AN ANTHOLOGY OF CATHOLIC POETS
DREAMS AND IMAGES
AN ANTHOLOGY
of
CATHOLIC POETS
Edited by
JOYCE KILMER
TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY
LIMITED
Copyright, 1917,
Boni & Liveright, Inc.
Printed in the U. S. of America
For advice and assistance in collecting and arranging these poems, I am grateful to many friends, especially to Mr. T. R. Smith, Miss Caroline Giltinan and Mr. John Bunker. The publishers, editors and authors who have kindly consented to let me use copyright material are numerous and I assure them of my deep sense of obligation. In particular I desire to thank the following publishers for their generous permission to use all that I required from their lists: Charles Scribner’s Sons, John Lane Company, Small, Maynard & Company, P. J. Kennedy Sons, Frederick A. Stokes Company, The Catholic World, Houghton Mifflin Company, The Encyclopaedia Press, Henry Holt & Company, The Devin-Adair Company, Little, Brown & Company, The Macmillan Company, Elkin Mathews, The Ave Maria, Laurence Gomme, and Wilfrid Meynell.
J. K.
To
Rev. James J. Daly, S.J.
[Pg vii]
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[Pg viii] 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.
[Pg ix]
[Pg 1]
By Hilaire Belloc
[Pg 2]
By Hilaire Belloc
[Pg 3]
By Hilaire Belloc
[Pg 6]
By Hilaire Belloc
By Hilaire Belloc
By Hilaire Belloc
[Pg 8]
By Hilaire Belloc
By Hilaire Belloc
I
II
III
IV
By Robert Hugh Benson
By Robert Hugh Benson
[Pg 12]
By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
[Pg 13]
By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
By Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
[Pg 14]
By Teresa Brayton
By Nancy Campbell
[Pg 19]
By Ethna Carbery
[Pg 20]
By Ethna Carbery
[Pg 21]
[Pg 22]
By P. J. Carroll, C.S.C.
By P. J. Carroll, C.S.C.
[Pg 24]
By D. A. Casey
[Pg 25]
By Padraic Colum
By Padraic Colum
[Pg 26]
By Katherine Eleanor Conway
[Pg 28]
By Katherine Eleanor Conway
[Pg 29]
By Eleanor Rogers Cox
[Pg 30]
By Eleanor Rogers Cox
[Pg 31]
[Pg 32]
By Eleanor Rogers Cox
[Pg 34]
By Eleanor Rogers Cox
By Olive Custance
By Olive Custance
By T. A. Daly
[Pg 40]
By T. A. Daly
By T. A. Daly
[Pg 41]
By T. A. Daly
By T. A. Daly
By Aubrey De Vere
By Aubrey De Vere
[Pg 45]
By Aubrey De Vere
By Aubrey De Vere
By James B. Dollard
[Pg 48]
By James B. Dollard
By James B. Dollard
By D. J. Donahoe
[Pg 52]
By Eleanor C. Donnelly
By Eleanor C. Donnelly
By Eleanor Downing
By Eleanor Downing
By Eleanor Downing
[Pg 57]
By Ernest Dowson
[Pg 58]
By Ernest Dowson
By Ernest Dowson
By Augusta Theodosia Drane
[Pg 62]
By Michael Earls, S.J.
(San Francisco, May, 1910)
By Michael Earls, S.J.
By Helen Parry Eden
[Pg 65]
By Helen Parry Eden
“Et pastores erant in regione eadem vigilantes”
By Helen Parry Eden
[Pg 67]
[Pg 68]
By Helen Parry Eden
[Pg 71]
By Father Edmund, C.P.
By Maurice Francis Egan
[Pg 72]
By Maurice Francis Egan
[Pg 73]
By Maurice Francis Egan
By Maurice Francis Egan
[Pg 74]
[Pg 75]
By Frederick William Faber, D.D.
By Frederick William Faber, D.D.
[Pg 79]
By John Fitzpatrick, O.M.I.
By Alice Furlong
[Pg 81]
By Francis A. Gaffney, O.P.
By Edward F. Garesché, S.J.
[Pg 83]
By Edward F. Garesché, S.J.
By Caroline Giltinan
[Pg 86]
By Gerald Griffin
By Louise Imogen Guiney
By Louise Imogen Guiney
[Pg 89]
By Louise Imogen Guiney
By Louise Imogen Guiney
[Pg 92]
A Christmas Chant
By Robert Stephen Hawker
[Pg 93]
By Robert Stephen Hawker
[Pg 94]
By James M. Hayes
[Pg 95]
By James M. Hayes
[Pg 96]
By James M. Hayes
[Pg 97]
By Emily H. Hickey
[Pg 98]
By Emily H. Hickey
[Pg 99]
By Gerard Hopkins, S.J.
[Pg 100]
By Gerard Hopkins, S.J.
[Pg 101]
By Gerard Hopkins, S.J.
