* 
 Tr 
 
Cantafco JDomtno Canticum iiobum 
 
J 
 
 ohn Bannister Tabb 
 The Priest-Poet 
 
 By M. S. PINE 
 
 Author of ALMA MATER, AND 
 OTHER DRAMAS 
 
 They toil not, neither do they spin** 
 The blossom-Thoughts that here within 
 The garden of my soul arise. 
 
 Immortelles 
 
 Published/or 
 
 Georgetown Visitation Convent 
 
 Washington, D. C. 
 
 1915 
 
Copyright, 1915 
 
 Munder-Thomsen Company 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Printed by 
 
 Munder-Thomsen Press 
 Baltimore New York 
 
To 
 
 Saint Joseph, the Spouse of Mary 
 Beloved of Heaven and Earth 
 
 This Little Garden of Father Tabb s Poesy 
 
 Is Gratefully and Lovingly 
 
 Dedicated 
 
 331051 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 A miniature painted in France in 1578 by 
 the artist Hilliard bears the inscription: "If one 
 could but paint his mind!" Happier than 
 the artist, the lyric singer can paint his soul in 
 his poems, and our Priest-Poet has painted his 
 in most exquisite miniature, so that the world is 
 better for the gift. 
 
 In this little volume I have been content, in 
 the main, to put forth the delicate work of his 
 poetic brush, as my readers will agree. Indeed, 
 I have more than once accused myself of pre 
 sumption in undertaking to comment upon the 
 rare creations of one so far above me as the 
 Reverend John Bannister Tabb. But admira 
 tion for the poet and respect for his memory, 
 combined with my desire to make him known 
 and loved, especially by the young, have urged 
 me to so unequal a task. 
 
 I may add that these chapters are founded 
 upon a lecture I gave to the young ladies of a 
 certain convent in 1907, chiefly upon the poems, 
 for my knowledge of Father Tabb s biogra 
 phy was then even more meager than it will 
 appear to those who peruse these pages. Last 
 year, 1914, 1 was asked by Mr. Charles Phillips, 
 A.M., the poet and journalist, to enlarge the 
 lecture for "The Monitor," of San Francisco; 
 
and since the appearance of the little serial, 
 friends, readers, and teachers of repute have 
 prevailed upon me to put it into permanent 
 form. I comfort myself with the hope that 
 ere long others will take up the task, too long 
 neglected for six suns have gone their round 
 since our poet took his flight to a higher land 
 and with more easy means of research than 
 Providence has placed in my power, will set 
 before the admirers of the Poet of the Quatrain 
 a worthy portrait of the man and a worthy esti 
 mate of his poetry and its influence. 
 
 I take pleasure in acknowledging my indebt 
 edness to the Right Reverend Mgr. T. S. Dug- 
 gan, V.G., of Hartford, for valued aids to 
 ward the biography of the poet, as also to the 
 Reverend Waldo Hasenfus, and Mr. Francis 
 A. Litz; I thank the Reverend D. A. Connor 
 for a copy of his eulogy pronounced over the 
 remains of Father Tabb; and my special grati 
 tude is due to the Very Reverend M. F. Din- 
 neen, S.S., D.D., the able, learned and kindly 
 president of St. Charles College, for continual 
 help and encouragement in my "labor of love." 
 
 In conclusion, I would ask my kind readers 
 to seek in the last chapter an urgent motive for 
 the present publication, which is to be devoted 
 to the attainment of the object there explained. 
 
 M. S. PINE. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I- PAGE 
 
 Birth and Boyhood 1 1 
 
 II. 
 The Boy-Soldier of the Confederacy 16 
 
 in. 
 Prison Life. Sidney Lanier 19 
 
 IV. 
 
 Release from Captivity. Engages as 
 Teacher. Alfred A. Curtis 22 
 
 v. 
 
 Enters the True Fold. Studies for the 
 Priesthood 25 
 
 VI. 
 
 Professor in St. Charles College. u Bone 
 Rules." With the Muses 28 
 
 VII. 
 
 Characteristics. His Gift of Humor. ... 32 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Theological Studies. Ordination to the 
 Priesthood 38 
 
 IX. 
 
 Father Tabb s Poems Center in God. ... 41 
 
 x. 
 
 His First Published Volume of Poems. . 45 
 
XL PAGE 
 
 "Poems." "An Octave to Mary." 
 "Lyrics." "The Rosary in Verse" 49 
 
 XII. 
 
 Mrs. Meynell s Selection of Verses. 
 "Quips and Quiddits." "Later Poems" 53 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Estimate of His Poems. His Optimistic 
 Spirit 58 
 
 XIV. 
 
 His Love of Nature. Flower Poems. ... 63 
 
 xv. 
 Floral Lyrics Continued 67 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Bird Lyrics 71 
 
 XVII. 
 
 Babyhood and Youth in Poesy 75 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Father Tabb s Friendship with Sidney 
 Lanier 8 1 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Friendship with Bishop Curtis. Uni 
 versal Brotherhood 86 
 
 XX. 
 
 Feasts of the Church. Christmas Poems. 91 
 
XXI. PAGE 
 
 Passion Flowers and Easter Lilies 95 
 
 XXII. 
 
 Mary in His Verse. Dogmas 98 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 Consideration of Other Poems. Tragedy 
 and Fancy 102 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 The Sonnets 107 
 
 XXV. 
 
 Personality of the Poet in 
 
 XXVI. 
 
 A Sacrifice. "Consecration" 117 
 
 XXVII. 
 
 The Poet s Failing Sight 123 
 
 XXVIII. 
 
 Blindness. Decline of Health 128 
 
 XXIX. 
 
 Death of Father Tabb. Funeral Eulogy. 133 
 
 XXX. 
 
 Supplementary. Father Tabb s Sermon 
 on The Assumption 144 
 
 XXXI. 
 
 St. Charles and the Sulpitians. A Memo 
 rial to the Poet-Priest 152 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 BIRTH AND BOYHOOD 
 
 Poetry is the fragrance of the flower of beauty. 
 Who can analyze fragrance, define it, describe 
 it? It seems like a spiritual essence, so subtle 
 and elusive in its sweetness, so exquisitely pene 
 trating, often so delicious and soothing in its 
 effects. Now if beauty be the flower of God s 
 creation and poesy its perfume, I think of all 
 our modern poets none has entered more deeply 
 into league with that divine beauty none has 
 stolen from its heart sweeter perfume to scatter 
 in little phials of verse all over the world than 
 John Bannister Tabb, Father Tabb, to use the 
 name dearer to our hearts, which designates the 
 Catholic priest and poet of whom we are so 
 justly proud. 
 
 Father Tabb s "Lyrics" breathe the music of 
 Ariel and exercise just as magical an influence 
 over the thought and fancy; he discerns spiritual 
 truth, indeed is ever seeking it hidden under the 
 lovely forms and types of nature, and he out 
 pours his findings in a wealth of analogy which 
 becomes a perennial treasure of moral musing 
 
 [ii] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 and lofty aspiration to the thoughtful mind, 
 one imbued, perhaps I must add, with a love of 
 poetry and the subtle spiritual sense often found 
 even in the heart of a child. 
 
 Father Tabb s boyhood, I think, must have 
 been spent with nature and with his own 
 thoughts beautiful hidden dreams and long 
 ings which no one, perhaps, not even his mother 
 suspected. A strong, tender, beautiful, womanly 
 character that mother was, an honor to the 
 sunny Southland which has given to our country 
 such noble types of womanhood. The poet s 
 second volume of "Lyrics" is dedicated: 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF MY MOTHER 
 The Cowslip 
 
 It brings my mother back to me, 
 Thy frail, familiar form to see, 
 
 Which was her homely joy; 
 And strange that one so weak as thou 
 Shouldst lift the veil that sunders now 
 
 The mother and the boy. 
 
 And still more he glorifies that mother by 
 inference in the poem, 
 
 WOMAN 
 
 Shall she come down and on our level stand ? 
 
 Nay, God forbid it ! May a mother s eyes 
 Love s earliest home, the heaven of Babyland, 
 
 Forever bend above us as we rise ! 
 
 All the man is there he goes beyond the en 
 chanted woods of chivalry, where the knight 
 
 [12] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 bowed down to womanhood, back to the heaven 
 of babyland and mother love. 
 
 A scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest 
 families of Virginia, whose members proudly 
 claimed alliance with the descendants of George 
 Washington and John Randolph, the future 
 poet and priest, John Bannister Tabb, was born 
 at The Forest, the family estate at Mattoax, 
 near Richmond, Va., on March 22, 1845. His 
 father was Thomas Yelverton Tabb and his 
 mother Marianna Bertrand Archer, from 
 whose union sprang four children, of whom our 
 poet was the third. With a family inheritance 
 of more than a dozen broad and fertile planta 
 tions, and surrounded by a multitude of slaves, 
 the boy grew up in an atmosphere of luxury. 
 From his sixth year he had his own servants, 
 one of whom, at that age of toy soldiers, he 
 liberally offered to a tin peddler in exchange 
 for a coveted piece of his shining ware. 
 
 Surrounded by all the gracious home in 
 fluences, he used to boast that he learned to read 
 and write at his mother s knee, where he learned 
 his prayers. Later, under the careful training 
 of a private tutor, whose instructions the neigh 
 boring children were allowed to share, mind and 
 faculties were developed, and the seeds sown 
 of that exquisite culture which in his verses has 
 since enchanted the world. 
 
 Reared amid the beautiful mountains of 
 Virginia, what wonder that his heart turns back 
 
 [13] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 to them in poesy? "Here nearer heaven I seem 
 to be," he tells us. A noble sonnet, u The 
 Mountain," no doubt commemorates the moun 
 tains of his native State: 
 
 Thy shadow broods above me, and mine own 
 Sleeps as a child beneath it. O er my dreams 
 Thou dost, as an abiding presence, pour 
 Thy spirit. 
 
 And with what human tenderness and pathos 
 u The Lonely Mountain" tells its sorrow over 
 the loss of one little bird s voice its strains of 
 miraculous power, 
 
 A breath whose faintest echo farthest heard 
 A mountain stirred. 
 
 Can you not hear the heart of the poet 
 breathing under it? I cannot divest myself of 
 the thought that the bird is symbolic that the 
 "Mountain" chants a lament for a human loss, 
 for the "one fond, familiar strain" of his own 
 boy voice pealing out its happy salute in song 
 to the resounding hills. 
 
 At the age of fourteen, threatened with fail 
 ure of sight, he was compelled to give up his 
 beloved books, his tutor performing the office 
 of reading to him daily. This was the fore 
 shadowing of the supreme affliction which came 
 upon him in his latest years, and which called 
 forth such pathetic effusions from his artist-pen. 
 
 [14] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 His passionate love of music, however, con 
 soled him in some measure, and during those 
 three years of privation he devoted much time 
 to practice on the piano. 
 
 [15] 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE BOY-SOLDIER OF THE CONFEDERACY 
 
 John Tabb was scarce more than a boy when 
 the Civil War broke out, and honor and duty 
 at once led him to the defense of the Confed 
 eracy. Enlisting in the navy, he served as 
 captain s clerk on the steamer Robert E. Lee, 
 which ran the blockade at Wilmington, N. C., 
 twenty-one times. His first voyage to England 
 under that captain, in 1862, was memorized 
 later by the appealing poem, 
 
 OFF SAN SALVADOR 
 
 It lay to westward as of old, 
 An emerald bar across the gold 
 Of sunset whence a vision grand 
 First beckoned to the stranger-land. 
 
 And on our deck, uncoffined, lay 
 A child, whose spirit far away 
 The wafture of an angel hand 
 Late welcomed to a stranger-land. 
 
 Subsequently he accompanied Colonel Stone 
 to England as secretary. On board was a chap 
 lain of the Confederacy, Father Bannon, bound 
 for Rome to enlist the sympathy of Pius IX. 
 One day being on deck with his captain, the 
 young secretary saw a gentleman of distin 
 guished appearance reading. Informed by his 
 officer that the stranger was a priest, he ap- 
 
 [16] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 preached Father Bannon and, with boyish sim 
 plicity, asked: "Are you a Catholic priest?" 
 Receiving an affirmative answer, he paused a 
 moment and then inquired: "Was your father 
 a priest?" "No, my boy," said the chaplain, 
 smiling. Young Tabb, not yet satisfied, pursued 
 his family investigation: "Will your son be a 
 priest?" "I think not," replied Father Bannon 
 gently. "May I see the book you are reading, 
 sir?" And the Father laid in the hands of his 
 gifted questioner the breviary which was after 
 ward, when the graces of faith and vocation had 
 been showered upon him, to become so inex 
 pressibly dear to his heart. 
 
