The Dream of Gerontius

"And ye great powers, Angels of Purgatory, receive from me My charge, a precious soul, until the day When, from all bond and forfeiture released, I shall reclaim it for the courts of light."

Waiting until he shall enter into the full glory of the Lord, Gerontius is left by the poet. This soul knows now what it did not know on earth,--what the real happiness of Heaven is; "it measures the distance which separates itself from this happiness. It understands how infinite this distance is, through its own fault. It suffers terribly. Its sorrow grows with its love, as it loves God more and more with all the fibres of its being; it is drawn by vital and mighty bonds towards the object of its love, but each bond is broken by the weight of its faults, which like a mass of lead hold it down."[6]

There can be no question as to the correspondence of the teaching of Cardinal Newman with the theology of the Catholic Church. Dante is put by Raphael, in the famous picture, the Disput‡, among the Doctors of the Church, and the author of "The Dream of Gerontius" would have merited a similar honor even if he had never been created[7] a Cardinal.

For advanced students interested in the study of literature a comparative reading of "The Dream of Gerontius" with the "Purgatorio" of Dante, Book III, Milton's "Paradise Lost," Rossetti's "The Blessed Damosel," and Tennyson's "In Memoriam" would be very interesting and profitable, provided this is done always with reference to the exact teaching of the Church. For exalted purity, for terseness and beauty of expression, for musical cadences, "The Dream of Gerontius" stands first among the few great poems that depict the life after death. "In Memoriam" is made up of human yearnings, of faith, of doubt. It never passes beyond "the bar" of death. Milton's "Paradise" is one of angels rather than men, and Rossetti's poem is only a reflection of earth. In Dante's "Purgatorio" the splendor seems to be so great that the appeal to the individual heart is lost, but the oftener we read "The Dream of Gerontius," the more its power and beauty and peace grow upon us.

The story of General Charles George Gordon, "Chinese Gordon," one of the heroes of the nineteenth century, has passed into history, and every enthusiastic boy or girl ought to know it by heart. Gordon was the type of the valiant soldier who carried the love and fear of God everywhere. He, besieged by pagan hordes, died, in 1884, the death of a martyr to duty. This man was only one of those who found consolation in "The Dream of Gerontius" at the very hour of death. General Gordon's copy of the poem--a small duodecimo--was presented to the late Mr. Frank Power, correspondent of the London Times. The latter sent it home to his sister in Dublin. Deep pencil-marks had been drawn under lines all bearing on death and prayer. For instance: "Pray for me, O my friends"; "'Tis death, O loving friends, your prayers,--'tis he"; "So pray for me, my friends, who have not strength to pray"; "Use well the interval"; "Prepare to meet thy God"; "Now that the hour is come, my fear is fled." Later Power met the fate of a hero. The last words that Gordon underlined before he gave him the book were:

"Farewell, but not forever, brother dear; Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow."

The metre in "The Dream of Gerontius" changes with the thought, and it is always appropriate to it. The solemn movement of the opening lines gives the typical music, which is varied lyrically. As an example of exquisite musical variety on a firm basis of unity the poem is admirable. The level of "Lead, Kindly Light" is reached many times in the expression of the highest faith and love, and in musical quality the famous hymn is even surpassed by

"Take me away, and in the lowest deep There let me be."

Why Cardinal Newman should have presented the experience of a soul after death as a "dream" we can imagine from his habitual caution in dealing with all subjects of importance. He has the boldness of neither Dante nor Milton, and he will not present the poetical experience of a man, at such a vitally sacred moment, as an actual fact; he is too reverential for that, and he calls it a "Dream." In a letter written in answer to an inquiry as to the meaning of the lines in "The Pillar of the Cloud,"

"And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile,"--

he says, quoting Keble, that poets are "not bound to be critics or to give a sense to what they had written,"[8] and he adds that "there must be a statute of limitations, or it would be quite a tyranny, if in an art which is the expression not of truth but of imagination and sentiment, one were obliged to stand an examination on the transient state of mind which came upon one when homesick, or seasick, or in any other way sensitive or excited."

It is well to take a great poem like this without too much inquiry or analysis. If the author's intention is not evident in his poem, either he has failed to be clear, or he is consciously obscure, or we are incapable of appreciating his work. The first and second defects do not appear in "The Dream of Gerontius." The third, let us trust, does not exist in us. The notes, few in number, are intended to explain only what is not obvious.

In his "Recollections" Aubrey De Vere says: "'The Dream of Gerontius,' as Newman informed me, owed its preservation to an accident. He had written it on a sudden impulse, put it aside and forgotten it. The editor of a magazine"--it appeared in The Month, of London, 1865, in two parts--"wrote to him asking for a contribution. He looked into all his pigeon-holes and found nothing theological; but, in answering his correspondent, he added that he had come upon some verses which, if, as editor, he cared to have, were at his command. The wise editor did care, and they were published at once."

R. H. Hutton, writing of Cardinal Newman, speaks in this way of "The Dream of Gerontius": "Before the Vatican disputes and shortly after the controversy with Canon Kingsley, Newman had written a poem of which he himself thought so little that it was, as I have heard, consigned or doomed to the waste-basket.... Some friend who had an eye for true poetry rescued it, and was the means, therefore, of preserving to the world one of the most unique and original poems of the present century, as well as that one of all of them which is, in every sense, the least in sympathy with the temper of the present century.... None of his writings engraves more vividly on his readers the significance of the intensely practical convictions which shaped his career. And especially it impresses on us one of the great secrets of his influence. For Newman has been a sign to this generation that unless there is a great deal of the loneliness of death in life, there can hardly be much of the higher equanimity of life in death. To my mind 'The Dream of Gerontius' is the poem of a man to whom the vision of the Christian revelation has at all times been more real, more potent to influence action, and more powerful to preoccupy the imagination than all worldly interests put together." (R. H. Hutton, "Cardinal Newman.")

The song of the soul in "The Dream of Gerontius" has sometimes been compared with "The Pillar of the Cloud"--a sacred lyric which is a household canticle wherever the English language is spoken. It is often misquoted, a fourth stanza having been added to it. This is the authorized version:

"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-- Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene--one step enough for me.

"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose my path, but now Lead Thou me on. I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will; remember not past years.

"So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile."

In the "Apologia Pro Vita Sua" Dr. Newman wrote: "We"--Mr. Hurrell Froude, brother of the historian James Anthony Froude, being the other person--"set out in December 1832. It was during this expedition that my verses which are in the 'Apostolica' were written--a few, indeed, before it, but not more than one or two of them after it. At Whitechurch, while waiting for the down mail to Falmouth, I wrote the verses about 'My Guardian Angel' which begin with these words:

"'Are these the tracks of some unearthly friend?'"

It must be remembered that John Henry Newman had not yet entered the Catholic Church. It is strange that he should at this time have held the belief in a ministering spirit which is so marked in "The Dream of Gerontius."