Emily Henrietta Hickey

“ Here is a lofty tree, blossoming bright above all other trees, and on this tree the Phœnix builds his nest, on a windless day, when the holy jewel of heaven shines clear. For he is fain by the activity of his mind to convert old age into life, and thus renew his youth. He gathers from far and near the sweetest and most delightsome plants and leaves, and the sweetest perfumes that the Father of all beginnings has made. On the lofty top of the tree he builds his house fair and winsome, and sets round his body holy spices and noble boughs. ”

“ How many of us I wonder, realise in anything like its full extent the beauty and the glory of our Catholic heritage. Do we think how the Great Mother, the keeper of truth, the guardian of beauty, the muse of learning, the fosterer of progress, has given us gifts in munificent generosity, gifts that sprang from her holy bosom, to enlighten, to cheer, to guide and to help; gifts that she, large, liberal, glorious, could not but give, for she, like her Lord, is giver and bestower ”

“ In this fair country there abides a bird of wondrous beauty and strong of wing. For him there shall be no death while the world shall last. Ever he watches the course of the sun, eagerly looks for the radiant rising over ocean of the noblest of stars, the first work of the Father, the glowing token of God. At the coming of the sun he flies swift-winged toward it, singing more wondrously than any son of man hath heard since the making of heaven and earth. ”

“ Love of books is love of part of God's world. In books we commune with the spirit of their writers. The Church the mother of all art and all literature. Catholic literature saturated with Holy Scripture.
A man who made many a man and woman love literature and helped them to study it, the late Professor Henry Morley, has said that one who thinks that a bookroom is not a part of the world; one who thinks that, in leaving his books and going forth to commune with nature he is, as it were, passing from death to life, is one who has not yet learned to read. ”

“ The literature of a country is not merely what the men and women born in it have written. The thought of one people is fed, or enlarged, or in some way strengthened by the thought of other peoples; and the literature of the times we are speaking of could not have been what it was, had it not had other sources than these purely English to draw from. And, of all kinds of help-bringers, we owe much to the monks, and chiefly the great Benedictine order. King Alfred had to do his work at a time when things were at a low ebb in the English monasteries. ”

“ The earliest literature of a people is almost invariably in verse: the literature that comes from the heart of a people, and is not the production of a few learned folk. In early days, there was little reading or writing, except in the shelter of the great monasteries. The common folk-literature, which is a very precious thing, is preserved, in such times as we are thinking of, in people's memories, and circulated by recitation, this recitation being accompanied by music or by rhythmical movements of the body. We all know how much easier it is to remember a page of verse than a page of prose. ”

“ The glorious land is higher than earth's highest towering mountain, lying serene in its sunny wooded fairness. Ever and always the trees are hung with fruits, and never comes the withering of the leaf. No foes may enter that land, and there is no weeping nor any sorrow, nor losing of life, nor sin, nor strife, nor age, nor care, nor poverty. When the Flood covered the earth, this Paradise was shielded from the rush of angry waters, happy through God's grace and inviolate; and so shall it remain even to the day of the coming of the Judgement of the Lord. ”

“ How it loves to have the clash of spear and shield strike upon the ear, and to hear how the voice of the eagle and the raven, and the howl of the wolf, proclaim the place of slaughter, the reek of battle!
Cynewulf calls the angel who stood by Constantine in his vision a "weaver of peace"; but the peace was to be woven after conflict, and the wearer of the victor's palm had first to wield the fighter's sword.
When Constantine had learned about the Cross from the few Christians he could find, he believed and was baptized, says the poet. ”

“ Men and women in great multitudes flock to the fortress-gate, pressing and running to meet God's handmaid, glad of heart to know of her home-coming. They let her in reverently, and the trophy she has brought is shown them. Judith beseeches them to go forth to the fight, as soon as the Maker of the beginning of all things, the King of high honour, hath sent the bright light from the East; to go forth bearing shield and buckler and the bright helmet, to meet the thronging foemen, and fell the folk-leaders, the doomed spear-bearers. ”

“ You will have noticed in the literature we have been considering the absence of certain elements which are an integral part of our modern literature. This poem, for instance, is, as far as I know, the only love poem before the Conquest which has come down to us. There is no romance either, and there is, we may say, no humour. Life is a very serious thing, so often lying close to the sword-edge; and the duties of life are simple. There is to be a great, very great enlargement of the borders of English literature later on. Prose and poetry are to have new developments. ”

“ And we must remember, too, must we not? how one thing helps us to understand another; how great painters and great poets help us to understand the beauty of nature as we might not have understood it without them, just as they help us also to know men and women, and help us to know better some of the fair things in our great and glorious religion; things which God can and does teach without their help when He chooses, though He graciously and lovingly often uses their help—the help He has given them the power of giving—to teach others of His children. ”

“ Beautiful is that plain, with joys endowed and with the sweetest smells of earth. Peerless is the island, set there by its noble Maker. Oft is the door of Heaven opened for the blessed ones and the joy of its music known of them. Winsome is the plain with its wide green woods. And there is neither rain nor snow, nor breath of frost nor flame of fire, nor the rush of hail, nor the falling of rime, nor burning heat of the sun, nor everlasting cold, but blessed and wholesome standeth the plain, and full is the noble country of the blowing of blossoms. ”

“ And, earlier by many a century, we have the dream of the dreamer at the depth of midnight, the midnight whose heart was bright with the splendour of the glorious vesting and gem-adorning of the Cross of Jesus Christ, and dark with the moisture of the Sacred Blood that oozed therefrom. ”

