words — then, let them pray for the
soul of the wretched Symon, anker of London
Wall."

This queer little church, packed away amongst
huge blocks of offices and warehouses, had fallen
on evil days. It was dark, musty, and depressing,
and might well be thought to afford an unanswerable
argument for those who inveigh against the useless-
ness of City churches and are loud in their demand
for their abolition. Indeed, it had only barely escaped
destruction, and as its demolition had come to be
regarded as merely a question of time, very few repairs

ALL HALLO WS\ LONDON WALL 6i

had been done of late years, and it now presented,
both without and still more within, an appearance of
the most sombre and unrelieved gloom.

The new rector, therefore, had to "solve the
problem of the City church," and the solutions which
he attempted are of much interest. The first thing,
obviously, was to take the interior in hand. This
he did with his usual thoroughness. A good architect
was called in, and the church was found to contain
much of that excellent English Renaissance work
which, now that we have got rid of the idea that
everything else than Gothic is profane, is seen to
lend itself to reverent and artistic treatment. There
had never been gas in the church, and so the fine
old spider chandeliers for thirty candles were found,
when cleaned, to be in excellent condition, and were
easily adapted for electric light. The three-decker
pulpit and the high pews were cut down and the
wood used for panelling all round the church.
Soft and harmonious colour was introduced, a digni-
fied altar placed in the little apse with its honey-
combed ceiling, and the altarpiece, which represents
the healing of St. Paul's blindness, a good copy
by Dance of an Italian picture, carefully cleaned and
restored. Stone spent upon this restoration more
than a year's income of the living, and not being
able to depend on private means, was contented to
live during that time without a home of his own.

It remained to make the church a spiritual temple

62 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

in tlic heart of the City. Stone tried to do this in
three especial ways.

First of all it was to be a sanctuary, newly beauti-
fied, warmed, and, when necessary, lighted. Its doors
stood open all day. It soon came to be visited
by numbers of people, who would enter the church,
some for a few moments of quiet prayer, some for
just a rest, some simply out of curiosity. Few
people would believe how many drift in from the
currents of traffic which are always setting through
the City into such a haven as this. A record was
kept at All Hallows', and it was found that in one
year a most surprising number of people had in this
way visited the church. Whatever the motive which
drew them thither, the mere fact of such a sanctuary
being open through the day for passing feet to enter
goes far to justify the continued existence of a City
church.

Then there was the task of making it more really
a house of prayer than before. The circumstances
of a City church must be borne in mind. In the
case of All Hallows' the day population would be,
perhaps, 10,000, the night population was 150. In
other words, during the daytime the offices and
warehouses of which the parish solely consists are
swarming with life ; at night they are left in the
charge of a few caretakers. These caretakers, then,
make up the resident population. But it is to the
floating day population of the City that the City

ALL HALLOWS\ LONDON WALL 63

church has to minister. The City rector must say,
adapting John Wesley's words, " All the City is my
parish." This is, of course, recognised nowadays
on all hands by many vigorous London incumbents,
and the midday service, with a sermon, either in
the church or from an outside pulpit, is almost a
matter of course.

Stone did not proceed exactly on these lines. He
first of all restored the weekly and Saints' Day
Eucharist, and then formed a Litany Guild. The
members of the guild were communicants whose
occupation lay in the City. Its objects were ^'Gener-
ally, the promotion of the habit of occasional prayer,
beyond ordinary use ; specially, the better observance
of the rule of the Church as regards the week-day
use of the Litany." The means by which they were
to be attained were to be '■'Generally, the habit of
ejaculatory prayer ; specially, the public or private
use of the Litany." Before long, between twenty
and thirty members, almost an equal number of
either sex, were to be found every Wednesday and
Friday at Litany in All Hallows'. Others attended
in other City churches, or said the first part of the
Litany privately.

There was yet another use to be found for All
Hallows', and this a new and very striking one. In
1898 the Rev. R. S. Gregory, Vicar of Edmonton,
asked the authorities of the East London Church
Fund whether they could find him a church, near

64 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

Liverpool Street and Broad Street stations, which
the vicar would consent to open early in the morning,
as a haven of rest for the girls and women living in
his huge parish, between the hour of their arrival
from Edmonton and the time when the City work-
shops and offices in which they were employed were
opened. These workers come up at a very early
hour in order to take advantage of the workmen's
trains, and it was found that they were forced either
to remain in the waiting-rooms at the stations or to
wander about the streets. All Hallows', London Wall,
was obviously the church for the purpose, and Stone
eagerly threw himself into the scheme. It was de-
cided to open the church from 6.30 to 8.30 a.m., well
warmed and lighted, during the winter months.
Handbills were distributed at the stations and in the
parish of Edmonton, and on January 9th, 1899, ^^^
experiment was begun. The first day nobody ap-
peared, but next day one came, and the following
day eight, and in a short time the church was full
every morning, with an average of a hundred and
sixty girls and women.

This new departure naturally attracted a good
deal of attention, and called forth in some quarters
a certain amount of criticism. It may be said at
once that it was in every way a success. During the
two hours the church was open sacred music was
played, interspersed sometimes with solos, and at
7,30 a ten minutes' service was held. Books were

ALL HALLOWS', LONDON WALL 65

provided, not only religious books, but books of
history and the like, bound volumes of magazines,
and such stories as those of Miss Yonge. Knitting
and needlework were permitted, but no one was
allowed to talk, to eat, or to read newspapers. The
Press soon got to hear of the venture, and the repre-
sentative of the Westmhister Gazette^ who may be
taken to be an entirely unbiased witness, reported
that on the occasion of his visit he found " nearly
everyone reading or kneeling." There was never any
cause of complaint on the score of irreverence, and
when the winter was over the girls themselves
petitioned that the church should be kept open
during the summer. The early opening thus became
an established thing, and it only remained to make
similar provision for the men. This has been done
by Stone's successor, who, beginning by providing a
tent in the little churchyard, was eventually able,
in 1902, to see it replaced by a permanent building.
At least one other City church has since followed
the example set at All Hallows', and has thrown
open its doors for the same purpose. The words of
Longfellow's sonnet occur to the mind —

" Oft have I seen at some cathedral door

A labourer, pausing in the dust and heat.
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet

Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor

Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er ;

Far off the noises of the world retreat ;
The loud vociferations of the street

Become an indistinguishable roar."

66 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

And one is led to hope that what struck the American
poet, as it strikes most travellers, as a common feature
of continental Church life may one day be no less
common in our own Communion.

There was no rectory belonging to All Hallows',
and for the greater part of the time he held the living
Stone lived on the heights at Clapton, coming down
every day to spend many hours in the vestry of his
church in reading and writing and in interviews with
those who came to him for advice and counsel.
During the course of his ministry there were many
at all times who so came. This of course entailed a
considerable strain, not the least part of which was
the constant burden of correspondence. With regard
to this most responsible and difficult part of the
pastoral office, it may be said that Stone's spiritual
letters had a thoroughly manly tone, and were per-
meated with common sense. " Fasting," he wrote on
one occasion, " in a climate like this means simply
* away with any redundancy or luxury.' " Much work
of this kind was done within the walls of the old
vestry ; and so constantly was he to be found there,
that his friends used laughingly to speak of him as
another " Symon the anker."

Stone had hoped, when he was relieved from his
heavy labours at Haggerston, that he might be able
to give himself largely to literary work. But twenty
years of the " burden and heat of the day " had told
on him severely, and had much impaired the fresh-

ALL HALLOWS', LONDON WALL 67

ness of his powers in this as in other directions.
This is to be noticed in the second volume of his
collected poems, the Lays of lona, which he pub-
lished in 1897, for the most successful portions of
it consist of the poems and hymns written a good
many years earlier. The lona poems do not show
Stone at his best, although he gave an immense
amount of care and trouble to them, and himself
regarded them as, he wrote, " the literary effort of
my life." " Not one page," he goes on, " has been
written without prayer for the consecration of the
Holy Ghost." We may recognise the spirit which
animated the author, while we are obliged to confess
that seriousness of purpose is not enough to make
good poetry. In fact, the lona poems are very largely
spoilt by the excessive amount of pains spent upon
them. Other literary projects were begun, as, for
instance, more than one story, but these were aban-
doned before publication.

During these years, however, he did much valuable
hymnological work in connexion with Hymns An-
cient and Modern. He was for many years on the com-
mittee of the book, and always took great delight in
the meetings, and he was at work in making notes
and suggestions for a new edition almost up to the
day of his death.

For Stone was gradually approaching the end of
his earthly ministry. " Better," said Kingsley, " to
wear out than to rust out,' and Stone, who, however

6S MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

unlike him in other ways, was singularly like Kingsley
in the possession of a strong physique in combination
with highly-strung nerves, was rapidly wearing out.
He had been in bad health during 1899, and in the
autumn of that year the grave symptoms appeared
of a terrible internal disorder. It was on St. Luke's
Day that the physicians pronounced that the case
was incurable, and from that time onwards he lived
face to face with death.

Some time before this he had moved from Clapton,
for he was destined to end his days where his school-
time had been spent, in his dearly-loved Charter-
house. By the kindness of the master, he was able
to rent four vacant sets of rooms amongst the
" Brethren of noble poverty," as the old men are
called in the similar foundation of St. Cross, at
Winchester, and here he settled down in the quaint
old quadrangle, which might belong to an Oxford
college, though it is only a few steps removed from
the roar of the City. He knew that he had before
him weeks, or it might be months, of patient waiting
and probably of severe suffering. Bishop Creighton,
himself beginning to tread the same path of pain,
wrote to him : "It is a sore trial to have to wait in
patience, but we ' tarry the Lord's leisure ' in many
ways." Friends came to see him and found him
cheerful and uncomplaining, delighting in the oppor-
tunities for reading which he was enjoying for the
first time for many years, and ready as ever to give

ALL HALLOWS', LONDON WALL 69

out to others. As the fact of his illness came to be
known, hundreds of letters of sympathy poured in,
numbers of them from people who were quite
strangers to him, but who had found help in his
poems or hymns.

He did not resign his living, but had the help of
an old friend, who acted as curate to him, and he was
able to attend the services every Sunday until the
end, often to celebrate and even once or twice to
preach. All through 1900 he kept up his interest in
life, in spite of frequent and increasing attacks of
pain. At the beginning of his illness he wrote the
Meditation in a Night of Pain, on p. 1 1 6, which, al-
though hitherto unpublished, has already brought
comfort to many sufferers. As the days went on
his faith and happiness visibly increased. " Mentally
and spiritually," he wrote, " I am fond of telling my
friends that I live in a kind of thankful wonder that
I should be so encompassed by the goodness of God
and the lovingkindness of men." One of his oldest
friends whites : " I saw him repeatedly a short time
before his death, and should not desire to see a more
manly and Christian approach to the change. The
interests of his parish were his main thought, and his
main desire and delight was to be able to take part
in the services, especially the Eucharist. The im-
pression he left on all was most salutary and bene-
ficial, and showed fully the strength of the influence
which had been the spring of his life." His humility

70 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

and his deep sense of penitence struck all those who
saw him. The hymn which was most constantly on
his lips was one which he had always loved, Cowper's
Thej-e is a fou7itain filled witJi blood.

So for just over a year Samuel John Stone walked
through the valley of the shadow of death, comforted
by the rod and the staff of the Good Shepherd, The
crushing attacks of pain increased, and he was worn
to a grey shadow of his former self. But still his
interest in life continued fresh and unbroken ; he
followed every detail of the South African War ;
he turned again and again to his favourite poets ;
he constantly saw his friends, still ministered to his
people, still kept up his spiritual correspondence,
still Sunday by Sunday came to All Hallows'. On
his better days he was able to go about in the City ;
when he was confined to his rooms he used to delight
in watching the old pensioners feeding their pigeons or
pacing about below his windows. One of his Windsor
people, who had been mission woman at Haggerston,
and now lived with him as housekeeper, tended him
devotedly to the end. He was cheered by the friend-
ship of the Master of the Charterhouse and his wife,
Dr. and Mrs. Haig Brown, and by the ministrations of
Bishop Ingram, at that time still Bishop of Stepney.

One night in the middle of November he was told
that the morning star was shining with exquisite
beauty, and, getting up, he looked at it with the
greatest joy and delight, reciting the words of

ALL hallows; LONDON WALL 71

Jephthah's daughter from TJie Dream of Fair

Women —

" ' Glory to God,' she sang, and past afar,

Thridding the sombre boskage of the wood,
Toward the morning star."

And he kept repeating the words " Glory to God " at
intervals, sometimes loud and sometimes low, until
the end, which came rapidly and peacefully a few
days later, on Monday, November 19th, 1900. Only
the day before, which was the Twenty-third Sunday
after Trinity, he had been to All Hallows' for the last
time. On the very day of his death he had written
one or two letters, one of which contained the follow-
ing words : " Sometimes I am in such pain that I can
neither write nor dictate ; at others, as now, I am just
able to write ' with mine own hand.' But whether at
the worst or the best in a bodily state, you will rejoice
with me to hear that, spiritually , I am not only in
patience but in joy of heart and soul." Miss Yonge's
Heartsease was afterwards found on his table lying
open at the second chapter, his spectacles upon the
page. On the table at the other side of his chair,
within reach of his hand, was his favourite copy of
Tennyson, well used and full of many notes. The
summons had come quickly at the last. A few hours
of unconsciousness, and one more Carthusian had
answered Adsiim.

The funeral took place four days later, on Friday,
November 23rd. The first part of the service was

72 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

taken at All Hallows' by the Bishop of Stepney.
Half an hour or more before the service began a
little bird flew in at one of the windows of the
church, and in the perfect stillness trilled for a
moment or two what fancy might deem the fare-
well dirge of the beasts and birds for the poet and
lover of nature. It was an incident" which Stone
himself would have dearly loved. The little church
was presently crowded with a sorrowful congrega-
tion, where, besides his relations, old friends and old
curates, together with numbers from his two London
parishes, and many others who had felt his influence
in various ways, were held in the bonds of a common
and heartfelt grief. The strains of The Church's one
Foundation rang out, and as the congregation took
up the words the walls of the little church seemed to
fall away and the gloom of the November day to
disperse as they sang of

"union
With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion
With those whose rest is won."

Never before, one would suppose, although the
hymn has been sung by no less than millions of
Church people in all lands — alike at Lambeth con-
ferences and in mud-walled African villages, at great
cathedral festivals and in tiny country churches, by
Archbishop Benson and a party of working-men in
his private chapel, and at open-air services in

ALL HALLOWS\ LOxNDON WALL 73

the slums — never did it fall on the ear with more
moving and inspiring meaning than when it was sung
as his requiem over the coffin which held all that was
mortal of its author.

The contrast of feeling was startling on passing
from the church into the street. It was high noon
in the City, and the funeral procession came out into
the midst of the swarming press of hurrying feet.
The business men remained arrested for a moment
by the unusual sight, and then the human tide surged
on as before.

A little later the mourners met again at Norwood,
where the service at the graveside was said by one
of his old curates. The cemetery at Norwood lies,
as it were, between the country and the town, just
beyond the roar of London, which had become so
dear to him, in a spot from which there is a wide
prospect of the Surrey hills. His grave is marked by
a tall lona cross.

We live in an age when life spins on so rapidly
that the memory of our greatest and our best serves
soon to grow dim and distant, for

" Each day brings its petty dust
Our soon choked souls to fill
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will."

But if the poet, as Horace knew, can escape oblivion
by his verse, the poet who has written a great hymn
will live through many generations on the lips of

74 MEMOIR OF S. J. STONE

men. Of this immortality the author of The Church's
one Foundation is secure. Yet it is but a cold immor-
tality if the poet lives merely as a name and nothing
more, if his personality is obliterated and the features
of the man himself are no longer to be discerned.
In the foregoing pages, then, the writer has attempted
to preserve, for the generations to come, the features
not only of the sacred poet, but also of the parish
priest, of whom at his death his Bishop wrote that,
"few men in the diocese have lived such useful lives of
quiet beneficence, or have given more beautiful ex-
amples of a Christian life." These are the words of
Bishop Creighton, who, beneath a brilliancy of in-
tellect which all admired, had a full measure of the
historian's perception of character, and not only that,
but also the pastoral eye which is keen to mark the
beauties and graces of a devout soul.

So this is the brief record of the life of one whom
the writer loved, because in him the attractiveness of
a poetic nature was deepened through the consecra-
tion given it by the priestly character, and most of
all because it was impossible not to feel at every
moment that beneath his cassock a warm human
heart was always throbbing and beating.

REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC
POEMS

DOWN STREAM TO LONDON

Written in Temple Gardens, London,
in memory of March 19-23, 1 86 1.

The din of the great town is on my ears
And not the voices of the wood and wave,
And the lark's warbUng : the pure air and sky,
With its cloud isles and mountains, is all past ;
Above me stretches the thick smoke and mist
That shuts heaven from the city ; and no more
Beneath me glides the king of silver streams,
The river of all rivers — yon black flood
That surges past me now and bears its name
Is not the Thames I know, the Thames I love.

Oh for the gleaming river once again,
That seemed to bear us through a golden age
In those four days : woods, meadows, hamlets, farms,
Spires in the vale, and towers upon the hill.
The great chalk quarries glaring thro' the shade,
The pleasant lanes and hedgerows, and those homes
Which seemed the very dwellings of content
And peace and sunshine — oh for the fresh lawns
That ran down brightly to the water's edge
To drink the waves — with freshness never known

78 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

In all the glow and glare of other lands.

Oh for the music of the livelong day,

The songs of woods and waters, and the lark

Cleaving his way through the thin air to heaven,

With that loud carol like a spirit freed

From chains and darkness. How we sometimes paused

And let the boat glide at the river's will,

And how, in the short pause, upon our ears,

Far in the distance downwards, there would come

A murmur from the cataract that flowed

Off from the side-stream — first a low deep hum,

A very dream of waters ; louder then,

And still more loud as the swift boat sped on

Nearer and nearer ; now the full-toned flood

Drowns with majestic thunder voice and oar

Till the boat bears us past it ; and the sound

Throws after us its harmony, and then

Subsides again into the dream and dies.

The spirit of the Spring was in the woods,
And woke within them murmurs that expressed
A joy of expectation, very low,
A musing gladness like the voice of one
Who whispers doubts because he is so sure :
A prelude to the burst of happy song
That hails fruition of the promised joy,
The march of coming Summer through the land.

Never without our music ! When the woods.
Left far behind, were lost to ear and eye,
Or yet below unreached for sight and sound ;

DOWN STREAM TO LONDON 79

AVhen trees were rare, or seen far off unheard
Along the level ; when the waterfalls —
Melodious visitations far between —
Were no more with us ; when the lark was down
Among the furrows, and the rise and fall
Of that aerial fountain of sweet sound
Was silent for a season — then perchance
Would float the chime of bells upon the breeze
From some old tower, or sound of happy life
From some bright village, or with distant hum,
And deepening roll, and palpitating roar,
Charged down the great fire chariot of the train,
And passed us like a whirlwind and went by.
Nor seldom too the boat and we sped on
With silence on the banks and on the stream
Save the long swish of oars, the dip, the stroke
That hurled the troubled water far astern
In little battling whirlpools, soon at peace ;
And that was real music in our ears.
As men that wander upon alien shores
Hear some loved song of their own land again.
And feel their blood run quicker : so that sound
Kept ever stirring pleasant memories
Of many a bright laborious afternoon
On the old Isis ; grim experiences
Of training pulls in eight oars — down the course
To Iffley, past the lasher, through the lock.
Then on to Sandford, turn, and home again
From Iflfliey racing-pace — "lift, lift," and in
From Saunders' bridge "at 40 ! " Oh the grind

80 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

We grumbled at, and loved so for its worth,

So far above all else for growth of strength

And moral muscle : then those mighty days

That brought the Races ; oh the toil, the strife—

Upon the stream, the rushing regular oars,

" The music of the many as of one,"

The forward shoot of straightened backs and arms,

Then the strong lift together ; on the shore

A shouting frantic crowd— a victory here,

There a defeat as glorious !— those were days

Which memory fostered in her safest hold

And needed Uttle spur to wake again.

So passed the time— a time that fled on wings
Too eager for our liking : and at last
We lost the green fields and the pleasant woods,
With all their happy voices and glad scenes
Of beauty and repose. The stream grew dark,
The light shone fainter through a sky less clear.
The approaching city tainted wave and air.
But still we failed not of a fitting close
To such a voyage. Came a day, our last.
Which saw us waiting, watching on the shore.
Among ten thousand eager too as we
To see the issue— which should bear the palm.
Our Isis or the Cam, for stalwart sons.
Broad backs and chests and iron-sinewed arms
Knit with a resolute courage and strong will
That shunned not stormy weeks of toil and pains
To weld their strength with hard-learnt skill, and wm
The mastery of the waters— aye, and prove

DOWN STREAM TO LONDON 8i

In whose veins flowed the truest purest stream
Of Viking blood and spirit. On they came —
The throbbing expectation where we stood,
Far up the course turned every straining eye
To see who led the way — The dark blue oars !
Tis Oxford wins ! — and Cambridge far behind
Rallied in vain, and the great race was won.
Be no more said, but that the victor's fame,
Which pales not set beside the brightest years,
Sheds lustre on the vanquished, with a grace
For such a fruitless struggle. But for us
More than for others 'twas a day indeed
To be remembered, crowning such a time
With such a sequel. Now it is all past.
And all that bright experience of the Thames
Is but a memory : — but although my eyes,
In this broad water flowing darkly past,
See little to recall the clear bright flood
That bore us down so blithely those four days.
Yet still it bears thy name, and even here,
Thou true Pactolus ! heart and voice are fain,
Despite thy smoky shores and clouded waves,
To give thee all their little, and heap up
Full phrase and epithet to speak my love
And swell thy praise, thou paragon of streams.
Thou lovely, lordly, mild, majestic Thames !

GOOD-BYE TO OXFORD

"Eheu! fut^aces, Postumc, Postiime,
Labuntur ;inni."