 One must remember the atmosphere of dense 
 ignorance of Catholicity, surcharged with preju 
 dice, in which the youth had been reared, to ap 
 preciate the awakening of his mind during the 
 voyage, for he and Father Bannon had many 
 an interview and became good friends. 
 
 Young Tabb continued to serve in the navy 
 until June 4, 1864, when he was captured on 
 the Siren which had lost her anchor off 
 Beaufort, N. C., by the Federal ship, Key 
 stone State. In the "Lyrics," Father Tabb per 
 sonifies, in three deep and tender quatrains, 
 
 THE LOST ANCHOR 
 
 Ah, sweet it was to feel the strain, 
 What time, unseen, the ship above 
 Stood steadfast to the storm that strove 
 
 To rend our kindred cords atwain! 
 
 [17] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 To feel, as feel the roots that grow 
 In darkness, when the stately tree 
 Resists the tempests, that in me 
 
 High Hope was planted far below! 
 
 But now, as when a mother s breast 
 Misses the babe, my prisoned power 
 Deep-yearning, heart-like, hour by hour 
 
 Unquiet aches in cankering rest. 
 
 On the following day he, with four others, 
 was taken to Old Point Comfort, where they 
 were court-martialed. The youth s sense of 
 humor did not forsake him even in the face 
 of possible death. When his judges asked his 
 place of residence, he replied: "England, 
 France, Scotland, Bermuda and Canada," for 
 he had visited all during his term of service. 
 The captives were ordered to the prison at Point 
 Lookout, known as the Bull Pen. Tabb, with 
 characteristic generosity, shared fifty dollars he 
 had equally with them; and as they were Eng 
 lishmen he labored for their release, which he 
 obtained after two months correspondence with 
 the British Ambassador in Washington. 
 
 [18] 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 PRISON LIFE. SIDNEY LANIER 
 
 The horrors of his prison life were some 
 what mitigated by his meeting with Sidney 
 Lanier, the Southern poet, prose-writer and 
 critic. Eight dreary months of captivity united 
 these gifted and ardent souls forever, and each 
 became the alter ego of the other. Lanier s 
 muse did not wholly forsake him in those dark 
 hours, though sometimes Sorrow palsied it; 
 and then the music of his flute brought solace 
 and cheer to the two great-hearted victims of 
 "The Lost Cause." Father Tabb s second 
 book of "Lyrics" has immortalized 
 
 LANIER S FLUTE 
 
 When palsied at the pool of Thought 
 
 The Poet s words were found, 
 Thy voice the healing Angel brought 
 
 To touch them into sound. 
 
 Those months of youth spent in durance vile, 
 during which he "supped full with horrors," 
 remained ever burned upon heart and memory. 
 His vivid description of those horrors still 
 haunts the remembrance of many a student of 
 St. Charles College, with the faculty of which 
 he was so intimately associated for more than 
 thirty years. 
 
 [19] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABS 
 
 Toward the close of his professorial term of 
 1899-1900, after a rather brief acquaintance 
 by letter, I had the temerity to suggest that he 
 should "go North" for the benefit of his health 
 and his literary work. Here is the answer that 
 came to me from Mattoax, Amelia County, Vir 
 ginia, on a hot July day: "I am amused at the 
 plan you propose. In the first place, to go to 
 the brain-cooling North is the last of desires, 
 for I am a Rebel unredeemed and unredeem 
 able, and should not feel at home there. Sec 
 ondly, had I the wish, the means are lacking." 
 
 And in November, 1911, accompanying a 
 caricature with a doggerel verse attached, 
 founded upon a White House incident which 
 had affronted his Southern blood, there was the 
 following note : "I am sending you a letter 
 from Mrs. Meynell and with it the sketch she 
 refers to. Keep both if you choose. Some of 
 your girls will, I know, see the picture as does 
 the irredeemable Rebel that drew it. Your 
 friend, John B. Tabb. Eight months confine 
 ment in a Northern prison makes me ever what 
 lam!" 
 
 But this dark memory never threw its shadow 
 over his poetic inspirations. I have sought, and 
 sought in vain, for one line that breathes of 
 those troublous years of the Civil War. A 
 marvelous reticence, indeed, which attests that 
 the supernatural had swallowed up the natural 
 as soon as he stepped with his Muse over the 
 
 [20] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 border line of his divine, Poesy. And his own 
 words to me were: U I can do nothing in verse 
 that is not directly imparted to me." The voice 
 of his Muse was to him a divine voice. 
 
 [21] 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 RELEASE FROM CAPTIVITY. ENGAGES AS 
 TEACHER. ALFRED A. CURTIS 
 
 It was a clear day in February, 1865, when 
 at last John Bannister Tabb and Sidney Lanier 
 stepped forth freemen again into God s sun 
 shine. "I felt that I was in the kingdom of 
 heaven," said the young scion of aristocracy as 
 he went out into a new world of poverty and 
 wrecked hopes, youth s dauntless energies still 
 ruling the frail, broken body. 
 
 A means of self-support must be found; and 
 he turned with enthusiasm to his favorite art, 
 music, determined to devote his life to its pur 
 suit. For a year and a half he gave seven 
 hours or more daily to piano practice. But his 
 patron s fortune suddenly collapsed, and with it 
 the young musician s hopes; with a heavy heart 
 he yielded to fate, or rather to the mysterious 
 overshadowings of Divine Providence, and gave 
 up all prospect of a musical career. 
 
 A position as teacher was now offered him in 
 a school attached to Mt. Calvary Episcopal 
 Church, Baltimore, then under the pastorate of 
 the Rev. Alfred A. Curtis, whose face was al 
 ready turned toward Rome. Mt. Calvary was 
 "High Church," and its pastor believed in the 
 Blessed Sacrament, "said Mass," preached de- 
 
 [22] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 votion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, and called 
 himself a priest, wearing cassock and biretta. 
 Young Tabb found in him a congenial spirit; 
 he soon fell under his spiritual influence and 
 regularly made his confession to him as to a 
 trusted guide. And this influence was but deep 
 ened and strengthened when, a few years later, 
 he obtained a more important position at Racine 
 College, Michigan. 
 
 Yet there was a hidden voice whispering to 
 his heart of higher things than earth can give; 
 and deeming it a call to the ministry, ere long 
 he resigned his position and proceeded to the 
 Episcopal Seminary at Alexandria, Va., there 
 to pursue a course of theological study a 
 course which was to be completed elsewhere, 
 though he knew it not, and after a long period 
 of waiting. 
 
 "There s a divinity that shapes our ends." 
 His revered director, Rev. Mr. Curtis, after 
 the Conference of Bishops in Boston, realized 
 with anguish of mind that there was no longer 
 any hope of peace or salvation for him in the 
 Anglican Church. At the close of 1871, after a 
 correspondence with his Bishop, which forms 
 one of the most interesting and thrilling chap 
 ters of his "Biography," he rent the ties which 
 bound him to Anglicanism, and, resigning his 
 pastorate, proceeded to Europe, where he re 
 paired at once to Oxford to consult Dr. New 
 man. 
 
 [23] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 His course was followed with intense interest 
 by his faithful disciple, whose longing for the 
 truth was equally ardent, and whose admira 
 tion for the illustrious English divine, for the 
 wisdom, sincerity and holiness of his life, even 
 more than for his profound works, already a 
 familiar study to young Tabb, led him to place 
 a trust equally unshaken in the spiritual counsels 
 of that great convert and guide of souls. Espe 
 cially was he touched with Dr. Newman s first 
 prescription to his seeker after truth. Placing 
 two books in Mr. Curtis hands, the enlightened 
 director said : "Read these if you like, but pray 
 and pray; nothing will help you more than 
 humble prayer." His doubts finally removed 
 and his soul fixed in unchangeable peace, the 
 happy neophyte was "reconciled to the Church" 
 by Dr. Newman and baptized in his presence on 
 May 10, 1872. 
 
 [24] 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ENTERS THE TRUE FOLD. STUDIES FOR THE 
 PRIESTHOOD 
 
 Mr. Tabb, profoundly moved, now studied 
 and prayed more earnestly than ever; and when 
 Mr. Curtis, shortly after his return from Eu 
 rope, entered St. Mary s Seminary, Baltimore, 
 to prepare for the priesthood, there was only 
 question of following the footsteps of his guide. 
 Ere the year came to an end John Bannister 
 Tabb was enlisted among the most fervent and 
 enthusiastic lovers of the Church of God. His 
 intense love for the faith in its purity reminds 
 one of Father Faber: he was a Catholic "from 
 top to toe" from the moment he entered the 
 fold, and to serve the Church was the pre 
 dominating passion of his life. 
 
 How potently is the restless struggle of the 
 soul of the free will held back by worldly 
 ties portrayed from experience in "The 
 Promontory" ! 
 
 Not all the range of sea-born liberty 
 
 Hath ever for one restless wave sufficed: 
 
 So pants the heart of all compulsion free 
 Self-driven to the Rock, its barrier Christ. 
 
 The sway of the new seminarian over him 
 remained undiminished. "On the day of Father 
 Curtis ordination (December 19, 1874)," a 
 
 [25] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 brother Levite tells the story, u he heard his 
 first confession, the humble, hasteful penitent 
 being Mr. Tabb, afterwards the noted poet- 
 priest. Mr. Tabb, who had as a Protestant 
 been his penitent, was now eager to claim his 
 old Confessor s first care. I received so many 
 absolutions before that did not count, I wanted 
 one at least that did, was his remark to the 
 students." 
 
 The biographer of Bishop Curtis gives a fur 
 ther paragraph of interest in regard to their 
 mutual relations. "They had been the closest 
 of friends; and years after, when Father Curtis 
 became Bishop of Wilmington, in 1886, he reg 
 ularly visited his friend, often walking the five 
 miles from the railroad station to St. Charles 
 College. , ., , Bishop Curtis was his con 
 soling angel in the hour of his greatest trial and 
 darkness, when threatened with the loss of sight. 
 Together they took long walks through the 
 country recreating each other and exchanging 
 reminiscences, one submitting to the criticism 
 of his friend his latest verses, while the other 
 cheered him by his encouragement. He sent 
 the poet kind and loving messages from his 
 deathbed, and bequeathed to him his chalice." 
 Bishop Curtis died July 11, 1908, only a year 
 and four months before his friend. 
 
 Not long after Mr. Tabb s conversion, his 
 conviction became assured that the priesthood 
 was his vocation; despite his own opinion of his 
 
 [26] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 unworthiness, his soul was well prepared for 
 this supreme grace by his purity of life, his love 
 and practice of prayer, and the sacrifices that 
 had been decreed by the loving Watcher and 
 Guide of the souls of His elect, at every step 
 of his youthful career. In 1874 he entered St. 
 Charles College, Ellicott City, Md., to study 
 for the priesthood. 
 
 [27] 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 PROFESSOR IN ST. CHARLES COLLEGE. "BONE 
 RULES." WITH THE MUSES 
 
 Having completed his preparatory classical 
 studies, for which his early education and fine 
 courses of reading had been an excellent train 
 ing-school, the aspiring student was now ready 
 for entrance into St. Mary s Seminary to pur 
 sue those theological and Scriptural studies 
 which were to bring him in four years to the 
 goal of all his hopes. But just at this happy 
 moment he met anew the shadowing angel, 
 Sacrifice, which the Holy Spirit had sent ever 
 before him even from childhood, to lure him 
 from aught but the Divine Light and Will. 
 The faculty of St. Charles, appreciating his high 
 intellectual and literary culture and his marked 
 qualifications as a preceptor, persuaded him to 
 remain in the college as a teacher of English. 
 In consequence, his ordination to the priesthood 
 was postponed many years. 
 
 He was a fine Greek scholar and delighted 
 in teaching that language now and again to spe 
 cial pupils. His admirable memory had stored 
 away long passages of the classic Greek authors 
 which he recited with rare ease and force. But 
 his affections were centered on his English class; 
 and he made the hour one of perennial pleasure 
 
 [28] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 as well as profit to his pupils. Not a moment 
 was lost. The first half-hour was devoted to 
 grammar recitations, explanations, and black 
 board work. The poet s genius for illustration, 
 which would have made him a pastmaster in that 
 art, helped to hold the attention and engrave in 
 the memory the facts he strove to impress upon 
 his eager hearers. 
 
