R. H. Hutton, writing of Cardinal Newman, speaks in this way of "The Dream of Gerontius": "Before the Vatican disputes and shortly after the controversy with Canon Kingsley, Newman had written a poem of which he himself thought so little that it was, as I have heard, consigned or doomed to the waste-basket.... Some friend who had an eye for true poetry rescued it, and was the means, therefore, of preserving to the world one of the most unique and original poems of the present century, as well as that one of all of them which is, in every sense, the least in sympathy with the temper of the present century.... None of his writings engraves more vividly on his readers the significance of the intensely practical convictions which shaped his career. And especially it impresses on us one of the great secrets of his influence. For Newman has been a sign to this generation that unless there is a great deal of the loneliness of death in life, there can hardly be much of the higher equanimity of life in death. To my mind 'The Dream of Gerontius' is the poem of a man to whom the vision of the Christian revelation has at all times been more real, more potent to influence action, and more powerful to preoccupy the imagination than all worldly interests put together." (R. H. Hutton, "Cardinal Newman.") The song of the soul in "The Dream of Gerontius" has sometimes been compared with "The Pillar of the Cloud"--a sacred lyric which is a household canticle wherever the English language is spoken. It is often misquoted, a fourth stanza having been added to it. This is the authorized version: "Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home-- Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene--one step enough for me. "I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou Shouldst lead me on. I loved to choose my path, but now Lead Thou me on. I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will; remember not past years. "So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still Will lead me on, O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent till The night is gone; And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile." In the "Apologia Pro Vita Sua" Dr. Newman wrote: "We"--Mr. Hurrell Froude, brother of the historian James Anthony Froude, being the other person--"set out in December 1832. It was during this expedition that my verses which are in the 'Apostolica' were written--a few, indeed, before it, but not more than one or two of them after it. At Whitechurch, while waiting for the down mail to Falmouth, I wrote the verses about 'My Guardian Angel' which begin with these words: "'Are these the tracks of some unearthly friend?'"