Good-bye at last to Oxford ! with full eyes

I watch the autumn day grow dark and die,
And see the year put on its saddest guise,
To sadden this Good-bye.

This sorrowing rain seems but the tearful grief

That pride forbids although the heart be fain.
And that regretful wind seems the relief,
In utterance, of pain.

Dim, as I thread the twilight, on my gaze

The "glorious street" Ues wrapt in misty gloom.
And in grieved sort like statues of past days
The old towers darkly loom.

I hear " Old Tom " announce the dying light,

The deep hoarse voice that I shall hear no more ;
Hoarser and deeper seems the note this night
Than in the days of yore.

GOOD-BYE TO OXFORD 83

Good-bye to walls and towers I know so well,

And love as dearly— most of all to thine^
Wherein my lot " in pleasant places " fell,
Kind Nurse and Mother mine !

May Heaven thee prosper ! and good-bye to thee,

My noble Isis, loved so all these years ;
Echoes of gallant strife right gloriously
E'en now ring in mine ears :

And mingling with them comes a measured strain,

The tramp and music of a marching band ;
I fight my bloodless " battles o'er again,"
In arms for father-land.

"These 'twill be joy to recollect," 'tis said.

Though with a tinge of sorrow, being gone :
Oxford, with me the dead past is not dead,
Though I must needs pass on.

Should I not love thee ? and for more than these.
By feasts (ah, sought too waywardly !) of thine
Where sat the Stagyrite, and Socrates,
And " Poets poured us wine."

Aye, and for more ! by all the eager search

The wisdom-quest of vague perplexed youth :
By the One Word made sure ; by the One Church
Known as the Ground of Truth.

^ Pembroke College.

84 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

Good-bye is " God be with thee ! " Even so

May God thee keep — above all fears I pray —
Truth's changeless champion, Error's strongest foe,
Till His own day.

— •' ^

E. B. BROWNING

OBIIT MDCCCLXI

Jn /ibcmoriam

Not, Florence, for the glory of thy skies.
For those grand mountains, for the golden flow
Of sweet-voiced Arno through the vale below,
Not for the Eden land that round thee lies
With claim for fairest in a land most fair,
Do men award thee such a crown to wear

Among the nations. In thee lived and loved
That Dante whom men call " The Florentine "
(And spite thine old contempt his fame is thine) ;
In thee Savonarola died and proved
His indignation righteous ; and in thee
Giotto built an immortality :

These names, nor these alone, do give thy name
A greater glory e'en than Nature's hand
In all her large grace to thy Tuscan land,
Seen through the dark of ages like a flame :
And now, behold, another Memory throws
A fair fresh leaf upon thy crowned brows.

86 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

Now doubly is our English homage won,
That thou hast nursed with such a tender care
An English flower too frail for English air,
With thy sweet breezes, and thy radiant sun :
And doubly art thou dear that in thee lies
All of our greatest poetess that dies.

Ah ! songless now the full-toned utterance
That spake the language of such lofty thought
And passionate feeling to such music wrought,
What time from Casa Guidi o'er th' expanse
Of men and minds she gazed on Italy,
Vexed and upheaving like a troubled sea.

Lost is the singer that so nobly sang

God's Truth and Beauty : — closed the wondrous eyes

That saw so much of heaven beneath the skies :

Silent the clarion that so sweetly rang :

And passed the poet from us to that throng

Where all are poets of diviner song.

The " Wine of Cyprus " flows for her no more
Who drinks of better fountains : mysteries,
Of which she sang in vision, now she sees
Revealed behind the veil on the far shore.
In the clear light of that eternal day
Which after dawning fadeth not away.

E. B. BROWNING 87

The " Drama of her Exile " is all done,

And now with earthly mists no longer dim

Her eyes are rapt upon those " Seraphim "

To see whose " wondrous faces " round the throne,

And hear whose " most sweet music," in past lay

Our hearts grew solemn as we heard her pray.

And we who read, " No more vain words be said,"
Seem too to hear the " near Hosannas " roll ;
And in the bliss that crowns the living soul
Forget the sorrow brooding o'er the dead :
Exultant, that the spiritual breath
Triumphs for ever over pain and death.

THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER

3n ^cmortam

Another beacon-light blown out above us ;

Another buoy-bell stilled upon the sea ;
Another pilot of the hearts that love us
Passed from our company.

Blown out, above the coast line frowning grimly ;

Stilled, o'er the fatal silence of the shoals ;
Passed, from the few who watch for us undimly
The Cynosure of souls.

An hour ago, and how the light was beaming

O'er iron rocks in smile of tender cheer.
Or, bravely at our need, a pharos streaming
O'er surging shocks of fear.

An hour ago, and as the tide flowed faster,

And we by dim dread shallows swept along.
How in our ears full-toned against disaster
Pealed out the stern sweet song.

' Bishop Wilberforce, who was killed by a fall from his horse,

July 19, 1873. [Ed.]

THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER 89

An hour ago, and at the hehii serenely,

His steadfast eye upon the steadfast Star
We saw him stand and, lovingly as keenly.
Steer for the Haven far.

And now, and in a moment, is all ended ?

Gloom for the light, and silence for the sound ?
And by that faithful presence undefended
Sails on the Homeward-bound ?

We see, hear, hold him yet ! To our emotion

Only a change of deeper awe is given ;
Naught dies upon the spiritual ocean
That had its life from Heaven.

Still do we see — not now the changeful splendour

Lambent or sparkling, leaping through the night —
But the abiding glow, most deep, most tender,
A great life's lasting light.

Still do we hear — not now the silvern laughter

We loved to catch 'mid many a mightier tone —
But this — the golden cadence that hereafter
All memory shall own.

Still do we hold — not now the presence human,

Kind, fearless eye, frank hand, and vigorous form —
But, closer yet, the inner and the true man
That steered us through the storm ;

90 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

To guide us still who loved him ! cheering, warning,

Past rock and shoal, and through the blinding foam,
Until the Homeward-bound at the clear morning
Shall be at last at home.

Ah, Saint, there are who in the heavenly places,

After the Vision of the Form Divine,
Shall greet not one among the blissful faces
More wistfully than thine !

A SEA-SIDE REVERIE

ON THE PICTURli OF A STILL SEA

Calm sea :
One water broad and bright beneath the sun,
Near and afar, in peace and silence, one ;
The long shore-shallow with the distant deep,
One still immensity :

Infinitude fallen on sleep.

How bright and beautiful a peace !
One fain would listen for the sleeper's breath —
The giant sleeper, sleeping like a child
By some sweet mother into rest beguiled —
For this is calm of slumber, not of death ;
The mighty pulses only seem to cease ;
The great heart of the sea,
Throbbing unheard, invisibly,
Beats not the less with the resistless power
Of his fierce anger's most tremendous hour.
His passions only hide — how soon.
And whence we know not, there may come
A cloud across the splendid noon.
And winds to wake him from this summer swoon ;

92 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

And then, no longer dumb,
Shall his loud tongue tell fearfully and far
Again the giant girds himself for war !

Yet, though this quiet marks no dearth
Of strength and life — repose but not decay —
Here lurketh Death ; O great, and strong, and free,
Death waits to lay his palsying hand on thee !
Is it not writ that, on a day
When sweeter heavens shall smile on purer earth,
There shall be no more sea ?
Yea, thou shalt die :
What matter if thine hour be far or nigh ?
Lo, not less surely ebbs thy life away
Than yonder splendour fails from off the land,
Or thine own dreamy tide is slipping from the strand !

Calm Sea :
Repose how rare, and, as the moments fleet,
Ever to seem more wonderful and sweet !

The little children do not shrink
To trust their tender steps beyond his brink,
So faint a ripple rolls he to their feet.

Only a kiss it seems
Of one who loves them in the land of dreams.
Sunny and placid are their childish years :
Pure pleasure's light, not passion's, in their eyes,
Calm on the wide depths of their sleeping souls.
They reck not of such possibilities
As lie, within my vision, there.

A SEA-SIDE REVERIE 93

And make my heart already sick with fears,
Because already in mine ears
The wind grows wild, the storm-wave rolls,

And cries go up in pain, and vows in prayer,

Mid silences, more dreadful, of despair.

Uncertain Sea, uncertain Life,
Of both how fair the calm, how quick the strife !

Yet, this side heaven, shall both be dear :
The " Sea is His " whose are yon depths above.
And Life is His whose gifts are all of love.

Away ! thou poor pale Fear,
O Sea, O Life, for storm or calm we stand
'Neath the safe keeping of our Father's hand.

Yet if, O Sea, thou art so dear.
So dear as this, we cannot spare thee here,
Shall we not miss thee in the glorious Land ? —

Nay, for thou pleasest eye and ear.
Sole image of that longed-for Infinite :
O image faint and far !

So love we as our all of light —
While here we sojourn — day's majestic star.
There never to be seen, too dimly bright.
Nor missed where, born of God, those jasper glories are.

O Life, despite thine ills, so fair,
Is this unworthy that we love thee here ?
O nay, because we hold thee dear

More gladly will we let thee go,
For love of thee makes longing to be there,

94 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

Beyond thy bounds above,
Where in immortal fulness we shall know
The grandeur and the beauty and the love,
Whereof we had by thee faint foretaste here below.

O Sea, O Life,
The pilgrim lingers where he may not dwell.
Lingers with hopeful heart and loving eyes.

And with a voice of praise
For such a grace shed on the weary ways

That lie between him and the skies ;
Such grace of calm or grandeur as can tell
Prophetic stories of that far-off home
Whereto at last his happy feet shall come.

So, till his pilgrimage is o'er.
And till his steps shall cease upon the shore.
No craven fears his loyal faith shall quell :
In peace or passion, in repose or strife.
He loves thee well, O Sea, O Life, he loves thee well !

SETTING SAIL

ON A nCTURE OF THREE CHILDREN ON THE SHORE

The Spring-tide air was breathing balm
Upon the waters all the night,

And scarce they moved when morning calm
Gave waking soft to slumber light,

And down the shore came children three

To launch a mimic argosy.

Said one — he was a noble boy.
And at their gallant mock emprise

Looked keenly, with the glittering joy
Of dawning purpose in his eyes —

" Thus will I sail from strand to strand,

And fight for God and fatherland ! "

Said one — she was the elder child.

And older yet in all her ways,
She was so motherly and mild.

So meekly wise beyond her days —
" O'er sea or land I'll never roam,
While father wants his maid at home."

96 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

Then lisped a third — in whose sweet face
Awoke a wistful dreamy smile,

Reflection of the loving grace

Of one whom she had lost awhile —

" I'll sail away from year to year,

Until I find my mother dear,"

Full fifty years brought evenfall
Upon that morning of their life.

And, scarred with wounds, a seaman tall
Came slowly homeward from the strife ;

Long had he served from strand to strand
The cause of God and fatherland.

He found a man of ninety years.

Whose dying eyes were turned to bless

A maiden old, whose gentle tears
Fell quicker at that mute caress :

In death that loving hand and eye
For him, as ever, still were nigh.

The third ? She sailed, ah ! long ago,
And found her mother dear at rest :

And where ? It is enough to know
'Twas in an Eden of the blest—

'Twas far away, beyond the foam,

She found her mother dear at home.

THE ANSWER OF THE HILLS

With 2 St. Peter iii. lo compare Rom. viii. 19-21

Dear friends among the hills, I sit at home,
Spending a leisure hour 'twixt toil and toil
Here in the east of Babylon, and think
How fair the mornings were a week ago.
It is, forsooth, September still, but not
The same September to my eyes and ears ;
It is not bright, it does not blow ; the eye,
Dismally peering towards the chimney-tops,
Sees nothing but a small and sickly sun.
Fog-stricken ; for so soon the month of mists
Has sent his haggard herald from the swamps.
Though he be yet a five weeks' march away,
To bid us surely look for him ; the ear,
Amid a medley of suburban sounds,
Catches not one of nature ; joyfully
Would it exchange for such a calm as this —
Doleful and chill as if the air were dead —
The rush of autumn rains, or that wild roar
You wot of, such a madness of the winds
As made one night tremendous, and, alas !
Ruined far ofif^ a wonder of the world.

^ n.M.S. Captain was lost off Cape Finisterre on the night of
September 7th, 1870.

H 97

98 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

Yet memory holds most dear of all those days
The calmest ; 'twas a day she will not lose
Till heart and mind have need no more to search
The stores of old delight for pleasant food
Or pastime. Such a day begins below,
In no faint foretaste, that eternal rest
Remaining for God's people. Far away
Seemed the sad world, behind the hills that stood
Shoulder by shoulder shining in their strength,
Gigantic warders of a quiet land ;
Parted for pasture all the vales beneath —
The long drought over and forgotten — smiled
With faces fresh and fair, being full at heart
With gracious rains : the woodland on the slopes
Looked up with life renewed, rejoicingly,
As if it stood for praise. For here was peace .
That was not idle sleep : too real a life,
Too great a gladness, mingled with the calm
For slumber ; and the brightness was like song,
Wide, full, but all too fine for common sound.
A reverence seemed to temper all the joy,
And make it worship worthy of that Fane
Not wrought with hands, whose dome of infinite blue
O'erarched it all, as peaceful as profound.
Soothing the soul with vastness ; as it were
God manifest in awful tenderness
Over His world.

THE ANSWER OF THE HILLS 99

It was the week's first day :
And 'twixt the hours of morn and evensong
I lay before those hills, beneath that heaven,
Among the grasses by the church, and watched
And felt in all my soul that awfulness
And beauty of repose.

One only thought,
A darkness and a discord, thrust itself
Into my musing, of that doom of fire
Which one day shall destroy all earth and heaven.
But oh, your green hills would not suffer it !
There was nor speech nor language, yet my heart,
As God did give them utterance, could hear
Their voice interpreting His word.

But read.
Thus have I fashioned faintly for your ken
The form of my complaint and their reply : —

The shining hills before me lay.
My musing heart was fain to say,
" I mourn, ye hills, the stern decree
""hat saith, ' Ye shall no longer be

On that dread day
When heaven and earth shall pass away.' "

The shining hills made calm reply,
That fell upon my foolish cry
Like words that silence, gravely mild,
The fretful accents of a child :

" Beneath, on high,
God's work is good, and shall not die.

loo REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

" Though heaven above and earth below
Shall share the universal woe,
That doom of fire shall but destroy
All that not ministers to joy ;

Yea, even so
Full life and beauty shall we know.

" That end true glory shall begin.
That doom is but the death of sin,
That night is mother of the morn.
In travail ere the light is born,

That woe shall win
A world that life can reign within.

" Eternal life ! no bounded lease
Of hours of pleasure and of peace.
But joys of service and of rest.
Of blessing and of being blest.

That never cease,
And only change by sweet increase.

" For, thinkest thou, shall then be dearth
Of aught of grandeur, beauty, mirth,
That now makes glad the sons of men ?
Shall they not see their joys again

At that dread birth
Which shall renew the heaven and earth ?

" Yea, trust that He Who all began
Hath for the end His perfect plan ;

THE ANSWER OF THE HILLS loi

His good gifts are for evermore !
Creation that in common bore

The woful ban,
Shall fail not of the bliss, of man,

" God's pity left her to the race
He would win back into His grace.
His poet sweet, his prophet true !
He shall her youth with man's renew,

And each tear's trace
Wipe ever from her glorious face !

" Then shall ye see the field, the flood,

The restful vale, the placid wood.

All that ye loved in all the land !

And we, whose ' strength is His,' shall stand

As erst we stood,
As when of old He called us good.

" Then come ! for supreme joy in woe,
Last triumph in last overthrow !
In all thy grace, in all thy power.
Come ! O thou sweet tremendous hour,

Come even so.
For heaven above and earth below."

LENTENTIDE

A MEDITATION

"Out of the deep."

Fain is the wakened soul to try
Her pinions in the golden sky
Of peace and pardon instantly :

But they are clogged by thoughts that fill
Her mind with memories of ill,
A worldly love, a carnal will,

And she is forced to sit and weep,
And watch alone in valleys deep
The darker shadows onward creep,

As though to whelm her in a tomb
Of utter spiritual gloom.
Foretaste of the eternal gloom.

" My sin ! " the low despairing sigh ;
" My sin ! " the exceeding bitter cry,
Out of those depths is heard on high :
1 02

LENTENTIDE 103

Glad angels hear it where they stand,
And wait — a ministering band —
Their Lord's permission and command ;

It comes — and swiftly, down from heaven

A light whereby that gloom is riven !

A voice of power and peace, " Forgiven ! "

O blessed voice ! O living light !

To wake those silent depths, and smite

With beams of day the vale of night.

But, ah ! not yet is peace complete,
The foemen, fiercer for defeat,
Strive to regain their ancient seat.

The world, forsaken, brings again

Its joys and cares : the Will would fain

Its realm recover and retain.

And though that Light still shineth clear
Through those new shades, and though the ear
Hears still that Voice it loves to hear

Speak, as of old, on GaUlee,

" Peace " : yet, withal, the heart must see.

And hate its own infirmity :

And cries, as one who cries for breath,
Worn and oppressed, " I faint beneath
The alien body of this death ! "

I04 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

'Tis well, for, otherwise than so.

The soul, disdaining to lie low,

A deeper depth of ill might know —

A darker gloom, a gulf more wide.

Because a self-exalting pride

Would thrust her further from His side.

Therefore, the Church, that she may lead
Her children Homewards, hath decreed
This Holy Season to their need ;

Heavenwards, Homewards ! through the dense
Dark clouds of sorrow, and the sense
Of present frailty, past offence ;

Heavenwards, Homewards ! by the road
The poor in spirit ever trod,
And tread, in pilgrimage to God.

Heavenwards, Homewards ! till they win
That blest inheritance, wherein
Is no more sorrow, no more sin.

COMING HOLY WEEK

" The Master saith, My time is at hand "
St. Matt. xxvi. i8.

' The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak "
St. Matt. xxvi. 41.

Soon will the Holy Week be here ;
It is as if my Lord were near,
And, half in hope and half in fear,

I went to meet Him, so to be

A witness of the agony

And bitter passion borne for me.

" In hope " that so my soul may gain
Harvest of joy from seeds of pain ;
That, flooding over heart and brain,

A deeper sense of sinful night
May drive me closer to the Light
To read His Love with clearer sight.

" In fear " lest even while I weep.
As once of old, forgetful sleep
Should o'er " the willing spirit " creep
105

io6 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

And I should hear, as heard the Three,

Those words of chiding sympathy,

*' Couldst thou not watch one hour with Me ? "

Be Hope the stronger ! O be Thou,
Dear Lord, the Guardian of my vow
To keep my vigil near Thee now :

Aid my " weak flesh " this holy tide.

That I, despite or sloth or pride,

May watch and pray as at Thy side. Amen.

EASTER EVE

A NIGHT of silence and of gloom :
My Master lieth in the tomb —
Mine was the sin and His the doom !

So on this awful eventide,

My self-trust gone, my wealth of pride

All spent and lost, I fain would hide.

And where ? — Lo, on this Eve alone
I come with contrite prayer and moan
And lay me down before the Stone.

All is so still, so deadly still —
E'en that dread scene upon the Hill
Scarce shook me with so strong a thrill.

For Calvary had its jeering crowd,

My tears were check'd, my love was cow'd.

My pride took courage 'mid the proud.

The soldiers sleeping heed me not,
Their vigil is perforce forgot :
The world is banish'd from the spot.
107

io8 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

So here I weep — for none are near
To fill my craven heart with fear
Of some sharp gibe for every tear.

And the deep stillness hath a cry
Reaching my soul, and none are by
To drown it with their blasphemy.

It saith, " O ingrate heart, for thee

The passion in Gethsemane,

For thee the scourge, the mockery,

" The scarlet robe, the thorny wreath.
For thee the load He sank beneath.
For thee the Cross, the Cry, the Death !

" Yea, all for thee ! and having learn'd
How great that love was, hast thou spurn'd
The due of gratitude it earn'd ?

"Thankless and cold ! thy broken vow
Of love and service asks thee now,
Here at His tomb, what doest thou ? " —

Tis true — yet am I fain to come :

In grief I have no other home

But near Him, though 'tis near His tomb.

And as in self-convicted mood
On mine ingratitude I brood,
A Voice upon the solitude

EASTER EVE 109

Breaks, like a benediction near,

And through the darkness in mine ear

Whispers of hope, and not of fear :

" Yea, all for thee ! and all to save !

Forgives He not as He forgave ?

Died His Love with Him in the grave ? "

• •••••

So on this holy eventide

I lay me down as at His side,

And pray to die as He has died :

That I may rise to meet the strife
With this dead heart renew'd, and rife
With impulses of love and life.

But can it be with one so vain,
So weak, so fearful of disdain ? —
" It can be ! by the right of pain,

" And curse, and cross, and this dark night !
Thou shalt endure through all the fight,
And as thy days shall be thy might.

" So shalt thou bear His flag unfurled,

'Mid ghostly foemen overhurl'd.

In fearless love before the world ! " —

Then, blessed Master ! only Friend
Be near, inspire, sustain, defend ;
In prayer I battle till the end.

no REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

Till on this Lenten night forlorn
There breaks the final Easter morn,
And the unsetting sun is born,

So on this blessed eventide,

Here at Thy tomb, here at Thy side,

I lift one prayer, Abide, abide !

The old sweet prayer so earnestly
Pray'd one sad eve, and heard of Thee —
Abide with me, abide with me !

TRUST

' As thy days, so shall thy strength be."— Deut. xxxiii. 25.
' Trust ye in the Lord for ever : for in the Lord Jehovah is
everlasting strength." — IsA. xxvi. 4.

O FELLOW-CHRISTIAN ! whosoe'cr thou art,

This is for thee and me —
This wine of Trust, that maketh glad the heart

In its adversity :
Drink, therefore, and so bear a braver part ;

For as thy days, thy strength shall be.

