O Rose! O Lily! O Lady full of grace! O Mary Mother! O Mary Maid! hear thou. Glory of Angels! Pity, and turn they face, Praying thy Son, even as we pray thee now, For thy dear sake to set thine Ireland free: Pray thou thy Little Child! Ah! who can help her, but in mercy He? Pray then, pray thou for Ireland, Mother mild! O heart of Mary! Pray the Sacred Heart: His, at Whose word depart Sorrows and hates, home to Hell's waste and wild. Lionel Johnson was, as Miss Louise Imogen Guiney has written, "a tower of wholesomeness in the decadence which his short life spanned." His purely secular poems are best when his Catholic Faith, seemingly without his willing it, unexpectedly shines out in a splendor of radiant phrases. And of all his poems, those which constitute his most important contributions to literature, are those which are directly the fruit of his religious experiences or of his love for Ireland. He was not so great a poet as Francis Thompson. He never wrote a poem that will stand comparison with "The Hound of Heaven" or the "Orient Ode." But the sum of the beauty in all his work is great, and his poetry is, on the whole, more companionable than that of Francis Thompson; it is more human, more personal, more intimate. And to at least two of Lionel Johnson's poems, the adjective "great" may, by every sound critical standard, safely be applied. One of these is the "Dark Angel," a masterly study of the psychology of temptation, written in stanzas that glow with feeling, that are the direct and passionate utterance of the poet's soul, and yet are as polished and accurate as if their author's only purpose had been to make a thing of beauty. The other is "Te Martyrum Candidatus," a poem which may without question be given its place in any anthology which contains "Burning Babe," "The Kings," and Crashaw's "Hymn to St. Teresa." It has seemed to me that these brave and beautiful lines, which have for their inspiration the love of God, and echo with their chiming syllables the hoof-beats of horses bearing knights to God's battles, might serve as a fitting epitaph for the accomplished scholar, the true poet, the noble and kindly Catholic gentleman who wrote them. SWINBURNE AND FRANCIS THOMPSON I feel a certain diffidence in approaching the subject of Francis Thompson before such an audience as this. For I know that there are many among you who could teach me much about that great poet, the modern laureate of the Catholic Church. I suppose that many of you have studied the profound philosophy of "From the Night of Forebeing," "The Mistress of Vision" and "The Hound of Heaven," have curiously examined the beautiful verbal intricacies of "Sister Songs" and "The Orient Ode," and are familiar with the triumphs and the tragedies of Francis Thompson's brief life.