[Illustration: JOHN HENRY NEWMAN From a drawing by G. Richmond in the possession of H. E. Wilberforce, Esq. [By permission.]] THE DREAM OF GERONTIUS BY CARDINAL NEWMAN _WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES_ BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN, A.M., LL.D. _Professor of English Language and Literature in the Catholic University of America, Washington, D. C._ LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE & 30TH STREET, NEW YORK LONDON, BOMBAY AND CALCUTTA 1910 Copyright, 1903, BY LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. _All rights reserved_ First edition, September 30, 1903; Reprinted, with additions, September, 1904; August, 1908; February, 1910. FRATRI DESIDERATISSIMO JOANNI JOSEPH GORDON ORATORII S.P.N. PRESBYTERO CUJUS ANIMA IN REFRIGERIUM J. H. N. _In die Comm._ _Omn. Fid. Def._ 1865 INTRODUCTION As a rule, when Cardinal Newman's poetry is mentioned, people think of "The Pillar of the Cloud," better known as "Lead, Kindly Light." This lyric is only one of the many beautiful poems written by an author whose fame as a writer of the finest modern prose in the English language has eclipsed his reputation as a poet. Nevertheless, he wrote a very great poem, "The Dream of Gerontius"--a poem which the intellectual world admires more and more every year, and which yields its best only after careful study and consideration. It has been described as a metrical meditation on death. It is more than that; it is the realization by means of a loving heart and a poetic imagination of the state of a just soul after death,--Gerontius typifying not the soul of a particular person imagined by Cardinal Newman, but your soul, my soul, any soul which may be fortunate enough to satisfy the judging and merciful God. No poet has ever presented the condition of the soul, as made known by the theology of the Catholic Church, so forcibly and appealingly as Cardinal Newman. The poem is filled with intense white light, and the soul on earth sees itself as it will be at the moment before its death; as it will be when, strengthened by the last sacraments and upborne by the prayers of its friends, it approaches the bar of judgment. Separated from the body until the day of the Resurrection, when it shall be united to that glorified body, it is not sundered by death from the love of those who have loved it on earth. Gerontius about to be judged feels that he must fail "And drop from out the universal frame Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss, That utter nothingness"