"Thy days" may be a life-long battle-field,

A warrior's history,
Where every weapon Satan's arm can wield

Shall each be aimed at thee :
But strive in Trust, and thou shalt never yield ;

For as thy days, thy strength shall be.

" Thy days " may be a weary pilgrimage

Through wastes of poverty ;
The vulture's hunger and the lean wolf's rage

Be ever threatening thee :
Thy childhood joyless, and thy youth like age;

Yet as thy days, thy strength shall be.
Ill

112 REFLECTIVE AND ELEGIAC POEMS

" Thy days " may be a voyage full of fear

Over a stormy sea,
And thou the sleepless helmsman sworn to steer

The good ship warily —
The sharp rocks there — the roaring whirlpool here-

Yet as thy days, thy strength shall be.

*' Thy days " may be a dull and vacant range,

A long captivity,
Naught brightly wonderful or sweetly strange

To quicken time for thee :
Less pain or more the only interchange ;

Yet as thy days, thy strength shall be.

" Thy days " may be a long experience

Of much perplexity ;
The light it longs for, amid clouds so dense,

Thy mind may scarcely see :
Then on thy Father cast thy confidence ;

And as thy days, thy strength shall be.

O burdened sufferer in a world of woe.

Thy sorrow's mystery
Shall pass : believe, and one day thou shalt know:

Above thine eyes shall see.
Be not impatient of the veil beloiv ;

And as thy days, thy strength shall be.

O wakeful toiler in a world of pain,
A long rest waiteth thee :

^rtH

TRUST 113

Seek it not here, but bravely lift again

Tired hand and feeble knee :
If thou wilt trust, thy Master will sustain.

And as thy days, thy strength shall be.

Yea, fellow-Christian ! whosoe'er thou art,

It is for thee and me, —
This wine of Trust, that maketh glad the heart

In all adversity :
Drink, therefore, and so bear a braver part ;

For as thy days, thy strength shall be.

Amen ! until there shall be no more " days,"

Until the shadows flee.
Until the cloud be lifted from our gaze.

Until in Certainty
Trust die, and Faith in Sight, and Prayer in Praise,

In God's Eternity !

WHERE THE SHADE IS

'« He stands brightly where the shade is,
With the keys of Death and Hades."

E. B. Browning's The Fourfold Aspect.

Where the shade is stands the Lord—

When the sun of youth has set,

When each spell is fading fast,

And the dreamer wakes at last,

And surprise and pain have met —

Where the shade is stands the Lord.

Where the shade is stands the Lord—
When again and yet again
Phantom forms of fear or ill
Crowd against the tottering will,
And the struggle seems in vain—
Where the shade is stands the Lord.

Where the shade is stands the Lord—
When within the broken home

All life's bread seems turned to stone :
Death has come to one alone,
To the other will not come-
Where the shade is stands the Lord.
114

WHERE THE SHADE IS 115

Where the shade is stands the Lord —
When the faint or fighting breath,
When the drooped or glazing eye,
Shows the gates of gloom are nigh,
Opening to the Vale of Death —
Where that shade is stands the Lord.

Where the shade was stood the Lord —
Then life's light won by Life's loss —
Light that burned the dark away.
Soft and sweet and strong as day —
Streamed from His all-conquering Cross —
Where the shade was stood the Lord.

Where our shade is, stand, O Lord !
Make us see Thee in our night.

Hear Thy promise through the gloom :
" Lo, I have the keys of doom,
O My children of the light !
Where your shade is stands your Lord."

MEDITATION IN A NIGHT OF PAIN

" Neither shall there be any more pain."

'Tis peace in pain to know that Pain

Secured us pain's eternal end ;
And that the more exceeding gain,

To which by grace our souls ascend,
My great Redeemer won for me
By more exceeding agony.

'Tis true my pain is still my pain :

Heavy its hand on thought and prayer 1

But while that Love to me is plain
It lays its hand upon despair :

And soon I know this faint " How long ? "

For me may quicken into song ;

Beholding Thee — in what repose.
By what still streams of Paradise !

Beholding memory of Thy woes
Still in those deep pathetic Eyes :

Ah me ! what blest exchange for pain,

If I attain, if I attain !

ii6

MEDITATION IN A NIGHT OF PAIN 117

Am I too soon in love with death ?

I know not if 'tis ill or well :
If ill, then, Master, stay this breath,

Deny mine ear the passing bell !
One thing I ask, since I am Thine,
Thy Will be done, Thy Will be mine.

December 2"] th, 1899.

LYRICAL POEMS

THE BEAUTIFUL DEATH

(song of a cavalier's mother)

He died the beautiful death,

For the Church and the King :
Shall his mother shed a single tear,
While yet so proudly she can hear

His war-cry ring —
So fiercely strong, so sweetly clear —

" For Church and King ! "

He died the beautiful death,

My own brave boy :
And — break though it may in its desolate ruth —
Thy mother's heart for thy loyal truth

Hath passionate joy !
Dead though thou art in thy strength and youth.

My glorious boy !

He died the beautiful death.

Last of his race :
I saw him slain from the castle wall,
The last and the dearest one left to recall

His father's face :
The last and the noblest and fairest of all

Of the ancient race.

121

122 LYRICAL POEMS

But he died the beautiful death,
For the Church and the King !

And none shall see me shed one tear,

While yet o'er sorrow my soul can hear
The war-cry ring —

So fiercely strong, so sweetly clear —
" For Church and King ! "

CHRIST'S KNIGHT

"The Sword of the Spirit."

" For an Helmet, the Hope of Salvation."

'God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross."

A HELM upon my brow I wear,

I wield in my right hand a Sword,
A Banner with device I bear —
For Christ my Lord.

Armed with the Spirit, helmed with Hope,
My great Cross standard wide unfurled,
I fail not, fear not, though I cope
With all the world.

I battle to my latest breath,

Then not my joys but labours cease.
And I am borne to life through death,
Through war to peace.

The guerdon, then ! O hour most sweet,

When I shall kneel for my reward
Before the Face, beside the Feet,
Of Christ my Lord !

123

THE EBB OF TIDE

The little maid lay moaning,

Late at the set of sun ;
They told him " She is dying

Now that the day is done ! "
But, listening by the window,

He heard the full-toned roar
Of great waves plunging, plunging,

All down the silent shore.
And to the watchers weeping

" She cannot go ! " he cried,
" The soul-call never cometh

At flowing of the tide."

The little maid ceased moaning,

And darker grew the night ;
They cried, " She is not dying.

She'll see the morning light ! "
But he heard there by the window

The plunging waves no more,
But the waters washing, washing,

Like a lake upon the shore.
And he heeded not the watchers.

As hopefully they cried.
But said with lips all trembling,

" It is the Flood of tide."
124

THE EBB OF TIDE 125

The little maid lay sleeping,

Or ere the night was done ;
They said, "She will awaken

To new life with the sun ! "
But he listened the deep murmur

The sighing night-wind bore
Of the waters sobbing, sobbing.

As they forsook the shore.
" Now pray the Lord Almighty

Upon your knees," he cried,
" Oh, pray Him by His mercy.

For 'tis the Ebb of tide ! "

Ah me ! the world is evil,

And sick with care and sin.
And, sure, the Lord had mercy,

Who left her not therein ;
For with one cry, " O Father ! "

She woke ere it was day.
And sighed and smiled ; and, sighing

And smiling, passed away.
And, sure, in life more blessed

Her sweet soul doth abide.
Where on the Sea of Jasper

Is never Ebb of tide.

THE HARVEST OF SOULS

Gather the Harvest in :
The fields are white, and long ago ye heard
Ringing across the world the Master's word —
Leave not such fruitage to the lord of Sin,

Gather the Harvest in.

Gather the Harvest in :
Souls dying and yet deathless, o'er the lands,
East, West, North, South, lie ready to your hands ;
Long since that other did his work begin ;

Gather the Harvest in.

Gather the Harvest in :
Rise early and reap late. Is this a time
For ease ? Shall he, by every curse and crime,
Out of your grasp the golden treasure win ?

Gather the Harvest in.

Gather the Harvest in :
Ye know ye live not to yourselves, nor die,
Then let not this bright hour of work go by :
To all who know, and do not, there is sin :
Gather the Harvest in.
126

THE HARVEST OF SOULS 127

Gather the Harvest in :
Soon shall the mighty Master summon home
For feast His reapers. Think ye they shall come
Whose sickles gleam not, and whose sheaves are thin?

Gather the Harvest in !

ISHMAEL'S SONG

My God hath heard me : I am His :
The Lord my God is mine :

And mine are His — in Ishmael
Is bless'd all Ishmael's line :

For of my seed for multitude
Be yonder stars the sign.

Man's foe for ever — there shall reign
No King for me but God !

Mine is this wild, and mine shall be,
Sand-tract, oasis-sod :

Beneath no sceptre shall I kneel
Except beneath His rod.

He will ride with me as I ride
Great Paran's wastes along.

And give His angel-winds a charge
To sing His Archer's song ^

Of Ishmael evermore the free
And evermore the strong !

^ Gen. xxi. 20.

128

ISHMAEUS SONG 129

All ends of earth, times of all time,

As here the blessed well,
As Lahairoi,^ in light and life.

My right divine shall tell.
For He the Lord my God is true

And I am Ishmael ! ^

^ Beer-lahai-roi, that is, " the well of him that liveth and seeth me "
(Gen. xvi. 14).
2 Ishmael, that is, "God shall hear."

LULLABY OF LIFE

Sleep, little flower, whose petals fade and fall

Over the sunless ground ;
Ring no more peals of perfume on the air —

Sleep long and sound.

Sleep — sleep.

Sleep, summer wind, whose breathing grows more faint

As night draws slowly nigh ;
Cease thy sweet chanting in the cloistral woods

And seem to die.

Sleep — sleep.

Sleep, thou great Ocean, whose wild waters sink

Under the setting sun ;
Hush the loud music of thy warring waves

Till night is done.

Sleep — sleep.

Sleep, thou tired heart, whose mountain pulses droop

Within the valley cold :
On pains and pleasures, fears and hopes of life,
T^et go thine hold.

Sleep — sleep.
130

LULLABY OF LIFE 131

Sleep, for 'tis only sleep, and there shall be

New life for all, at day ;
So sleep, sleep all, until the restful night

Has passed away.

Sleep — sleep.

THE MAIDEN AT THE WELL

At the Well's heart serene and deep

Sweet waters lie :

But from their sleep
The maid will stir them by and by.

The plunging pail their peace shall break :

And at the sound

They shall awake,
Meeting the summons with a bound :

Then from the darkness to the light

Shall be new-born ;

While in their sight
Is spread the beauty of the morn.

Was their repose a blessed thing ?

P'or bliss or bane

Shall they up-spring ?
Is such emotion joy or pain ?

Deep in the maiden's heart serene

Sweet waters lie,

Silent, unseen —
But one shall stir them by and by !
132

THE MAIDEN AT THE WELL 133

Love, that has lain in sleepy night,

Aroused shall sing

And leap to light,
As from still Winter leaps the Spring.

But was the slumber good or ill ?

Will joy or pain

The future fill ?
Is such new knowledge true or vain ?

True be the knowledge that shall crown

Her waiting eyes !

Cast her not down.
Saying, " Tis folly to be wise ! "

HOLIDAY ODE TO THE NORTH-WEST

WIND

BY AN EAST-ENDER

Blow, breeze, from the north and the west,

Through the clear afternoon ;
To all that gives solitude zest,
To the zeal, not the languor, of rest

Our tired spirits attune.

Blow, breeze, in the deep of the night.

Solemn-sweet in our ears,
God's organ of full-toned delight.
With thine ebbings and flowings of might.

Charm our souls from their fears.

Blow again, potent breeze, with the morn,

Till, refreshed with thy wine.
Eyes dim, spirits harassed and worn
Looking now on past pains with sweet scorn,

May arise and may shine !

134

ST. COLUMB OF lONA

A LAY OF THE "FAMILY OF HY"^

Iona's hills are lowly,

Her rocks are bleak and wild,
Frowns Mull the mighty o'er her

As at a changeling child ;
O'er the dividing waters

She sends no mother's smile :
No kin the granite giant

Owns in the darker isle.

lona sends for pleading

No suit of tender grace :
No fee of form majestic,

No wile of winsome face : —
No forests make her stately.

No rivers make her fair,
She lieth still o'er vale and hill,

As if in meek despair.

'■ Family of lona : the community of the island.
135

136 LYRICAL POEMS

Yet hath the Lord from Heaven

Looked on the lowly isle ;
His promise shall not tarry,

The wilderness shall smile,
And, on these bleak rocks, beautiful

Shall be their feet who stand —
The heralds of that Lord of Love

Who die in Holy Land.

But long years — half a thousand —

Have fled in weary line,
And naught hath waked the silence,

And none hath seen a sign ;
By feet that bring no blessing

lona still is trod ;
And priests unknown of Sion

Worship an unknown God.^

The ocean winds that sweep her

Breathe sadness still in tone,
The ocean voice rolls round her

As one that maketh moan ;
For, from the chosen island,

In tempest or in calm
Rises in air, for praise or prayer.

Nor litany nor psalm.

' The Druids acknowledged only one God.

ST. COLUMB OF lONA 137

But now ! the burden changeth,

Though none the change may know,
Save those who joy in heaven

For blessing wrought below ;
The mournful burden changeth,

Like weeping into song ;
Like those who cry, " He cometh ! "

Who wailed before, " How long ? "

*Tis on a silent even,

After the glare of day,
A frail boat to lona

Is wending peaceful way ;
A glow is on the waters,

A charm is in the air,
And the blessing Pentecostal ^

Seems falling everywhere.

Long was the weary waiting.

The desolate day was long,
But peace has come at sunset.

Like praise at evensong !
Cometh lona's promise.

In that frail boat on the sea.
As of old the Hope of a world forlorn.
The future Church and her Lord, was borne

On the waves of Galilee !

1 It was on the evening before Whitsunday that St. Columba arrived
first at lona.

138 LYRICAL POEMS

A saint and his twelve companions

Are all the waters bear ;
They wave no warring standard,

No battle-arms they bear :
Christ's Cross their warrior token ;

His Word the sword they wield ;
But whose are brand and banner

So blest on foughten field ?

St. Columb's name is noble,

Of kingly line is he ;
And rich broad lands and vassal bands

Are his in his own countrie.
But homage, and wealth, and sceptre,

He lays right gladly down ;
Who counts the Cross his glory

Recks not of fleeting crown !

Priests of the old delusion,

Fear for your ancient reign !
A mightier than the Roman

Here cometh o'er the main :
Soon shall the Golden Sickle

Gleam in the oak no more ;
No more the stones of the cromlech

Be red with human gore.

ST. COLUMB OF lONA 139

The charm of your day is passing,

A new strange " fire of God " ^
Shall wither the worn-out tokens,

The Amulet and the Rod :
There shall rise a temple stately

For every shapeless shrine,
And a threefold priestly order

Supplant your triple line ! ^

Now be she named Ishona !

Now call her Holy Isle ! ^
Now may the winds be jocund,

Now may the waters smile !
For proud at the sacred service

They render the freight they bore,
As the saints of the great Redeemer

Stand on the chosen shore.

He calls his Twelve around him,

As a chieftain calls his clan.
For zealous deed in some sore need

Exhorting every man :
" Behold," he saith, " the darkness

Deep o'er the northern land !

' The great Druidical festival took place in May, and was called the
Feast of the "Fire of God," in honour of the sun.

- There were three orders or grades among the Druids : the Druids
proper, the Bards, and the Vates.

^ The Gaelic Ishona signifies Holy Island.

I40 LYRICAL POEMS

And ye, the Sons of Morning,

To shine at the Lord's command !

Shine ye forth at His bidding,
O new, best Hght of souls.

Till from the chosen kingdom
The death-shade backward rolls !

" Far are ye from the borders

The feet of Jesus trod,
Far from the Holy City,

Far from the Hill of God :
But the Pentecostal Presence

Is brooding everywhere,
And the whole earth is Sion,

And Jesus reigneth there !
To every wind of heaven

His standard is outfurled.
His kingdom's only limit

The kingdoms of the world !

" Scatter the ancient shadows,

Grace of the mystic Trine !
O Human tender pity,

O love and power Divine !
Gather the northern peoples,

Gather them near and far,
To follow the herald promise

Of the Western morning star." ^

* An expression applied frequently to lona.

ST. COLUMB OF ION A 141

The saint fulfils his praying —

Whose life is as his prayer
Shall work the work he willeth,

And safely do and dare :
The Lord God is his keeper,

And His strong angels stand
To watch and ward, to guide and guard

Ever on either hand.

King Brude is lord of Pictland :

Fierce is his heart and hard.
And fast against the stranger

His castle gate is barred ;
But, as the gentle sea-tide

O'erflows the rugged shore.
Ere long the saintly spirit

Winneth the proud heart o'er !

Fell is his foemen's malice,

More fell the Druid's wile ;
But neither threat may daunt him.

Nor treachery beguile.
Through pain, and toil, and vigil

Ever so passeth he.
With a steadfast heart through every one.
As of old through the fire in Babylon

Did pass the holy Three.

142 LYRICAL POEMS

As after hours of tempest,

Or ere the day be done,
Pierces the rolling cloud-rack

The great orb of the sun ;
And all the broken heaven,

And the waste world below,
Is bathed with his tender glory,

A deeper golden glow ; —

So to the heathen peoples,

As after gloom of storm,
With light of the great evangel

Stands forth St. Columb's form :
Outpouring peace on hatred,

And closing years of strife ;
Like a visible benediction

Outbreathing a new life.

Behold they throng around him !

Vassals, and chiefs, and kings ;
From the poet-lips ^ that scorned him

His fame and honour rings.
See how the wild barbarians

Kneel at his loving word,
And come, like sheep that have wandered,

Back to the Shepherd-lord !

' The bards, at first his bitterest foes, ultimately became most friendly
and sang his praises.

ST. COLUMB OF ION A i43

Fear is in his rebuking,

Strength in his clear command,
But Love in his long forbearing.

And Blessing beneath his hand :
Tenderly loosing the burden,

Yet crushing the pride of sin.
He bringeth the fierce with the fearful,

The stern with the gentle, in !

Conqueror, true and noble !

Not now the wasted lands.
Not now the riven banner

And reeking battle brands !
But a kingdom torn from Satan,

And the spoil of souls unpriced.
Won painfully, laid humbly

At the feet of the Lord Christ !

Won painfully — in vigils.

In labours night and day,
Preparing in the desert

The coming King's highway :
Laid humbly— with no vaunting.

But meekly as by one
Counting his hands not worthy

To loose the Master's shoon.

144 LYRICAL POEMS

See, high in barren places, *'

Springs hallowed house, or shrine —
Of unseen spirit-blessing

The visible fair sign —
And winds, that breathed the rancour

Of human hate and wrong,
Bear now the heavenly incense

Of morn and even-song.

Praise to the Lord of harvest !

The waste land is a field
Wherein the sower's labour

A hundredfold doth yield :
Seed which the Spirit wafteth

Far on from clime to clime,
To be reaped at last by the angels.

At blessed Harvest-time.

But he dies — the saintly sower —

Lo, 'tis the Eve of Morn : ^
With joyful praise he seeth

The garnered wealth of corn ;
"They shall not lack," he crieth,

" The children shall be blest.
Though the long Sabbath calleth

The father unto rest ! "

' On the morning of Saturday, the day before he died, he visited the
granary of the monastery, and gave thanks for the provision for the
sustenance of those whom he was about to leave.

ST. COLUMB OF ION A 145

Now o'er the sacred College

On the Torr Abb he stands,
And prophet-benediction

Falls from his lifted hands :
" Lo, great shall be thy triumph

O'er evil overhurled !
And thou, the meek and poor, be found
Chosen and precious, when thy sound

Is heard in all the world."

Now, 'tis the hour of vigil —

The father in his cell
Hears on the air the call for prayer

Ring from the midnight bell.
Long ere the monks have risen

His feet have passed the door,
And at the Altar lowly

He kneeleth on the floor.

"Where art thou, O my father?"

One crieth through the gloom : ^
But the darkness is as silent

As the darkness of the tomb.
With haste they bring the tapers.

With fear they gather round ;
But in answer to their crying

Is neither sign nor sound.

' Dermid, the monk who was his continual attendant.
L

146 LYRICAL POEMS

Then gently they uplift him,

And lo ! — a little space —
An infinite sweet rapture

Doth lighten in his face ;
And well they know he seeth

The heralds of Reward !
The guardians of the blessbd,

The liegemen of the Lord !

Yet once he turneth on them

One last long look of love ;
One moment, for last blessing,

They raise his hand above ;
And then they watch him wildly,

And then they turn and weep —
The soul hath passed to Eden,

The body into sleep.

lona ! Holy island !

Isle of St. Columb's cell ! i
The very names thou bearest

Love all thy children well.
Ringed by thy rainbow waters,

Crowned by thy peerless skies.
Where change on change unchanging

For ever lives and dies :

' Icolmkill is the form in which this title of the island is still retained.

ST. COLUMB OF lONA 147

To us thy thought is dearer

Than of all lovely lands,
With all their lordly mountains,

And all their golden sands.

What say our seers ? ^ Hereafter

When storm shall shake the world,
And in one vast sea-ruin

Nations are overhurled —
When Erin lies and Islay

'Neath the sepulchral wave,
And of the hundred islands

Each finds its own sea-grave ; —
Then, as on rolling billows

When the tornadoes die.
Rocks the great Solan calmly

Where buried navies lie :
So riding, as God's token.

Over the waters dark.
Our Columb's own lona

Shall be God's second Ark.

Where'er our steps may wander

In far-off ways of toil,
In longing sweet remembrance

We tread thy sacred soil :

* These sixteen lines are an amplification of some Gaelic lines quoted
in Dr. Gordon's lona.

148 LYRICAL POEMS

And when the toil is over

Fain would we fall on sleep,
Where o'er thy first great Abbot

Thine ocean breezes sweep ;
So when the Angel-trumpet

Heralds the Easter-tide,
We may behold, as the mighty sound
Wakens the blessed sleepers round,

Saint Columb at our side !

