Page:The Poet's Chantry pg 131.jpg

Rh and the strange summons that came to him from the Ghostly Gate. In lines of weird beauty he describes the "dolour and the dirge" which swept upon the land one cold midnight, the "bitterness of wounding fire which pierced the chieftain's heart." Then

The power of such poetry is undeniable: but is one not conscious of the long vista of time and art through which our bard looks back upon his subject? The Celtic inspiration was in truth a precious and powerful factor in Lionel Johnson's poetry; one is not so certain that it was an inevitable or an inalienable one.

On the other hand, any divorce between the poet and his religious lyrics would be quite inconceivable. His early lines to "Our Lady of the Snows" are one of the most beautiful expressions of the contemplative ideal to be found in English poetry: while his "Visions" of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven are notable alike for extreme delicacy of touch and extreme power. But it was reserved for the second volume to prove this scholarly young convert one of the loveliest of our devotional poets. It is seldom possible to wander far among the lily-beds of English sacred lyrics without meeting traces of Crashaw, the ever-fragrant; and in Lionel Johnson the affinity is quite manifest. Indeed, many of his Catholic