The gods of violence took the veil Of vision and philosophy, The Serpent that brought all men bale, He bites his own accursed tail, And calls himself Eternity. Go humbly ... it has hailed and snowed ... With voices low and lanterns lit; So very simple is the road, That we may stray from it. The world grows terrible and white, And blinding white the breaking day; We walk bewildered in the light, For something is too large for sight, And something much too plain to say. The Child that was ere worlds begun (... We need but walk a little way, We need but see a latch undone ...) The Child that played with moon and sun Is playing with a little hay. The house from which the heavens are fed, The old strange house that is our own, Where tricks of words are never said, And Mercy is as plain as bread, And Honour is as hard as stone. Go humbly; humble are the skies, And low and large and fierce the Star; So very near the Manger lies That we may travel far. Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes To roar to the resounding plain, And the whole heaven shouts and shakes, For God Himself is born again, And we are little children walking Through the snow and rain. This is indeed the beautiful expression of a beautiful impression; it has in every line the unmistakable glow of noble poetry; it is musical, imaginative, direct, and it is passionately Christian. It is the sort of thing which makes it easy to understand why many people, including, it is said, Mrs. Chesterton, believe that this great humorist, this formidable debater, this brilliant novelist, this sound critic, this accomplished essayist, is, before and above all other things, a poet. LIONEL JOHNSON, ERNEST DOWSON, AUBREY BEARDSLEY In considering that brief and tumultuous period in English literature which is sometimes called The AEsthetic Renaissance, it is inevitable that three figures should stand out with particular vividness. They are Lionel Johnson, Aubrey Beardsley and Ernest Dowson--a great poet, a brilliant, but unbalanced illustrator, and another poet, who wrote a great deal of rubbish and about four poems which are genuine and important contributions to English literature. What is the bond between these men? Why should they be grouped together? They might be grouped together because they all three were creative artists whose careers, so far as the world knows, ended with the nineteenth century. They might be grouped together because they were animated by the same feeling, a violent reaction against the hideous scientific dogmatism, the deadly materialism of the much vaunted Victorian era. And they might be grouped together because all three were artists, seekers after that real but elusive thing called beauty, a thing which they found at last when they had made their submission to her who is the mother of all learning, all culture and all the arts, the Catholic Church.