A LAY OF PORT-NA-CHURAICHi

Rock and roar,
Wind and wave, of a west-rolling sea.

Of a sunset of sea :
The deep slope of a diamond shore,

A mosaic of shore :
And a moss-hidden skeleton lea,

Lying inward afar
From sea-gates of precipitous scaur : —
Like their spell was none other to me,

Is none other to me !

Face and form,
Port and power, of a ruler of men

Of a Saul among men :
Voice like song at the heart of a storm,

A deep organ of storm :
Kingly eye as an eagle's in ken,

^ Port-na-Churaich (the "Haven of the Coracle") is at the south-
west end of the island. Here St. Columba landed with his twelve
followers on the eve of Whitsunday, May 12, A.D. 563, and having
ascended to the point near it, now called "Cairn cul ri Erin" (or
"Cairn of Farewell to Ireland"), and seeing that his native land was
not visible, as it had been from Colonsay, the island on which he first
landed, he decided to make lona the cradle of his Mission. It is in
this bay that the brilliantly-coloured stones, white and porphyry-coloured
and, most beautiful of all, translucent green serpentine and the reddest

felspar, are found.

149

I50 LYRICAL POEMS

Yet an angel might own
Looking love by the steps of the Throne ;
Their old glamour is now as was then :

Even now as was then !

Long ago ?
And ye hear but the roll of the wind,

Of the wave and the wind,
But the ebb, or the plunge of the flow.

Sough of ebb, thunder-flow ?
And ye see not these wraiths of the mind ?

And that old Pentecost
Is a thing of the Far-away lost ?
And I sing to the deaf and the blind,

Spirit-deaf, spirit-blind ?

Ah, no, no !
By the winds would a challenge be hurled,

From the West ^ would be hurled ;
By the seas, by their many-hued Bow,

By their opaline Bow —
That the Banner of Love is unfurled

Over space without bound :
That this glamour of vision and sound
Has won through the gates of the world,

Of yon world and your world !

' The expanse of sea westward from Port-na-Churaich is unbroken
to that New World where the Episcopal Succession was first received
through the Catholic Church of Scotland.

A MORNING ON lONA

A SONG

A TENDER mist of amber lawn,
Aurora's vesture ere the dawn,
A robe already half-withdrawn

O'erhung the heaving bay ;
Just might be seen beneath its pall
Her bosom's restful rise and fall :
Just heard from far the breezy call

That summoned up the day.

The amber deepened into gold :
Then softly, slowly, fold by fold.
The lingering robe away she rolled :

Then, smiling sleep to scorn,
To sound of wings the waste along
That woke the ripples into song,
A goddess, beautiful and strong.

Up leapt the living Morn !

151

NARRATIVE POEMS

THE KNIGHT OF INTERCESSION

"All things pass away but the Love of God. Suffice it then to say
that he loved and feared God above all things." — From The Character
of Bayard, by his " Loyal Serviteur."

In ancient days, so saith an old Romaunt,
There lived a knight, brave, rich, and nobly born,
Withal pure-hearted as a saint, whose love
His ladye spurned ; not that she loved him not.
Although she said so, but because she saw
He put God higher than all human claims
Of love and reverence. So she bade him go,
And spurned him for a wicked pride : and he,
Not caring any more to dwell with men
In open converse, left his ancient halls
And things of wealth and state, which men hold dear.
And rode through many lands for many a day,
Doing true devoir as a noble knight.
None knew him, for he lived with visor down ;
His harness of plain steel revealed no sign
Of rank or name ; nor bore he in his helm
Token or favour ; only on his shield
A dark cross, as of mourning. On he rode ;
And ever as he wrought a gallant deed.
And man or maiden asked him, " How may I

155

156 NARRATIVE POEMS

Repay thy service ? " never aught said he

Save, " Pray for Her ! " and parted, still in quest

Of fresh occasion, and for guerdon still

Took nothing ; only came the self-same voice

From the closed helm in answer : " Pray for Her ! "

And so the captive freed did pray for Her ;
The rescued maiden prayed ; the widow prayed,
With all her wrongs avenged ; the poor and rich,
Each for the service they received from him,
Did pray for Her. The little children lost
In the wild wood, and found by him, and saved
From wolf or robber, lifting trustful eyes
Prayed also : and the angels went and came.
Bearing those prayers, and bringing blessings down.
And so she prospered much in all her pride.

The days passed on ; and on the warrior rode —
The Knight of Intercession : and his deeds
Made the plain harness famous in the lands ;
And neither ceased those grateful hearts to pray,
Nor she to prosper.

Came a day at last,
Whereon a certain prince, with all his host,
Did battle for his kingdom ; and the foe
Had well-nigh driven back his last essay.
And won the city. Mothers, sisters, wives,
Wringing their frantic hands upon the towers.
Wept for the coming issue, death or shame.
Then on a sudden rode into the fray
The nameless knight : the foremost foe drew back
Before his onset ; then with terrible blows

THE KNIGHT OF INTERCESSION 157

He clave a bloody pathway to their chief,

And bore him down, and slew him, and pressed on

To win the standard. So the battle changed ;

The prince and all his warriors took fresh heart,

And drove their foemen backward toward the sea.

And overthrew them. When the fight was done,

The prince with all his nobles came to thank

The saviour of his kingdom. But he lay

Wounded upon the standard he had won ;

A lance was in his breast, and through the helm

He was sore smitten ; and at last was seen

Through the raised visor the long-hidden face,

Sad, pale, and noble. Then the prince burst forth :

" Sir Knight, what guerdon wilt thou for thine aid ?

Certes, whatever thou shalt ask is thine,

E'en to the one half of my realm ! " And so

The nobles prayed him ; and their ladies came

And wept their thanks ; and all in that great town —

The rich and poor, the old and young — came there,

Beseeching him with tears of joy, that he

Would name some guerdon. And the knight looked

round ;
O'er his pale visage moved a moment's smile —
Like the last tinge of sunset on a height —
Tender and holy, moving men to tears ;
And smiling thus, he murmured, " Pray for Her ! "
Then with closed eyes he lay a little space,
And the pale face grew paler, and his head
Grew heavier on the knees of him whose hands
Had caught him falling. Yet once more the eyes

158 NARRATIVE POEMS

\Vere opened, and the noble head was raised,
And once more, while his upward wistful gaze
Sought the far heav'n, he murmured, " Pray for Her ! "
And in the look and in the prayer he died.
And in that kingdom never passed a day,
But prince, knights, nobles, ladies, young and old,
And rich and poor, at morn and evensong.
Did evermore henceforward pray for Her.

Ere long there came unto the ladye's bower
A nameless messenger. " I come," said he,
" Ladye, I come from one who loved thee well.
And whom thou lovest ! " Then the ladye flushed.
And but he said "who loved" and not "who loves,"
And so awoke a terror in her breast.
Which still was mindful of the love it spurned.
She would have straight dismissed him. Still she feigned.
And dallying with her fear she answered him
Lightly and falsely : " Comest thou from him,
The stately earl of yonder proud domain,
Who bids me make him and his fair broad lands
Mine own ? " He answered sternly, " Not from him ;
His heart is narrow, though his lands are broad ! "
" Perchance thou comest from the courtly knight
Who wears my glove for crest, my woven scarf
Across his gilded harness ? " " Not from him ;
His sword is rusty, though he rides in gold ! "
" Thou comest then, I wot, from him who rules
In yonder city, treads his palace floors,

THE KNIGHT OF LNTERCESSION 159

And sighs for me ? " He answered, " Not from him ;
His name is noble, but his soul is mean ! "

So thrice she questioned, hovering round her fear,
As one who stays and lingers at a door
Wistful, yet dreads to enter. So she paused :
Then with changed voice demanded, "Comest thou — ?"
But here she sickened, for she felt his eyes
Looked sadly on her, seeing through her soul.
Right to the inner trouble, undeceived
By outward seeming. Then she summoned strength,
And asked in accents tremulous and low,
Which grew in force and passion — as a stone.
Loosed from a hill-side, rolls towards the vale.
Slowly at first, but gathering power and speed
Falls wildly—" Comest thou from him, my knight.
Nameless but famous, unknown but renowned.
In plain steel armour, with his visor down,
Yet winning noblest praise in all the lands ;
Who knew not that I loved him even then
When I was scornfuUest, whom yet I love,
Whom I love on for ever ? If from him
Thou comest, get thee back and tell him all !
Go tell him I repent me of my pride ;
Tell him I wait for him, and spend my heart
In waiting ; tell him that I never loved
And never shall love other till I die !
Speak ! comest thou from him ? "

He said, " From him."
And more the trembling passion of her frame.
The close-clasped hands, the cheek now red, now pale,

i6o NARRATIVE POEMS

And more the pleading hunger of her eyes,
Than her quick asking, moved him to reply
Softly, and not in wrath, " I come from him,
Ladye — from him who cannot come to thee ;
For now that visor closed is closed no more,
For men have looked beneath it ; and he sleeps
In that plain harness, never more to rise
Till God shall wake him. In a prayer he died,
That all he saved and served should pray for thee.
So until death, at morn and evensong,
True hearts and hands are lifted up for thee.
That all things of the earth, and all of heaven,
In all thy goings out and comings in.
May bless thee always, even to the end.
Farewell ! so pray a thousand hearts for thee ;
So shall I pray for ever unto death :
Farewell ! "

She heard him speechless to the close,
And speechless still she saw him pass away :
" Death," and " Farewell," the last words on his lips.
And in her ears. Oh, how they rose and fell
Alternate, like a cadence of despair !
Death and Farewell ! Farewell and Death ! in each
A hopeless issue, speaking not of him
Who said them, but of him from whom he came —
Her own true knight, her noble, peerless knight :
Death and Farewell ! and then it seemed to her
As though she too must die.

Her maidens came
And found her swooning.

THE KNIGHT OF INTERCESSION i6i

But she did not die :
She woke again to hate the thought of Ufe,
Yet fearing death. She stood as one might stand,
A pilgrim for whose steps is no return,
With choice for two ways : one across a wild
Gloomy and drear, the other through a vale
With unknown terrors lurking in its depths,
More drear because unknown. E'en so she looked
On life and death : the one a darkened path,
Reft of the sun which might have shone on her ;
So darkened now, that ever and anon
Stretching her hopeless hands out in the dark
Towards that other, " Oh, that I might die ! "
She cried — still conscious that she dared not die.

Then was it well for her that late and soon,
Frqm great and noble, from the small and mean —
The sad and needy, and the rich and glad —
From little children and hoar-headed men —
The voice of intercession ever rose,
Like incense, unto Him " Who heareth prayer."
For even while He smote her with a sense
Of hopelessness and anguish — even then
He wrought within her unto final good.
Crushing her pride, He bade her stoop and raise
That Cross she had refused of lowly fear.
And love unselfish.

Then He gave her peace —
Because her heart had learned to rest on Him —
His perfect peace : and with rejoicing flight,
The great good angels of a thousand prayers —

1 62 NARRATIVE POEMS

The prayers still rising morn and eve for her —
Sped downwards at commandment of their King,
And tended her with constant service ; filled
Her mind with holy thoughts and pure desires
And glorious hopes. And so it was that she,
Who looked on life and death with hate and fear,
Saw in her life a happy pilgrimage
On toward a better country, which she sought
With longing ; and in death that blessed stream,
Ordained to bear the children of the Lord
Beyond the shadowy twilight of this world,
Into the glory of the perfect day.

DEARE CHILDE

A PARISH IDYLL
"Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven ? "

A SIMPLE cross, let in the outer wall
Under the chancel window, and beneath
A little slab, of marble also, graved
With these two words, spelt anciently, deare childe.
These and no more, and yet he lingered here ;
He who had wandered with me, and had scanned.
With heedless eyes that cared to rest on none.
The carven annals on a score of tombs.
He who had laughed at this, and sneered at that.
Nor gave elsewhere a reverent word for one,
Yet lingered here, and lingered on, until
I moved away to test him ; still he stayed
And kept his eyes upon the simple cross
And those two words ; and when I spoke to him
He moved not. Coming back and touching him,
I said, " What keeps you ? " As he turned, I saw
The face was wholly changed, the open brow
Thrid as with pain or thought, the careless eyes
Filmed with a mist of tears, and the strong lips

163

1 64 NARRATIVE POEMS

Set closer, as prepared against a sense

Of quivering weakness. Facing round again

Upon the little monument, he said,

" Tell me of him, or her." I thereupon.

In sudden memory of a bygone day

And a great loss which dimmed his life awhile.

Knew why the simple words on one unknown

Had power to move him by the touch of that

Which, says the great bard, "makes the whole world kin."

So without word of wonder I replied :

"Of her, who underneath the holy sign

Sleeps there, the record is but that of all

Who die ere yet the pure baptismal robe

Is soiled, or stained, or torn in this bad world.

Yet there are words of hers I know and keep.

Said in her last hours, little childish words.

Yet all divine in their simplicity,

Pure gold, with no touch of the base alloy

That mars all earthly treasure ; you shall hear :

I am no miser though it is pure gold ;

Share it, it shall enrich your soul as mine.

She was the daughter of a shepherd here.

And born hard by, there, where you see the smoke

Rise from the cottage underneath the eaves

Of that grove-covered hill. He who begot

And she who bare her were and are to me.

Of all the flock on whom I tend for God,

Worthiest of love and honour : poor in truth.

Save in that wealth which passeth not away ;

Humble, save in that greatness which alone

DEARE CHILDE 165

Is lord of death ; not known within the world,

But written amid God's chosen saints ; and she,

This quiet sleeper, was their only child.

Seven years, that fled like Eden hours, was she

The sunshine and the music of their home.

Such blessed sunshine ! in the holy blue

Of innocent eyes, in the fair, guileless face,

And myriad glimmers of her golden hair :

Such music ! in the run of little feet

That beat the merry pulse of laughing hours,

And in the loving prattle of the lips

That framed the simple tale of daily needs.

Of daily hopes and pleasures, aims and ends.

So sweetly, or that spake on holy themes

With all the intuition marvellous,

The fearless, reverent confidence of those

Whose angels see the Father's face in Heaven.

Ah me ! perchance that sunshine was too bright

For this all-darkening world, too sweet perchance

That music for the jarring dissonance

Of sin and sorrow. He who loved her best

Did what was best, and we that wept His will

Yet praise Him ; praise Him for the treasure lent,

For that sweet angel-visit which unawares

We entertained ; for that deep memory

Which makes the past of those seven winged years

An Eden of remembrance ; more than all

We now have learned to praise Him that again

Into His blessed keeping, undefiled,

He took her back, to meet us at ' that day.'

1 66 NARRATIVE POEMS

You wonder at my speech of ' us ' and ' we,'

As though she had two fathers. She had two —

Him the true, faithful man of whom I spake,

The shepherd of the flocks on yonder wold,

And me, the pastor of the sheep of God

Folded within this vale and on those hills ;

His child according to the flesh, and mine

According to the Spirit — mine the arms

In which she died to sin and lived to God ;

Mine the priest's hand that traced upon her brow

The token of her new inheritance,

Yon sacred sign ; mine, too, the lips that sware

Her vows of fealty. And from that hour.

As by an instinct, I, who had no child,

Gave all the father's heart within my breast

To her, and she to me a daughter's love ;

Such love as to the others of her home.

And reverence withal as unto one

Nearest, she held it, unto God and Heaven,

Which coming all so full from one so pure.

Not seldom smote and pricked a heart that knew

Its own defilement.

" So it was, that when
God's message came that we must render up
The treasure lent awhile, to me they gave —
In the wild grief that shook them more than mine,
Marking the severance of the fleshly bond —
The task to tell her that the end was nigh.
I went alone into the little room.
And using the familiar name she knew,

DEARE CHILDE 167

' Dear child,' I said, ' God wants you very soon
To go to Him. He has a better home
Above, you know, with angels in His Heaven,
Where there is perfect peace and no more pain.'
' Oh, that is good,' she answered, ' no more pain !
It hurts me so, and mother cries to see it ;
But, sir, will she come there, and father too,
And you ? '

" I answered, ' But a little while
And we will come ; God has not sent for us.
He calls you first, soon He will send for us,
And we will come, and you will meet us there,
And we shall never part, nor grieve, nor die.'
" ' Am I to die, sir ? ' tremulously she said ;
And when I could not speak for sudden tears,
Went on, ' Oh, now I know I am to die.
Like little Alice at the farm last year,
Who used to gather flowers and play with me ;
But she fell ill, and angels came from God
And took her up, you said, beyond the stars.
But oh ! they cried so when she went away !
Will mother cry, and father if I go,
And you, sir ? Oh, 'tis sad for you to cry !
May I not stay awhile ? '

" I answered her,
* Your father, mother, and I love you, dear ;
You know it ! '

' Oh, I love you so ! ' she said.
' But there is One who loves you more than all :
IV/io loves you best ? ' I asked her. Then a smile

1 68 NARRATIVE POEMS

Childlike and holy, as I never saw

On other lips, so human and divine,

Flowed over all the tender little face,

And broke in utterance, 'Jesus loves me best,

Jesus, Who died upon the cross for me ! '

" And much it moved me, watching her, to see
How the sweet head before the Holy Name,
Despite the languor of its feebleness.
Essayed the wonted reverence where it lay.
"Tis Jksus,' I replied, 'Who loves you best,
That calls you. Will you wait awhile, or go
Now when He calls you ? '

' Now, oh now,' she said.
And smiled again, and clasped her little hands ;
' And I shall see His face, and hear His voice.
And He will come and take me in His arms
And say your words, " dear child," and bid me rest,
Making me love Him ever more and more.
And I shall wait for you, and you will come,
And mother dear, and father when He sends.
And He will make us glad and good for ever.'

" That noon — for it was morning when I spoke —
There came upon her bitter throes of pain ;
But naught save sudden spasms of the brow,
And the shook lips and quicker breath betrayed
The tribulation of the passing life.
No wailing or complaint to vex our ears.
But ever and anon we heard her say,

DEARE CHILDE 169

In whispers softly, 'There is no more pain';
Or she would murmur, 'Jesus loves me best,'
And then again would whisper, ' No more pain.'

" But when the sun was low at eventide,
The bitter pain had passed, and she lay still,
Too weak for words, but smiling peacefully
With eyes that looked upon us with such love,
Our hearts in battle with the struggling tears
Were nigh to bursting. Then we knelt and prayed,
And as we rose the parting sunlight streamed
With its last glory through the window panes.
And o'er the dying child. She could not speak,
But first at us, and after toward the west,
Looked wistfully. And then the mother said
Divining, ' She would have you sing the hymn
You taught her for the sunset every day.'

" And so we sang the hymn of eventide,
' Abide with me '; and while we sang, her soul
Sang with us in that marvellous sweet smile.
That was like music too divine for sound.
We sang and darkness deepened, but that smile
Grew brighter yet, and brighter, till the close,
' In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me ! '
Then, with ' Amen,' was breathed one little sigh,
And song, and smile, and soul fied up to heaven.

" Deare Childe ! I think that we thus are more blest
Than by thy life — we are more near to God :
That holy sleep in Jesus which thou sleepest
Has power to lull us also into dreams
More bright of waters still and pastures green,

I70 NARRATIVE POEMS

Where thou art waiting till He bid us come :
He, the Good Shepherd, Who doth feed His flock,
Gather the Httle lambs within His arm,
And gently lead the heavy laden home."

"MORNING ROBERT''

A PARISH IDYLL

" So ere that day and hour begun
In which Thyself will be the sun ;
Thou'lt find me drest, and on my way,
Watching the break of Thy Great Day."

H. Vaughan, The Dawning.

" Until the day dawn."

There stands a little cottage near the wood
That lies one side the village church, and crowns
The long but gentle slope above the vale.
Wide on the left, descending from the wood,
Fringed with a low grey wall of ancient stone,
A grassy park extends, with, here and there.
Great trees, alone or clustered, till it joins
The hamlet and the river.

Many years
A pensioner of the hall, an old man, lived
Alone in the lone cottage. Dear to him
Its narrow walls and weather-beaten thatch.
And windows quaint and dim. There he was born ;
There had his mother loved him ; there she died,

171

172 NARRATIVE POEMS

Her hand in his ; there had his father prayed
His latest prayer of blessing on his head ;
There, one fair summer morning, he had brought
From the near church, his pretty sweetheart home ;
There she had loved him well a happy year ;
There, with her little babe, he saw her die.

Awhile the old dear home seemed changed to him,
Desolate and unlovely, but ere long
The sense of darkness and of loneliness
Left it, for it was peopled from the Past,
And brightened with the Future. There he saw,
As with shut eyes he sat beside his hearth.
The old familiar faces come and go,
And heard their voices at his will ; and there.
Far better thus alone, in simple prayer
And study of the Holy Word, he held
Communion with those dear saints gone before.
Not lost — and in that quiet commune drew
His vision of the glory that should be.

But when his years were many, and his limbs
Failed at their wonted toil, the good old squire —
Knowing himself the weight of many years —
Gave him the cottage for his life, and all
The little needs his thrift could not supply.
Supplied with willing hand.

But though his limbs
Were feeble, yet his heart had kept its youth,
And something of its childhood : in his eyes
It shone so bright, and over all his face —
Despite the wintry pallor of his age,

"MORNING ROBERT" 173

And the deep wrinkles which the tide of life,
Receding, had left marked on cheek and brow —
Glowed yet so fresh and cheerly, it belied
His fourscore years. A simple heart it was,
Not learn'd in any lore save that of Heaven ;
Yet, in its order, rare, for he was one
Whom God had made a poet to Himself;
Poet, indeed, who "never wrote a verse,"
Yet none the less a poet. He could hear
Music that did not come to common ears,
And see, what eyes around him seldom saw.
An inner life beneath the outer form
Of Nature : so that, knowing not his gift,
He marvelled that his fellows gave no heed
To that which made his life so sweet to him,
And earth so dear that naught could come amiss.
Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, day and night.
The shade and shine, the light of moon and stars,
The clouds of rain, or storm, or rolling mist.
The whirlwind and the zephyr — each and all
Were ministers of pleasure : every one
Taught him of God.