 In his "Bone Rules, or Skeleton of English 
 Grammar," first published in 1897, and which 
 he sent me later, we discern clearly his method 
 of teaching. The dedication page reads: 
 
 INSCRIBED 
 To my Pupils 
 
 Active and Passive; Perfect and Imperfect; 
 
 Past, Present, and Future, by Their 
 
 Loving Father Tabb. 
 
 The brevity and clearness which mark every 
 page, the pithy explanatory notes, the copious 
 quotations from the masters of English litera 
 ture, and even the comic procession of "Sen 
 tences to be corrected," many of them Father 
 Tabb s own creation, render "Bone Rules" an 
 easy and a helpful mode of studying grammar. 
 
 But I have accounted for only half of the 
 hour consecrated to English. Students of the 
 poet could alone tell the enchantments "of those 
 rare half-hours spent with him in the company 
 of the Muses." Shakespeare s plays, read and 
 
 [29] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 analyzed with rare psychological and poetical 
 insight, awakened unbounded enthusiasm in his 
 listeners. Shelley and Keats, as well as Edgar 
 Allen Poe, each of whom he cherished with 
 special appreciation, were studied and their ex 
 quisite imagery and musical diction brought 
 strikingly to notice. 
 
 Of his readings of the prose and poetry of 
 that 
 
 Sad spirit, swathed in brief mortality 
 Of Fate and fervid fantasies the prey, 
 
 Mgr. T. S. Duggan, a gifted student of the poet, 
 writes : "We ran with him through the full 
 gamut of The Bells, from their riotous roar 
 to the softest tintinnabulations. And even the 
 most apathetic was forced to wipe away a tear 
 at realizing the full sadness of the untimely 
 taking off of that rare and radiant maiden 
 whom the angels name Lenore. Toward the 
 end of one session, the teacher went to the cor 
 ner of the classroom, crouched, and began to 
 recite The Skylark. The students were trans 
 fixed. When he had finished, he was on tiptoe 
 at the opposite corner of the room, breathless, as 
 if eager to follow the bird in its flight. In 
 stinctively the class broke out in applause. He 
 modestly suppressed our enthusiasm with the 
 remark: Gentlemen, did you see that Skylark 
 soar? Did you hear him sing? If there is a 
 single boy in this class who did not see that lark 
 and hear him sing, I forbid him ever again to 
 
 [30] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 open a book of poetry, for it would be a sheer 
 waste of time. Need it be said that most of 
 those present saw the lark and heard him sing?" 
 Each of these three poets has been honored 
 with more than one memorial on Father Tabb s 
 pages. Besides the sonnet entitled "Poe," be 
 ginning with the two lines cited above, a quat 
 rain is inscribed to 
 
 POE-CHOPIN 
 
 O er each the soul of Beauty flung 
 A shadow mingled with the breath 
 
 Of music that the Sirens sung, 
 Whose utterance is death. 
 
 In two rare sonnets he shows his devotion 
 to Keats as well as in the double quatrain en 
 titled "Keats-Sappho": 
 
 Methinks when first the Nightingale 
 
 Was mated to thy deathless song, 
 That Sappho with emotion pale 
 
 Amid the Olympian throng, 
 Again, as in the Lesbian grove, 
 
 Stood listening with lips apart, 
 To hear in thy melodious love 
 
 The pantings of her heart. 
 
 In the sonnet, "At Keats Grave," he apostro 
 phizes the dead poet: 
 
 E en death itself deals tenderly with thee: 
 For here, the livelong year, the violets bloom 
 And swing their fragrant censers till the tomb 
 
 Forgets the legend of mortality. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CHARACTERISTICS. HIS GIFT OF HUMOR 
 
 One of Robert Louis Stevenson s biographers 
 said of him that with all his literary genius he 
 would have been floored in a simple sum of 
 proportion. Father Tabb had an equal ab 
 horrence of mathematics; he even refused to 
 admit that he could add correctly. His love 
 of the Church and her doctrines and discipline 
 was impressed upon his pupils with strenuous 
 energy. He said to some members of his class 
 one day: "If I die before my ordination, while 
 studying theology, I want my epitaph to read: 
 
 Sacred to the memory of John B. 
 Tabb, D. D. " 
 
 The students smiled, and one ventured to say: 
 "But you are not a Doctor of Divinity yet." 
 "D.D. will not mean Doctor of Divinity when it 
 is found on my tombstone," was the answer; 
 "it will mean Died of Dogma." 
 
 This passion for the Faith in its purity 
 gleams like a ray of sunlight through his poems. 
 "Epiphany" is a glorious confession: 
 
 Reason, have done! 
 Of thee I ll none 
 While face to face I see the sun. 
 
 [32] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 Be thine the ray 
 To point the way 
 In darkness: but behold, tis day! 
 
 Should Faith divine 
 Forbear to shine, 
 Again I ll place my hand in thine. 
 
 For in thy sight 
 To walk aright 
 Is prelude to the perfect Light. 
 
 Father Tabb had the faculty of genius in call 
 ing out latent talent in his students, which he 
 fostered with generous and unremitting care. 
 Indeed, he was ever at their service in class or 
 out of class, for he had the overflowing heart of 
 a father for the youths in his charge. His gen 
 erosity impelled him often to little acts of kind 
 ness that boys love some dainties out of time, 
 a pair of skates at Christmas, a book for a 
 birthday present. The gifts he himself received 
 from friends were generally disposed of in this 
 way; and of his own published works he was a 
 liberal donor. 
 
 Yet beloved as his pupils were, he would 
 have no scenes at parting; he had no fancy for 
 saying good-by. Commencement Day found 
 him slipping out of the back door and down 
 through the woods to the Virginia Station long 
 before they and his numerous friends were free 
 to utter that unpleasant word in his ear. 
 
 It was characteristic of him, too, to keep in 
 the shade during celebrations or receptions of 
 
 [33] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 distinguished visitors. One day he was particu 
 larly requested to be on hand to help entertain 
 four Bishops who were hourly expected. The 
 smile on his face could not be misinterpreted. 
 He was soon out of sight down in his beloved 
 haunts in the woods, where he spent the day. 
 As the whistle told him late in the afternoon 
 that the honored guests had departed, he saun 
 tered back to the college. On the way one of 
 the faculty met him and asked: "Why didn t 
 you stay and see the Bishops?" "I didn t want 
 to see my forefathers (four Fathers)," was the 
 witty rejoinder. 
 
 In the same spirit of distaste for great func 
 tions he declined an invitation of the Reverend 
 Father (now Monsignor) Mackin, of Wash 
 ington, to be present at the laying of the corner 
 stone of St. Paul s Church, of which he was 
 pastor. Here are Father Tabb s "Regrets" : 
 
 St. Peter is the cornerstone, 
 
 And if you build on Paul, 
 
 I greatly fear 
 
 Ere many a year 
 Your Church is doomed to fall. 
 
 So pray excuse 
 
 If I refuse 
 To heed your invitation, 
 
 Or have no heart 
 
 To take a part 
 In such a Mackin-ation. 
 
 He possessed the gift of humor in an ex 
 traordinary degree. His jokes, repartees, and 
 
 [341 
 
CL 
 
 K - 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 comic bits of verse seemed to come from an in 
 exhaustible source. But his wit was ruled by 
 good nature, and was kindly toward others, 
 though often directed unmercifully toward him 
 self. He took delight in unearthing a tradition 
 of the colored mammy who received him at his 
 birth and who bore him in purls naturalibits 
 through the mansion, that the entire household 
 might see "the homeliest baby ever born in Vir 
 ginia." I have no doubt that a profound spirit 
 of humility was fostered underneath all the 
 ridicule which he vented upon his tall spare 
 form and prominent features. 
 
 On one occasion I had expressed my appre 
 ciation of his verses in unmeasured terms 
 terms which in no wise approached their merit; 
 and shortly after, with a cordial New Year 
 answer (1903), came a pencil sketch of the 
 poet, to which he referred as follows: "To 
 disabuse your notion of the poet, I send you 
 a matter-of-fact, honest presentment of the 
 
 man who is always, dear , Your servant 
 
 in Christ, John B. Tabb." Below the little 
 cartoon was the slanderous verse: 
 
 This is the Catholic priest 
 Who in piety never increased. 
 
 With the world and the devil 
 
 He kept on a level 
 Tho from flesh he was wholly released. 
 
 I will venture to quote a bit of his humor 
 from a friend s letter. A lady in Cairo, Egypt, 
 
 [35] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 having written to Father Tabb for a copy of 
 his poems, he answered her: "I am not sur 
 prised that you, who are sojourning in a land 
 where the cat was once worshiped, should desire 
 to hear the mews (Muse) of the Tabb-y." 
 
 His democratic principles are illustrated in 
 the Cinderella rhymes styled u High and Low." 
 
 A boot and a shoe and a slipper 
 Lived once in the Cobbler s Row; 
 
 But the boot and the shoe 
 
 Would have nothing to do 
 With the slipper, because she was low. 
 
 But the King and the Queen and their daughter 
 On the Cobbler chanced to call ; 
 
 And as neither the boot 
 
 Nor the shoe would suit, 
 The slipper went off to the ball. 
 
 Two unconscious lovers he celebrates with 
 still more comic effect in 
 
 THE TRYST 
 
 Potato was deep in the dark underground, 
 
 Tomato above in the light; 
 The little Tomato was ruddy and round, 
 
 The little Potato was white. 
 And redder and redder she rounded above, 
 
 And paler and paler he grew; 
 And neither suspected a mutual love 
 
 Till they met in a Brunswick stew. 
 
 [36] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 Here in a new aspect appears "The Wood 
 pecker." 
 
 The wizard of the woods is he, 
 
 For in his daily round, 
 Whene er he finds a rotting tree, 
 
 He makes the timbers sound. 
 
 Most of my readers will remember the train 
 of events resulting so disastrously for the 
 Church in France during Premier Combes 
 administration, Pius X then occupying the 
 Papal throne. The lampoon cited below, 
 founded upon this period, was sent me by a 
 friend in 1905 ; I have never seen it in print. 
 
 THE ISSUE 
 
 In France they question now: Is Combes 
 The right of teaching Faith, or Rome s? 
 "That Pius Fraud," thinks Combes, "shall see 
 That I am master here, not he." 
 While thinks the Pope: "Since Peter s day 
 All little Cocks, Combes, crow that way." 
 
 [37] 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES. ORDINATION TO THE 
 PRIESTHOOD 
 
 After so long and painful a postponement 
 of his ardent aspirations for the priesthood, 
 Mr. Tabb s professorial labors at St. Charles 
 were intermitted and he entered the Seminary. 
 His theological studies were completed toward 
 the end of 1884. A spiritual Retreat followed, 
 wholly devoted to solitude and earnest prepara 
 tion for the stupendous dignity to which he was 
 about to be elevated. 
 
 Holy Orders were conferred upon him dur 
 ing the Ember Week of Advent, December 20, 
 by Archbishop Gibbons, in the Cathedral of 
 the Assumption, Baltimore. It was in the Col 
 lege Chapel, at the Midnight Mass of Christ 
 mas, that he had the consoling privilege of 
 offering the Divine Victim to His Eternal 
 Father for the first time; and so deeply affected 
 was he by the greatness and sacredness of the 
 act that he would celebrate only that one Mass, 
 although the Church allows her priests to say 
 three on the solemn Feast of the Nativity of 
 Christ. At the close of the Gospel he turned 
 and addressed his audience in brief but impres 
 sive terms, referring with affectionate gratitude 
 to the beautiful chalice he had just used, it being 
 
 [38] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 a testimonial of the love and appreciation of 
 his pupils. His heart overflowed in thanks 
 giving to Almighty God, who permitted him to 
 celebrate his first Mass in the Chapel so dear to 
 him; and he expressed an ardent desire that 
 after a life consecrated to his beloved pupils, 
 he might offer the Holy Sacrifice for the last 
 time within its hallowed walls. 
 
 God heard his prayer and granted it in full 
 ness, for from that day until the day of his 
 death the gifted priest-poet was a part of the 
 college. He gave to it the service of his whole 
 being; and the angels alone could measure the 
 height of moral, spiritual, and literary influence 
 which he exerted not only on those who came 
 under his gentle academic sceptre, but on hosts 
 of friends and strangers alike by his counsels, 
 his cultured conversation, his kindly, helpful 
 letters each a veritable multum in parvo and 
 by his published poems. 
 