[Pg 102]
By Scharmel Iris
[Pg 103]
By Lionel Johnson
[Pg 104]
[Pg 105]
By Lionel Johnson
[Pg 106]
By Lionel Johnson
[Pg 107]
[Pg 108]
By Lionel Johnson
[Pg 109]
(Upon reading the poem of that name in the Underwoods of Mr. Stevenson)
By Lionel Johnson
By Lionel Johnson
[Pg 112]
By Lionel Johnson
[Pg 113]
By Lionel Johnson
[Pg 114]
[Pg 115]
By Blanche Mary Kelly
By Blanche Mary Kelly
By Francis Clement Kelley
By George Parsons Lathrop
[Pg 128]
By George Parsons Lathrop
By Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
[Pg 129]
By Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
By Edmund Leamy (Senior)
[Pg 131]
[Pg 132]
By Edmund Leamy
By Edmund Leamy
[Pg 134]
By Edmund Leamy
[Pg 135]
By Edmund Leamy
By Edmund Leamy
[Pg 137]
By Shane Leslie
By Ruth Temple Lindsay
[Pg 139]
[Pg 140]
By Rev. William Livingston
[Pg 141]
By S. M. M.
[Pg 142]
By James Clarence Mangan
By James Clarence Mangan
By Thomas MacDonagh
[Pg 147]
Born on St. Cecilia’s Day, 1912
By Thomas MacDonagh
[Pg 148]
By Seumas MacManus
By Seumas MacManus
[Pg 151]
By Theodore Maynard
[Pg 152]
By Theodore Maynard
I
[Pg 153]
II
By Theodore Maynard
[Pg 154]
By Theodore Maynard
[Pg 155]
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth are passed away.”—Apoc. xxi. I.
By Theodore Maynard
[Pg 156]
By Denis A. McCarthy
By Denis A. McCarthy
[Pg 161]
By Denis A. McCarthy
[Pg 162]
By Thomas D’Arcy McGee
[Pg 163]
By Alice Meynell
By Alice Meynell
[Pg 164]
By Alice Meynell
[Pg 165]
By Alice Meynell
[Pg 166]
By Alice Meynell
By Alice Meynell
[Pg 167]
By Alice Meynell
[Pg 168]
By Alice Meynell
By Wilfrid Meynell
[Pg 169]
By Helen Louise Moriarty
[Pg 170]
By John Henry Newman
[Pg 171]
By John Henry Newman
By John Henry Newman
By John Henry Newman
“He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto Him.”
[Pg 173]
By John Henry Newman
By Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.C.
[Pg 174]
By Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.C.
[Pg 175]
In memory of Brother Basil,
Organist for half a century at Notre Dame
By Charles L. O’Donnell, C.S.C.
By Thomas O’Hagan
By John Boyle O’Reilly
By Mary A. O’Reilly
By Shaemas O. Sheel
[Pg 183]
By Shaemas O. Sheel
By Shaemas O. Sheel
By Shaemas O. Sheel
[Pg 186]
By Condé Benoist Pallen
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
By Condé Benoist Pallen
[Pg 194]
By Condé Benoist Pallen
[Pg 195]
By Coventry Patmore
[Pg 197]
By Coventry Patmore
By Coventry Patmore
[Pg 199]
By Coventry Patmore
By P. H. Pearse
(Translated from the Irish by Thomas MacDonagh)
By Charles Phillips
[Pg 202]
By Joseph Mary Plunkett
By Joseph Mary Plunkett
By May Probyn
[Pg 204]
17th Century
By May Probyn
[Pg 210]
By Adelaide Anne Procter
I
II
III
IV
By Adelaide Anne Procter
By Adelaide Anne Procter
[Pg 215]
[Pg 216]
By Adelaide Anne Procter
By James Ryder Randall
[Pg 220]
By James Ryder Randall
[Pg 221]
By James Ryder Randall
By Agnes Repplier
By James Jeffrey Roche
[Pg 223]
By James Jeffrey Roche
By James Jeffrey Roche
[Pg 225]
By James Jeffrey Roche
By John Jerome Rooney
[Pg 226]
[Pg 227]
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.”—Revelation XXI:1
By John Jerome Rooney
On seeing the original manuscript map of the Mississippi River by its discoverer, Father Marquette
By John Jerome Rooney
[Pg 230]
(On the death of a Catholic gentleman)
By John Jerome Rooney
I
II
[Pg 232]
[Pg 233]
By John Jerome Rooney
By Matthew Russell, S. J.
[A] In the last of his “Discourses to Mixed Congregations,” Dr. Newman calls the Blessed Virgin the Mother of Emanuel, and says: “It is the boast of the Catholic religion that it has the gift of making the young heart chaste; and why is this, but that it gives us Jesus for our food and Mary for our nursing Mother?”
By Abram J. Ryan
By Abram J. Ryan
[Pg 238]
By Abram J. Ryan
By Abram J. Ryan
[Pg 242]
By E. Seton
By Dora Sigerson
[Pg 244]
By John Lancaster Spalding
By Charles Warren Stoddard
[Pg 246]
By Charles Warren Stoddard
[Pg 247]
By Charles Warren Stoddard
(The Mission of San Gabriel Archangel, near Los Angeles, founded in 1771, was, for a time, the most flourishing mission in California)
By Speer Strahan, C.S.C.
By Speer Strahan, C.S.C.
By Speer Strahan, C.S.C.
By Caroline D. Swan
[Pg 252]
By John B. Tabb
[Pg 253]
By John B. Tabb
By John B. Tabb
By John B. Tabb
[Pg 254]
By John B. Tabb
By Francis Thompson
By Francis Thompson
By Francis Thompson
[Pg 267]
By Francis Thompson
By Francis Thompson
By Katherine Tynan
By Katherine Tynan
By Katherine Tynan
By Katherine Tynan
[Pg 278]
By Katherine Tynan
By Thomas Walsh
By Thomas Walsh
This eBook makes the following corrections to the printed text: