Chapter I: Introduction

This is not a collection of devotional poems. It is not an attempt to rival Orby Shipley’s admirable “Carmina Mariana” or any other similar anthology. What I have tried to do is to bring together the poems in English that I like best that were written by Catholics since the middle of the Nineteenth Century. There are in this book poems religious in theme; there are also love-songs and war songs. But I think that it may be called a book of Catholic poems. For a Catholic is not a Catholic only when he prays; he is a Catholic in all the thoughts and actions of his life. And when a Catholic attempts to reflect in words some of the Beauty of which as a poet he is conscious, he cannot be far from prayer and adoration.

The Church has never been without her great poets. And in the Nineteenth Century there was a splendid renascence of Catholic poetry written in English. It had already begun when Francis Thompson wrote his Essay on Shelley, in which he longed for the by-gone days when poetry was “the lesser sister and helpmate of the Church; the minister to the mind, as the Church to the soul.” The members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were not Catholics, but their movement was related to the renascence of Catholic poetry--it was an attempt to restore to art and letters some of the glory of the days before what is called the Reformation. Coventry Patmore carried the theories of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to their logical conclusion, as Newman did those of the Tractarians. Coventry Patmore became a Catholic, and found in his Faith his inspiration and his theme. And his disciple Francis Thompson, born to the Faith which Patmore reached by way of the divine adventure of conversion, with art even greater than that of his master, made of the language of Protestant England an instrument of Catholic adoration.

A few of the poets represented in this book were not yet Catholics when they wrote the poems I have quoted. But I do not think that anyone will find fault with me for including Newman and Hawker among the Catholic poets. I am very sorry that the limitations of space have made me exclude many poems dear to me, many poems that are part of the world’s literary heritage. There should be many Catholic anthologies.

The poet sees things hidden from other men, but he sees them only in dreams. A poet is (by the very origin of the word) a maker, but a maker of images, not a creator of life. This is a book of reflections of the Beauty which mortal eyes can see only in reflection, a book of dreams of that Truth which one day we shall waking understand. A book of images it is, too, containing representations carved by those who worked by the aid of memory, the strange memory of men living in Faith.

JOYCE KILMER.

August, 1917.
165th Regiment, Camp Mills, Mineola, New York.

CONTENTS

PAGE

BELLOC, HILAIRE
Our Lord and Lady 1
To the Balliol Men Still in Africa 2
The South Country 3
The Early Morning 6
The Prophet Lost in the Hills at Evening 6
The Birds 7
Courtesy 8
Noel 9

BENSON, ROBERT HUGH
After a Retreat 10
The Teresian Contemplation 11

BLUNT, WILFRED SCAWEN
How Shall I Build 12
Song 13
The Desolate City 13

BRAYTON, TERESA
A Christmas Song 16

CAMPBELL, NANCY
Like One I Know 18

CARBERY, ETHNA
Mea Culpa 19
In Tir-na’n-Og 20

CARROLL, P. J.
Lady Day in Ireland 22
St. Patrick’s Treasure 23

CASEY, D. A.
The Spouse of Christ 24

COLUM, PADRAIC
Christ the Comrade 25
An Old Woman of the Roads 25

CONWAY, KATHERINE ELEANOR
The Heaviest Cross of All 26
Saturninus 28

COX, ELEANOR ROGERS
Dreaming of Cities Dead 29
Death of Cuchulain 30
Gods and Heroes of the Gael 32
At Benediction 34

CUSTANCE, OLIVE
Primrose Hill 34
Twilight 35

DALY, THOMAS A.
To a Thrush 36
To a Plain Sweetheart 40
To a Robin 40
The Poet 41
October 42

DE VERE, AUBREY
Sorrow 43
Human Life 44
Cardinal Manning 45
Song 45

DOLLARD, JAMES B.
The Sons of Patrick 46
Song of the Little Villages 48
The Soul of Karnaghan Buidhe 49

DONAHUE, D. J.
The Angelic Chorus 51

DONNELLY, ELEANOR
Ladye Chapel at Eden Hall 52
Mary Immaculate 52

DOWNING, ELEANOR
The Pilgrim 53
On the Feast of the Assumption 54
Mary 55

DOWSON, ERNEST
Extreme Unction 58
Benedictio Domini 58
Carthusians 58

DRANE, AUGUSTA T.
Maris Stella 60

EARLS, S.J., MICHAEL
An Autumn Rose Tree 62
To a Carmelite Postulant 63

EDEN, HELEN PARRY
A Purpose of Amendment 64
The Confessional 65
An Elegy 66
Sorrow 70

EDMUND, C.P., FATHER
Our Lady’s Death 71

EGAN, MAURICE FRANCIS
Vigil of the Immaculate Conception 71
The Old Violin 72
Maurice de Guerin 73
He Made Us Free 73

FABER, FATHER
Grandeur of Mary 75
Right Must Win 77

FITZPATRICK, JOHN
Mater Dolorosa 79

FURLONG, ALICE
Yuletide 79

GAFFNEY, O.P., FRANCIS A.
Our Lady of the Rosary 81

GARESCHÉ, S.J., EDWARD F.
At the Leap of the Waters 81
Niagara 83

GILTINAN, CAROLINE
Communion 85

GRIFFIN, GERALD
The Nightingale 86

GUINEY, LOUISE IMOGEN
Tryste Noel 86
The Wild Ride 87
Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore 89
In Leinster 91

HAWKER, ROBERT STEPHEN
Aunt Mary 92
King Arthur’s Wassail 93

HAYES, JAMES M.
Old Nuns 94
The Mother of the Rose 95
Transfiguration 96

HICKEY, EMILY M.
Beloved, It Is Morn 97
A Sea Story 98

HOPKINS, S.J., GERARD
The Starlight Night 99
The Habit of Perfection 100
Spring 101

IRIS, SCHARMEL
The Friar of Genoa 102

JOHNSON, LIONEL
The Dark Angel 103
Te Martyrum Candidatus 105
Christmas and Ireland 106
To My Patrons 108
Our Lady of the Snows 109
Cadgwith 111
A Friend 112
The Statue of King Charles at Charing Cross 113

KELLY, BLANCHE MARY
The Housewife’s Prayer 115
Brother Juniper 116

KELLEY, MGR., F. C.
The Throne of the King 117

LATHROP, GEORGE PARSONS
The Child’s Wish Granted 127
Charity 128

LATHROP, ROSE HAWTHORNE
A Song Before Grief 128
The Clock’s Song 129

LEAMY, SIR EDMUND
Ireland 130

LEAMY, EDMUND (Senior)
Music Magic 132
Gethsemane 133
My Lips Would Sing---- 134
My Ship 135
Visions 135

LESLIE, SHANE
Ireland, Mother of Priests 137

LINDSAY, RUTH TEMPLE
The Hunters 138

LIVINGSTON, FATHER
In Cherry Land 140