THE POETRY OF NEWMAN

New Zealand Tablet, 6 May 1920, Page 17

THE POETRY OF NEWMAN

(By Helen -Moriarty, in America.) To one who loves words there is more lasting pleasure, in applying them to the garnishment of prose than in fitting them into conventional poetic' forms, that is to say,.unless one is above all things else a poet; and even then the lure of a felicitous phrase is powerful and the charm of a gracefully turned sentence like music to the ear. In a superlative degree the gift of graceful and limpid prose belonged to Cardinal Newman, though according to the accepted canons of criticism the ultimate crown of poesy was denied him. Yet . much as he loved words and scorned the insincerity which made them unreal, he was too keenly alive to the high office of literature to subordinate its dignity and uses to a purely artistic aim. Words for him were not simply agents for the embellishment of speech, they were sentient things given him to express the truth, and ho used them, as he always believed they should be used, to clothe the inner vision that came to him, to set forth the truth as ho saw it. “My own motive for writing,” he once said to W. G. Ward, “has been the sight of a truth and the desire to show it to others.” He was not conscious that he rewrote and corrected his writings for the sake of an improved style, but the artist in him was too real not to find delight in the perfect clothing of a beautiful thought. His single desire, he said again to another friend, was to express clearly and exactly his meaning; and this desire, though entirely divorced from art for art’s sake, was yet a big factor in the creation and evolution of that simple, direct, clear; and lucid stylo which sets Newman apart as a master of English prose. And, paradoxically enough, it is to his prose we turn when we look for what is most beautiful in his poetic thought. This is not to say that Newman had no claim to tho title of rhythmic poet. There is much beauty of phrase, rare poetic insight and -great depth of feeling in much of his verse, and many of his short poems are gems of genuine worth. They have their own share of charm and attractiveness; they are, as Justin McCarthy puts it, “All that verses can be made by one who fails to be a poet.” And yet he sometimes rises to supreme heights, as in “The Dream of Gerontius.” In this poem he has pictured for us the last hours of a soul on earth and its entrance into the great beyond with a power and insight that have been likened to that of Dante. Not since Dante, at least, have such fearless feet trod the dread regions of the invisible, and across the limitless chasm we are given to hear an authoritative and comforting voice telling us of the sure joys of the redeemed if suffering soul. In its piercing emotion and vivid realisation of the other world the poem takes rank with the best of English religious poetry. Few sweeter adjurations are to be found in all literature than the last words addressed by the Guardian Angel to the ransomed soul as the gates of Purgatory open. He speaks :— Softly and gently, dearly ransomed soul. In my most loving arms I now enfold thee. And, o’er the penal waters as they roll. . I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.

And carefully I dip thee in the lake, * And thou, without r a sob or a resistance, Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,' Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. Angels to whom the willing task is given Shall tend,, and nurse, and lull thee as thou liest; And Masses on the earth and li prayers in heaven Shall aid thee at the throne of the Most Highest. Farewell, but not forever, brother dear. Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow. Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here, And I will come and wake thee on the morrow. the peace of the other _world always made a special appeal to the spirit of Newman, who had so early become aware of the deep unrest of the world about him. In his lines entitled “Waiting for the Morning” there is developed this atmosphere of abiding peace; They are at rest; Me may not stir the heaven of their repose By rude invoking voice, or prayer addrest A In waywardness to those ‘ Who in the mountain grots of Eden lie And hear the fourfold river as it murmurs by. They hear it sweep I n distance down the dark and savage vale; But they, at rocky bed or current deep Shall never more grow pale. They hear and meekly muse, as fain to know, How long untired, unspent, that giant stream shall flow. So, too, with Newman's prose writings. It was in dealing with the “world of invisibilities” that the true poetry of his soul came out. The ideal to him was over the real, Heaven lay about him like a known kingdom, and its bright denizens walked with him through many a thorny path. In one of his Easter sermons, “The Invisible World,” there are so many beautifully poetic passages that the entire sermon might be called a prose poem, and where could one find more real and exquisite poetry than in this concluding paragraph of his sermon on “The Shepherd of Souls”? It runs thus: “Blessed are they who give the flower of their days and their strength of soul and body to Him; blessed are they who in their youth turn to Him Who gave His life for them, and would fain give it to them and implant it in them, that they may live forever. Blessed are they who resolve — come good, come evil, come sunshine, come tempest, come honor, come dishonor—that He shall be their Lord and Master, their King and God! They will ccfme to a perfect end, and to peace at the last.” Professor John Campbell Shairp, in his “Aspects of Poetry,” calls Newman one of the great prose poets of his time. His wonderful knowledge of human nature, his perfect understanding of the human 'heart, his tenderness, his sympathy, his intuition, these same qualities which in his sermons and addresses pierced to the hearts of his hearers and held them spellbound, blossomed forth into expressions of rare poetic beauty, full of music, and color, and sweetness, as fresh to-day in dusty tome and on lifc-