“ Alfred knew how to use helpers. All who understand the "ought to be" take help as well as give it. The good King encouraged others, and the office of encourager is no mean part of the office of helper. We cannot do our work in the world alone: God meant us to work with others, and man's best work as an individual can never be independent of the work of others, those who are living or those who have gone before. ”

“ The three crosses are together, buried far down in the earth, and Judas digs deep and brings them up, and they are laid before the knees of the Queen. Glad of heart she asks on which of them the Son of the Ruling One had suffered. The Lord's Cross is revealed by its power to raise a dead man who is brought to the place.
Satan assaults Judas, angry and bitter, for again his power has been brought low. One Judas has made him joyful: the second Judas has humbled him. He is boldly answered when he pours out threats and foretells that another king than Constantine will arise to persecute. ”

“ It has done far more than give a sense of colour and beauty and nature-love. More than the love of nature in its beauty is the sense of fellowship between man and nature, the sense that makes man see his own joy and sorrow reflected in the mighty heart of Nature. This is a very big subject, and can only be touched on here. The beginning of this influence, which came also from Wales and France, is due to Ireland. We must never forget how great a debt England owes to Ireland. ”

“ Where should we be but for the work done in the monasteries? How can we be grateful enough for what went on there in the way of thought, research and the collecting of materials, in addition to the work of teaching: all fed by the life of prayer and praise and self-denial? Let us try to think about the quiet, patient work of scholars and students; about their noting of so many facts and detailing of them. Let us think of the beginnings of English history and literature ”

“ The good Professor saw that books have souls in them, so to speak, and that to love a book really and truly is to hold communion with that which is living and is a part of the great, beautiful scheme of God's great, beautiful world. To love one part of what Our Father has given us should never lead us to despise, or even undervalue, other parts. ”

“ We cannot know how much we may have influenced others for good, we cannot calculate the effect that we have had upon them, and, through them, upon others. And to apply this thought specially to a poet, we may say that what he has done for others by suggesting, by stimulating, by inspiring, is not only a most valuable part of his work, but also an immeasurable part. ”

“ We have hitherto spoken of work done in the dedicated life of religion: to-day we direct our attention to the work of a great layman; the first English layman whom we know to have been a great power in literature; less as a "maker," poet or proseman, than as an opener out to "makers" of precious store; a helper and encourager; a fellow-student; a learner and a teacher of whom it could be said, as Chaucer says of his Clerk of Oxford, "gladly would he learn and gladly teach."
STATUE OF KING ALFRED, BY H. THORNEYCROFT, R.A. ”

“ A poet may inspire another poet simply to sing; or he may inspire him to sing on subjects akin to those dearest to himself; and the second poet, or the third or fourth, as it may be, may sing better than the first. But all the same, he owes it to the first poet, and, in a sense, the work of the latter poet is a part of the work of the earlier.
The poem "Genesis" is known to be the work of at least two people: part of it is a version of an old Saxon paraphrase of the Old Testament, and must have been written later than Caedmon's time. ”

“ One may love the book through which one holds communion with the spirit of its writer, being ready to learn from him by direct learning, or by the learning received through suggestion, or through the rousing of the spirit of enquiry, or the spirit of opposition. Is not this the best kind of love, the love by which the thought of man is used by man, the spirit of man holds communion with the spirit of man? ”

“ I dwell on this before passing on to the poem, because I want to bring before you the remembrance of what a tremendous factor in literature, as in thought and in the whole of life is the principle of comparison, or, as we might put it, the principle of similitude or likeness. We learn about a thing we do not know through its likeness, as a whole or in some parts, to a thing we do know. ”

“ All through the ages, great things have been handed down by written words, and people of all nations have shared one another's national heritage of written thought, and in that sharing made it larger and greater. We are now considering the earlier story of English Catholic literature, and it is surely well that people should know something of what things were said and sung in the olden time; the time when all art, all literature was fed by the great Mother of all Christian art and all Christian literature, the Holy Catholic Church. ”

“ Romances are to show us heroic ideals. Lyrics of joy, of sorrow, of passion, of emotion natural and spiritual, are to be sung. The sense of beauty is to grow. The drama is to arise from beginnings to be but faintly traced in early days. Epic poetry is to take a great place. ”

“ But it could not be hidden from God how pride had taken hold of His angel. And Satan resolves in that pride not to serve God. Bright and beautiful in his form, he will not obey the Almighty. He thinks within himself that he has more might and strength than the Holy God could find among his fellows. "Why should I toil, seeing there is no need that I should have a lord? With my hands I can work marvels as many as He. Great power have I to make ready a goodlier throne, a higher one in Heaven. ”

“ If we want to write fast, we do not write so round as when we write slowly. Afterwards, in the tenth century, the English began to use the French style of writing.
The runes were sometimes used as ordinary letters, without any thought of the old connection with magic. So the great Christian poet, Cynewulf, wrote his name in runes, which is how we know him to be the author of some of the poems we have been considering.
The portions of the "Dream of the Holy Rood" which are on the Ruthwell Cross (see Chapter IV) are carved in runes. ”

“ And let us rightly order word and work, and earnestly cleanse the thoughts of our hearts, and carefully keep oath and pledge and have honesty among us without weakness, and let us often understand the great judgement which we all must meet, and earnestly protect ourselves against the burning fire of the punishment of hell, and earn for ourselves the glories and the joys which God has prepared for them that do His will in the world. ”