Those years of solitude
Fed his poetic heart from morn till eve,
From eve till morn ; and each repeated change
Made new delight.

Often, in simple words.
Glad of an ear that seemed to understand,
He told me how the Months were all his friends.
And had their mission to his heart and soul

174 NARRATIVE POEMS

With sight or sound ; how, not in Spring alone,

Or Summer, was their visitation loved,

But how, not seldom, he would lie awake

Communing on his bed in peace, and hear

The tears of dying Summer dash their drops

Against the thatch, the window, and the door ;

While from the drench'd woods came the Autumn throes.

Wild shrieks, and hollow moanings of the winds.

That rose with power and died away in pain,

That died in pain and rose again with power,

The long night through. Or in the Winter days,

" I love, sir," he would say, "to hear the storm

Go roaring through the glen and down the vale

So strong and terrible ; for, as I watch,

It minds me of the Psalm you preached about

A while ago — David on Lebanon,

Hearing the Lord's voice in the thunder-roll

O'er many waters : how it shook above

The old, eternal mountains, and below

The still, waste land, dividing, as it sped,

The flames of fire ; and how the cedar-trees

Brake as it smote them, and the forest depths

Unclosed before it ; but, saith he, the Lord

Sitteth above the thunder and the flood,

A King for ever ! and will give His own

Strength for the storms of life, and afterward

The blessing of His peace. And so it is

The end is always peace ; and therefore, sir,

I love the storm, because the calm at last

Is sure, and sweeter for it."

"MORNING ROBERT" 175

There were none
In all the scattered hamlet did not know
Old Robert ; and though there were some to sneer —
Poor souls ! they only sneered to hide the shame
Stirred by the pricking judgment in their breasts —
Because his kindly face changed utterly,
Stern, sorrowful, before a godless deed
Or an unholy word ; yet he was loved
By most, and honoured ; chief of all by those
The furthest from him in the scale of years ;
For the child's heart within the aged man
Yearned upon little children, like his Lord's.
No hard disciple he to thrust away
Their clambering feet, and clinging hands, or hush
Their eager voices ! 'Twas a goodly sight
To see and hear them on a summer day
Around him, like some old-world patriarch
With half a hundred children ; or to watch
How in God's house, on every Holy-day,
He, from his wonted station in the aisle,
Beside a grey stone pillar near to them.
Joined, in the holy words of prayer and praise,
His deeper tones with their less tremulous
Sweet voices, and to note how with a look —
The old saint, with the little ones of Christ,
Like somegood shepherd whom the young lambs know —
He would win back into the ways of prayer
Wandering eyes and hearts.

An arbiter
In many a village difference was he.

176 NARRATIVE POEMS

And oracle of counsel in their need

To all the hamlet ; and, as in the days

Of oracles each had its wonted shrine

And station, so old Robert did not lack

His proper tryst. A mighty old oak-tree

Within the park, fronting the far-off hills

That lay beyond the river, made for him.

Deep-hollowed close above its mossy roots,

A seat he loved. Here any one who sought

Would seek him when the sun was high at noon

Or low at eve ; but always he was there

At the first break of dawn, and hence it was

That, with a mingled reverence and jest,

They called him " Morning Robert," though his day

Was now far spent towards the eventide ;

For a strange fancy took him in his age

Never to miss the sunrise any morn

The long year round. So, though at noon or eve

Perchance he wandered elsewhere, never came

The dawn in summer, autumn, winter, spring.

But found him underneath the old oak-tree

In vigil : there he saw the new day born

Above the hills, in clamour of the winds.

Or brooding mist, or rushing clouds of rain.

As in the still sweet air and silver sky.

I held it dear to see and speak with him
Not seldom there. The picture as I came
Was worthy of remembrance — the great tree.
Knotted and gnarled with nigh a thousand years.
Yet wearing the new life of the last spring

"MORNING ROBERT" 177

Upon its summit greenly — underneath,
The old man seated, calm in that repose
Which is not of the world, with that child's look,
Most happy, blending with the dignity
Of many years and natural nobleness ;
His long staff, reaching from him to the ground.
And on its end close clasped his wrinkled hands,
And over them the reverend reverent face ;
The chin just laid upon the hand, the head
Leant back against the tree, and looking up,
Like hers, the saint of many tears and prayers —
Whom Scheffer drew — what time at Ostia
She sits with him, her son new born to God,
And communes with him of those future joys
Unseen, unknown, undreamed of, yet so near
They brighten o'er her !

If he saw me come.
With honour for my office, and some love
(I love to think it) for me, he would rise,
And underneath his lifted hat reveal
That old man's "crown of glory." We would hold
That converse then which only they can hold
Who love one Lord ; and, most of all, we dwelt
On the near glory of that heavenly day
For which, in night-time of the evil world,
God's people keep their vigil evermore.

And yet, withal, there came to him no sign
That soon he should go hence, nor did he deem,
Despite his failing limbs and fourscore years,
His time was near, until, on one sad eve,

178 NARRATIVE POEMS

A little maiden whom he called " Deare Childe,"

Making short sojourn in this pilgrim land,

Went home — went home, but left the world so dark

To us who loved her, and, not least, to him

To whose hoar winter she was like the spring,

So often that old tree was trysting-place

Where she would meet him after hours of school,

With sunbeams in her eyes and on her hair,

And merry prattle like the morning wind.

Or low sweet talk, like evening's softer breeze,

Of God, and heaven, and angels, and that Love

Which loved us unto death in Holy Land

Long years ago, and lives to love us still

Beyond the worlds. — Not till she passed away

He seemed to lose his vigorous hold on life ;

But on that eve when, as the sun sank down.

Her soul arose and spread its wings for flight,

And left us to the darkness, as I went

Homeward, grief-stricken, — for I loved the child,

God knoweth ! — leaning on the garden gate

I found him watching. With a single look

He read my wordless answer all too plain.

Perhaps a man's tears leave a deeper trace —

Perhaps some strange reflection, lingering still,

Caught from the deathly presence, told the tale —

Howbeit, he read it all, and turned away ;

But such a groan broke from him, I was fain

To stay him with a hand upon his arm,

And force one word, " The maiden is not dead,

But sleepeth."

"MORNING ROBERT" 179

Then he turned again and stood
Before me, silent. Neither spoke awhile,
And, though my grief was selfish, and I longed
To be alone with that remembered face.
That little form of saintly sweet repose,
And those last words, I might not leave him there.
So strangely grieved beyond the wont of age,
The whole frame rocked like some grey tower that feels
The earth-wave roll beneath it. So we stood ;
The summer even darkening towards the night,
The breeze that rose at sunset from the west »

Now dying wearily in sighs that shook
Faintly the leaves above us. Then again.
Touching his hand, I spoke. "Is it too long
To tarry for the morning, when they meet
Who parted in the night ? That morning comes
In God's good time ; when He shall will it comes.
It will not tarry." Then he raised his head
Quickly as one who hears, or thinks he hears,
A summons far away. A little while
He seemed as one who listened ; then as though
He heard the voice that called him, " Ah!" he said —
Musingly, not to me, within himself —
*' The youngest, now the oldest." Then a change
Revived the shaken frame, and lit the face.
Which had been dark, with light so strange and new,
I marvelled. But my own heart calling me
Back to myself, I left him with one word
Of benediction.

i8o NARRATIVE POEMS

But, from that day forth,
There was not one that might not mark a change
In Robert ; not of weariness, or pain.
Or that which is the strength of many years,
" Labour and sorrow " ; rather might be seen
A brightness, added to the wonted look
Of peace he wore. He did not seem like one
Waiting, however, patiently, for that
Which might be yet far off; but like a man
Who knows with joy one more swift hour will end
The long delay. It was, indeed, as though
Patience with him had had her perfect work,
And in his soul already had begun
The full joy of fruition. Yet to none
He bade farewell. And some there were who said,
Noting that change which brightened in his face,
But seeing naught beneath it, " Sure it was
Robert had got another lease of life,
And would outlive them all." And others said,
" They marvelled Robert had so soon forgot
The little maid he seemed to dote upon."
But those who knew him better saw the change.
And only wondered with a kind of awe.
But me he told in secret he believed
The time was very near when for his soul
The blessed dawn should break behind the hills,
And bring the eternal day. " And yet," he said,
" I do not know, sir, why I am so sure ;
No angel told me ; no, nor in a dream
Have I been warned ; and so I do not say

"MORNING ROBERT ' i8i

Openly, I am sure, lest, if it be

I am mistaken, I should live to hear

My dear hope jested on — but, sir, I think

I cannot be mistaken, though no dream

Or angel has revealed it ; for that night

On which the little maiden went to God,

And you, sir, told me, when my heart was sick,

That when the Lord shall will the morning comes

And will not tarry, then, I know not how,

But suddenly my breast was filled with joy,

As though I heard the footsteps of the Lord

Coming upon the mountains. " He will come,

He will not tarry," sounded in my soul ;

Not faintly, as in whispers, but as though

A hundred voices said it. Then I thought,

Surely it is a message sent from God,

And by His priest He bids me stand prepared

For His quick coming. Therefore, sir, I wait,

Believing He is near. Yea, even so.

Lord Jesus, come ! Amen "

I looked at him,
His head bent low in utterance of the prayer,
The ancient, holy prayer, wherewith is closed
The great Apocalypse. And " such," I thought,
" Was he who prayed it on that latest page
Of inspiration, he, the most beloved
Where all were loved, yet last to pass away ;
The old disciple, full of years, and worn
With many toils, but like a little child
In confidence and gentleness and love."

i82 NARUATIVK POEMS

Summer was young when our "deare childe" was laid
Under the chancel window, and her grave
Was still made bright, beneath the little cross,
With summer blossoms, when, one early morn,
I passed it by. No purpose led me forth,
Only a vague desire that I might feel
The first fresh breathing of the infant morn
And see its earliest smiling down the hills
And o'er the stream. I wandered by the wood,
And passed the lonely cottage. Then, I thought,
" Robert not yet has left his morning watch,
And he shall tell me with what joy he saw.
An hour ago, the sun rise."

From the wood
I came behind the tree to where he sat
Beneath it. Then I thought he was asleep.
Because he moved not, and his eyes, half-closed,
Seemed overcast and dim, and when I spoke
He did not hear me.

" Robert ! do you sleep ? "
I said, and bent to touch him. — Then I saw
Indeed he slept. It was the sleep of him
Who slept within the cave of Bethany,
Whom none could wake but Jesus.

He was dead :
Dead underneath the dying old oak tree —
(Its last leaf died that autumn). " O my friend,"
I cried, with tearless bitterness at heart,
" I came to hear thee speak of light and joy,
And thou art dead ! "

"MORNING ROBERT^' i8:

Shivering with grief, I turned,
And — lo ! before me glowed the living morn —
The great unclouded sun above the hills
Made hills and woods and river beautiful ;
And overhead, unseen, I just might hear
A lark that sang to God his matin song
Of praise for light and joy.

Again I turned,
Fronting the sleeping saint, and as my tears
Fell part in sorrow, part in penitence,
I knelt beside him with that ancient prayer.
As I had heard him pray it, " Even so,
Lord Jesus, come ! Amen."

Thus did he die.
That good old man. And for ourselves, indeed.
It could not be but we must mourn for him.
We miss him at the solitary tree ;
We miss his reverent greeting by the way ;
We miss him in the Church's holy hours
From that grey pillar, and the altar-rail.
How many mourn that childless, poor old man !
That lonely, unimportant, poor old man !
Oh, nay ! — that heir of heaven, that royal saint.
That brother of the Lord, that king and priest
To God Almighty ! Yes, and we who mourn
With love's true sorrow, yet will never say
" Alas ! " but " Hallelujah ! "—lost to us.
But found in heavenly places ! He has left
A vacant niche in earth's cathedral front,
But in God's Eden, by the crystal stream,

1 84 NARRATIVE POEMS

Under the tree of life, a glorious form,
He fills a glorious place ; his eyes behold
The Great King in His beauty ; in the glow
And splendour of that Day, for which he looked
And longed and waited, now at last he hears
The chantings of the myriad morning stars
Of which he caught the echoes, though so far
Not faintly, here.

For us, who still are here,
We follow : if so be, by grace of Christ,
We also may attain, and hear, like him.
The Voice of the Beloved, beyond the hills,
Calling our souls to gather to His light,
When the day breaks, and shadows flee away.

THE BIRDIE^

From his short slumber in the early morn

The sick man woke. Beneath the window sill,

Caged in this alien land, an English lark,

Making melodious prelude to the light

Ere the dark shades were driven all away,

Lightened its exile with the songs of home.

Strange in that land, alone of all its kind,

Well was " the Birdie " known for leagues around ;

Rough men, uncouth in look and speech, would come,

As those who keep a Sabbath after toil,

And hush their ribald blasphemies, as though

They stood in holy presence while it sang ;

And their wild faces would take back again

Some looks of childhood and those purer days

Far off, or ere the branding lust of gold

Had marred them.

On this morn the Birdie's note
Woke from his fevered sleep the dying man.
He knew the time was near that he must die :

^ Elihu Burritt tells a story of the intense interest excited among the
colonists of an Australian settlement by the singing of a lark — a bird
not indigenous to Australia — kept in a cage outside her window by
a widow. She had brought it over from England to share her exile,
and refused all the many offers of purchase made to her.

185

1 86 NARRATIVE POEMS

And, smiling as the broken-hearted smile,
He said in thought, " This wide Australian land,
That never gave me welcome to her arms
Or bade me find a home upon her breast,
Will open soon her heart and lay me there.
And suffering none to break my quiet sleep.
There she will clasp me closely till the end."

Was it not hard to die so far away
From all of place and person that he loved ?
To die alone, not one of all his kin
To minister the last necessities.
To fan the burning fever from his brow,
To cool his hot dry lips, and, more than all.
To give him tender words and loving looks,
And make death calm and holy — as a wind
At even, breathing softly from the west.
Gladdens the dying sunlight, or as when
It breathes Hke pity through the autumn woods.
And the sere leaves like dying hopes float down
Gently to their decay, not torn by gusts
Nor whirled away in tempest — even so
To breathe upon him all the gracious air
Of reconciling sympathies, and then
To close at last the sightless eyes, and then
To shroud the still cold form, and reverently,
As one who sows immortal seed for God,
To lay it in the furrow of a grave,
Waiting His golden harvest, over it.
Dropping the precious rain of holy tears.
Not one — and yet how might he call it hard ?

THE BIRDIE 187

No other hand than his had cut the bonds
That bound him to his kin and to his home.
Nor might he rail against the land he loved
And longed for far away ; nor stern nor cold
Had been its motherhood to him her son,
But kindly, as a mother, she had given
All liberal gifts to meet a modest need,
And yet, as one too wise in love to spoil.
Withheld her treasure from his grasp. But he
Had heard a siren-call come o'er the waves
From the great Golden Isle, had seen in dreams
A glorious spectre clothed in sheen of gold
That motioned him to follow ; unto whom
He said, " I follow," and arose and went.
Went — careless of the dear familiar land,
Heedless of loving eyes that wept for him,
Deaf to the tender voices praying him.
Scornful of duty with her stern reproach,
" Stay, for thy place is here," — and more than all
Striving to cover what he could not hide,
A Form with Arms outstretched to draw him near,
To deaden that within which would not die,
Another, " Follow Me, for thou art Mine."

O'er the long leagues of that sea waste between,
Cursing the tardy hours that would not fly
And bring him face to face with all his hope
Quick as his eager longing, on and on
The gleaming spectre lured him ; till it stood
In that far land which seemed another world.
And bade him come and thrust his greedy hands

1 88 NARRATIVE POEMS

Into that treasure-heap. It is a tale
Oft told, yet not too often. While he grasped
There came against him surely one by one
Avenging powers to hinder : pains of toil
Unwonted, hateful scenes of sin and strife.
The savage life beneath the burning sun,
The broken sleep of fear beneath the stars,
The want of better things than gold, and then
The robber's cruel hand that made in vain
Long weary months of labour, then disease.
And with it none to heal and none to cheer ;
And so it was that ere a year was gone
He saw that golden phantom, as a cloud
Tinted by sunset lapses into gloom.
Slow darken into grisly hues of death.

And now it was that memories of home
And those fond hearts that waited wearily
Beyond the evermore-dividing seas,
Came thronging in sweet sadness over him.
With holy influence from the Source of love
Moving his soul to prayer. And so the Form
Which he had sought in vain to see no more
Looked also down upon his heart in love,
Not in reproach : he thought those gracious Arms
Leaned to him from their Cross of pain as though
To draw him near for blessing ; and a Voice,
Rich with the eloquence of mercy, seemed
Ever to fall more clearly on his soul
" Ere long thou shalt be with Me — thou art Mine."

THE BIRDIE 189

And on this early morning as he lay,
Yet clearer, nearer seemed to fall that Voice,
" This day thou shalt be with Me," and his soul
Made answer, " Yea, since Thou forgavest him
Who died that day, I, though more vile than he.
Will hope for mercy greater than my sin."

And as he lay and brighter grew the morn,
And sweeter sang the Birdie, while a sense
Of pardon calmed the waters of his soul
Into a perfect stillness — on their breast
Came mirrored from the old beloved land
Scene after scene of other days long dead :
Came not to trouble but to soothe, and all
Seemed wrought to real life as by a spell,
And the spell-worker seemed the Birdie's song.

Oh sweetly, sweetly rang the joyous note !
He thought he was a child again, and stood
With others, children also, by a stream
Which, as it were the type of their glad lives,
Ran, making merry music through the fields,
Ran, with a rippling welcome and farewell
To every blossom met and left behind.
Ran, careless of the solemn mystery
Of ocean ever nearer day by day.
So sped he with his fellows by the banks
And through the meadows, greeting hastily
All bonny things and bright, and stayed for none,
Heeding no future save the next hour's play —
And round and o'er him laughed the frolic wind.

190 NARRATIVE POEMS

Oh sweetly, sweetly rang the Birdie's note !
And now he was a boy whose eager heart
Would fain in this the glimmering dawn attain
Manhood's full day : with visionary eyes
Blending his future with the glorious past
He saw no present : all the quiet hills
About his home were castled heights o^ war,
And down their placid sides his fancy scanned
Descending squadrons sweeping to the fray.
The keen fresh morning breezes woke his soul
Like battle clarions ; peaceful woodland scenes,
Through which the simple cotter wound his way.
He peopled from the noble names of Eld
With warrior forms : great Arthur, flower of kings.
True friend and terrible foe, rode there ; and there
Sir Galahad, who sought the Holy Grail,
With earnest face and pure ; and here was heard
Sir Roland's horn : and ever there and here
Some immemorial deed was wrought again.
These faces and a thousand else he saw,
He saw them all and loved them, and he longed
To follow and be like them ; and the sun
Shone brightly o'er him, and the blackbird's call
Came to him like a bugle from the dell.
And all things seemed so beautiful and true,
He cried aloud until the echoes rang—
And round and o'er him swept the rolling wind.

Oh sweetly, sweetly rang the Birdie's note !
And now the scene was changed, and still alone,
Yet not alone, for there is life in death.

THE BIRDIE 191

He stood beside a grave. Not many years
Had made him older since that day, and yet
Not one expectant glance in those dim eyes,
Not one bright gleam upon the stricken face,
Alas ! not e'en toward Heav'n ; he stands and looks
A stony look beneath, and bitter words
Low-voiced with sullen passion made their way :
" I loved her with a love that made me pure.
And she is gone ; the truth was in her eyes,
And they are closed for ever ; her bright hair
Made chains to bind me to the hope she held
Of God and angels ; they are loosened chains
There in the dust. She was my all in all.
Truth, Honour, Beauty, Purpose, Purity,
Hope, Joy, Faith, Comfort — all — and she forsooth
Was needed elsewhere and not left to me.
And I go forth and care not where I go ! " —
And round and o'er him sighed the ghostly wind.

Yet sweetly, sweetly rang the Birdie's note.
Cloud-like the sin of those remembered words
Troubled the vision of the dying man.
A moment — and it sped, for now no more
Came memories of the past ; a marvellous light
Such as he knew not, drowning all the morn.
Flooded his soul, and music wonderful.
In which the Birdie's warble blent and died,
Began, rose, swelled and deepened into Heaven
Louder than loudest thunders, yet more soft
Than all earth's sweetest silence. Then a form,
Bright from God's presence hovered down and smiled —

192 NARRATIVE POEMS

And yet he knew it — and a voice he knew,
Attuned to that strange music, flowed to him,
" Arise, come hence, beloved ! I am sent
To bring thee, for He calleth thee, and now
Thine eyes shall see Him — Come."

Before the day
Shed its full lustre, one who slept beneath
Woke with a sudden start, and knew not why,
But rising quick, and coming half in fear
Within that chamber, he beheld his face
Shine with a light which was not of the sun.
Nor yet of inner life, for he was dead ;
Dead, yet without, as though there were no death.
And as its music had been learnt in Heaven,
Sweeter and sweeter sang the Birdie still.

THE GATE OF DEATH

"Grant, O Lord, . . . that through the grave, and gate of death, we
may pass to our joyful resurrection." — Collect for Easter Eve,

The watching Church was near her Easter hope;

The waiting earth was close upon her spring,
Soft breezes wooed the woodland buds to ope
And woodland choirs to sing.

Yet was not Lententide nor winter past,

Still were the lands of leaf and flower forlorn ;
And Christian souls kept one more quiet Fast
Or ere their Festal Morn.

It was Death's hour : but close are Death and Life :

The long loud storms had breathed their latest breath;
In dying is the agony and strife,

But solemn peace in Death.