 He added fame and distinction to the already 
 famous institution founded by Charles Carroll 
 of Carrollton for "the education of pious young 
 men of the Catholic persuasion for the ministry 
 of the Gospel," as its ancient Maryland charter 
 states. His "Poems" and "Lyrics" were read 
 and appreciated by an ever-widening circle of 
 cultured admirers wherever the English lan 
 guage is spoken. 
 
 The assertion has been ventured that his 
 diamonds of verse were more prized in England 
 
 [39] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 than in the country that gave them birth; but 
 for my part I would not so wrong the American 
 mind as to believe it. Yet now that the hand 
 which wrought such unique gems is stilled in 
 death and not one other to hold out such a 
 casket for centuries, perhaps let us not leave 
 these priceless treasures to lie on dusty shelves. 
 Let us love and study them and lead others to 
 penetrate their beauty; let us hold them in rev 
 erence for their spiritual and educative power. 
 For, indeed, all the truth that Father Tabb 
 teaches does not lie open on the surface : often 
 beneath his inspired words are little crypts of 
 thought-symbol into which we must descend with 
 our torches of love and intelligence if we would 
 pierce the depth of the wisdom and beauty 
 hidden there. 
 
 [40] 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 FATHER TABB S POEMS CENTER IN GOD 
 
 Father Tabb s sacred poems are gems of the 
 sanctuary. They are peculiarly the treasures 
 of the Church ; they are stately with her majestic 
 dogmas; tender and pathetic with her mysteries 
 of love and joy and sorrow; glowing with her 
 beautiful ritual and the splendor of her Feasts: 
 her moral code, the repentance of the sinner, 
 the mystical union of the soul with God, and, 
 above all, the divine lessons of the Master 
 drawn from parable and miracle and doctrine, 
 minister in turn light and comfort to our hearts, 
 and exquisite pleasure to our minds under these 
 brief poetic creations, "imparted," no doubt, 
 many of them, in the very presence of the 
 Master. 
 
 Indeed, there is scarcely a poem which has 
 not for us this embassy of sweetness, of uplift, 
 of comfort; even the playful fancies in lighter 
 vein bring a smile to the lips, but a deeper smile 
 to the heart. And often, as we read, love and 
 memory embalm the lines almost without effort, 
 so enchanting is their melody, so sweet the 
 awakened emotions of surprise, and so insistent 
 the lesson that pierces down to the deeps of our 
 nature. How many thousands, I wonder, can 
 today repeat, and each time with increasing 
 
 [41] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 pleasure, if not with fuller comprehension, the 
 little Christmas verse steeped in the fragrance 
 of Heaven, 
 
 OUT OF BOUNDS 
 
 A little Boy of heavenly birth, 
 
 But far from home today, 
 Comes down to find His ball, the Earth, 
 
 That Sin has cast away. 
 O comrades, let us one and all 
 Join in to get Him back His ball ! 
 
 It is a sermon, or, rather, many mission ser 
 mons abridged in a wonderful picture. The 
 "little Boy" the Word eternally born in the 
 bosom of the Father; the Earth, the ball that 
 He holds in the hollow of His little hand; the 
 monster Sin that has cast it away, with the 
 whole human race, so dear to His heart ! And 
 the closing soul-cry to us all to become apostles 
 inflamed with boundless zeal to save the souls 
 He has come so "far from home" to redeem! 
 But who could translate into words the deep 
 and sublime conceptions this little verse en 
 genders in the heart? 
 
 Father Tabb puts a maximum of meaning 
 into a minimum of words; he cherishes struc 
 tural simplicity, while the transcendent energy 
 of his mind carries you away with a kind of 
 momentum over gaps of thought that take away 
 your breath, as, among scores of others, in the 
 last couplet of "Recognition" a happy title. 
 
 [42] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 When Christ went up to Calvary 
 
 His crown upon His head, 
 Each tree unto its fellow-tree 
 
 In awful silence said: 
 "Behold the Gardener is He 
 Of Eden and Gethsemane!" 
 
 And here is a triplet, the prayer of a contem 
 plative soul. I avow that when my eyes first 
 lit upon it my heart almost stood still at the 
 depth and exaltation of the thought. 
 
 GOD 
 
 I see Thee in the distant blue, 
 But in the violet s dell of dew 
 Behold, I breathe and touch Thee, too. 
 
 Do you remember how St. Gertrude, picking 
 a flower and inhaling its fragrance, almost fell 
 into an ecstasy of love at the thought that her 
 Lord had created that lovely flower "to give 
 pleasure to His little Gertrude"? Emerson 
 says somewhere : "Nature is the incarnation of 
 a thought. . . . Man imprisoned, man 
 crystallized, man vegetative, speaks to man im 
 personated." Father Tabb, with an exquisite 
 adaptation of the miracle recorded in St. Mark, 
 fifth chapter, reveals his conception of God in 
 His creation. 
 
 NATURE 
 
 It is His garment; and to them 
 That touch in faith the utmost hem, 
 He turning says again: "I see 
 That virtue is gone out from me." 
 
 [43] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 Are not these three poems emanations of a 
 heart which had found its center in God, whose 
 attributes are revealed to him through the trans 
 parent medium of His glorious works? All the 
 "Nature Lyrics" and they superabound 
 chant in notes of deathless beauty the truth 
 enunciated in the first lines of "Resurrection" : 
 
 All that springeth from the sod 
 Tendeth upwards unto God. 
 
 May I say it with all reverence? As one 
 cannot penetrate the meaning, discern all the 
 beauty, and draw all the sweetness and divine 
 unction from a verse of Scripture without re 
 reading, without tasting each word in the silent 
 pauses of the soul, so, to my mind, much of 
 Father Tabb s poetry will yield up its full har 
 vest of inner meaning and outer loveliness only 
 to the student who dedicates himself lovingly 
 and leisurely to the enchantment of his verse. 
 
 To read the subjoined poem alone is to feel 
 the force of my suggestion. 
 
 DEUS ABSCONDITUS 
 
 My God has hid Himself from me 
 Behind whatever else I see; 
 Myself the nearest mystery 
 As far beyond my grasp as He. 
 
 And yet in darkest night, I know, 
 While lives a doubt-discerning glow, 
 That larger lights above it throw 
 These shadows in the vale below. 
 
 [44] 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 HIS FIRST PUBLISHED VOLUME OF POEMS 
 
 Father Tabb s first modest volume of poems 
 was printed privately in 1884; there is no ref 
 erence to date or publisher in the copy I have. 
 The lyrics, nineteen in number, are beautiful 
 and refined, opening with "The Cloud," and 
 closing with "The Rhyme of the Rock," the 
 longest of all. These are followed by "Son 
 nets," several of which are republished in later 
 volumes. There is one Sonnet on "Columbus" 
 which is a finely drawn analogy between St. 
 Christopher 
 
 who on his shoulders bore, 
 Across the torrent to the welcome shore, 
 The Infant Christ, 
 
 and our Columbus, who was led 
 
 westward o er the wandering main, 
 Christ-laden, to the land whereof no gleam 
 Had cleft the compass of the narrower brain. 
 
 Another Sonnet whose fourteen lines con 
 jure up in fair dreamland some of the great 
 character-creations of tragic literature, will not 
 prove unacceptable in full to my readers. To 
 quote "The Arte of English Poesie," 
 
 [45] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 If Poesie be, as some have said, 
 A speaking picture to the eye, 
 
 then Father Tabb has nobly achieved the 
 artist s function and superadded the grace of a 
 third art by the musical rhythm of his num 
 bers in 
 
 SHAKESPEARE S MOURNERS 
 
 I saw the grave of Shakespeare in a dream, 
 And round about it grouped a wondrous throng, 
 His own majestic mourners, who belong 
 
 Forever to the Stage of Life, and seem 
 
 The rivals of reality. Supreme 
 
 Stood Hamlet, as erewhile the graves among, 
 Mantled in thought: and sad Ophelia sung 
 
 The same swan-dirge she chanted in the stream. 
 
 Othello, dark in destiny s eclipse, 
 
 Laid on the tomb a lily. Near him wept 
 
 Dejected Constance. Fair Cordelia s lips 
 
 Moved prayerfully the while her father slept, 
 
 And each and all, inspired of vital breath, 
 
 Kept vigil o er the sacred spoils of death. 
 
 A good deal to my surprise, I have found no 
 other tribute to the Bard of Avon in Father 
 Tabb s collection of verse than an octet, full of 
 pathos, which will fit in here, although it 
 appears in the book of "Poems" of 1894. 
 
 YORICK S SKULL 
 
 Poor Jester! still upon the stage, 
 
 Chap-fallen flung, 
 Where merry clowns from age to age 
 
 Thy dirge have sung; 
 
 [46] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 Yet more than Eloquence may reach, 
 
 Thought-heights among: 
 Tis thine, humanity to teach, 
 
 Sans brains or tongue. 
 
 A beloved name, Cardinal John Henry New 
 man, shines on the Dedication page of this 
 volume not alone in the formal inscription, but 
 in a sonnet, which breathes the deepest rever 
 ence and affection. Another tribute of the heart 
 to His Eminence opens the sequence of "Son 
 nets" under date of May, 1879, the month 
 in which the great Oratorian received the Car 
 dinal s hat from the hand of Pope Leo XIII. 
 
 Father! for loftier titles cannot hide 
 
 The tenderness of thy paternity 
 
 From eyes that turn with filial gaze to thee 
 Sons of thy Faith, across the ocean wide, 
 Led of thy light from paths unsanctified, 
 
 Thine own begotten, though unseen are we. 
 
 Thy loss, thy gain, we count our own to be: 
 And now our hearts exulting in the tide 
 Of favors shed upon thee from the hand 
 
 Whose grace outgrow r s its giving, fondly glow 
 With more than silent syllables express. 
 
 O westward, as the sunshine, to our land 
 Still let thy love, a light perpetual, flow, 
 
 Thy children bowed in reverence to bless ! 
 
 The perusal of this initiative work of our 
 great American Lyrist would by no means sug 
 gest to the reader a coming vocation of so rare 
 a nature as the peculiar and exquisite culture of 
 the quatrain, and with such success as to exalt 
 
 [47] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 him to a special and unique place in literature. 
 Only three short poems are to be found on its 
 pages, the shortest of ten lines. This book did 
 not command the attention it deserved, and is 
 now, I believe, out of print. 
 
 [48] 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 "POEMS." "AN OCTAVE TO MARY." "LYRICS." 
 "THE ROSARY IN VERSE" 
 
 Father Tabb, however, soon began to awaken 
 the public to the fact that a new star was mount 
 ing the poetic horizon. The first magazines 
 of this country and England published his 
 verses, which were widely copied, and the critics 
 were generous in praise ; so that when in Decem 
 ber, 1894, his second volume "Poems," dedi 
 cated to Sidney Lanier, appeared, it was 
 welcomed on all sides; and that it touched a 
 chord in the hearts of the people was evidenced 
 by the fact that in January, 1895, a second edi 
 tion was called for. A copy came to me later 
 from a dear friend, long departed, who made 
 in my favor a sacrifice; for it had been the gift 
 of the Reverend Charles Ramm, whose exqui 
 site quatrain on the flyleaf was a worthy intro 
 duction to the poet-priest he so admired: 
 
 The poet s prophet eyes a form of beauty see 
 
 A glimpse of God, a vision fair 
 He chains it fast in measured links till we 
 
 Of dimmer sight his rapture share. 
 
 Prominent British critics placed the author 
 of "Poems" in the front rank of American 
 poets; and some pronounced him one of the 
 greatest living poets in the English language. 
 
 [49] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABS 
 
 "An Octave to Mary," somewhat of an edi 
 tion de luxe, in white or blue and gold, and 
 bearing as frontispiece the Annunciation by E. 
 Burne-Jones, had appeared during the preced 
 ing year. From the eight filial tributes to Mary, 
 none of which exceeds in length three sestets, 
 I select a bit of dialogue on the "Purification" : 
 
 A PAIR OF TURTLE DOVES 
 
 Where, Woman, is thine offering 
 
 The debt of law and love ? 
 "My Babe a tender nestling is, 
 
 And I the mother-dove." 
 
 The book of "Lyrics," inscribed "To the 
 Memory of My Mother," appeared in 1897 
 four editions between March and November. 
 I was so fortunate as to receive my copy directly 
 from the author, with his New Year greeting, 
 and on the flyleaf the octet, "Ready." 
 
 They might not need me 
 
 Yet they might ; 
 I ll let my heart be 
 
 Just in sight. 
 A smile so small as 
 
 Mine might be 
 Precisely their 
 
 Necessity. 
 
