4. A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets

The second baronet devoted the remainder of his life to family, travel, poetry and the management of Curraghchase and the estate at Glangoole.

He refrained from writing anything major until nineteen years after The Duke of Mercia. Then, four years before his death, he published the volume of poetry titled "A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets" (London: William Pickering, 1842).1

A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets is the work that Edgar A. Poe would have read. He reacted thrice to the lecture by refurbishing his short poem "A Paean" (1831) into the significantly different "Lenore" (1843),2 by writing the short story "Eleonora" in 1844, and his most renowned poem "The Raven" in 1845.

Sir Aubrey de Vere dedicated A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets to William Wordsworth,

To know that you have perused many of the following Poems with pleasure, and did not hesitate to reward them with your praise, has been to me a cause of unmingled happiness. In accepting the Dedication of this Volume, you permit me to link my name—which I have hitherto done so little to illustrate—with yours, the noblest of modern literature. I may at least hope to be named hereafter as one among the friends of WORDSWORTH.

In the preface the author explains that he should be taken as a layman, not as an ecclesiastical authority and—perhaps in an oblique retort to Poe's criticism of religious poets 3—he adds that he writes religious poems because "our noblest impulses and purest emotions partake of poetry."

The Holy Spirit
(fragment)

THE Sadducee hath said there is no Soul,
Angel, nor Resurrection after death:
Yet there seems room to doubt that even he
Denied the Being of the Spirit of God—
For he denied not God—and God is Spirit.
The Pharisee, by him despised, confessed
A resurrection; and, in a sense restrained
Spirits angelical, created Powers.
Therefore they erred, not knowing yet the truth
By gospel light revealed: for to the Jews,
Whose law of faith was God in Unity,
The mystery profound of Three in One
Was undeveloped. Prophecies were dark,
And faint traditions fell as shadows, cast
Down from unseen Realities, 'till Earth
Received her Christ, and when He passed away,
Him whom He sent: the Holy Paraclete—
Acknowledged, not to outward sense revealed,
But known within the heart and by His Fruits.

(A Song of Faith, #8, p. 57)

The Church Catholic
(fragment)

THE supernatural Truths revealed in Christ,
The sacraments and holy ceremonies
Used as He hath appointed, which lead on,
Nay instigate to Godliness, and fence
From sin, and are memorials of His gifts,
Sure warrants of our faith, and marks whereby
His Flock may be distinguished—furthermore
Men's union with these things, in word and deed,
While by their lawful Pastors undefiled,
Leaders along the paths of holiness,
They walk instructed—these denote the true
And manifest condition of "The Church";
Essential, proper, and inseparable.
Ponder these things; discuss in humbleness:
So chastened Reason shall submit to Faith,
And help thee to shake off all adversaries,
As the vexed viper from the hand of Paul.

(A Song of Faith, #9, p. 65)

The Praise of God
(fragment)

HONOUR, and Glory, and Dominion,
Belong to God! like incense they ascend
Up from Earth's altar to his throne in Heaven!
For Him all sacrifices burn; to Him
All sceptres bend, all diadems bow down:
Empires are evanescent as the dew
That gems the path of morning among flowers.
What Power like His whose lifted hands send down
The lightnings, and with thunder shake the rocks?
Who good and fair, and worthy of all love,
As He whose charities like manna fall
On every creature? Who so wise as He
To whom all depths of knowledge lie as clear
As the calm crystal of the tropic sea?
For whom Time hath no mist, Nature no veil,
Depth no obscurity, no dimness height!
Who fashions for the spirit in the brain
Engines of eloquence, treasuries of thought!

(Devout Exercises, #11, p. 128)

Sacred And Profane Writers

LET those who will hang rapturously o'er
The flowing eloquence of Plato's page;
Repeat, with flashing eye, the sounds that pour
From Homer's verse as with a torrent's rage;
Let those who list, ask Tully to assuage
Wild hearts with high-wrought periods, and restore
The reign of rhetoric; or maxims sage
Winnow from Seneca's sententious lore.
Not these, but Judah's hallowed bards, to me
Are dear: Isaiah's noble energy;
The temperate grief of Job; the artless strain
Of Ruth, and pastoral Amos; the high songs
Of David; and the tale of Joseph's wrongs,
Simply pathetic, eloquently plain.

(Sonnets. I. Religious and Moral, #11, p. 145)

Waterloo 4

WHY have the mighty lived—why have they died?
Is it ever thus, in awful wreck, to strew
Such fields as thine, remorseless Waterloo?
—Hopeless the lesson! Fate hath ever cried
Vainly to man, "So perish human pride!"
Still must the many combat for the few—
Still must the noblest blood fair earth bedew—
Tyrants, slaves, freemen, mouldering side by side!
On such a day the world was lost and won
By Pompey, at Pharsalia; such a day
Saw glorious Hannibal a fugitive;
So faded, 'neath the Macedonian sun,
Persia's pale star; so empire passed away
From Harold's brow—but he disdained to live!