So had the awful Friday passed in pain,

And souls were calm that had not ceased to grieve,

Since in their sorrow Hope drew close again,
Again with Easter Eve.
o 193

194 NARRATIVE POEMS

One lay and waited as the hours went on,

Watching the shadows deepen round his bed :
One whose long Lent of life was almost gone,
And winter well-nigh sped.

Spring was so near him, and the glorious Feast ;

And his believing soul in calm foretaste
E'en in that death-hour from all trouble ceased,
Nor needed to make haste.

And one was watching with him, young and fair,

But fairer than in beauty of her youth,
By that sweet patience which meets earth's despair.
Secure of Love and Truth :

His Love, His Truth, Who cannot change or lie,
Lover of souls and Lord o'er Death and Hell ;
Who saith, " In Me all things below, on high.
For you are always well."

Her heart was full of tears, and almost rent,

Well-nigh too full for life, yet her child's will—
A will not lost but with her Father's blent —
Lay satisfied and still.

Husband and wife : so dear, so near, that earth
Had naught for each without the other good,
Yet son and daughter by one heavenly Birth,
Beneath one Fatherhood.

THE GATE OF DEATH 195

And heaven is more than earth, and so their love

Was more than earthly, even as their life —
In souls so sure of hidden bliss above
No sorrow grows to strife.

" My children do not part, and cannot die " :

Yesterday taught them by the Cross in sight,
To-day by that dark Sepulchre hard by.
Morn by its promised light.

She sat beside him till the night grew deep,

Her eyes on his, his hand within her hand,
The perfect peace she saw had power to keep
Her own heart in command.

Not much they said : Love unto love can tell

Its inmost feeling, though of words be none.
By look, by touch, in thought they commune well.
Whose heart and soul are one.

Yet, twice he spoke : once, when as day grew dim.

And a bell ceased upon the still March air,
She sang the Church's Psalms and one sweet hymn,^
And prayed the Vigil Prayer.

Then first he said, " ' The Grave and Gate of Death '

Are near this Eve : Lord ! let my soul be borne
Through them to Thee with the first light and breath
Of Thy victorious Morn.

^ See Hymns Ancient and Modern^ No. 105.

196 NARRATIVE POEMS

" I will ' remain in patient watch ' till day —

This gloom is holy, for it once was Thine —
Then, O my Righteousness ! with Thy first ray
Bid me arise and shine."

Again was heartfelt silence for an hour ;

Then one came in, whose voice well-known and dear
Brought prayer and counsel and the Word of power
The contrite love to hear.

Beautiful were his feet. When he was gone

Light seemed to linger and the calm increase,
Flowing from those last words, the benison
Of the eternal peace.

The hours crept on : till dawn was close, and still

She watched beside him. Once she thought he slept,
Nor knew but it was death, and then her will
Failed in her, and she wept.

No sound, but tears upon his hand could tell

Her anguish ; and, with love that could not chide,
He whispered, " Dearest, even this is well,
He wept when Lazarus died ;

" He knows His sheep ; God-Man ; and in His ears

Your cry is holy ; even Hope can weep :
'I go,' He said, and went, amidst His tears,
' To wake him out of sleep.'

THE GATE OF DEATH 197

" Like Him you weep — and I — O love, my wife,
I weep too ! — but our tears do Faith no wrong,
The heirs together of the grace of life.
Our parting is not long ;

*' Yet now we part ; and e'en the ' little while '
Seems long to love : but oh ! if life is sweet,
Sweeter it is to lay it with a smile
At our dear Master's feet.

*' My darling, this is all ; speech fails ; stoop low,

Tenderest face I love so ! — now, before

Sight, sense, fail also, and I cannot know

Even you — kiss me once more."

She kissed him. O how piteously her soul

Longed to go with him, even while its cry
Lay hushed in reverence, for its trust was whole
In its great agony.

She kneeled, her arms about him, by the bed.
And watching the dim eye \nd fitful breath,
Seemed with her still white face beside his head
A very Bride of Death.

Slowly the darkness shrouded all the room.

As the spent fire and watch-light died away ;
Slowly again came creeping o'er the gloom
The sense of the new day.

198 NARRATIVE POEMS

A low broad window looked toward the East ;

And as a hand before a taper's gleam
Glows red, its curtain folds, as dawn increased,
Veined with rich life did seem.

His face was from it : but in fear anon

She saw his spirit saw, by the set eyes,
The loosened clasp, the gesture as of one
Preparing to arise ;

Then one faint sign ; whereat — as if she knew

Behind it all the Beatific Sight
Lay veiled — with awful hand she backward drew
The curtain from the light.

Blest Light, blest Morning ! beautiful it shone

Just over the dark hills with orient rays,
Which, like the summons from a trumpet blown,
Poured full upon her gaze.

He slowly turned to look from where he lay :

Then once or twice, like one most blest, he sighed,
Then laid his pale hands close as if to pray,
And, gazing still, he died.

Christ's Morning ! ceased before it the old law
That bound in prison-house the yearning soul.
Which fled to taste the glory that it saw,
Freed from its long control.

THE GATE OF DEATH 199

" Difiiiiiis, Domine ! " — was that the prayer ? —

" Here have I seen Thy Promise, Risen Lord ;
Now I depart to find Thy Fulness there,
According to Thy Word ! "

And she ? — she waits ; alone but not forlorn.

And learning more to long as less to grieve,
Keeps, with an ever brighter hope of morn,
Her quiet Easter Eve.

SONNETS

THE ONE NAME

" Who is among you that walketh in darkness, and hath no light?
Let him trust in the Name of the Lord." — Isaiah 1. lo.

In One Name I have found the all in all.

It is enough, and It will never fail.

Here on the height, or there within the vale,
In this my strength I shall not greatly fall.
If on the dark hills here thy fears appal,

O thou mine Enemy ! or there assail

My fainting heart, yet shall they not prevail.
For on the Name thou dreadest I will call.

Oh then rejoice not ! for I shall arise.
And heavenly light shall stream across the gloom,
And heavenly music drown the voice of doom.

And a most blissful prospect cheer mine eyes :
All from that Name beloved and adored,
Thy sweet great Name, O Jesus Christ, my Lord.

202

FOUR POETS

A PERSONAL HISTORY

(1877)

WALTER SCOTT

Master-Magician of that breezy Spring
Ere my first decade died — when life awoke
Within me of the mystic world, and broke

In such illuming flashes as still fling

Light on my soul — in bugle-calls that ring

Still in mine ears ! thy wand it was whose stroke
As swift in power as April's on the oak,

Stirred all my life to rich imagining.

Oh glamour not of love or ladies' eyes,

But of the stream, the mountain, and the glen,
Of war-horse champing, clash of armoured men.

And song that, like its subject, never dies !
Master-Romancer, not supreme to-day.
Power yet was thine which cannot pass away.

203

204 SONNETS

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

Then with the early summer came the zest

For food not meet for babes — for old-world lore
Ere "Pan was dead" ^ — for fervent thought to soar

Where sang " The Seraphim" ^ — or, in anxious quest,

To plunge through deep seas at the soul's behest,
And find with beating heart and bated breath
How knowledge is by suffering, life by death ^ —

White Pearls of truth 'neath Ocean's darkling breast.

Aurora,* from thine hand the summer long

I drank the " Wine of Cyprus " :^ with thine eyes
I saw from " out the depths " *"' to the clear skies.

And heard thy voice sing true the spheric songJ
More than our "England's Sappho "^ is thy due:
Earth's Sovereign Poetess, as great as true.

' TAe Dead Fan, vol. iii., 4th Edition, 1856.

* Ibid., vol. i.

■^ See Vision of Poets , Ibid., vol. i.

^ Aurora Leigh — the title of her most important work. It is in some
sort autobiographical.

* See vol. iii., 4th Edition, 1856.

^ See "De Profundis" in Last Poems, 1862.

^ See Sonnet, Perplexed Music, vol. ii., 4th Edition, 1856.

* A title given to the poetess by Edgar A, Poe.

FOUR POETS 205

III

ALFRED TENNYSON

Ere this, and in the fuller year, there fell
On mind and soul made ready long ago-
Receptive ground for such an overflow,
Nile-like, of grace from mystic hills— a spell
Of power made sweet by music's miracle,

That showed stern truth, high duty, steeped i'

the glow
Of such fair trust my restless heart below
Answered far Heaven at last with "All is well.''^
I swear, O Poet, by thy "Voices "^ twain.
By souls that cannot prove and yet believe,^
By Love and Duty, by Saint Agnes' Eve,
By Arthur, Galahad, Gareth, and their train.
Thou art the Master-Prophet of this age :
Its sweetest music-maker, surest sage.

^ See Section cxxvi. in /« Memoriam.

2 The Two Voices.

* See Proemion to In Memoriam.

2o6 SONNETS

JOHN KEBLE

"The richest glow sets round th' autumnal sun":^

And so about the later year there grew 1

A light of holier influence, deeper hue,
Than that which fell so fresh on life begun,
Or that the radiant summer ever won, d

A light which brought, with all things fair and new,

That spiritual City clear in view
Where the true life begins " when life is done." ^
Priest-Poet, — Phosphor of the Light of Light,

" Sun of my soul " — still is the singing sweet

Of those high Poets, beautiful their feet
Still on the hills which darken toward the night.

But thy deep voice is tenderest in mine ear.

Nearest thy saintly presence and most dear.

^ See Christian Year, 2nd Sunday after Epiphany.
^ Ibid.

IN CHARTERHOUSE CHAPEL

ON founder's day, 1872

Since I knelt here ten years have slipt away
And four : and only this to me is strange,
That only in myself appears a change :

All else that then was seems the same to-day.

Here are the antique gownsmen, worn and gray,
"Codd Colonel" and "Codd Captain," each old face,
Long passed, seems still to fill its wonted place;

And there behind me all the young array
Stands as it stood on that last Lenten morn.

When here with eyes all dim I sighed farewell,

And heard each old prayer like a passing bell !
Well — of those half-shed tears I think no scorn;

Unchanged in this at least, from boy to man,

That I am heart and soul Carthusian.

207

208 SONNETS

I LOVE the Domus. Floreat! though no more
Shall be beheld again on Founder's day
Those ancient faces and that young array

In most pathetic union as of yore,

Meeting together where they both adore :
Yet shall it flourish : 'tis a green old tree
Deep-rooted in dark earth, yet vigorously

Bidding its young leaves and new branches soar
And find a rich fresh life and freer course

Above these misty depths in purer air :

So to be not less reverend but more fair
By a departure which is not divorce.

Sternum floreas, Domus! there and here;

Be greater there — here evermore as dear.

TO WINDSOR CEMETERY ON
MAY-DAY

THROUGH THE PARK!

We five went blithely gravewards on May-day.

Gravewards : but over us all Heaven in smiles

Broke through the tracery of woodland aisles
And gothic cloisters green: for all our way,
As through a Church of Resurrection, lay,

Under one dome, through pillars, arches, spires;

Nor did we miss the chant of Easter choirs;
High in the dome the lark, upon the spray

Linnet, merle, mavis ; last, one nightingale
Sang his first anthem purely without fear —
As sure of welcome in a poet's ear —

Sang in the sunshine o'er the sylvan pale.
Then, passing, we fulfilled our quest, and stood
By the green graves above the choral wood.

209

2IO SONNETS

THE CEMETERY

Among the graves : but round us the sweet air,
Sun-warmed and laden from the Ulac's breath
With Hving odours, kissed the mounds of death;
Flowers, diamonding the grasses here and there,
Stirred to the soft caress, and everywhere

Was life, and warmth, and beauty, and repose;
While in the midst the slender steeple rose,
A Mother's hand toward home, serenely fair.

Now what thy victory, Grave, or. Death, thy sting
Unto her children ? — One we met, well known.
Worn with long winter and aweary grown;

Summer was mine, and four were in their spring;
But all were blithe: and in one shadowy spot
Smiled to our smiling the Forget-me-not.

TO WINDSOR CEMETERY 211

III

THE LITTLE CHURCH

If I forget thee, O thou lowly Shrine,
Prefer thee not in Israel, let my voice
Forget the power of song, no more rejoice

With reverence in the faculty divine.

Thine am I by first love, for ever thine.

Thine by a new-sent Deacon's hopes and fears,
A Priest's first consecration: by prayers, tears,

And travail known to God. And thou art mine
By the true love of souls that cannot die :

Of some yet on their journey, as of those

Whose tired forms round thee here awhile repose.
And wait the last Spring and the open sky.

Whose welcome, if I fail not by the way,

I shall not miss on the new earth's May-day.

FROM WINDERMERE

TO THE CONGREGATION AND CHILDREN OF

ST. Paul's, haggerston

Moored by a green isle of Winandermere —
Listening the gentlest lapping of the wave
On the rock margin, and the blackbirds' brave
Soldierly antiphons, afar and near,
And the wind's whispered evensong — I hear
A sound beyond, and sweeter as more grave
Than ever paradise of nature gave,
Dear to my heart of old, and now more dear :
The roar of Londo7i—the deep undersong,

The myriad music of immortal souls
High-couraged, much-enduring, 'midst the long
Drear toil and gloom and weariness. It rolls
Over me with all power, for in its tone
The hearts I love in Christ beat with my own.

212

THE GARDEN OF THE LORD"

"The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." — Isaiah xxxv. i.
(Motio of All Saints', Mission Church of Si. PauCs, Haggerston.)

"The Lord shall comfort Zion : He will comfort all her waste places :
and He will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the
Garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanks-
giving, and the voice of melody." — Isaiah li. 3.

The Garden that has been, and is no more !
And left the world forlorn of bliss and bloom ;
Naught but the flaming sword to break the gloom,

Guarding against all hope the fatal Door.

The Garden now ! peaceful amid the roar

Of circling storm — Christ's Church, in face of doom
Revealing pardon — by the desolate tomb

Spreading the fruits of life in plenteous store.

The Garden that shall be ! where none shall know
Of noise, or gloom, or grave, or curse again •
But, 'neath th' unsetting Sun and gracious Rain,

The Rose and Lily evermore shall blow.

Gardener of souls ! dear Lord, we work for Thee,
Sure of this beauteous Eden that shall be.

213

MIDNIGHT IN LONDON

(FEBRUARY 24, 1873)

' ' From many a nook imthought of there
Rises for that proud world the saints' prevailing prayer."

Keble.

" I WILL not spare : within its circling wall
Are not ten righteous." So descending Hell
In flakes of fire on shrieking Sodom fell.

I see descending Heaven on London fall

To-night, in flakes of snow. No fears appal
Or eye or ear. Most fairly on the sight
Lies the great seamless garment of pure white.

A robe, like Christ's, on London robes it all.

And all is still, save for the watchman's tread;
And, at the day's first hour, the voice of time
Tenderly solemn in a steeple chime.

Like life's calm promise uttered o'er the dead.

Such is the scene ; sure, for this wicked city

Christ's Church hath pleaded well the Eternal pity.

214

THE SMALL-POX IN THE EAST END

SPRING AND EASTER

The room is dark, and at the door is Death ;

Sightless, and marred beyond all knowledge, there
His victims waiting lie : their labouring breath

Makes the sole sound, and taints the heavy air.
What comfort? — Ah, my God! who doubt Thy truth,

And mock our Easter hope, should enter here,
And see Thy Word in its immortal youth,

Serene and strong in mastery of fear.
Without, the changed season smiles and sings.

For winter's tyranny is overpast:
Within, is risen with healing in His wings

The Sun, whose sky no death-clouds overcast :
There, Spring-tide's promise of regenerate earth ;
Here, Easter sunshine of the second birth.

215

2i6 SONNETS

HOLY COMMUNION

A LITTLE while, O Death, a little while.

Then may'st thou enter in and make an end —
An end of sorrows — enter with the smile

Thou usest when thou comest as a friend.
A little while : for meet it is and right

That first we feast together— we who stay
They that be passing— so to part at night

Foretasting union in the new near day.
The woful scene, the sickening air, the gloom.

Mar not this Feast : round this poor Altar-board
Good angels gather, and account this room

A Gate of Heaven by Presence of the Lord.
A little while, O Death ! then set them free
To find His Face beyond this veil and thee.

A SUNDAY CONFIRMATION IN AN
EAST-END CHURCH

Within, the sounds were all of praise and prayer,
The old alternate music of the soul,
Triumphant, tender : now the lofty roll

Of glad thanksgiving shook the sacred air:

Now the pathetic voice of need and care
Wherewith in reverent trust the children cry
Unto a loving Father here most nigh,

Albeit not far from each one everywhere.

Without, the sounds were all of shame and sin :
The pleasure-seeker's laugh, the drunkard's song,
The vendor's shout amid a careless throng.

By turns broke softly on the ears within ;

And they who heard did more devoutly pray,
"Lord, arm Thy children for the evil day."

217

2i8 SONNETS

So must it be iviihout, while Time shall be,
The evil world of revelry and strife,
Alluring or assailing every life
Hidden with Christ in God, perpetually
Shall rave around it like a troubled sea.
So may it be within ! till Time shall end,
The holy Church till her dear Lord descend
Drowning that discord in her harmony :
Blest harmony of souls that love and long !
The deep sweet minor of her lowly prayer
Rising beyond the world and mingling there
With the full swell of her majestic song. —

Child! let thy heart through all the blatant days
Keep such an inner shrine of prayer and praise.

FREDERICK ARNOLD

Dear Arnold, life is less by loss of thee:

Less full, less jocund. Hours with thee sped by
On wings of wit, or wealth of sympathy,

Or talk on truths of height and depth, yet free

Ever from cant or affectation. We,

In our stern East-End life, grew bright of eye
And cheerier at thy comings ! Smile or sigh

Fitted thy various converse equally,

Sweet-hearted friend ! Alas, that now no more
The arm-chair or the pulpit will be filled
With that kind presence — keen attention thrilled

By tales of " men and cities," or the lore

Of those book-depths from which thou knew'st so well

To mix for mind and heart an cenomel.

219

SANCHO: AN OLD FRIEND

Not sparse of friends the world has been to me
By grace of God ; sweetness and light to life
Their love has given ; many a stormy strife,

Many a pulseless torpor, on my sea,

Through them — their presence or their memory —
Have been or stilled or quickened; and to thee
My Dog, the tribute, as the term, is due.

My Friend! not least of all dear, near, and true

These seventeen years — and through the years to be
Sure in my heart of immortality.
Must this be all ? F the great Day of the Lord,

Shall aught that is of good and beauty now
Be missing ? Shall not each gift be restored ?
Paul says "the whole creation"— why not thou?

220

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

THE SOLILOQUY OF A RATIONALISTIC

CHICKEN

ON THE PICTURE OF A NEWLY HATCHED CHICKEN CON-
TEMPLATING THE FRAGMENTS OF ITS NATIVE SHELL

Most strange !
Most queer, — although most excellent a change !
Shades of the prison-house, ye disappear !
My fettered thoughts have won a wider range,

And, like my legs, are free ;
No longer huddled up so pitiably :
Free now to pry and probe, and peep and peer,

And make these mysteries out.
Shall a free-thinking chicken live in doubt ?
For now in doubt undoubtedly I am :

This problem's very heavy on my mind.
And I'm not one to either shirk or sham :
I won't be blinded, and I won't be blind !
Now, let me see ;
Firsts I would know how did I get in there ?

Then, where was I of yore?
Besides, why didn't I get out before ?

224 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Bless me !
Here are three puzzles (out of plenty more)
Enough to give me pip upon the brain !

But let me think again.
How do I know I ever was inside ?
Now I reflect, it is, I do maintain,
Less than my reason, and beneath my pride

To think that I could dwell
In such a paltry miserable cell

As that old shell.
Of course I couldn't ! How could / have lain,
Body and beak and feathers, legs and wings,
And my deep heart's sublime imaginings,

In there?

I meet the notion with profound disdain ;

It's quite incredible ; since I declare

(And I'm a chicken that you can't deceive)

What I canU u?idersfand I wojiH believe.

Where did I come from, then ? Ah ! where, indeed ?

This is a riddle monstrous hard to read.

I have it ! Why, of course.
All things are moulded by some plastic force
Out of some atoms somewhere up in space,
Fortuitously concurrent anyhow : —

There, now !
That's plain as is the beak upon my face.

THE RATIONALISTIC CHICKEN 225

What's that I hear ?
My mother cackling at me ! Just her way,
So prejudiced and ignorant / say ;
So far behind the wisdom of the day !

What's old I canU revere.
Hark at her. " You're a little fool, my dear.

That's quite as plain, alack !
As is the piece of shell upon your back ! "
How bigoted ! upon my back, indeed !

I don't believe it's there:
For I can't see it ; and I do declare,

For all her fond deceivin',
What I cati^t see I never will believe in!

A BOY'S REVERIE

OVER AN OLD PICTURE

What shall I be ?

I'd like to be a soldier, strong and tall,
Like Grandpapa, drawn in the picture here ;
And be the first to hear the trumpet's call,
And be the first to scale the castle wall.

But then, you see,
The worst of it is this, Mamma, poor dear —
Just because these brave fighters sometimes fall-
Won't hear about this soldiering at all !

Papa's a clergyman.
And nobody's one-half as good as he,
Nor ever was, / think, since time began ;
No, and I don't believe will ever be:

I know Mamma thinks so ;
And that's the reason partly, I dare say,
She hopes with all her heart her boy some day
Will lead good people in his father's way.

And when I tell her " No,
I want to be a soldier of the Queen,"
She says (and dear old Auntie just the same)

226

A BOY'S REVERIE 227

"That there's a soldier's service nobler far,

With surer triumph and a grander fame,

Than any fighting in an earthly war ;

Great battles that no eye has ever seen

'Gainst foes more fierce than ever men have been ;

And that a clergyman does wear a sword

As captain in the armies of the Lord."

I think I know what she and Auntie mean,
And like to hear them tell of it ; but still
I should so like a sword that I can see,
Like Grandpapa's, and wield it in my hand.
Just as he's painted here upon the hill,
While all the soldiers charge at his command ;
That's just how I should like to look, so grand !

