Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets

Dreams and Images: An Anthology of Catholic Poets

This is not a collection of devotional poems. It is not an attempt to rival Orby Shipleys 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 poetryit 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 worlds literary heritage. There should be many Catholic anthologies. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 66094
Author: Kilmer, Joyce
Release Date: Aug 20, 2021
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Editor: Kilmer, Joyce, 1886-1918