 Father Tabb had read a critical estimate of 
 his book of "Poems" which I had written to a 
 young relative, and this was the grateful out- 
 
 [50] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 pouring of his heart for so slight a favor. 
 Stranger that I was to him, I was quite over 
 powered. 
 
 "Child Verse" was issued in 1899; an d m 
 1902 another volume was given to an eager 
 public "Later Lyrics," dedicated to his sister, 
 to whom he was devotedly attached. The open 
 ing poem, haunting in its music, is a revelation 
 of the poet s longings: 
 
 TO A SONGSTER 
 
 O little bird, I d be 
 A Poet like to thee, 
 Singing my native song 
 Brief to the ear, but long 
 To Love and Memory. 
 
 "The Rosary in Verse," another tribute of 
 love to Mary, is a chain of fifteen precious 
 pearls of verse. The opening mystery, "The 
 Annunciation," is told thus: 
 
 Accustomed in the highest heights to be, 
 
 The Angel bowed in awe, 
 As if, amazed before Humility, 
 
 A deeper heaven he saw. 
 
 And the final mystery, "The Coronation of 
 Mary," is portrayed with equally striking 
 brevity : 
 
 Thee, Mother-Queen of Heaven, He crowned, 
 
 And not for love alone; 
 For in thy bosom first He found 
 
 The life-spring of His own. 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 This little volume is dedicated "To the 
 Right Reverend Alfred A. Curtis, D. D., with 
 the love and veneration of his first son in 
 Christ." It is an exquisite specimen of book- 
 making by Small, Maynard & Co., Boston, 
 1904, embellished with fifteen full-page deco 
 rative drawings and initial letters by Thomas 
 B. Meteyard; the edition was limited to three 
 hundred and fifty copies. 
 
 [52] 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 MRS. MEYNELL S SELECTION OF VERSES. "QUIPS 
 
 AND QUIDDITS." "LATER POEMS" 
 
 In 1907 the title page of a new book read: 
 "A Selection from the Verses of John B. Tabb, 
 made by Alice Meynell." This selection, a 
 worthy one in every respect, as the name of the 
 poet and essayist who made it would attest, 
 gave great pleasure to Father Tabb, who dedi 
 cated the book to Mrs. Meynell. His sight 
 was now fast failing, and my presentation copy 
 was followed by a brief and touching postal in 
 a tremulous hand of the date of January 3, 
 
 1908. "I send you, dear , The Living 
 
 Age, with a very kind notice from the London 
 Times. This, with my greeting, is all I can do. 
 Gratefully and faithfully yours, John B. Tabb." 
 
 Mrs. Meynell had spent some months on the 
 California coast with friends in 1901-02, where 
 she corresponded with Father Tabb, who some 
 times sent me her letters to read. He remarks to 
 me in a letter dated October, 1901 : "She is 
 perhaps the best Catholic English writer, and 
 Ruskin, whose life she wrote, calls her a great 
 critic. Her lecture, I am sure, is a great literary 
 treat. . . . Hoping you may see her if 
 she comes to Washington, or, still better, hear 
 her, I am, Your friend in Christ, John B. Tabb." 
 
 [53] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 He had made extraordinary efforts to procure 
 for the famous poet and essayist a sufficient 
 number of engagements to justify a trip to the 
 East, and I, too, with friends, had entered with 
 zest into the enterprise. To his great regret, 
 it failed. 
 
 Apart from Mrs. Meynell s fame as a writer, 
 Francis Thompson had portrayed her in lines 
 of such Dantean beauty in "Love in Dian s 
 Lap" that it seemed to her friends she should 
 have been the observed of all observers in our 
 country. Personally, my admiration for her as 
 a writer is extraordinary, but my affections have 
 long been hers apart, unknown for the un 
 speakable kindnesses which she, in conjunction 
 with her husband, showered upon the neglected 
 poet: she deserved, indeed, to be raised to im 
 mortality by his pen, which honored her equally 
 in her children in "Sister Songs" and other 
 poems. 
 
 In April, 1912, Father Tabb writes: "I am 
 sending herewith a letter from Mrs. Meynell, 
 and the verses of mine which she kindly ap 
 proves. Accept them with the Easter greetings 
 of Your friend in Christ, John B. Tabb." 
 These three exquisite six-lined stanzas bore the 
 title, "To Her First-Born." A postscript 
 added: "Nothing from Mrs. Meynell since I 
 wrote you last. On the I2th, I think, she sails." 
 
 In the same year, 1907, "Quips and Quid- 
 dits," an illustrated book of humorous verse, 
 
 [541 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 came from the press. The edition of "Selec 
 tions" just mentioned had been bound in a color 
 which seems to have appealed to Father Tabb s 
 sense of humor, and one of these "Quips" reads 
 as follows: 
 
 ON THE COVER OF JOHN B. TABB S 
 LATE LONDON VOLUME 
 
 His eyes are dim: 
 
 And so for him, 
 
 They thought in London, twas enough 
 To bind his book in blind-man s buff. 
 
 The illustrations, which add to the humor of 
 the volume, were designed, I conjecture, by the 
 author s own pen. A doubtful point in his 
 torical records he amusingly discusses in 
 
 QUEEN BESS 
 
 Or praise or obloquy is hers 
 As history has viewed her; 
 
 To some a I der she appears, 
 To others but a 2 dor. 
 
 The poet plays with the instruments of his 
 art in 
 
 UNSTATIONARY STATIONERY 
 
 The Wax waxed hotter and hotter 
 
 Till the Seal took his seat on her back ; 
 
 And the Pen wiped his foot on the Blotter, 
 And laughed at them both from the Rack. 
 
 Here is the penalty inflicted for a slip in 
 orthography. 
 
 [SSl 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 TO MR. ANDREW LANG, WHO SPELLED MY NAME 
 "TAB" 
 
 O why should Old Lang Sign 
 
 A compliment to me 
 (If it indeed is mine) 
 
 And filch my final b? 
 To him as to the Dane 
 
 In his soliloquy, 
 This question comes again, 
 
 "2 b or not 2 b?" 
 
 "Later Poems" came to the world as a dying 
 gift from the poet, dedicated 
 
 "To M. A. C. 
 
 to whom 
 My Right Reverend Father in Christ 
 
 the late 
 
 Bishop Alfred A. Curtis, D. D., 
 commended his son." 
 
 It was a collection of poems that had hon 
 ored the columns of the Atlantic Monthly, 
 Harper s Magazine and others during his later 
 years. His blindness prevented his preparation 
 of the volume for the press. A letter dated 
 March 2, 1909, and dictated to another hand, 
 
 refers to the forthcoming poems : "Dear : 
 
 Thank you for your letter, but not for the pre 
 mature embalming of your friend; after I am 
 dead, folks may say what they please, but my 
 poor living body does not fancy perfume. . . . 
 Mrs. Meynell is preparing my last volume for 
 publication, a copy of which you shall have 
 
 [56] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 when it appears. As to the sketch of my life, 
 I m fighting hard to baffle the project. . . . 
 Please accept my best blessing and give me your 
 prayers. Ever yours faithfully, John B. Tabb." 
 The beloved author did not live to see his 
 "Later Poems" in print. He was summoned 
 to his heavenly reward in November of the 
 same year, and the volume came from the press 
 (Kennedy, New York) only in 1910. Its hun 
 dred and more poems seemed to those who 
 loved him and treasured his least words a little 
 shower of pearls dropped on his way to Heaven. 
 Deeply pathetic and touching are the poems a 
 decade of them on his blindness, which breathe 
 to us his last message of resignation and hope 
 and love as he sought more than ever the eternal 
 light that shines in the soul from the unseen 
 world. 
 
 [57] 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ESTIMATE OF HIS POEMS. HIS OPTIMISTIC SPIRIT 
 
 A tragic writer, Alcestides, boasted that 
 whereas Euripides had composed only three 
 verses in three days, he himself had written 
 three hundred. "Thou sayest the truth," an 
 swered the dramatist, "but thine shall be read 
 only three days, while mine shall last for three 
 ages." To my mind, the same scale of propor 
 tion may be used in comparing the ephemeral 
 fame of a score of prolix poets of our own day 
 with Father Tabb s enshrinement in the hearts 
 of a long-abiding posterity. A lover and ap 
 prenticed student of the Elizabethan writers, 
 pre-eminently of the Shakespearean drama, 
 which he taught with unparalleled enthusiasm, 
 Father Tabb s poetic phrase is woven with the 
 exquisite skill and variety of the genius of that 
 age, whether he rises to the elevated truths that 
 so captivated his noble intellect or expatiates in 
 the most delicate regions of fancy. The rhythm 
 is that of the musician whose ear is attuned to 
 the perfection of melody. His language is in 
 deed music; the overflow of vowels and soft 
 consonants, the artistic freedom of accent, and 
 the subtle interplay of different metres give a 
 fascination to the poet s verse-making only in 
 ferior to the spell cast upon us by his thought 
 and imagery. 
 
 [58] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 Unlike Francis Thompson, he did not seek 
 in the Elizabethan treasury words, however 
 beautiful, that had the stamp of antiquity; nor 
 did he ever coin new words for his purpose, 
 and he might have done so and added a golden 
 score to the modern poet s vocabulary, so prodi 
 gious was his inventive power and so sane the 
 judgment and taste that ruled it. The truth is, 
 Father Tabb loved simplicity he sang first 
 for God, and then for every soul that wished to 
 hear, from the princes of the realms of intellect 
 and fancy to the simple and unlearned, yea, to 
 the child. 
 
 The poet loves solitary places: 
 
 to his capable ears 
 Silence is music from the holy spheres : 
 
 and the charm and divine contentment that 
 Father Tabb found in "loneliness" he reveals to 
 us in the lyric 
 
 IN SOLITUDE 
 
 Like as a brook that all night long 
 Sings, as at noon, a bubble-song 
 
 To Sleep s unheeding ear, 
 The Poet to himself must sing, 
 When none but God is listening 
 
 The lullaby to hear. 
 
 In passing I would ask you to observe the 
 perfect music of the versification, the tender 
 voweling, the soft unobtrusive flow of the con- 
 
 [59] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 sonants, the variable fall of the accent; in a few 
 lines of iambic tetrameter and trimeter, we hear 
 as well the pleasing ring of trochee, dactyl, am 
 phibrach and spondee; and this ease and mas 
 tery of change betray everywhere the "maker 
 and model of melodious verse." 
 
 Father Tabb was a lover of silence, too, 
 the silence of the soul: and his poems on this 
 theme are notable and suggestive. Here he 
 questions 
 
 SILENCE 
 
 Why the warning finger-tip 
 Pressed forever on thy lip? 
 "To remind the pilgrim Sound 
 That it treads on holy ground, 
 In a breathing space to be 
 Hushed for all eternity." 
 
 This lyric of six lines touches the sublime as 
 well in its Scriptural allusion as in its great final 
 thought. It recalls a brief lyric of John Boyle 
 O Reilly, which begins: 
 
 The Infinite ever is silent, 
 Only the finite speaks. 
 
 A masterly critic in the London "Times," 
 quoted by "Littell s Living Age," remarks of 
 the poem "To Silence" : "Grandeur cannot be 
 achieved in six lines by grandiloquence. In the 
 immensity of what it suggests, the vast silence 
 out of which it wakes and into which it fades, 
 that poem is undeniably grand." 
 
 [60] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 A cheerful and optimistic spirit shines through 
 all Father Tabb s verses; not a trace of melan 
 choly is to be found among them; his themes 
 are sometimes sad, but soft and beautiful lights 
 of hope, resignation, and kindred emotions 
 make the sadness sweet; and you are led into 
 visions of loveliness by the hand of Sorrow 
 herself. I do not know a poem which illustrates 
 better what I have said than that tender lyric 
 "Confided," which is found in every American 
 anthology. It is the plaint of a mother who has 
 just laid her little babe in God s Acre. 
 
 Another lamb, O Lamb of God, behold, 
 
 Within this quiet fold, 
 
 Among Thy Father s sheep 
 
 I lay to sleep! 
 
 A heart that never for a night did rest 
 
 Beyond its mother s breast. 
 
 Lord, keep it close to Thee, 
 
 Lest waking it should bleat and pine for me ! 
 
 His cheerfulness has a special winning power: 
 it has held a charm for me since the day I 
 opened the first book of "Poems." How softly 
 he smiles sorrow away in the "Fern Song" ! 
 