(Sonnets. II. On Character and Events, #2, p. 171)

The Rock of Cashel

ROYAL and saintly Cashel! I would gaze
Upon the wreck of thy departed powers
Not in the dewy light of matin hours,
Nor the meridian pomp of summer's blaze,
But at the close of dim autumnal days,
When the sun's parting glance, through slanting showers,
Sheds o'er thy rock-throned battlements and towers
Such awful gleams as brighten o'er Decay's
Prophetic cheek. At such a time, methinks,
There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles
A melancholy moral; such as sinks
On the lone traveller's heart, amid the piles
Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand
Or Thebes half buried in the desert sand.

(Sonnets. III. Descriptive, #4, p. 193)

On the Funeral of A Lady And Her Son

THERE I beheld them last—nay, still behold—
The mother, and her son, both on one bier,
In their small coffins sleeping; both so dear
To me and mine! The heavy death-bell tolled;
And there was gathering of the young and old
Round those sad obsequies: I, in the rear,
Stept in slow grief, and deep religious fear;
Wrapping my heart in my cloak's silent fold!
And as the earth on each dark coffin's lid
Fell, there were tears (O how sincere!) and cries,
From the thick-crowding Poor, that rose unbid.
Ay, in far countries, there were streaming eyes,
And bosoms choked with sobs; such as suit well
A loss whose memory is indelible.

(Sonnets. IV. Personal. Miscellaneous, #10, p. 227)

Henry the Eighth

A REFORMATION needful, it was good
That he, the strong man, missioned to unbar
A Nation's prison, should be one endued
With iron heart, and eager hand for war:
Of vision stern, and piercing; slow to spare;
Prompt, resolute, and in his angry mood
Fatal: a captain whose crowned helm from far
Might lead the van of battle unwithstood.
Such Henry was; thus wrought; though red with crimes;
Voluptuous, despotic, pitiless;
Yet royally endowed for perilous times;
A weapon coarse yet apt; where gentleness
Had but provoked a wide spread martyrdom:
An Attila to scourge a latter Rome!

(Sonnets. V. Historical, #13, p. 249)

"Thy Kingdom Come." 1.

THY diadem is Grace, Thy sceptre Power,
Lord of that kingdom which shall have no end!
Thou, at whose frown Hell quakes, and demons cower,
With Thee shall Man debate—shall Earth contend?
Thou Chainer of the Proud! Thou who canst bend
Stiff-necked Rebellion in his fiercest hour—
O mighty Monarch! dost Thou condescend
To visit Man; partake a Mortal's bower?
Giver of all things! Didst Thou share with Man
His common wants? Prince of the star-set heaven!
Didst Thou lie down in the grave's narrow span?
O! once again to us—condemned, forgiven—
Return in glory, righteous Judge! and grant
Triumphant Palms to Thy Church militant!

(Sonnets. VI. On the Lord's Prayer, #8, p. 271)

Edgar A. Poe acknowledged the high calibre of De Vere's poetry by donning his "Guy de Vere" with lofty poetic flush and flourish on the two stanzas of Lenore where the baronet is "quoted."

Incidentally the name "Aubrey de Vere" fits like a glove on line 1.3 of Lenore the poem,

And, Guy de Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or nevermore!

⇓

Aubrey de Vere, hast thou no tear?—weep now or nevermore!
1 Then, four years before his death, he published the volume of poetry titled "A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets" - Although some sources state that Sir Aubrey de Vere converted to Roman Catholicism, the Catholic Encyclopedia does not support the claim. The first line of De Vere's historical sonnet titled, "Henry the Eighth," (reproduced above) shows where his religious sympathies lay. Still the Church of England is known as the "Anglican Catholic Church" for its similitude with the Roman Church,

The Church of England consciously retained a large amount of continuity with the Patristic and Medieval periods in terms of its use of the catholic creeds, its pattern of ministry, its buildings and aspects of its liturgy, but which also embodied Protestant insights in its theology and in the overall shape of its liturgical practice. The way that this is often expressed is by saying that the Church of England is both "catholic and reformed."

(http://www.churchofengland.org/about-us/history.aspx [7 Dec 2016]. The Church of England)


2 He reacted thrice to the lecture by refurbishing his short poem "A Paean" (1831) into the significantly different "Lenore" - A Paean does not contain the word "Lenore." Edgar A. Poe brought the name Lenore into his poetry after A Song of Faith: Devout Exercises and Sonnets was published in 1842.

3 perhaps in an oblique retort to Poe's criticism of religious poets - Edgar A. Poe disliked religious poets and dismissed metaphysical poems as unworthy of the poetical label. "I see no reason, then, why our metaphysical poets should plume themselves so much on the utility of their works, unless indeed they refer to instruction with eternity in view; in which case, sincere respect for their piety would not allow me to express my contempt for their judgement; contempt which it would be difficult to conceal, since their writings are professedly to be understood by the few, and it is the many who stand in need of salvation" (Posthumous Collection of Criticism, 1850).

4 Waterloo - This poem was first published in The Duke of Mercia, an historical Drama. The Lamentation of Ireland, and other Poems. The only significant difference is punctuation and unnecessary capitalization. In these regards the earlier version is better and is the one reproduced above.
Supplement to Lenore: Answers To Some Questions On The Raven