What I had written I burnt before I became a Jesuit and resolved to write no more,
as not belonging to my profession,
unless it were by the wish of my superiors;
so for seven years I wrote nothing but two or three little presentation pieces which occasion called for.
But when in the winter of seventy-five the Deutschland was wrecked in the mouth of the Thames and five Franciscan nuns,
exiles from Germany by the Falck Laws,
aboard of her were drowned I was affected by the account and happening to say so to my rector he said that he wished some one would write a poem on the subject.
On this hint I set to work and,
though my hand was out at first,
produced one.
I had long had haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now I realised on paper.
I do not say the idea is altogether new.
but no one has professedly used it and made it the principle throughout,
that I know of.
However I had to mark the stresses and a great many more oddnesses could not but dismay an editor's eye,
so that when I offered it to our magazine The Month,
they dared not print it.
it is dreadful to explain these things in cold blood)
means a headlong and exciting new snatch of singing,
resumption by the lark of his song,
which by turns he gives over and takes up again all day long,
and this goes on,
the sonnet says,
through all time,
without ever losing its first freshness,
being a thing both new and old.
renewal,
resumption.
which from his height gives the impression of something falling to the earth and not vertically quite but tricklingly or wavingly,
The same is called a score in the musical sense of score and this score is writ upon a liquid sky trembling to welcome it,
only not horizontally.
The lark in wild glee races the reel round,
paying or dealing out and down the turns of the skein or coil right to the earth floor,
the ground,
where it lies in a heap,
as it were,
or rather is all wound off on to another winch,
reel,
bobbin or spool in Fancy's eye,
by the moment the bird touches earth and so is ready for a fresh unwinding at the next flight.
Crisp means almost crisped,
namely with notes.
I shall shortly send you an amended copy of The Windhover: the amendment only touches a single line,
I think,
but as that is the best thing I ever wrote I should like you to have it in its best form.
The Hurrahing sonnet was the outcome of half an hour of extreme enthusiasm as I walked home alone one day from fishing in the Elwy.
You mistake the sense of this as I feared it would be mistaken.
I believed Hare to be a brave and conscientious man,
what I say is that _even_ those who seem unconscientious will act the right part at a great push.
About _mortholes_ I wince a little.
A Maypiece in which I see little good but the freedom of the rhythm.
Have fair fallen.
Have is the singular,
imperative(
or optative if you like)
of the past,
a thing possible and actual both in logic and grammar,
but naturally a rare one.
As in the second person we say Have done or in making appointments Have had your dinner beforehand,
so one can say in the third person not only Fair fall of what is present or future but also Have fair fallen of what is past.
The same thought (
which plays a great part in my own mind and action)
is more clearly expressed in the last stanza but one of the Eurydice,
where you remarked it.
The sestet of the Purcell sonnet is not so clearly worked out as I could wish.
The thought is that as the seabird opening his wings with a whiff of wind in your face means the whirr of the motion,
but also unaware gives you a whiff of knowledge about his plumage,
the marking of which stamps his species,
that he does not mean,
so Purcell,
seemingly intent only on the thought or feeling he is to express or call out,
incidentally lets you remark the individualising marks of his own genius.
Sake is a word I find it convenient to use.
I mean by it the being a thing has outside itself,
as a voice by its echo,
a face by its reflection,
a body by its shadow,
a man by his name,
fame,
or memory,
and also that in the thing by virtue of which especially it has this being abroad,
and that is something distinctive,
marked,
specifically or individually speaking,
as for a voice and echo clearness;
for a reflected image light,
brightness;
for a shadow-casting body bulk;
for a man genius,
great achievements,
amiability,
and so on.
In this case it is,
as the sonnet says,
distinctive quality in genius.
By moonmarks I mean crescent-shaped markings on the quill-feathers,
either in the colouring of the feather or made by the overlapping of one on another.
I enclose a sonnet on which I invite minute criticism.
I endeavoured in it at a more Miltonic plainness and severity than I have anywhere else.
I cannot say it has turned out severe,
still less plain,
but it seems almost free from quaintness and in aiming at one excellence I may have hit another.
I am somewhat dismayed about that piece and have laid it aside for a while.
I cannot satisfy myself about the first line.
You must know that words like charm and enchantment will not do:
the thought is of beauty as of something that can be physically kept and lost and by physical things only,
like keys;
then the things must come from the mundus muliebris;
and thirdly they must not be markedly oldfashioned.
