of the glory of the days before what is called the Reformation. Coventry Patmore carried the theories of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to their logical conclusion, as Newman did those of the Tractarians. Coventry Patmore became a Catholic, and found in his Faith his inspiration and his theme. And his disciple Francis Thompson, born to the Faith which Patmore reached by way of the divine adventure of conversion, with art even greater than that of his master, made of the language of Protestant England an instrument of Catholic adoration.
A few of the poets represented in this book were not yet Catholics when they wrote the poems I have quoted. But I do not think that anyone will find fault with me for including Newman and Hawker among the Catholic poets. I am very sorry that the limitations of space have made me exclude many poems dear to me, many poems that are part of the world's literary heritage. There should be many Catholic anthologies.
The poet sees things hidden from other men, but he sees them only in dreams. A poet is (by the very origin of the word) a maker, but a maker of images, not a creator of life. This is a book of reflections of the Beauty which mortal eyes can see only in reflection, a book of dreams of that Truth which one day we shall waking understand. A book of images it is, too, containing representations carved by those who worked by the aid of memory, the strange memory of men living in Faith.
165th Regiment, Camp Mills, Mineola, New York.
