Transcribed from the 1914 Burns & Oates edition ,email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
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 gloriesof poetry, if the chief glories of holiness she has preserved for herown. The palm and the laurel, Dominic and Dante, sanctity andsong, grew together in her soil: she has retained the palm, but forgonethe laurel. Poetry in its widest sense, {1}and when not professedly irreligious, has been too much and too longamong many Catholics either misprised or distrusted; too much and toogenerally the feeling has been that it is at best superfluous, at worstpernicious, most often dangerous. Once poetry was, as she shouldbe, the lesser sister and helpmate of the Church; the minister to themind, as the Church to the soul. But poetry sinned, poetry fell;and, in place of lovingly reclaiming her, Catholicism cast her fromthe door to follow the feet of her pagan seducer. The separationhas been ill for poetry; it has not been well for religion.
Fathers of the Church (we would say), pastors of the Church, piouslaics of the Church: you are taking from its walls the panoply of Aquinas—takealso from its walls the psaltery of Alighieri. Unroll the precedentsof the Church’s past; recall to your minds that Francis of Assisiwas among the precursors of Dante; that sworn to Poverty he forsworenot Beauty, but discerned through the lamp Beauty the Light God; thathe was even more a poet in his miracles than in his melody; that poetryclung round the cowls of his Order. Follow his footsteps; youwho have blessings for men, have you no blessing for the birds? Recall to your memory that, in their minor kind, the love poems of Danteshed no less honour on Catholicism than did the great religious poemwhich is itself pivoted on love; that in singing of heaven he sang ofBeatrice—this supporting angel was still carven on his harp evenwhen he stirred its strings in Paradise. What you theoreticallyknow, vividly realise: that with many the religion of beauty must alwaysbe a passion and a power, that it is only evil when divorced from theworship of the Primal Beauty. Poetry is the preacher to men ofthe earthly as you of the Heavenly Fairness; of that earthly fairnesswhich God has fashioned to His own image and likeness. You proclaimthe 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 arevery good. Beware how you misprise this potent ally, for hersis the art of Giotto and Dante: beware how you misprise this insidiousfoe, 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. Ifyou have no room for her beneath the wings of the Holy One, there isplace for her beneath the webs of the Evil One: whom you discard, heembraces; whom you cast down from an honourable seat, he will advanceto a haughty throne; the brows you dislaurel of a just respect, he willbind with baleful splendours; the stone which you builders reject, hewill make his head of the corner. May she not prophesy in thetemple? then there is ready for her the tripod of Delphi. Eyeher not askance if she seldom sing directly of religion: the bird givesglory to God though it sings only of its innocent loves. Suspicioncreates its own cause; distrust begets reason for distrust. Thisbeautiful, wild, feline Poetry, wild because left to range the wilds,restore to the hearth of your charity, shelter under the rafter of yourFaith; discipline her to the sweet restraints of your household, feedher with the meat from your table, soften her with the amity of yourchildren; tame her, fo