You will see that this limits the choice of words very much indeed.
However I shall make some changes.
Back is not pretty,
but it gives that feeling of physical constraint which I want.
I never did anything more musical.
I laughed outright and often,
but very sardonically,
to think you and the Canon could not construe my last sonnet;
that he had to write to you for a crib.
It is plain I must go no further on this road
if you and he cannot understand me who will?
Yet,
declaimed,
the strange constructions would be dramatic and effective.
Must I interpret it? It means then that,
as Saint Paul and Plato and Hobbes and everybody says,
the commonwealth or well-ordered human society is like one man;
a body with many members and each its function;
some higher,
some lower,
but all honourable,
from the honour which belongs to the whole.
The head is the sovereign,
who has no superior but God and from heaven receives his or her authority:
we must then imagine this head as bare(
see Saint Paul much on this)
and covered,
so to say,
only with the sun and stars,
of which the crown is a symbol,
which is an ornament but not a covering;
it has an enormous hat or skullcap,
the vault of heaven.
The foot is the day-labourer,
and this is armed with hobnail boots,
because it has to wear and be worn by the ground;
which again is symbolical;
for it is navvies or day-labourers who,
on the great scale or in gangs and millions,
mainly trench,
tunnel,
blast,
and in other ways disfigure,
mammock the earth and,
on a small scale,
singly,
and superficially stamp it with their footprints.
And the garlands of nails they wear are therefore the visible badge of the place they fill,
the lowest in the commonwealth.
But this place still shares the common honour,
and if it wants one advantage,
glory or public fame,
makes up for it by another,
ease of mind,
absence of care;
and these things are symbolised by the gold and the iron garlands.
O,
once explained,
how clear it all is!)
Therefore the scene of the poem is laid at evening,
when they are giving over work and one after another pile their picks,
with which they earn their living,
and swing off home,
knocking sparks out of mother earth not now by labour and of choice but by the mere footing,
being strong-shod and making no hardship of hardness,
taking all easy.
And so to supper and bed.
Here comes a violent but effective hyperbaton or suspension,
in which the action of the mind mimics that of the labourer--
surveys his lot,
low but free from care;
then by a sudden strong act throws it over the shoulder or tosses it away as a light matter.
The witnessing of which lightheartedness makes me indignant with the fools of Radical Levellers.
But presently I remember that this is all very well for those who are in,
however low in,
the Commonwealth and share in any way the common weal;
but that the curse of our times is that many do not share it,
that they are outcasts from it and have neither security nor splendour;
that they share care with the high and obscurity with the low,
but wealth or comfort with neither.
And this state of things,
I say,
is the origin of Loafers,
Tramps,
Cornerboys,
Roughs,
Socialists and other pests of society.
And I think that it is a very pregnant sonnet,
and in point of execution very highly wrought,
too much so,
I am afraid.
I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you,
five or more.
Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will.
And in the life I lead now,
which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind,
if in any leisure I try to do anything I make no way--
nor with my work,
alas!
but so it must be.
I will now go to bed,
the more so as I am going to preach tomorrow and put plainly to a Highland congregation of MacDonalds,
Mackintoshes,
Mackillops,
and the rest what I am putting not at all so plainly to the rest of the world,
or rather to you and Canon Dixon,
in a sonnet in sprung rhythm with two codas.
Lately I sent you a sonnet on the Heraclitean Fire,
in which a great deal of early Greek philosophical thought was distilled;
but the liquor of the distillation did not taste very greek,
did it?
The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise.
So it must be on every original artist to some degree,
on me to a marked degree.
Perhaps then more reading would only refine my singularity,
which is not what you want.  
I ask your opinion of a sonnet written to order on the occasion of the first feast since his canonisation proper of Saint Alphonsus Rodriguez,
a laybrother of our Order,
who for forty years acted as hall porter to the College of Palma in Majorca;
he was,
it is believed,
much favoured by God with heavenly light and much persecuted by evil spirits.
The sonnet(
I say it snorting)
aims at being intelligible.
I am obliged for your criticisms,
contents of which noted,
indeed acted on.
I have improved the sestet.
at any rate whatever is markedly featured in stone or what is like stone is most naturally said to be hewn,
and to shape,
itself,
even,
properly means to hew.
But life and living things are not naturally said to be hewn:
they grow,
and their growth is by trickling increment.
