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Poems I Like: To the Rev. F.D. Maurice by Lord Alfred Tennyson

This has never been one of my all-time favourite poems, or even one of my favourite Tennyson poems, but it's always appealed to me since I originally encountered it in my teens. Some of its lines recur to my mind regularly.

I like that it's such a subdued poem. It's very far from ecstasy, rhapsody, tragedy, or any of the blazing moods of human life. It's an invitation to a friend to visit. That in itself gives it a delicious mellowness. (The easy camaraderie between old friends is one of the most beautiful things in the world-- especially, if I dare say it, the friendship between middle-aged or elderly male friends. Tennyson was forty-four when he wrote this. Rev. Maurice was four years older.)

It's one of two memorable "visiting" poems that I can think of. The other is the sonnet "Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son" by John Milton, which is remarkably similar.

Tennyson's relationship with Christianity was complex. He famously wrote that there was "more faith in honest doubt" than in "half the creeds". But his Idylls of the King is shot through with Christian imagery, and he apparently died a good Christian death. Anyway, it's no surprise that his clergyman friend was someone whose orthodoxy was apparently questioned, as the poem suggests-- one of the founders of Christian Socialism, it seems. He seems to have been a very good and pious man, according to his lights.

For all the calm tone and lack of intense emotion in this poem, it frequently brings me to tears (even thinking about it)-- especially the verse that ends: "How to gain, as life advances, valour and charity more and more." The line: "Dear to the man that is dear to God" also moves me.

Some of the flashes of nature poetry in the poem are particularly beautiful, for instance: "Hear the magpie gossip, garrulous under a roof of pine." That garrulous...

At the risk of sounding self-pitying, there's a certain pathos attached to this poem for me, since there are few (if any) hearths that welcome my arrival in the manner that Tennyson's hearth awaited the arrival of Reverend Maurice. My own fault, no doubt.

To The Rev F.D. Maurice

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Come, when no graver cares employ,

Godfather, come and see your boy:
Your presence will be sun in winter,
Making the little one leap for joy,

For, being of that honest few,
Who give the Fiend himself his due,
Should eighty thousand college-councils
Thunder 'Anathema,' friend, at you;

Should all our churchmen foam in spite
At you, so careful of the right,
Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome
(Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight.

Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless-ordered garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,
And only hear the magpie gossip
Garrulous under a roof of pine.

For groves of pine on either hand,
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And farther on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand;

Where, if below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,
And on through zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep,

We might discuss the Northern sin
Which made a selfish war begin;
Dispute the claims, arrange the chances;
Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:

Or whether war's avenging rod
Shall lash all Europe into blood;
Till you should turn to dearer matters,
Dear to the man that is dear to God;

How best to help the slender store,
How mend the dwellings, of the poor;
How gain in life, as life advances,
Valour and charity more and more.

Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;
But when the wreath of March has blossomed,
Crocus, anemone, violet,

Or later, pay one visit here,
For those are few we hold as dear;
Nor pay but one, but come for many,
Many and many a happy year.

An Email I Just Sent

Hello

I have a very unusual query for you. I was in the Den bar last night. It was a very enjoyable evening and all the staff were wonderful. But something is nagging at me. For hours now I've been trying to remember the advertisements on the wall where I was sitting.

We were sitting in a sort of corner snug between the bar and the staff bathrooms/kitchen (I think). I was facing the wall and I spent a lot of time looking at the decorative advertisements on it. There was an ornamental mirror for some whiskey brewed in Tullamore (I can't remember which, not Tullamore Dew), two advertisements for Mick McQuaid's Plug and Cut Plug tobacco, another advertisement for Quaker Oats...and, above the Quaker Oats advertisement, one for a product I can't remember and that's driving me crazy.

I know this is an odd query but it would be possible to take a look at this corner and tell me what the whiskey advertised on the mirror and the product advertised above the Quaker Oats was?

Many thanks

Maolsheachlann

Update: I got a reply. It was a Fry's chocolate advertisement. (The reply didn't mention what whiskey the mirror was advertising, but I was less curious about that anyway.)

A Clerihew

Christina Rossetti
Never showered in confetti.
Whenever a swain made her his target
She said: "Sorry, I'm writing Goblin Market."

The Feast of St. Finbarr

Two saints' day posts in a row!

Today is the feast of St. Finbarr (550-660), who is the patron saint of Cork. He's mentioned in the motto of University College Cork: "Where Finbarr taught, let Munster learn." Which I like because it's both religious and provincial-- literally provincial. (Don't people get tired of everything being about the world, the world, the world, global, global, global, international, international, international?)

Finbarr is also the name I chose for my confirmation name. I chose it entirely because I liked the sound. I didn't know anything about Finbarr. I'm not even confident I knew he was a saint.

 

I had my confirmation (with the rest of my class in school) in Our Lady of Victories church in Glasnevin (a very modern church with a lot of stained glass and which somewhat resembles some alien spaceship). I would have been eleven or twelve. I remember I wore a new cream safari suit, which I had for a considerable time afterwards. I also remember my sponsor (who was my uncle) saying: "A bit of an anti-climax, isn't it?". How edifying!

A confirmation name is a strange thing. You never really use it. I only use mine when I'm using my name and I want to sound pompous (like I have to try, right?), styling myself: "Maolsheachlann Tiernan Finbarr Ó Ceallaigh".

Every now and again I do remember to pray to St. Finbarr, at least in recent years. I'll do so again now. Watch over me, St. Finbarr!

St. Pacificus of San Severino

Today is the feast day of St. Pacificus of San Severino (1653-1721), who was canonised in 1839.

Have you ever heard of him? I haven't.

He went deaf and blind at a relatively young age but still held a position of authority in a monastery and worked miracles.

I suppose his reputation suffers from the fact that there are so many Italian saints.

Anyway, I really like that there are lots of days in the year when the saint of the day is pretty obscure, and there are no special feasts.

Anti-Political Correctness Vows

Today I found myself toying with the idea that there should be anti-political correctness vows in the same way there are baptism vows. I'm always impressed by the solemnity and poetry of the baptism vows, which are renewed at the Easter Vigil:

Do you reject Satan?

I do.

And all his works?

I do.

And all his empty promises?

I do.

Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth?

I do.

And so on. There are three more and they are considerably longer.

Vows concentrate the mind. I think anti-PC vows could go something like this:

Do you reject political correctness in all its forms?

I do.

Do you reject all identities based on grievance?

I do.

Do you reject the conflation of trivial and imaginary harms with serious harms?

I do.

Do you reject arbitrary changes in language in the name of sensitivity-- even if you have to go along with them in some circumstances?

I do.

Do you reject the concept that anybody has less right than anybody else to use a particular word or give an opinion on any subject whatsoever?

I do.

Do you reject the attribution of historical guilt to people for injustices that occurred before they were even born?

I do.

Do you reject weaponized false dichotomies, such as victim-oppressor and transformation-stasis?

I do.

Tell me if I missed anything obvious. (By "transformation-stasis", I mean the sort of rhetoric you're surely familiar with: the appeal to gradual and organic evolution in the past to justify complete transformation in the present.)