Oh, dear, oh, dear, I don't know what to do !
I shouldn't worry, if I only knew ;
But now it's quite a burden on my mind.
Because in both directions I'm inclined.
I'd like to be a good man, like Papa,
And, best of all, it would so please Mamma,
But then, I want to fight like Grandpapa.

I'm in a regular fix :
Nurse says that I must wait, I'm only six,
And this time ten years will be time enough
To make a fuss about what I shall be.
I don't care what she says, because, you see.
Every one knows old women talk such stuff.

228 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

There ! I declare she's calling me again.
The cross old thing ! — hark at her overhead :
" Come, Master Johnnie, time you were asleep ! "

One thing is very plain,
When I'm a man (oh, how the time does creep !
I wish it could be done as soon as said !)
Unless I choose, I'll tiever go to bed !

THE REASON WHY FLORENCE WAS
CALLED "THE DUCHESS"

DEDICATED TO F. C. B. AND K. L. B.

" Not her name, but Florence," such is
Katie's comment on " the Duchess,"
When she hears your grace's title
Given you in due requital
Of an aspect most serenely
Soft and placid, yet so queenly.
From your little three-years' stature,
That one cannot doubt that nature
Has decreed by certain touches
To design at least a Duchess !

" When and why ? " does Katie ask me,
Quite resolved to take to task me.
And to make me give a reason
For this nominal high treason.
Ere she will acknowledge duly
That you are " the Duchess " truly !

Listen, Katie, listen other.
Each and every, sister, brother,
While I tell you all the history.
This aristocratic mystery !
229

230 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

On a day you should remember
In a holiday December,
While the gale without blew madly,
And the hearth-side firelight gladly
Smiled to scorn the winter wailing.
While we sat around it stilly —
Elders all but May and Willie—
On a sudden in came sailing
(Like a white swan on the waters
With two dingy cygnet daughters,
Or like queen through fabled gateway
Closed in fear behind her straightway,
'Twixt two griffins, by some charming
Kept in durance from all harming),
You, my Florence — a white figure,
'Twixt two cats, and not much bigger
Than the beasties you were bearing
With a baby's easy daring.
Little fingers could not hold them,
So the whole arm must enfold them
(Arms and fingers minus mittens),
These two taloned tabby kittens !
Big as cats, of savage feature.
Each a grim and gruesome creature.
Had / touched them, they'd have scratched me
Or, in will at least, despatched me ;
Or, if fearful more than frightening.
Have despatched themselves like lightning
From my arms' unlovely prison,
Mewing wild, " I isn't his'n ! "

THE REASON WHY 231

But, your Grace ! by all the Graces !
There they hung with charmed faces,
From your wee white arms depending,
Heads and tails together blending.
Troubled, doubtless, if not tortured.
But, as apples hang in orchard.
There they hung, nor scratched nor bit you,
Spit nor swore, nor hurt a whit you !

Scratched jj^i?^/!, hitj>ou? Just as soon a
Lion would have bitten Una !
Spit or swore a.t you ? Much rather
They'd have spit at Tim their father,
Or have sworn at Tib their mother,
Or have eaten one another,
Like the cats who at Kilkenny
Found each other one too many !

Ah, my darling ! at this vision,
'Spite the prosy world's derision,
I confess, so did it win me,
The poor poet spirit in me
Rose and spread its folded pinion.
With a moment's sweet dominion
In the regions sunny, airy,
Of far Eld and farther Faery,
And in you there passed before me —
Such a charm and spell was o'er me —
Those who formed the darUng fancies
Of our childhood's blithe romances.

232 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Said I so ? Not I ! I tumbled
Back to earth and merely mumbled,
" Look, her grace and glamour such is,

'Tis no baby, but a duchess ! "

There, my pet, you have the reason
For this nominal high treason !

A HOLIDAY DITTY

TO MY LITTLE NIECE

Kate to others, but my Kitty !
Dear, my precious, sweet, my pretty.
It were sorrowfullest pity
If your singer sent no ditty
Home to greet you : not a whit he
Cares for critics : not a bit he
Loves his leisure, nor can sit he
Here in field, or home in city.
Lazy, till, or weak or witty
Verse of oddest ends has writ he.
With all rhyme-words that can fit he.
All the word-marks that can hit he,
All the song-threads that can knit he :
No rhyme-rummage will remit he,
No jing-jangle quest will quit he.
Till is wrought the wondrous ditty.
Fond or foolish, weak or witty.
Spoil of those sky-blue banditti.
Lovely, loving eyes of Kitty ;
Yours, my precious, yours my pretty,
Kate to others, but my Kitty !

233

LINES

WRITTEN IN A CHILd's BIBLE

Beautiful truths may lurk in secret signs ;

A Lovely name lies hid in these plain lines.

WhAt's in a name ? Ah, much ! in this for thee

I fiNd the truth of thy soul's history.

Dear Child, it was, is, may it ever be !

I watcH in love and hope, nor cease to pray

That thE clear dawn may grow to perfect day.

234

FINIS

An end, an end ! What hath an end ?

The base, the mean, the small:
These naught can save, these naught defend.

Doom claims them all.

Hath life an end ? Life hath an end,

The creature of to-day ;
This none may keep, this none defend,

Meet for decay.

An end, an end ! What hath no end,
By right of strength and youth,

— Which all may hold and all defend ?
Immortal Truth.

Hath life an end ? Life hath no end.

Earth-born, yet born above :
This man may keep and God defend,

The life of Love.

235

HYMNS

"I BELIEVE

IN THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH,

THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS"

" The Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own Blood,"

Acts xx. 28.

The Church's one Foundation

Is Jesus Christ her Lord :
She is His new creation

By water and the Word ;
From heaven He came and sought her

To be His holy Bride,
With His own Blood He bought her,

And for her life He died.

Elect from every nation,

Yet one o'er all the earth.
Her charter of salvation

One Lord, one Faith, one Birth ;
One Holy Name she blesses,

Partakes one Holy Food,
And to one Hope she presses,

With every grace endued.
239

240 HYMNS

Though with a scornful wonder

Men see her sore opprest,
By schisms rent asunder,

By heresies distrest ;
Yet saints their watch are keeping,

Their cry goes up, " How long ? "
And soon the night of weeping

Shall be the morn of song.

Mid toil and tribulation,

And tumult of her war,
She waits the consummation

Of peace for evermore ;
Till with the vision glorious

Her longing eyes are blest,
And the great Church victorious

Shall be the Church at rest.

Yet she on earth hath union

With God the Three in One,
And mystic sweet communion

With those whose rest is won:
Oh, happy ones and holy !

Lord, give us grace that we
Like them, the meek and lowly,

On high may dwell with Thee ! Amen.

BATTLE HYMN FOR THE NEW YEAR

"But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breast-
plate of faith and love ; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation."

I Thess. v. 8.

The old year's long campaign is o'er :

Behold a new begun ;
Not yet is closed the Holy War

Not yet the triumph won :
Out of his still and deep repose

We hear the old year say : —
" Go forth again to meet your foes,

Ye children of the day ! "

*' Go forth ! Firm Faith in every heart,

Bright Hope on every helm,
Through that shall pierce no fiery dart,

And this no fear o'erwhelm !
Go in the Spirit and the might

Of Him Who led the way ;
Close with the legions of the night,

Ye children of the day ! "
K 241

242

HYMNS

So forth we go to meet the strife,

We will not fear nor fly !
Love we the holy warrior's life,

His death we hope to die !
We slumber not, that charge in view,

'• Toil on while toil ye may,
Then night shall be no night to you.

Ye children of the day ! "

Lord God, our Glory, Three in One,

Thine own sustain, defend !
And give, though dim this earthly sun,

Thy true light to the end ;
Till morning tread the darkness down.

And night be swept away.
And infinite sweet triumph crown

Thy children of the day ! Amen.

BATTLE HYMN OF CHURCH DEFENCE

DEDICATED TO THE "CHURCH SOCIETY" OF ST. PAUL's,

HAGGERSTON

"Her foundations are upon the holy hills: the Lord loveth the gates
of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob." — Ps. Ixxxvii. i, 2.

"God is in the midst of her, therefore shall she not be removed:
God shall help her, and that right early." — Ps. xlvi. 5.

" If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her
cunning." — Ps. cxxxvii. 5.

»
Round the Sacred City gather

Egypt, Edom, Babylon ;
All the warring hosts of error,

Sworn against her, are as one :
Vain the leaguer ! her foundations

Are upon the holy hills,
And the love of the Eternal

All her stately temple fills.

Get thee, watchman, to the rampart !

Gird thee, warrior, with thy sword !
And be strong as ye remember

In your midst is God the Lord :
Like the night-mists from the valley.

These shall vanish, one by one,
Egypt's malice, Edom's envy.

And the hate of Babylon.

243

244 HYMNS

But be true, ye sons and daughters,

Lest the peril be within ;
Watch to prayer, lest in your slumber

Stealthy foemen enter in ;
Safe the mother and the children

If their will and love be strong,
While their loyal hearts go singing

Prayer and praise for battle-song.

Church of God ! if we forget thee,

Let His blessing fail our hand ;
When our love shall not prefer thee.

Let His love forget our land —
Nay ! our memory shall be steadfast

Though in storm the mountains shake,
And our love is love for ever.

For it is for Jesus' sake.

Church of Jesus ! His thy Banner

And thy Banner's awful Sign :
By His passion and His glory

Thou art His and He is thine:
From the Hill of His Redemption

Flows thy sacramental tide :
From the Hill of His Ascension

Flows the grace of God thy Guide.

Yea: thou Church of God the Spirit !

His Society Divine,
His the living Word thou keepest.

His thy Apostolic line.

BATTLE HYMN OF CHURCH DEFENCE 245

Ancient prayer and song liturgic,
Creeds that change not to the end,

As His gift we have received them,
As His charge we will defend.

Alleluia, Alleluia,

To the Father, Spirit, Son,
In Whose will the Church at warfare

With the Church at rest is one :
So to Thee we sing in union,

God in earth and Heav'n adored,
Alleluia, Alleluia,

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord. Amen.

HYMN FOR MISSIONS TO THE JEWS

Unchanging God, hear from eternal Heav'n,
We plead Thy gifts of grace, for ever given,
Thy call, without repentance, calling still.
The sure election of Thy sovereign will.

Out of our faith in Thee, who canst not lie,
Out of our heart's desire, goes up our cry,
From hope's sweet vision of the thing to be,
From love to those who still are loved by Thee.

Bring Thy beloved back, Thine Israel,
Thine own elect who from Thy favour fell,
But not from Thine election ! — Oh forgive.
Speak but the word, and, lo ! the dead shall live.

Father of mercies ! these the long-astray,
These in soul-blindness now the far-away,
These are not aliens, but Thy sons of yore,
Oh, by Thy Fatherhood, restore, restore !

Breathe on Thy Church, that it may greet the day,
Stir up her will to toil, and teach, and pray,
Till Zionward again salvation come.
And all her outcast children are at home.

246

HYMN FOR MISSIONS TO THE JEWS 247

Triune Jehovah, Thine the grace and power,
Thine all the work, its past, its future hour,
O Thou, Who failest not, Thy gifts fulfil.
And crown the calling of thy changeless will.

Amen.

HYMN FOR MISSIONS TO THE
HEATHEN

"Come over into Macedonia and help us !" — Acts xvi. 9.

Through midnight gloom from Macedon

The cry of myriads as of one,

The voiceful silence of despair,

Is eloquent in awful prayer ;

The soul's exceeding bitter cry,

*' Come o'er and help us or we die."

How mournfully it echoes on,
For half the world is Macedon !
These brethren to their brethren call.
And by the Love which loved them all.
And by the whole world's Life they cry,
" O ye that live, behold we die ! "

By other sounds our ears are won
Than that which wails from Macedon ;
The roar of gain is round us rolled,
Or we unto ourselves are sold,
And cannot list the alien cry
" O hear and help us lest we die ! "
248

MISSIONS TO THE HEATHEN 249

Yet with that cry from Macedon
The very car of Christ rolls on !
"I come: who would abide My day,
In yonder wilds prepare My way !
My voice is crying in their cry
Help ye the dying lest ye die ! "

O once, for men, of man the Son,
Yea, Thine the cry from Macedon !
Oh by the Kingdom and the Power
And Glory of Thine advent hour.
Wake heart and will to hear their cry,
Help us to help them lest we die !

Yet fair the hope that speeds us on

With psalms of praise for Macedon !

Thy blessing given, Thy promise bright.

Are earnest sweet of morning light.

Till " Alleluia " be the cry

Of souls that live and shall not die ! Amen.

THE PROTO-MARTYR OF BRITAIN:
A HYMN IN MEMORY OF ST. ALBAN

DEDICATED TO A. C. S. AND M. S. S.

" Egregium Albanum foecunda Britannia profert."

Venantius Fortunatus (Fifth Century).

" Thus was Alban tried,
England's first Martyr, whom no threats could shake ;
Self-offered victim ; for his friend he died,
And for the Faith." — Wordsworth.

England, by thine own Saint Alban,

Put thy Christian heart to school :
Learn to sacrifice and suffer

By thy Proto-Martyr's rule.
Life in Christ is stern and selfless,

Gentle though it be and bright :
Life in Christ is dying with Him,
Though in sweet and living light.
England, by thine own Saint Alban,
Put thy Christian heart to school:
Learn to sacrifice and suffer
By thy Proto-Martyr's rule.
250

IN MEMORY OF ST. ALBAN 251

Meteor-like athwart the darkness

Flashes still the Signal Cross ;
Still like trumpet on the night-wind

Sounds the summons unto loss ;
Yet how blessed is the losing

And how stately is the war:
And how beautiful the ending

In the bliss for evermore !

See ! thy hero, prudence scorning,

All for noble pity dares :
Finds the priest he saved his prophet,

Meets "an angel unawares ":
Sits as at the feet of Jesus,

Soon is to His Laver led:
Then himself as on an altar

Offers in his Teacher's stead.

"I am Christ's: I therefore suffer:

I am Christ's: I therefore die:
I am Christ's: so I am happy.

And my life is His on high " ; —
Thus he faced the Roman's torture.

Youth, wealth, honour sacrificed,
Losing thankfully the whole world

That he might be found in Christ.

Primal Hero-Saint and Soldier !

Still thy story speeds us on :
Though, since thou didst bravely witness,

Twice eight hundred years have gone.

252 HYMNS

Lord, Who gavest him to England,
Grace, like his, to England give —

Grace to bear Thy cross with gladness,
Grace to die that we may live.

England, by thine own Saint Alban,
Put thy Christian heart to school :

Learn to sacrifice and suffer

By thy Proto-Martyr's rule. Amen.

HYMN OF THE DIAMOND WEDDING OF
THE OUEEN WITH HER PEOPLE

"The Diamond Wedding of the Queen with her people." — Times
Leader, November loth, 1896.

God of supreme dominion,

From Whom all power has birth,
Whose praise on eagle pinion

O'ersweeps Thine Heav'n and earth:
We lift one voice before Thee

From many a land and race,
And with one heart adore Thee

For threescore years of grace.

Here, by the barriers olden

With front of silver sheen —
There, from the Islands golden —

From Orient lands between —
From isles of beauty sparkling

The summer seas among —
From tracts with winter darkling —

Goes up the choral song.

These years, in tale excelling

All years of olden reign.
Their twofold story telling

Of blended joy and pain —
253

254 HYMNS

With equal grace upon her.
Like twain wings of Thy Dove —

Have crowned the Head we honour:
Have blessed the Heart we love.

Comes with prophetic morning,

With Peace afar and near.
With Hope our hills adorning.

This Diamond Marriage Year !
And hearts with praise o'erflowing.

And souls that inly pray,
Greet Queen and Nation going

Still on their stately way.

Praise for Thy long sustaining,

That held her firm in aim
Ever to keep unwaning

Our fair ancestral fame ;
Praise for the sweet compassion

Which makes the wide world own
That Love's divinest fashion

Is set from England's throne.

Lord, as her realm lies truly

'Neath an unsetting sun.
As earthly meed all duly

Her stainless life hath won:
So when at last before Thee

She lays her kingdom down,
Christ's One Light be her glory,

Christ's Merit be her crown. Amen.

HYMN FOR THE LORD'S DAY

Eastward, ever eastward,

Dark or light the way,
Pressing towards the promise,

We salute the day.
O'er the mountains yonder

Shines the orient gleam,
Yonder sweetest voices

Call across the stream.

Eastward, ever eastward,
Dark or light the way.

Pressing towards the promise.
We salute the day.

To those border mountains

Lift we then our eyes :
Thence our help smiles on us,

There is set our Prize —
There, like sound of trumpet,

Clear, and loud, and long,
Easter splendour streaming

Greets our Easter song.

255

256 HYMNS

Flow life's river cheerly —

Flow it dark and chill —
O'er its changeful waters

Constant look we still.
Clear across them beckons

The unchanging shore,
Where the life and beauty

Are for evermore.

Saints and angels call us —

Angels of the height,
Who at th' Incarnation

Sang the new-born light :
Saints gone on before us,

Past our life forlorn,
Who in Eden's vigil

Wait the greater Morn.

Death of woful winter !

Dawn of happy spring !
Listen, all the woodlands

Of the wide world ring !
Look, the waste lands blossom

'Neath the gracious rain.
And all beauty buried

Takes its life again !

HYMN FOR THE LORD^S DAY 257

Oh, the end of patience,

And the dose of strife !
Oh, the joy of morning,

And the gift of Ufe !
Oh, the grace, the glory.

Of the great Reward !
Oh, the blessed Vision,

Jesus Christ our Lord !

Eastward, ever eastward,

Dark or light the way.
Pressing towards the promise,

We salute the day. Amen.

HYMN FOR DAY AND SUNDAY
SCHOOL TEACHERS 1

Thou Who hast charged Thine elder sons,

In Thy great Church's school
To teach and tend Thy little ones,

And in wise love to rule :
Here may they loyal witness bear,

As those whom Thou hast sent.
By Love inspired, kept pure by Prayer,

Made strong by Sacrament.

And ever here. Lord Christ, be seen

Standing beneath Thy Rood,
Stoled in Thy raiment, white and clean,

A priestly sisterhood ;
Which in Thy Church's order sure

May in the dark world shine
Like her, the wise, the brave, the pure.

Their own Saint Katharine.

' Adapted from a hymn written for the Church Trahiing College of
St. Katharine, Tottenham.

258

HYMN FOR SCHOOL TEACHERS 259

Teacher of teachers, only Guide,

True learning's only spring,
O Holy Ghost, with each abide,

All truth interpreting ;
From light to light of mind and soul.

And pure, devoted will.
Lead on Thy learners to the goal

Of wisdom's holy hill.

Lead on, O Lord — Love, Grace, and Might —

Lead on through toil and prayer ;
So worship shall make labour light.

And hope ennoble care ;
So they adoring while they toil,

Their guerdon may foresee.
When at Thy feet they lay the spoil

Of souls they trained for Thee. Amen.

HYMNS FOR CHURCH WORKERS

I MAGNIFY MINE OFFICE"

Lord Christ, my Master dear,
Naught have I that is mine ;

Body and mind and soul,
All that I am is Thine.

Mine office is from Thee :

Not only for mine hour,
But for Thine own great day,

And by Thy mighty power.

Through Thine own Church it comes,
From Thine Ascension Day,

By Thine ordaining word
Which cannot pass away.

So do I love Thy call !

So great and sweet to me
That word which makes me sure

That I may speak for Thee
260

HYMN FOR CHURCH WORKERS 261

How poor am I in love,

In patience, and in power,
Yet more than I can be

Is, by that word, my dower !

Power, patience, love, are mine.
From Thee, my Priest on high.

If I in faith and prayer
Mine office magnify.

For, then, I lose myself!

I know it is not mine ;
Thereon I see the mark

Which makes it wholly Thine:

Thy Cross, Incarnate Lord !

The measure of Thy love,
Of Thy great power below.

Of Thy full bliss above. Amen.

"IN THEE"

DEDICATED TO THE "CHURCH SOCIETY" OF ST, PAUL's,

HAGGERSTON

"Christ the Power of God, and the Wisdom of God. ... Of Him
are ye in Christ Jesus." — i Cor. i. 24 and 30.

Christ, the Wisdom and the Power!
From our labour's fleeting hour
To that timeless age of bliss
Which shall crown the toil of this,
Grant that all our life may be
Hidden and revealed "in Thee."

That our work may be divine
Seek we not our own but Thine ;
Lost to self and found " in Thee,"
Find we sweet Humility,
Zeal by reverent Love refined,
True Devotion's single mind.
262

HYMN FOR CHURCH WORKERS 263

So " in Thee " we shall be strong,
Seem the labour light or long ;
And, though clouds of self and sin
Darken round us and within.
So not dimly shall we see
Light to lighten all " in Thee."

Thus " in Thee," O Wisdom, wise,
May we touch the blinded eyes.
Turn the steps that vainly roam
Back to happiness and home.
And in sacred waters sweet
Wash Thy young disciples' feet.

Thus " in Thee," O Power, we go
Through Thy Church's war below,
In Thy panoply alway
Steadfast through the evil day ;
Troubled ever, not distrest,
Moving to Thy Church at rest.

" In Thee " now, and " in Thee " then !

Now, and when Thou com'st again ;

Now at war among Thy foes,

Then at peace in Thy repose.

Brother-man and Sovran-Lord

Thine our Work and our Reward ! Amen,

HYMN FOR CANDIDATES FOR
ORDINATION

" Who is sufficient for these things ? "
" Even so send I you."

O MY Lord, most Holy,

Summonest Thou me.
Lowliest 'mid the lowly.

As Thyself to be ?
" Yea, because I call thee,

Take thy priestly place,
Front what may befall thee —

Hast thou not My grace ? "

Can I in my weakness

Stand as in Thy stead ?
I, in might or meekness,

Needing to be led ?
" Yes, for I have sent thee.

