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SHELLEY: AN ESSAY
The Church, which was once the mother of poets no less than of
saints, during the last two centuries has relinquished to aliens the
chief glories of poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has
preserved for her own. The palm and the laurel, Dominic and Dante,
sanctity and song, grew together in her soil: she has retained the
palm, but forgone the laurel. Poetry in its widest sense, {1} and
when not professedly irreligious, has been too much and too long
among many Catholics either misprised or distrusted; too much and
too generally the feeling has been that it is at best superfluous,
at worst pernicious, most often dangerous. Once poetry was, as she
should be, the lesser sister and helpmate of the Church; the
minister to the mind, as the Church to the soul. But poetry sinned,
poetry fell; and, in place of lovingly reclaiming her, Catholicism
cast her from the door to follow the feet of her pagan seducer. The
separation has been ill for poetry; it has not been well for
religion.
Fathers of the Church (we would say), pastors of the Church, pious
laics of the Church: you are taking from its walls the panoply of
Aquinas--take also from its walls the psaltery of Alighieri. Unroll
the precedents of the Church's past; recall to your minds that
Francis of Assisi was among the precursors of Dante; that sworn to
Poverty he forswore not Beauty, but discerned through the lamp
Beauty the Light God; that he was even more a poet in his miracles
than in his melody; that poetry clung round the cowls of his Order.
Follow his footsteps; you who have blessings for men, have you no
blessing for the birds? Recall to your memory that, in their minor
kind, the love poems of Dante shed no less honour on Catholicism
than did the great religious poem which is itself pivoted on love;
that in singing of heaven he sang of Beatrice--this supporting angel
was still carven on his harp even when he stirred its strings in
Paradise. What you theoretically know, vividly realise: that with
many the religion of beauty must always be a passion and a power,
that it is only evil when divorced from the worship of the Primal
Beauty. Poetry is the preacher to men of the earthly as you of the
Heavenly Fairness; of that earthly fairness which God has fashioned
to His own image and likeness. You proclaim the day which the Lord
has made, and Poetry exults and rejoices in it. You praise the
Creator for His works, and she shows you that they are very good.
Beware how you misprise this potent ally, for hers is the art of
Giotto and Dante: beware how you misprise this insidious foe, for
hers is the art of modern France and of Byron. Her value, if you
know it not, God knows, and know the enemies of God. If you have no
room for her beneath the wings of the Holy One, there is place for
her beneath the webs of the Evil One: whom you discard, he
embraces; whom you cast down from an honourable seat, he will
advance to a haughty throne; the brows you dislaurel of a just
respect, he will bind with baleful splendours; the stone which you
builders reject, he will make his head of the corner. May she not
prophesy in the temple? then there is ready for her the tripod of
Delphi. Eye her not askance if she seldom sing directly of
religion: the bird gives glory to God though it sings only of its
innocent loves. Suspicion creates its own cause; distrust begets
reason for distrust. This beautiful, wild, feline Poetry, wild
because left to range the wilds, restore to the hearth of your
charity, shelter under the rafter of your Faith; discipline her to
the sweet restraints of your household, feed her with the meat from
your table, soften her with the amity of your children; tame her,
fondle her, cherish her--you will no longer then need to flee her.
Suffer her to wanton, suffer her to play, so she play round the foot
of the Cross!
There is a change of late years: the Wanderer is being called to
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