 Dance to the beat of the rain, little Fern, 
 And spread out your palms again, 
 
 And say, "Tho the sun 
 
 Hath my vesture spun, 
 He had labored, alas, in vain, 
 
 But for the shade 
 
 That the Cloud hath made, 
 
 [61] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 And the gift of the Dew and the Rain." 
 
 Then laugh and upturn 
 
 All your fronds, little Fern, 
 And rejoice in the beat of the rain! 
 
 No melancholy there! He would have us 
 laugh and welcome the little trials that befall 
 us the Cloud and the Dew and the Rain, that 
 come even into the sunny lives of youth, because 
 they strengthen us and make us grow spiritually 
 and intellectually. Here is what his happy 
 nature thinks of 
 
 LAUGHTER 
 
 "Et ridebit in die novissimo" 
 When wrought of Joy and Innocence 
 
 Tis unto God it goes, 
 A fragrance of the olive whence 
 His "oil of gladness" flows. 
 
 In a letter dated February, 1902, he writes: 
 "As to the blues, I am upside down the worst 
 weather putting me in the best spirits. The 
 Smart Set has taken the following quatrain : 
 
 BY CONTRARIES 
 
 Tis strange, but ominously true, 
 When we are bright the skies are blue ; 
 But, let them change their livery, 
 And in a moment blue are we. 
 
 This, of course, only true of well-constructed 
 people not cranks, such as I." 
 
 [62] 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 HIS LOVE OF NATURE. FLOWER POEMS 
 
 Father Tabb had the poet s passionate love 
 of nature, but sublimated; his sense of beauty 
 was a part of his religion; and to such a spirit 
 every object of creation becomes a ladder of 
 light by which it mounts to the Maker of all 
 things. Browning says: 
 
 God is the Perfect Poet, 
 Who in creation acts His own conceptions; 
 
 and to His hand Father Tabb clung like a little 
 child, watching Him breathlessly, joyously, 
 in the minutest details of creation of life, 
 motion, color, as expressed in the flower, the 
 bird, the insect, in the elements, in the starry 
 universe, in the complex workings of the Divine 
 Spirit in the temple of human personality. 
 
 From the sacred Presence of the Tabernacle, 
 where, like his saintly model, Bishop Curtis, he 
 spent hours of fervent adoration, he would 
 pass to his sanctuary of the woods, and there 
 wait, assured of poetic inspiration. For there 
 he swung anew the worship-cloud of incense in 
 the golden censer of exquisite verse to the ever- 
 present Creator. 
 
 Indeed, who can surpass his own conception 
 of the divine art he so loved and honored? 
 Read it: 
 
 [63] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABS 
 
 POETRY 
 A gleam of Heaven; the passion of a star 
 
 Held captive in the clasp of harmony; 
 A silence, shell-like breathing from afar 
 
 The rapture of the deep eternity. 
 
 The soul that has found its mystical union 
 with the Maker is there, so it seems to me. 
 
 I have wondered if the poet saw the acorns 
 fall as he sat that day in the woods with pen 
 in hand and mused: we are the richer for his 
 musings in 
 
 COMPENSATION 
 How many an acorn falls to die 
 
 For one that makes a tree! 
 How many a heart must pass me by 
 
 For one that cleaves to me! 
 
 How many a suppliant wave of sound 
 
 Must still unheeded roll, 
 For one low utterance that found 
 
 An echo in my soul ! 
 
 How numerous and how varied in beauty and 
 the suggested moral lesson are the flower 
 poems ! In one of his roamings through the 
 woods he brought home to the college a flower, 
 and to that we owe 
 
 MY CAPTIVE 
 I brought a blossom home with me 
 
 Beneath my roof to stay; 
 But timorous and frail was she 
 
 And died before the day: 
 She missed the measureless expanse 
 Of heaven, and heaven her countenance. 
 
 [6 4 1 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 There is a sublimity of suggestion in the last 
 two lines that often startles us in Father Tabb s 
 singing, a hint of divine analogies that must 
 give us pause. 
 
 "Wood Grain" is an exquisite lyric in dactylic 
 metre: a bit of graphic picture-work intended, 
 no doubt, to symbolize the hidden workings of 
 God s grace in lives. 
 
 This is the way that the sap-river ran 
 From the root to the top of the tree 
 Silent and dark, 
 Under the bark, 
 Working a wonderful plan 
 That the leaves never know, 
 And the branches that grow 
 On the brink of the tide never see. 
 
 Here is a little pearl of delicate sweetness 
 and daintiness : 
 
 A SLEEPING-PLACE 
 
 When into the Rose 
 
 A ladybird goes 
 And o er her couch the petals close, 
 
 Was ever bed 
 
 So canopied 
 For lids in maiden slumber wed? 
 
 Now in soft trochaics and glowing rhetoric 
 he is chatting familiarly with "The Yellow 
 Crocus." 
 
 Were you, little Monarch, crowned 
 
 Under ground? 
 Or did the Daylight make you king 
 
 Of the Spring? 
 
 [65] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 Ere your blossom-retinue 
 
 Come to you, 
 I, before your Majesty, 
 
 Bow the knee. 
 
 Did you ever feel like this when you saw the 
 first Crocus? I feel so every March. 
 
 And can you find a more fascinating little 
 bit of drama than the poet presents in 
 
 THE TAX-GATHERER 
 
 "And pray, who are you?" 
 Said the Violet blue 
 To the Bee, with surprise 
 At his wonderful size, 
 In her eye-glass of dew. 
 
 "I, madam," quoth he, 
 "Am a publican Bee, 
 Collecting the tax 
 On honey and wax. 
 Have you nothing for me?" 
 
 The Violet claims many tender tributes 
 "To a Wood Violet," "Brotherhood," "The 
 Violet Speaks," "One April Morn," and others. 
 
 [66] 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 FLORAL LYRICS CONTINUED 
 
 Spring never came forth under the veil of 
 Allegory in more exquisite and touching beauty 
 than she appears to us in 
 
 THE TRYST OF SPRING 
 
 Stern Winter sought the hand of Spring, 
 And, tempered to her milder mood, 
 Died leafless on the budding breast 
 He fondly wooed. 
 
 She wept for him her April tears, 
 But, from the shadows wandering soon, 
 Dreamed of a \varmer love to come 
 With lordly June. 
 
 He scatters roses at her feet, 
 And sunshine o er her queenly brow, 
 And through the listening silence breathes 
 A bridal vow. 
 
 She answers not; but, like a mist 
 O erbrimmed and tremulous with light, 
 In sudden tears she vanishes 
 Before his sight. 
 
 Does not the last stanza appeal to you with 
 a poignant human touch? 
 
 Two far apart beauty in sublimity and 
 beauty in littleness are made lovable person- 
 
 [67] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 alities in Dawn and the Blossom, and brought 
 into dramatic contact in "Come True." Amid 
 the train of conceptions that their tender col 
 loquy evokes, the final one is dominant the 
 sweetly living and ever-ruling thought of Father 
 Tabb of the transitoriness of all earthly 
 glories, the passing away of mortal hopes and 
 loves. 
 
 "Good morrow!" breathed the Blossom. 
 
 "Good morrow!" flushed the Dawn. 
 "Where were you, dear, before the light? 
 For I was dreaming all the night 
 
 That we should meet anon, 
 To drink a dewdrop here today, 
 And then together pass away." 
 
 The apostrophe "To a Rose," beginning 
 
 Thou hast not toiled, sweet Rose, 
 Yet needest rest, 
 
 summons up its counterpart, Herrick s lovely 
 "Daffodils," so persistent a favorite of mine, 
 that it has been painted on Memory s canvas by 
 each succeeding band of pupils. I deem that both 
 poets stood in contemplation before the flowers 
 of their love, when of a sudden each calyx be 
 came a well-spring of inspiration; and they 
 turned from the spot in a brief space their 
 dream of beauty and tears of "Life s mys 
 tery" transferred to their tablets for an en 
 tranced posterity. 
 
 [68] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 It is hard to restrain the temptation to cull 
 more of the poet s dainty Flora, for it is a royal 
 garden in which Father Tabb s Muse disports, 
 and she has a loving glance and a lyric for all 
 these rainbow children of the sun, yea, even for 
 the "Wild Flowers" that strew the woods be 
 yond her crystal gate. The common "Clover" 
 of our fields, mounting Nature s pulpit, becomes 
 the poet s teacher. Brimming with simplicity 
 and reverence, a revelation of beauty, and 
 breathing subtle intimations of the Trinity and 
 Unity of God, the most majestic dogma of our 
 faith, this poem recalls St. Patrick standing be 
 fore the King of Tara and conveying to him 
 through the little three-leaved shamrock the 
 mysterious lesson of Christianity. 
 
 CLOVER 
 
 Little Masters, hat in hand, 
 Let me in your presence stand, 
 Till your silence solve for me 
 This your threefold mystery. 
 
 Tell me for I long to know 
 How, in darkness there below, 
 Was your fairy fabric spun, 
 Spread and fashioned, three in one. 
 
 Did your gossips, gold and blue, 
 Sky and Sunshine, choose for you, 
 Ere your triple forms were seen, 
 Suited liveries of green ? 
 
 [69] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABS 
 
 Can ye if ye dwelt indeed 
 Captives of a prison seed 
 Like the Genie, once again 
 Get you back into the grain ? 
 
 Little Masters, may I stand 
 In your presence, hat in hand, 
 Waiting till you solve for me 
 This your threefold mystery? 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 BIRD LYRICS 
 
 In a group of enchanting bird lyrics more 
 than thirty of them the little minstrels of the 
 air most dear to us are all immortalized. Now 
 Father Tabb is watching a pair of birds build 
 ing a nest a most fascinating bit of architec 
 ture, of which act I think I am an unimpeach 
 able witness, having been chief assistant to the 
 thrush and wren on many occasions. He 
 daintily pictures the planning of the airy struc 
 ture, the laying of the eggs, the hatching of the 
 fledgelings, and the flight. Now it is a lark high 
 in the air, athrob with life and song anon it is 
 a dead thrush that awakens his sympathy. The 
 bluebird, the robin, the lovely killdee, whose note 
 is "a rhapsody of light," and how many 
 more ! all chant their madrigals for him and he 
 in turn sings their praises in dewy poesy. There 
 he is bending over a "Humming-Bird" which his 
 poet-brush paints for us in this fashion: 
 
 A flash of harmless lightning, 
 
 A mist of rainbow dyes, 
 The burnished sunbeams brightening, 
 
 From flower to flower he flies: 
 
 While wakes the nodding blossom, 
 
 But just too late to see 
 What lip hath touched her bosom 
 
 And drained her nectary. 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 The mocking-bird, I think, is his favorite, 
 after the killdee. U O heart that cannot sleep 
 for song!" he so addresses that midnight 
 warbler, delirious with rapture, in one poem; 
 and in another, "A Phonograph," he sums up 
 the bird s whole score of musical robberies in a 
 delicious quatrain: 
 
 Hark! what his fellow warblers heard 
 
 And uttered in the light, 
 Their phonograph, the mocking-bird, 
 
 Repeats to them at night. 
 
 The story is told by many lyrists how the 
 dear robin s breast became red, but by none, I 
 conceive, so briefly and sweetly as by Father 
 Tabb. Judge for yourselves : 
 
 ROBIN REDBREAST 
 
 When Christ was taken from the rood, 
 
 One thorn upon the ground, 
 Still moistened with the Precious Blood, 
 
 An early Robin found 
 And wove it crosswise in his nest, 
 Where, lo, it reddened all his breast! 
 
 The poet conjures "Two Sparrows" from 
 their far-away home in the Scriptural land to 
 renew for us the Master s lesson: 
 
 To creatures upon earth, 
 Our price one farthing worth : 
 To everlasting Love 
 
 All price above. 
 
 [72] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 And in the same vein of Scriptural rever 
 ence is 
 
 HOLY GROUND 
 
 Pause where apart the fallen sparrow lies, 
 
 And lightly tread; 
 For there the pity of a Father s eyes 
 
 Enshrines the dead. 
 
 Of this quatrain a London critic says with 
 truth: "In that thought lies the secret of the 
 unity for which Father Tabb seeks in living and 
 dead, man and flower, great and small." 
 
 The Dead Thrush" is all melody. A bird- 
 lover cannot see the beautiful speckle-breast 
 that charmed so many summer hours lying 
 stark without a pang akin to that for human 
 loss : I know one, at least, who has suffered this 
 pang many times. But Father Tabb s elegy is 
 full of hope. Here is his first stanza : 
 
 Love of nest and mate and young 
 Woke the music of his tongue, 
 While upon the fledgeling s brain 
 Soft it fell as scattered grain, 
 There to blossom tone for tone 
 Into echoes of his own. 
 