less page as when ■ they were set down >.in-f the full fervor of his zeal by the "hand of the writer. i? Like Dante, he was fond of homely , terms and simple illustrations, as in speaking of St. John outliving his generation and experiencing the “dreariness of being solitary,” he wrote: “Of him were demanded by his gracious Lord as pledge of his faith, all his eye loved and his heart held converse with. He was as a man moving his goods into a far country, who at intervals and by portions sends them before him, till his present abode is well-nigh unfurnished.” Those who love the stately cadences of “The Second Spring” instance it as an example of Newman at his best as a prose poet. It was the first flowering of that new and less restrained eloquence which came to him on his submission to the Catholic Church. In this sermon the future Cardinal drew a picture of the “Second Spring” that had come to England in the revival of Catholicism, in language whose charm and vigor, elasticity and limpid grace has few, if any, equals in English literature. In the following excerpt from one of his essays, written shortly after his entrance into the Church, Newman’s own logic “becomes poetical” as he writes of the Church’s ritual: “What are her ordinances and practices but the regulated expression of keen, or deep, or turbid feeling, aiid thus a ‘cleansing,’ as Aristotle would word it, of the sick soul? She is the poet of her children; full of music to soothe the sad, and control the wayward—wonderful in story for the imagination of the romantic; rich in symbol and imagery, so that delicate and gentle feelings which will not bear words, may in silence intimate their presence, or commune with themselves. Her very being is poetry; every psalm, every petition, every collect, everv versicle, the cross, the mitre, the thurible, is a fulfilment of some dream of childhood, or aspiration of youth. Such poets as are born under her shadow, she takes into her service, she sets them to write hymns, or to compose chants, or to embellish shrines, or to determine ceremonies, or to marshal processions; nay, she can even make schoolmen of them, as she made St. Thomas, till logic becomes poetical.” Newman she set to writing hymns and composing chants, and many of his loveliest lines art* addressed to Our Lady, to whom he ever had the tenderest devotion. Many of his hymns are very widely sung, including the one to his beloved patron. St. Philip Neri, beginning ‘‘This is the Saint of gentleness and kindness,” and it is interesting to note that there are as many as fortv musical settings to his “Lead, Kindly Light,” which has always been more popular with our separated brethren than among Catholics, though as a poem it is rhythmically sweet and appealing. .. However, when all is said, it must be admitted that Newman did not feel “the curse of destinate verse," and with all his vivid imagination he was no teller of talcs. As far as conventional diction was concerned his verse was quite in line with that of the eighteenth century poets, and he had nothing in common with the new romanticists who sought the appeal of strange, curious, and obsolete words. Neither had he sympathy or patience with the slipshod colloquialisms of a later day The poetry of the Scriptures was his, and of the jasper’ streets, and of the sweeping, invisible sea. of eternity, and this be gave to his readers in imperishable lines set forever in the pure gold of perfect prose. Newman loved words and lie loved the truth; and with these two as a motif he set himself to weave a tapestry, simple in design yet rich with a beauty that holds the glow and charm of medieval art. With what a master hand lias he combined the colors, vivid, sombre, bright, subdued, giving us sheen of silver, opal fire panoply of purple, rainbow tints— and as enchanting as the dawn. There is no prodigality, hut all is right and well ordered, all is grandly conceived and carried out. Dignity it breathes, tin's tapestry, and holiness, and sweetness, and peace. And woven in and out and dominating the whole are the golden threads of faith, that faith that led him on “to a perfect end, and to ’ peace at the last.” 1

li eland is the only country in Europe where to utter a word of the native language in a law court is an offence punishable with imprisonment. Every parent should implant into the heart of his children a love for the Faith and a high ideal of its value, that through life they may look upon the very idea of losing it as the greatest of perils. They should instil it into their minds that loyalty to the constituted authorities, above all to the Vicar of Christ, is one of the greatest of guarantees of Faith.