Laid on thee My poiver ;
Be, by what is lent thee,

Equal to thine ho7ir*'

264

HYMN FOR ORDINATION 265

How may I be leader,

Doubting mine own way ?
Of Thy flock the feeder,

Oft myself astray?
" Canst not trust Thy Master

His elect to keep ?
Think, Uis thine own Pastor

Set thee o'er His sheep."

Lord, who can awaken

Israel cold and dead,
Now that Thou art taken

From Thy Church's head?
"Z<?, My mantle folds thee

From My car of fire!
Mine Ascetision holds thee

With Me to aspire.

" Canst thou fear or falter

Clothed with such a claim ?
Standing at Mine Altar,

Blessing m My Name ?
When Life's path grows steeper,

Pointing out the Height,
^Mid the darkness deeper

Holding out the light."

O my Master, truly

Thou hast met my need !
They who follow duly

Duly Thine may lead ;

266 HYMNS

Following Thee for ever,
As Thou wilt and where,

I, in Thee, will never
Falter or despair.

Father, Son, and Spirit,

'Tis Thy call of grace,
Thine election's merit

Seals to me my place:
Lowest 'mid the lowly,

Yet I call Thee mine:
Holy, Holy, Holy,

Thine, and sent to Thine. Amen.

HOLY COMMUNION

Who loved me, and gave Himself for me." — Gal. ii. 20.

" Remember Me : show forth My Death

Until Mine Advent be " :
So of His Altar-Feast He saith

Who gave Himself for me.

I will not tremble nor delay,

Unworthy though I be :
He will not send my soul away

Who gave Himself for me.

For there, when sorrows come to prove
Where my true joy should be,

Most sweet the comfort of His Love
Who gave Himself for me.

There, too, in calm of holy rest.

My weary head shall be,
As if it lay upon His breast

Who gave Himself for me.
267

268 HYMNS

There seem I ever nearest Home,
Most sure of bliss to be

When in His glory He shall come
Who gave Himself for me.

O that I ever may abide

Where only life can be,
Still close and closer to His side

Who gave Himself for me ! Amen.

HYMN AFTER HOLY COMMUNION

"Ye do show the Lord's Death." — i COR. xi. 26.
"Jesus said, Somebody hath touched Me ; for I perceive that virtue
is gone out of Me." — St. Luke viii. 46.

Now hath been shown, O Lord, Thine Act of Love:
Shown at Thine Altar here, and shown above.

Here hath been pleaded, and beyond the skies.
The perfect yet perpetual Sacrifice.

Thou hast been with us, and in very deed
From Thee hath virtue gone for all our need :

Pardon and Peace and Joy : the making whole.
The making glad, of every faithful soul.

How dared we come so close despite our fear ?
Because we knew the Lord of Love was near.

Thou earnest — through the midst of many a care.
The mind's depression or the soul's despair —

A Presence calm — in awful silence — known.
By healing touch, to those in need alone.

269

270 HYMNS

Then Thou didst bless us ! Now, O Lord, we pray
May this Thy Grace grow in us day by day :

Thy Grace of Meekness, learned beneath Thy Feet,
Where all things strong with all things lowly meet ;

Thy Grace of Faith, serene and open-eyed,
Far-gazing, till it shall be satisfied ;

Thy Grace of Zeal, in toil or patience sure.
Keen to press on, or happy to endure ;

Thy Grace of Love, the purest, noblest, best,
With eyes on Thee and trustful heart at rest.

Thy Grace of Joy, for ever fain to sing

The Praise of Thine Eternal Offering. Amen.

HYMN AFTER BENEDICTION

Homeward we pass, in Peace :
Our Master's message given :
He sends us on our earthly way
With words from Heaven.

The Church's words arc His :

This " Peace " is said with power ;
His Blood-bought Blessing is her charge,
Her children's dower.

To every faithful soul

There at the Altar stand
The Love, Grace, Might, of God Triune,
With lifted hand.

Hear tender Mercy's words.
Ye souls that inly mourn !
Receive your Saviour's Sympathy,
Ye hearts forlorn !
271

272 HYMNS

Hear Wisdom's word of light,

All ye who long to find
The knowledge that can free and fill
The troubled mind.

So blest in mind and heart

Homeward we pass to-day :
Dear Lord, so may we wend at last

Our Heavenward way. Amen.

THE ''ATHLETES OF THE UNIVERSE"^

" Destitute, afflicted, tormented : of whom the world was not worthy."

Heb. xi. 37, 38.

Their names are names of kings

Of heavenly line,
The bliss of earthly things

Who did resign.

Chieftains they were, who warr'd
With sword and shield ;

Victors for God the Lord
On foughten field.

Sad were their days on earth,
Mid hate and scorn ;

A life of pleasure's dearth,
A death forlorn.

Yet blest that end in woe.
And those sad days ;

Only man's blame below —
Above, God's praise !

' An expression used by St. Chrysostom.
T 273

274 HYMNS

A city of great name
Was built for them,

Of glorious golden fame —
Jerusalem.

Redeemed with precious Blood
From death and sin,

Sons of the Triune God,
They entered in.

So did the life of pain

In glory close ;
Lord God, may we attain

Their grand repose ! Amen.

THE BEATING DOWN OF SATAN

"That it may please Thee. . . finally to beat down Satan under
our feet." — The Litany.

"For He must reign till He hath put all enemies under His feet."—
I Cor. XV. 25.

Watching early, late, and long.
Sworn to crown his work of wrone.
Satan would our doom complete,
Tread us down beneath his feet.

Christ against him aid us well ! —
When fair lures lead on to hell ;
While the Spring blows free and fresh,-
LoRD, beat down the lust of flesh.

When our life in Summer noon,
Reigning through its roseate June,
Seems an age that cannot die, —
Lord, beat down the lust of eye.

When the golden Autumn throws
Glory on a proud repose,
Or adorns a splendid strife, —
Lord, beat down the pride of life.
275

276 HYMNS

When, with Death, at Winter's night,
He shall come in Hope's despite.
And all powers and passions fleet —
Beat him down beneath our feet.

Thou, Whose love hath made us free,

When he claims us finally

At the dread tribunal seat, —

Beat him down beneath our feet. Amen.

PATIENCE

De Patientia Servanda
A HYMN OF ST. THOMAS A KEMPIS

Bear the troubles of thy Hfe

In the name of Christ thy Lord:

Less the harm of stormy strife
Than the easy world's award.

Many a foe means many a friend ;

Earthly losing is not loss ;
Patience has her perfect end,

And all good flows from the Cross.

Small thy toil is : short thy life :
Grand and endless thy reward !

Through the sorrow and the strife,
The confession of thy Lord !

Purer gold and clearer glass !

By thy pains a nobler man,
Through the furnace thou wilt pass.

Bearing all a martyr can.
277

278 HYMNS

So thou wilt be sterner foe,
So thou wilt be dearer friend ;

So the Saints thy name will know,
And Christ own thee at the end.

Call on Jesus evermore.

Be His Cross thy sign alway.

Love the saints gone on before ;
Ever strive and watch and pray.

Do the right : the truth declare !

Live in hopes that never cease :
Humbly make thy God thy care,

So thou shalt find perfect peace. Amen.

THE ASCENSION

" He ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of
God the Father Almighty."

On Olivet a little band
Around their risen Master stand :
And, after charge and blessing given,
He passeth from them into Heaven,

Wistful their eyes, but angels twain
Cheer them with glorious words: "Again
One day shall Jesus even so
Return, as ye have seen Him go."

Till then in Heaven He doth remain,
True God, at God's right hand to reign.
True Man, at human woes to grieve,
True God, Almighty to relieve.

For every soul in every need
He ever lives to intercede.
Presenting there within the veil
The Sacrifice that cannot fail.
279

28o HYMNS

Our heavenly great High Priest He stands:
By pierced Feet, and pierced Hands,
By thorn-scarr'd Brow and riven Side,
He pleads for those for whom He died !

Whom have we, Lord, in heaven but thee ?
Like ships safe moored on stormy sea
Our souls, in peril, with Thee there
Find anchorage of hope and prayer.

Set loose from earth, and evermore
Fast bound to that eternal shore.
So all our life and love shall be,
Ascended Master, hid with Thee ! Amen,

THE PERFECT DAY

" Until the Day break and the shadows flee away."— Canticles ii. 17.

Dark is the sky that overhangs my soul,
The mists are thick that through the valley roll,
But as I tread I cheer my heart and say,
When the Day breaks the shadows flee away.

Unholy phantoms from the deep arise,
And gather through the gloom before mine eyes ;
But all shall vanish at the dawning ray —
When the Day breaks the shadows flee away.

I bear the lamp my Master gave to me,
Burning and shining must it ever be,
And I must tend it till the night decay —
Till the Day break and shadows flee away.

He maketh all things good unto His own,
For them in every darkness light is sown ;
He will make good the gloom of this my day —
Till that Day break and shadows flee away.
T 2 281

282 HYMNS

He will be near me in the awful hour

When the last Foe shall come in blackest power ;

And He will hear me when at last I pray,

Let the Day break, the shadows flee away 1

In Him, my God, my Glory, I will trust :
Awake and sing, O dweller in the dust !
Who shall come, will come, and will not delay —
His Day will break, those shadows flee away !

Amen.

<'I BELIEVE IN
THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS"

" Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much."
St. Luke vii. 47.

Weary of earth and laden with my sin,
I look at heaven and long to enter in.
But there no evil thing may find a home —
And yet I hear a Voice that bids me " Come."

So vile I am, how dare I hope to stand

In the pure glory of that holy land ?

Before the whiteness of that Throne appear ? —

Yet there are Hands stretched out to draw me near.

The while I fain would tread the heavenly way.

Evil is ever with me day by day —

Yet on mine ears the gracious tidings fall,

" Repent, confess, thou shalt be loosed from all."

It is the voice of Jesus that I hear.
His are the Hands stretched out to draw me near,
And His the Blood that can for all atone.
And set me faultless there before the Throne.

283

284 HYMNS

'Twas He Who found me on the deathly wild,
And made me heir of heaven, the Father's child,
And day by day, whereby my soul may live.
Gives me His grace of pardon, and will give.

O great Absolver, grant my soul may wear
The lowliest garb of penitence and prayer.
That in the Father's courts my glorious dress
May be the garment of Thy righteousness.

Yea, Thou wilt answer for me. Righteous Lord :
Thine all the merits, mine the great reward ;
Thine the sharp thorns, so mine the golden crown,
Mine the life won, through Thine the life laid down.

Naught can I bring, dear Lord, for all I owe,
Yet let my full heart what it can bestow ;
Like Mary's gift let my devotion prove.
Forgiven greatly, how I greatly love. Amen.

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

A helm upon my brow I wear .

A little while, O Death, a little while

Among the graves : but round us the sweet air

An end, an end ! What hath an end ? .

A night of silence and of gloom

Another beacon-light blown out above us

A simple cross, let in the outer wall

A tender mist of amber lawn .

At the Well's heart serene and deep

Bear the troubles of thy life

Beautiful truths may lurk in secret signs

Blow, breeze, from the north and the west

Calm sea ....
Christ, the Wisdom and the Power !

Dark is the sky that overhangs my soul .
Dear Arnold, life is less by loss of thee .
Dear friends among the hills, I sit at home

Eastward, ever eastward

England, by thine own Saint Alban

Ere this, and in the fuller year, there fell

Fain is the wakened soul to try

From his short slumber in the early morn

Gather the Harvest in

God of supreme dominion

Good-bye at last to Oxford ! with full eyes

He died the beautiful death
Homeward we pass, in Peace .

285

PAGE
123
216
210

107

88
163

151
132

277
234
134

262

281

219

25s

250

205

102

185

126

253
82

121
271

286

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

If I forget thee, O thou lowly Shrine

I love the Domus. Fioreat ! though no more

In ancient days, so saith un old Romaunt

In One Name I have found the all in all

lona's hills are lowly

" I will not spare : within its circling wall "

Kate to others, hut my Kitty !

Lord Christ, my Master dear

Master-Magician of that breezy Spring .
Moored by a green isle of Winandermerc
Most strange ! .

My God hath heard me : I am His

Not, Florence, for the glory of thy skies
*' Not her name, but Florence," such is .
Not sparse of friends the world has been to me
Now hath been shown, O Lord, Thine Act of Lov

O fellow-Christian ! whosoe'er thou art .
O my Lord, most Holy
On Olivet a little band

" Remember Me : show forth My Death "

Rock and roar

Round the Sacred City gather .

Since I knelt here ten years have slipt away
Sleep, little flower, whose petals fade and fall
So must it be without, while Time shall be
Soon will the Holy Week be here

The Church's one Foundation

The din of the great town is on my ears

The Garden that has been, and is no more !

Their names are names of kings

The little maid lay moaning

Then with the early summer came the zest

The old year's long campaign is o'er

There stands a little cottage near the wood

" The richest glow sets round th' autumnal sun"

The room is dark, and at the door is Death

INDEX OF FIRST LINES

287

The Spring-tide air was breathing balm .
The watching Church was near her Easter hope
Thou Who hast charged Thine elder sons
Through midnight gloom from Macedon
'Tis peace in pain to know that Pain

Unchanging GoD, hear from eternal Heav'n

Watching early, late, and long

Weary of earth and laden with my sin

We five went blithely gravewards on May-day

What shall I be ? .

Where the shade is stands the Lord

Within, the sounds were all of praise and prayer

PAGE

95
193
258
248
116

246

275
283
209
226
114
217

GENERAL INDEX

Addison, Joseph, lo

Aidan, St., 34

Alban, St., 250

Alexander, Cecil Frances, 22

Alfriston, 36

Alhatnbra, The, 9

All Hallows', London Wall, i, 58,

59-74
Ancient and Modern, Hymns, 28,

67
Argyll and the Isles, Bishop of,

Arnold, Frederick, 219

Arnold, Matthew, II

Arthur, King, 19

A Treatise on the Fruites of Re-
demption, 60

Augustine, St., 34

Aurelia, 28

Beaumont, Sir John, 1 1
Bemerton, i

Bennett, Rev. W. J. E., 7
Benson, Archbishop, 72
Bernard of Morlaix, St., 24
Birdie, The, 2, 185
Black Country, The, 2
Blomfield, Bishop, 8
Blorafield, Sir Arthur, 37
Booth, Mr. Charles, 36
Broad Street Station, 59, 64

Brown, Dr. and Mrs. Haig, 70
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 5,

18, 45, 85, 204
Burritt, Elihu, 185 n.

Cannock Chase, 2, 5
Carr, Rev. Donald, 40-1
Charterhouse, The, 5, 8-10, 35,

68, 207-8
Chaucer's Pilgrims, 6
Cheltenham, 7

Christian Year, The, 17, 20, 45
Church Bells, 29
Church, Dean, 8
Church of England Temperance

Society, The, 14
Church Revival, The, 8, 46
Churches one Foundation, The, i,

21,25,27-30,38, 72,74,239
Church Stretton, 40
Churchwardens' accounts, 59-60
Clapton, 66, 68
Close, Dean, 7
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 11
Coeur de Lion, Richard, 5
Columba, St., 33-4, 45, 135, 149
Colwich, 2

Confirmation, 13, 52-3, 55
Cowper, William, 70
Crashaw, Richard, 9
Creighton, Bishop, 68, 74

288

GENERAL INDEX

289

Dance, Nathaniel, 61

Dante, 6

Deare Childe, 31, 163

Dies Irae, The, 23

Down Stream to London, II, 77

Dream of Fair Women, A, 33

Dream of Gerontius, The, 33, 71

Durham, Diocese of, 38

East End, The, 36-58, 215-18
East London, Church folk of, 57
East London Church Fund, The,

63
Edmonton, 63-4
Ellison, Canon, 5
Essays and Reviews, 6

Fasting, 66

Good-bye to Oxford, 11,82
Goodhart, Rev. H. W., 58
Greatheart, Mr., 5
Gregory, Rev. R. S., 63

Hackney, 9
Haggerston Gorse, 41
Haggerston, St. Paul's, i, 4, 34,

36-58
Havelock, Sir Henry, 9
Heartease, 71
Henry IV., 60
Herbert, George, i, 3, 22, 33
High Wycombe, 12
Holy War, The, 5
Home Words, 31
Hook, Dean, 8
Hooker, Richard, 12
Horace, 73
How, Bishop Walsham, 44

Hursley, X

Hymns, 21-5, 32-3

Hymns Ancient and Modern, 28,

67
Hymn-writers, Latin, 23

Idylls of Deare Childe, 31, 163
Idylls of the King, The, 19
Ingram, Bishop, 70, 72
Innsbruck, 19

lona, 33-4, 45, 135, 149, 151
Isaiah, 23

Jackson, Bishop, 37

Jacobson's, Bishop, Apostolic

Fathers, 16
Jebb, Sir Richard, 9
Jenner, Sir William, 17
Jephthah's daughter, 71
Jesus calls us o'er the tumult, 22
Jews, Work among the, 56-7
Johnson, Dr., 10, 11

Keats, John, 15, 19
Keble, John, i, 8, 12, 20, 206
Kempis, St. Thomas a, 24, 277
Ken, Bishop, 12, 29-30
Kingsley, Charles, 67-8
Knight of Intercession, The, 19,
31. 32, 37, 155

Lavington, 13

Lays of lona, 33, 45, 67

Lea, The River, 9, 10, 39

Lichfield, 6

Lightfoot, Bishop, 38

Lindisfarne, 34

Litany Guild, 63

Liverpool Street Station, 59, 64

290

GENERAL INDEX

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth,

Long Mynd hills, The, 40

Lovelace, Richard, 10

Lyra Apostolica, 21

Lyra Eucharistica, 21

Lyra Fidelitiin, 21, 31

Lyra Innocentium, 21

Lyra Messianica, 21

Lyric of lona : Past, and To Be,

Masterman Ready, 5

Maximilian L, 19

Medilation in a Night of Pain,

35. 69, "6

Melville, Whyte, 31

Miserere, The, 25

' ' Morning Robert," 31, 171

National Trust, The, 37
Newdigate, The, il
Newman, John Henry, 1
No Popery riots, 8
Norwood, 73

Oxford, 10-12, 82-4
Oxford Sacred Poem, 31

Paradiso, The, 33

Parish, Methods of working a, 50

Parochial Sermons, S. J. Stone's,

Pembroke College, Oxford, 10,

11,83
Pembroke Rowing Club, 10
Pilgrim'' s Progress, The, 5
Poetry, S. J. Stone's, 9, 11, 31-5,

67, 69 ; as an educative force,

45-6

Poor Brethren, The, 8
Portico, The, 9
Port-na-Churaich, 149 n.
Poussin Rationaliste, Le, 32
Preaching, 54; S. J. Stone's, 55-6
Princess, The, 33

Rationalistic Chicken, The Solilo-
quy of a, 31, 223
Renaissance work, 61
Rhythm of St. Bernard, The, 24-5
Rosenthal, Rev. M., 56
Rossetti, Christina, 22
Ruskin, John, 6

St. Cohitnb of lona, 33, 135
St. Paul's Cathedral, 6, 7, 37
St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, 7
Sancho, 40, 220
School Board, The London, 19,

42-3. 52

Schools, 17-18

Scott Holland, Canon, 7

Scott, Sir Walter, 5, 18, 203

Sermons, 54 ; S. J. Stone's, 55-6

Shakespeare, 33

Shenstone, William, il

Shoreditch, St. Leonard's, 36

Shrewsbury, 40

Sinai, 31

Soliloquy of a Rationalistic
Chicken, The, 31, 223

Soutli African War, The, 70

Spiritual Letters, 66

Spital, 15

Stepney, Bishop of, 70, 72

Stone, Samuel John (iJ. April 25th,
1839 ; d. November 19th,
1900) ; birth, I ; childhood.

GENERAL INDEX

291

2 ; early influences, 2, 5, 12,
8-20 ; school days, 8-10 ;
wins school poem, 9 ; Oxford
life, 10-12 ; proxime accessit
for Newdigate, 11 ; Ordina-
tion, 13 ; work at Windsor,
14-35; hymn-writing, 18-30,
37; poetry, 9, 11, 31-5, 67,
69 ; wins Oxford Sacred
Poem, 31 ; work at St.
Paul's, Haggerston, 36-58 ;
personal appearance, 38-9 ;
character and tastes, 39-42,
44-47 ; care for his day-
schools, 42-3, 47, 51 ;
idealism, 46-8 ; as parish
priest, 48-54 ; as preacher,
54-6 ; refuses colonial bishop-
ric, 57 ; work at All Hallows',
London Wall, 59-74 ; as
rector of a City church, 61-5 ;
hymnological work, 67 ; re-
moves to Charterhouse, 68 ;
last illness, 68-71 ; death,
71 ; funeral, 71-3
Stone, William, 3-5, 17, 36, 37
Swan's nest among the reeds. The,

5
Symon the anker, 60, 66
Synionds, John Addington, 1 1

Temple, Archbishop, 58
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 10, 18,

19- 45. 205
Thanksgiving for Prince of Wales'
recovery, 37

The Birdie, 2, 185
The Church's one Fotmdation, i,
21, 25, 27, 30, 38, 72, 74,

239

The Knight of Intercession ^ 19,

31, 32, 37, 155

There is a fountain filled with

blood, 70
There is a green hill far away, 22
Thomas a Kempis, St., 24, 277
Times, The, 29
Trench, Archbishop, 23
Trent, The River, 5

Ulysses, 10

Vaughan, Henry, 33

Walton, Izaak, 3

Weary of earth, 21, 25-6, 30,

283
Wesley, John, 10, 63
Wesley, Sebastian, 28
Westminster Gazette, The, 65
Whitechapel, St. Mark's, 56
Whitmore, i, 3
Wilberforce, Bishop Samuel, 12-

13, 29, 88
Windermere, 212
Windsor, i, 13, i4-35> 7°. 209-11
Wood Street, Cheapside, 59
Woolstaston, 40-1
Wordsworth, William, 59
Wren, Sir Christopher, 7

Yonge, Charlotte Mary, 65, 71

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