 I cannot part with these lovely warblers of 
 the "sylvan solitudes" without listening awhile 
 with the poet to the strains of 
 
 [73] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 THE WOOD ROBIN 
 
 The wooing air is jubilant with song; 
 
 And blossoms swell 
 As leaps thy liquid melody along 
 
 The dusky dell, 
 Where Silence, late supreme, foregoes her wonted spell. 
 
 Teach me, thou warbling eremite, to sing 
 
 Thy rhapsody; 
 Nor borne on vain ambition s vaunting wing, 
 
 But led of thee, 
 To rise from earthly dreams to hymn eternity. 
 
 [74] 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 BABYHOOD AND YOUTH IN POESY 
 
 Love was the principle of Father Tabb s 
 life primarily intense love of God, and then 
 its natural outcome, love of the neighbor that 
 ardent love of souls that distinguishes the priest, 
 yes, but moreover a cordial, tender, expansive, 
 Christlike love which finds its object in the little 
 babe on its mother s breast, in the gentle, pure 
 maiden, in the rollicking boy, in every type of 
 noble manhood or womanhood; his deep affec 
 tions flow out to the stranger, to the erring, to 
 the wanderer, to call them back by a thousand 
 winning ways. The last two stanzas of "Visible 
 Sound" proclaim this all-radiating and all-con 
 verging principle of life and beauty. 
 
 Yea, Love, of sweet Nature the Lord, 
 Hath fashioned each manifold chord 
 To utter His visible Word, 
 
 Whose work, wheresoever begun, 
 Like the rays floating back to the Sun, 
 In the soul of all beauty is one. 
 
 Francis Thompson wrote to his infant god 
 child, Francis Meynell anticipating the arrival 
 of this "heir of his song" in the Blessed Land 
 long after his own entrance there "Look for 
 
 [75] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 me in the NURSERIES of Heaven!" And judg 
 ing from the alluring loveliness with which 
 Babyhood sits throned in Father Tabb s poetic 
 bower, crowned and circled by the "Rosebud" 
 vines of his delicate fancy and tender affection, 
 I am inclined to believe that the poet-priest has 
 found a part of his beatitude in those "divine 
 nurseries." Surely the "Babe Niva" must have 
 welcomed him there : 
 
 Niva, Child of Innocence, 
 
 Dust to dust we go : 
 Thou, when Winter wooed thee hence, 
 
 Wentest snow to snow. 
 
 And the Babe whom he apostrophized in 
 dying, too, smiled a heavenly greeting: 
 
 O Bubble, break! All heaven thou hast 
 
 Unsullied in thy heart! 
 Ere Time its shadow on thee cast 
 
 Love calls thee to depart. 
 
 But let us descend the crystal ladder to earth 
 again, and, entering on tiptoe into a dainty 
 nursery of Time, see with the poet s eyes 
 
 BABY 
 
 Baby in her slumber smiling, 
 
 Doth a captive take: 
 Whispers Love, "From dreams beguiling 
 
 May she never wake!" 
 
 [76] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 When the lids, like mist retreating, 
 
 Flee the azure deep, 
 Wakes a newborn Joy, repeating, 
 
 "May she never sleep!" 
 
 And now behold the innocent Babe turned 
 suddenly and bewitchingly into 
 
 AN IDOLATER 
 The Baby has no skies 
 But Mother s eyes; 
 Nor any God above 
 But Mother s love. 
 His Angel sees the FATHER S face, 
 But he the Mother s full of grace ; 
 And yet the Heavenly Kingdom is 
 Of such as this. 
 
 Hush! Listen to the lovely "Cradle-Song," 
 a tribute to mother-love which, I doubt not, for 
 its exquisite pathos and tender reminiscence, has 
 drawn tears from many a mother s eyes: 
 
 Sing it, Mother! sing it low: 
 
 Deem it not an idle lay. 
 In the heart t will ebb and flow 
 
 All the life-long way. 
 
 Sing it, Mother, Love is strong! 
 
 When the tears of manhood fall, 
 Echoes of thy cradle-song 
 
 Shall its peace recall. 
 
 Sing it, Mother ! when his ear 
 Catcheth first the Voice Divine, 
 
 Dying, he may smile to hear 
 What he deemeth thine. 
 
 [77] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 How playfully and carefully the poet-uncle 
 has portrayed "Baby s Dimples" ! 
 
 Love goes playing hide-and-seek 
 Mid the roses on her cheek, 
 With a little imp of Laughter, 
 Who, the while he follows after, 
 Leaves the footprints that we trace 
 All about the Kissing-place. 
 
 And here, more attractive in its dainty pic- 
 turesqueness than any that ever came from a 
 king s garden, is 
 
 A BUNCH OF ROSES 
 
 The rosy mouth and rosy toe 
 
 Of little baby brother, 
 Until about a month ago 
 
 Had never met each other; 
 But nowadays the neighbors sweet, 
 
 In every sort of weather, 
 Half way with rosy fingers meet, 
 
 To kiss and play together. 
 
 Yet "Chanticleer," 
 
 A crowing, cuddling little Babe was he, 
 
 would perhaps gain the prize over them all for 
 winning charm and for pathos that sudden 
 pull at the heartstrings that leaves an ache long 
 after. 
 
 In a graphic Allegory of six stanzas, "The 
 New-Year Babe," Father Tabb tells us how 
 
 [78] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 Two together, Babe and Year, 
 
 At the midnight chime, 
 Through the darkness drifted here 
 
 To the coast of Time. 
 
 After a journey to "the land of May" and on 
 "through the Vale of Autumn to the Mount of 
 Snow," 
 
 Then together Babe and Year 
 
 Slept : but ere the dawn, 
 Vanishing, I know not where, 
 
 Brother Year was gone! 
 
 Father Tabb has honored Maidenhood by 
 many pure and lovely conceptions. My readers 
 will pardon me if I choose two that touch upon 
 the shadow of life, poems that leave a feeling 
 of exquisite sadness that the heart often loves 
 better than mirth. The first is entitled 
 
 MAIDEN BLOOM 
 
 Where the youthful rivals meet 
 
 Reddest Rose and whitest Snow 
 From a trysting-place so sweet, 
 
 Which will soonest go? 
 "Hence with life alone I stray," 
 
 Blushed the flower of balmy breath. 
 "Mine," the snow-wreath sighed, "to stay 
 
 Steadfast e en in death." 
 
 The second poem is a favorite, and was 
 copied very widely when it first appeared in one 
 of the leading magazines of the country. "The 
 
 [79] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 White Jessamine" sings its own idyl of love for 
 the little maiden who had planted it and lov 
 ingly watched its climbing tendrils, but ere it 
 had throbbed into bloom suddenly fell ill. The 
 Jessamine at last in the stillness of night reaches 
 her window, where, it tells us, 
 
 Her gentle whisper thrilled me 
 Ere I gazed upon her face. 
 
 I waited, darkling, till the dawn 
 Should touch me into bloom, 
 
 While all my being panted 
 To outpour its first perfume ; 
 
 When, lo ! a paler flower than mine 
 Had blossomed in the gloom ! 
 
 Was ever Death symbolized with such deli 
 cacy such soft and touching picturesqueness of 
 suggestion? 
 
 There is a charm natural and sweet combined 
 with innocent restfulness in the dainty question 
 and answer Allegory, u The Playmates." 
 
 Who are thy playmates, boy? 
 "My favorite is Joy, 
 Who brings with him his sister, Peace, to stay 
 
 The livelong day. 
 I love them both; but he 
 Is most to me." 
 
 And where thy playmates now, 
 O man of sober brow? 
 "Alas! dear Joy, the merriest, is dead. 
 
 But I have wed 
 Peace; and our babe, a boy, 
 
 New-born, is Joy." 
 
 [80] 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 FATHER TABB S FRIENDSHIP WITH SIDNEY 
 
 LANIER 
 
 The memories of many noble and tender 
 friendships are scattered through the pages of 
 Father Tabb s poems, but one stands luminous: 
 a veritable pillar of light to the poet, it would 
 seem, was Sidney Lanier of whom we made 
 an earlier mention. Besides his poems, Mr. 
 Lanier wrote novels, historical studies, essays, 
 and a valuable work on the relations between 
 music and poetry called "The Science of Eng 
 lish Verse." Stedman, the great American poet 
 and critic, wrote: "When Sidney Lanier died 
 (in 1881), not only the South that bore him, 
 but the whole country and our English rhythm 
 underwent the loss of a rare being." On the 
 dedication page of Father Tabb s "Poems" his 
 name is set in immortal lines: 
 
 AVE : SIDNEY LANIER 
 
 Ere Time s horizon-line was set, 
 Somewhere in space our spirits met, 
 Then o er the starry parapet 
 
 Came wandering here. 
 And now that thou art gone again 
 Beyond the verge, I haste amain 
 (Lost echo of a loftier strain) 
 
 To greet thee there. 
 
 [81] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 In "Love s Hybla" and many other lyrics the 
 poet sends his minor strain up to his departed 
 friend reigning in immortality. Here is one of 
 these deep heart poems: 
 
 TO SIDNEY LANIER 
 
 The dewdrop holds the heaven above 
 
 Wherein a lark unseen 
 Outpours a rhapsody of love 
 
 That fills the space between. 
 
 My heart a dewdrop is, and thou, 
 
 Dawn-spirit, far away 
 Fillest the void between us now 
 
 With an immortal lay. 
 
 Their poetic styles are in remarkable con 
 trast. Rich, magnificent, diffuse, Lanier rolls 
 out his verses in great waves of song, and, 
 while they are pervaded with a highly sensuous 
 beauty and overflowing with human sympathies, 
 here and there you encounter lofty conceptions 
 of the greatness of God which bring you to your 
 knees in worship and make manifest the secret 
 of the bond that so welded Father Tabb s soul 
 to his. But Father Tabb moves and breathes 
 in the heavenly atmosphere he would have 
 everything in nature, in art, in life, bring us into 
 closer relations with the Creator, with the Re 
 deemer, with Heaven; he would sow a seed in 
 our heart of faith heroic, of hope unfading, of 
 love unutterable. 
 
 [82] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 It will not be amiss to give a specimen of 
 .Sidney Lanier s verse. Of all his poems, I 
 yielded most spontaneously to the fascinations 
 of "The Marshes of Glynn," a poem of one 
 hundred and five lines, which first appeared 
 anonymously and attracted attention at once by 
 its exquisite word-painting, its rich imagery, and 
 its musical quality. One must read the whole 
 poem in a quiet mood to appreciate its beauty. 
 
 THE MARSHES OF GLYNN 
 
 O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the 
 
 vine, 
 While the riotous noonday sun of the June day long 
 
 did shine, 
 Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in 
 
 mine ; 
 
 But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, 
 And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the 
 
 West, 
 And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth 
 
 seem 
 Like a lane into Heaven that leads from a dream 
 
 Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand 
 On the firm-packed sand, 
 
 Free 
 By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. 
 
 Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-with 
 holding and free 
 
 Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves 
 to the sea! 
 
 [83] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABS 
 
 Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and 
 
 the sun, 
 Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath 
 
 mightily won 
 
 God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain, 
 And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 
 
 As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, 
 Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God ! 
 I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies 
 In the freedom that fills all the space twixt the marsh 
 
 and the skies: 
 
 By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 
 I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God : 
 Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within 
 The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of 
 
 Glynn. 
 
 Father Tabb s appreciation of Sidney Lanier s 
 poems is unique before him he "hides his 
 diminished head," calls himself, as you have 
 read, "Lost echo of a loftier strain." An 
 eminent English critic remarks, however: "It 
 is interesting to contrast the long, voluminous, 
 rushing flow of Lanier . . . with the 
 minute, delicately carved work of his country 
 man. Which is the greater poet, let those who 
 like giving marks decide ; but Father Tabb, 
 working within the limits which the nature of 
 his art inevitably determined, piping, so to 
 speak, upon his flute, can do things which 
 Lanier s great four-manual organ could never 
 accomplish." 
 
 I was surprised and pleased some months 
 ago by a tender little note from Mrs. Sidney 
 
 [84! 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 Lanier, who had heard of my forthcoming 
 sketch of Father Tabb. The poet-priest re 
 mained devoted to her in the bonds of sym 
 pathy and holy friendship until his death. Her 
 deep sensitive nature never recovered, I think, 
 the shock of her gifted husband s death; and 
 Father Tabb used to deplore her failing health 
 to his friends. Here is her missive : 
 
 "To the lover of Sidney Lanier s poems, 
 whose kind greeting has come to me by Father 
 Hasenfus, I would return the sympathy and 
 thanks of her friend-in-will and her friend-in- 
 Christ. 
 
