Verses on Various Occasions - John Henry Newman (best beach reads txt) 📗

Angel

Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul,41
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,42
And thou, without 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 prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest.

Farewell, but not for ever! 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 Oratory. January, 1865.

“Is life a boon so kindly given,” etc., vide Childe Harold, Canto II. ↩

The diction of these verses has been altered in some places at a later date. ↩

Of course the allusion is not to the author’s mother; a mother has no favourites. ↩

Psalm 104 [103]:23. ↩

Vid. 1 Pet. 3:5; and cf. Gen. 24:22, 28⁠–⁠30. ↩

The last stanza is not as it stood originally. In this and other alterations in these compositions, care has been taken not to introduce ideas foreign to the author’s sentiments at the time of writing. ↩

Jeroboam. ↩

David. ↩

Of course this is the exclamation of one who, when so writing, was not in Catholic Communion. The same must said also of Nos. LXVI, LXXVIII. ↩

See endnote for “The Good Samaritan.” ↩

Vide the Oedipus Coloneus of Sophocles. ↩

The last twelve lines were added after Feb. 28, 1836, the date of R. Hurrell Froude’s death. ↩

These hymns are all free translations, made in 1836⁠–⁠8, from the Roman Breviary, except two, which are from the Parisian. ↩

Vide the Anglo-Norman History of Sir Francis Palgrave (Vol. III p. 588), who did the author the honour of asking him for a translation of this hymn, as also of the “Christe Pastorum,” infra. ↩

From the Parisian Breviary. ↩

On the day of his death, Philip, “at the beginning of his Mass, remained for some time looking fixedly at the hill of St. Onofrio, which was visible from the chapel, just as if he saw some great vision. On coming to the Gloria in Excelsis, he began to sing, which was a very unusual thing for him, and he sang the whole of it with the greatest joy and devotion,” etc. —⁠Bacci’s Life ↩

The musical character of the verse of “The Dream of Gerontius” is brought out more and more by careful study of the changes of the meaning of the poem and their expression. “The Dream” is a series of lyrics⁠—each lyric voicing its own feeling and sensitively tuned to that feeling. According to the scansion most in use in English, the first supplicating lyric may be classed as in pentameter iambic. Gerontius is yet in the body, and the rime, used solemnly, marks a difference⁠—which has a delicate symbolism⁠—between his utterances in the body and his utterances when his soul has left the body. What we call blank verse is used by the Spirit⁠—rime disappears, but the rhythm remains the same. Using verse-notation, we find five accented notes in each line, if we consider the lines at all. There are two quarter-notes in each bar, which may be written as

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Gerontius dreams that he is dying. He has not strength to pray. He hears the persons near his bed praying for him, in the language prescribed by the Church, “The Litany for the Dying.” The three opening invocations are in Greek, “Kyrie Eleïson” (“Lord, have mercy”), “Christe Eleïson” (“Christ, have mercy”), “Kyrie Eleïson” (“Lord, have mercy”). The next invocation in the Litany is “Sancta Maria, Ora pro eo,” which Cardinal Newman translates into English. With the exception of the first three and the last two invocations, the Litany is in Latin. The Litany is too long for the purpose of the poem, and the author has translated into English some of the invocations that would