‘It was before the summer holidays,
A noon I well remember, as we sat
Conversing in my College rooms, my thoughts
Mingling unconscious with the trembling leaves
Of poplars from the window; and meanwhile,
In converse still unbroken, thence we passed
Into the stately garden-walks, and there
Paced to and fro beside the aged yews
Which once like living guardians of the lawn
Had marshalled all the place with verdant walls:
Now, mere memorials of their former sway.
’Twas a dark vapoury noon, while ruddy gleams
Were mingling with the sun, and fell athwart
The cloistral lime-tree avenue beyond;
And like a curtain, the moist atmosphere
Hung heavily around us, yet withal
Glowing and warm, not adverse to my friend
(Lately returned from genial Italy,
Death in his frame and cheek), and to his eye
Lent more than its own brightness. He was one
I loved: ah, would that I had loved him more!
For he was worthy of a good man’s love.
“Yes,” said he, with my name, as he was wont,
Sportfully playing, “we must make a noise
In the large world; why should we not? How they
Of Low Church views, Peculiar, through the land
Make themselves felt and heard; and ring aloud
With a few truths, half-truths! and shall not we
With the whole Truth forgotten for our theme,
The pillar and the ground of all our hopes,
Or, rather, say the Faith entire and one
In all its due proportions, and the Church
Our witness of old time,—why should we not
Lift up, as like a trumpet through the land,
With no uncertain sound, our warning voice?”
My answer I remember: “Noise abroad
I doubt not we can make as well as they.
And then to be as hollow partisans,
Supporters,—this were easy, and the Church
To be familiar in men’s mouths; but then
Will they beneath all this be better men,
More humble?”
“They will be so,” he replied.
“For the great Truths themselves, depend on it,
Will work, and work for good; but hollow men
There will be, and needs must.”
Yet, to and fro,
I urged the adverse part: “I fear the weight
On spirits unprepared, undisciplined;
Of others and ourselves I am afraid.
Could men be fuller leavened with the thought
Of Judgement and Hereafter, could we lay
Foundations deep in honesty, ’twere well;
But else, mere superstructure on the sand!
Fashion, religious fashion, and the tide
Of popular feelings,—I can never wish
To have them with us. We must walk in doubt
And fear, and do our parts, come what come may.”
“Yes,” said he, pausing, “very true”: with look
Half-loving and half-pitying. “My friend,
You now must creep no more; for all too long
You have in country hamlets shady grown.
For part of this our duty, ere we die,
Is to be up and stirring; we must rise
Or be for ever fallen: God will help.
Else all that’s good and holy in the land,
Beneath the blasting influence of the State
Will wither and dry up and droop and die,
As neath the upas-tree. We must be up,
And moving, now, at once; and when our friend
Shall have returned from ancient Sicily,”
(He spake of one whom he had left behind
Bound for the classic shores of Syracuse),
“Tracts we must have, and, by what means we can,
Launch them abroad, short Tracts; we must begin,
And you, too, you must aid, and with your verse.
Come, see what you have ready for our hand.
The Monthly, as you know, The British named,
Is open for our letters, prose, and rhyme.
But deeper the foundations must be laid
In these our Tracts; subsidial aid we need,
Full many: to get friends (if here and there
One may be found, or two) to bring to aid
Their pulpits, and proclaim there is a Church
Planted by Christ’s own hand within our isle.—
And let us now to Worcester.” Then of one
He spake, well-honoured for good service done
Linking our Liturgies unto the past.
“Hearty he is, and earnest; though not meet
Throughout to understand and sympathise,
Yet in his line will lend us his good aid,
Though looking for external front, and powers,
More than on principles which we are bent
To scatter broad and deep. Let’s now to him.”
And thus, full-sailed in academic garb,
Through the Collegiate gates, archway, and porch
We passed in conversation, bent to raise
The Signal: ’twas the day of little things.
That friend with whom I thus in council walked,
Associate of my earlier years, long since
Is in his peaceful grave; nor did he live
To see our sorrows. There was that in him
Wherein one might cast anchor. Often wont
To talk in paradox, it was his mood
Of playfulness, as one that inly smiled
Mocking at the conceptions which the tongue
Is weak to utter; venting heart-felt truths
In startling shape preposterous; with a smile
At incongruity of our poor thoughts
To match our endless weight of destiny;
Yea, at himself, to see intention yoked
So strangely with performance, which still paced
Unequally, and limped or dragged behind.
His intellect was keen-edged as the sword
Of Saladin, well-matched with battle-axe
Of Cœur de Lion; while in poetry
And arts, his judgement was the sculptor’s nail;
But, like the royal Dane of Shakespeare wrought,
One by himself, not of a class or kind:
Like to himself alone and no one else.
There was within him such repose on Truth,
Absence of self, such heart-controlling fear,
I feel that, had he lived, he had not been
The sport of his own sails, or popular winds
That he had courted for our object’s sake.
Men hurry to and fro; but he the while
Hath found the Haven where he fain would be.’