Note 1. Most of Newman’s poems previous to the “Dream of Gerontius” were written on a voyage to the Mediterranean in 1833 in company with Hurrell Froude. They appeared under the title of “Lyra Apostolica” in the British Magazine with poems by Keble, Froude, and a few other writers, and were afterwards collected into a volume bearing the same name. An edition with an introduction by Canon H. S. Holland, and a critical note by the present editor, has appeared in the “Library of Devotion” (Methuen). One of the most beautiful of Newman’s poems, which is too personal to take its place in a “Lyra Sacra,” may be quoted here. It refers to the comfort he received when sick and weary at Palermo by frequenting the Roman churches.
O that thy creed were sound!
For thou dost soothe the heart, thou Church of Rome,
By thy unwearied watch and varied round
Of service, in thy Saviour’s holy home.
I cannot walk the city’s sultry streets,
But the wide porch invites to still retreats,
Where passion’s thirst is calmed, and care’s unthankful gloom.
There on a foreign shore
The home-sick solitary finds a friend:
Thoughts, prisoned long for lack of speech, outpour
Their tears; and doubts in resignation end.
I almost fainted from the long delay
That tangles me within this languid bay,
When comes a foe, my wounds with oil and wine to tend.
