Joyce Kilmer

Chapter 32: LIONEL JOHNSON (For the Rev. John J. Burke, C.S.P.)

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A biographical memoir accompanies a wide selection of poems, essays, and letters that together trace the author’s life, friendships, and artistic growth. The poems alternate between nature and devotional themes, domestic observations, and wartime and memorial pieces composed both abroad and at home. Essays and correspondence reveal literary preferences, personal affections, and religious sensibilities, while photographs and facsimiles supplement the personal record. The collection balances lyrical short poems with occasional longer pieces and critical or biographical sketches, offering a compact portrait of a poet engaged with faith, ordinary life, and the moral and emotional stakes of his historical moment.

LIONEL JOHNSON
(For the Rev. John J. Burke, C.S.P.)

There was a murkier tinge in London’s air

As if the honest fog blushed black for shame.

Fools sang of sin, for other fools’ acclaim,

And Milton’s wreath was tossed to Baudelaire.

The flowers of evil blossomed everywhere,

But in their midst a radiant lily came,

Candescent, pure, a cup of living flame,

Bloomed for a day, and left the earth more fair.

And was it Charles, thy “fair and fatal King,”

Who bade thee welcome to the lovely land?

Or did Lord David cease to harp and sing

To take in his thine emulative hand?

Or did Our Lady’s smile shine forth, to bring

Her lyric Knight within her choir to stand?