 "MARY DAY LANIER. 
 "September ijth, 1914, 
 
 Lanier Camp, Eliot, Maine. " 
 
 Father Tabb was present at the Lanier 
 Memorial Meeting in Johns Hopkins Univer 
 sity, Baltimore, and paid the eloquent tribute of 
 lifelong admiration and love to Sidney Lanier s 
 genius. From the far-away year of his prison 
 life, his memory had faithfully retained one 
 cherished theme of Lanier s Flute; this he gave 
 to Mr. E. E. Trumbull, who arranged and har 
 monized it under the title: "A Melody from 
 Sidney Lanier s Flute." Father Tabb popu 
 larized the song by some accompanying lines. 
 
 [85] 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HIS FRIENDSHIP WITH BISHOP CURTIS 
 UNIVERSAL BROTHERHOOD 
 
 Knowing the friendship, of a celestial order, 
 that bound him to Bishop Curtis from his 
 youthful years, it cannot be doubted that a num 
 ber of the poems owe their inspiration to the 
 Bishop, while others are tenderly reminiscent 
 of his "angel visits." The saintly prelate s 
 chief and recognized virtue was his profound 
 humility; and the disciple, I suspect, was "un 
 der orders" not to set his Master s name upon 
 his immortal pages. It was a marvel that he 
 was permitted to dedicate to him the beautiful 
 "Rosary in Verse." Among the poems to 
 which my belief on this point clings is 
 
 WESTWARD 
 
 And dost thou lead him hence with thee, 
 
 O setting sun, 
 And leave the shadows all to me 
 
 When he is gone? 
 Ah, if my grief his guerdon be, 
 
 My dark his light, 
 I count each loss felicity, 
 
 And bless the night. 
 
 "Photographed" and "O erspent" equally 
 point to Bishop Curtis as their source of being, 
 as well as the deep and sincere heart-cry, 
 
 [86] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 ALTER EGO 
 
 Thou art to me as is the sea 
 
 Unto the shell; 
 A life whereof I breathe, a love 
 
 Wherein I dwell. 
 
 And no one can doubt that his friend in dying 
 inspired "Finis," one of the last poignant 
 strains of the lyrist s heart. It is touched with 
 indescribable pathos because of the cruel suf 
 ferings of his holy director during the illness 
 preceding his death in 1908, and Father Tabb s 
 own blindness and fast-failing health. 
 
 FINIS 
 O to be with thee sinking to thy rest, 
 
 Thy journey done ; 
 The world thou leavest blessing thee and blest, 
 
 O setting sun! 
 The clouds, that ne er the morning joys forget, 
 
 Again aglow, 
 And leaf and flower with tears of twilight wet 
 
 To see thee go. 
 
 There is a feature of universal brotherhood 
 that cannot fail to impress one in reading Father 
 Tabb. It is the echo of our Saviour s words: 
 "Love one another as / have loved you." My 
 choice shall fall upon three out of many that 
 are steeped in the fragrance of this doctrine : 
 
 GOD S LIKENESS 
 Not in my own, but in my neighbor s face, 
 
 Must I Thine image trace ; 
 Nor he in his, but in the light of mine, 
 
 Behold Thy Face Divine. 
 
 [87] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 TO THE CHRIST 
 
 Thou hast on earth a Trinity, 
 Thyself, my fellow-man and me; 
 When one with him, then one with thee ; 
 Nor, save together, Thine are we. 
 
 CHARITY 
 
 If but the world would give to Love 
 The crumbs that from its table fall, 
 T were bounty large enough for all 
 The famishing to feed thereof. 
 
 And Love, that still the laurel wins 
 Of Sacrifice, would lovelier grow, 
 And round the world a mantle throw 
 To hide its multitude of sins. 
 
 Perhaps in contrast to these I might quote a 
 rather original and humorous conception pecu 
 liar to Father Tabb; it is entitled 
 
 THE STRANGER 
 
 He entered ; but the mask he wore 
 
 Concealed his face from me. 
 Still, something I had seen before 
 
 He brought to memory. 
 
 Who art thou? What thy rank, thy name? 
 
 I questioned with surprise; 
 "Thyself 1 the laughing answer came, 
 
 "As seen of others eyes." 
 
 And the littleness of "Prejudice," that vice 
 of purblind souls, that destroyer of a fellow- 
 creature s influence, that stumbling-block to 
 
 [88] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 many good and noble works, is unfolded in four 
 lines of metaphor: 
 
 A leaf may hide the largest star 
 
 From Love s uplifted eye; 
 A mote of prejudice out-bar 
 
 A world of charity. 
 
 The priest-poet s large-hearted sympathies 
 stretched from "The Hermit," who, 
 
 High on the mountain-top, 
 
 spelt 
 
 The name of the Omnipotent, and knelt 
 In lowly reverence of adoring love, 
 
 across the great universe of human struggle 
 and fulfillment and tragic failure even to the 
 despairing outcast in "Quo Vadis?" 
 
 The sedge was sere ; the water still, 
 As waiting for the wintry chill ; 
 When, shadow-like along the hill, 
 She moved alone. 
 
 A plunge, a ripple, and a sigh 
 Of waters; fleeting soul, reply, 
 Was it for death of Love to die, 
 Or to atone? 
 
 You whose hearts are divided from kindred 
 hearts, who look back upon years of separation, 
 whereas Love should have been playing chords 
 of harmony and union all through your sad 
 dened lives, read 
 
 [89] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 LIFE 
 
 The Power that lifts the leaf above 
 
 And sends the root below, 
 Sustains the heart in brother-love 
 
 And makes it heavenward grow. 
 
 In "The Bridge" the poet symbolizes and 
 prays for the brotherhood of the nations. The 
 last stanza of the five is an appeal. 
 
 O that, all strife above, 
 Strong in the strength thereof, 
 
 Man evermore 
 Built, with a broader span, 
 Love for his fellow-man 
 
 From shore to shore! 
 
 [90] 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 FEASTS OF THE CHURCH. CHRISTMAS POEMS 
 
 The Feasts of the Church hold their conse 
 crated rites in the poet-priest s sanctuary of 
 Poesy. There is a little galaxy of Christmas 
 poems of wondrous diversity. I have already 
 quoted one that concentrates a whole mission 
 sermon in its six starry lines, "A Little Boy 
 of Heavenly Birth." Among many others are 
 "The Lamb-Child," "A Christmas Cradle," 
 "The Angel s Christmas Quest," and the favor 
 ite allegory of the Christmas dream, so pictorial, 
 so overflowing with scriptural suggestion, and 
 so redolent of deep peace, 
 
 MISTLETOE 
 
 To the cradle-bough of a naked tree, 
 
 Benumbed with ice and snow, 
 A Christmas dream brought suddenly 
 
 A birth of mistletoe. 
 
 The shepherd stars from their fleecy cloud 
 Strode out on the night to see; 
 
 The Herod north-wind blustered loud 
 To rend it from the tree. 
 
 But the old year took it for a sign, 
 
 And blessed it in his heart: 
 "With prophecy of peace divine, 
 
 Let now my soul depart." 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 The second chapter of St. Luke s Gospel be 
 comes dearer than ever when you have mastered 
 that poem and carry it in your heart. May I 
 analyze it a little? 
 
 The poet has chosen the simplest form of 
 verse, as befits the great theme. The rhythm 
 is music : the sound is perfectly adapted to sense 
 in the lines. In the second stanza the spondees 
 add to the majesty of the first picture, and to the 
 strength of the last. 
 
 From the opening phrase the Divine Infant 
 is the life of the poem. "To the cradle-bough" 
 is a lovely invention, suggestive of birds nests 
 rocking in the summer breezes ; but then you are 
 confronted with 
 
 a naked tree 
 Benumbed with ice and snow, 
 
 an emblem of the wintry cave of Bethlehem, 
 where a manger received the trembling frame 
 of the Babe new-born ; typified, too, in the figure, 
 is the then state of the wide, hopeless, cold- 
 hearted world. The Dream-Feast and the 
 Birth seem like fairy-land consecrated. 
 
 How finely is the Allegory drawn out in the 
 next stanza ! The shepherds "keeping the night 
 watches over their flocks" become shepherd 
 stars, the clouds their lambs; and borne at once 
 to the starry heavens, are we not subtly con 
 scious of the angelic presences, even the har 
 monies of their Gloria? "Strode out in the 
 
 [92] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 night to see" is a line of power a Thompsonian 
 line; and the blustering "northwind" is a mir 
 rored type of the cruel Herod, "who sought 
 the Child to destroy Him," and, foiled by the 
 Kings, slew a multitude of "Innocents," secure 
 that His Blood would swell the sacrificial tor 
 rent. 
 
 But what a deep significance in "the old 
 year" ! The aged and boly Simeon rises before 
 us, the type of the ancient dispensation, who 
 "entered the temple by the Spirit" just as Mary 
 and Joseph bore the Babe-Victim within its 
 hallowed precincts to present Him to His Eter 
 nal Father. Taking the Child in his arms, the 
 aged saint at once knew his God, the Expecta 
 tion of Israel, and, with supreme happiness, 
 chanted his "Nunc dimittis," "Now dost Thou 
 dismiss Thy servant, O Lord, in peace, because 
 my eyes have seen Thy Salvation." 
 
 The first soft slumbers of the new-born 
 Infant are commemorated in twelve lines of 
 exquisite imagery the last three divinely beau 
 tiful, with the glow of more than seraphic love. 
 
 AT THE MANGER 
 
 When first her Christmas watch to keep, 
 Came down the silent angel, Sleep, 
 
 With snowy sandals shod, 
 Beholding what His Mother s hands 
 Had wrought, with softer swaddling-bands 
 
 She swathed the Son of God. 
 
 [931 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 Then, skilled in mysteries of night, 
 With tender visions of delight 
 
 She wreathed His resting place, 
 Till, wakened by a warmer glow 
 Than Heaven itself had yet to show, 
 
 He saw His Mother s face. 
 
 Here we listen to divine words from the very 
 lips of "The Babe to the Gift-Bearer." 
 
 I cannot hold within My hands 
 
 Thy gift, but here My Mother stands 
 
 To take it as My own. 
 It is through her I come to thee, 
 And now our go-between is she 
 
 Till I am older grown. 
 
 There is a haunting music from many 
 Epiphany strains, with their high faith rising 
 almost to vision; let us listen to one that is inter 
 woven with an ancient classical theme, in 
 
 THE ARGONAUTS 
 
 To Bethlehem, to Bethlehem, 
 
 The Magi move, and we with them, 
 
 Along the selfsame road ; 
 Still following the Star of Peace, 
 To find at last the Golden Fleece 
 
 The Spotless Lamb of God. 
 
 [94] 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 PASSION-FLOWERS AND EASTER LILIES 
 
 Father Tabb has planted in his garden of 
 sacred verse a score of beautiful Passion-Flow 
 ers, which bear the heart to Calvary and Geth- 
 semane. 
 
 The triple stanzas of "The Vigil of Good 
 Friday" might be called a perfect elegy of St. 
 Peter s denial of Christ U I know Him not" 
 with its beautiful climax of repentance, 
 
 O Christ! its perjury 
 Love weeps for Thee! 
 
 Mary the Immaculate and Mary the penitent 
 are pictured to us together during the Three 
 Hours Agony of the Saviour 
 
 ON CALVARY 
 
 In the shadow of the Rood 
 Love and Shame together stood ; 
 Love, that bade Him bear the blame 
 Of her fallen sister, Shame ; 
 Shame, that by the pangs thereof 
 Bade Him break His Heart for Love. 
 
 Father Tabb s devotion to the Cross, the 
 chief consolation in all life s trials, is manifest 
 in many poems, touchingly so in his lines to the 
 Crucifix hanging in his room, and touched with 
 the early sun-rays. 
 
 [95] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 Day after day the spear of morning bright 
 Pierces again the ever-wounded side, 
 
 Pointing at once the birthspring of the light 
 And where for Love the Light Eternal died. 
 
 The last day of Holy Week was a fount of 
 inspiration to the poet. "Holy Saturday" is 
 an apostrophe to "Earth who daily kissed His 
 feet"; in it Love and Death enact a drama, and 
 every line of the poem is a study. Of excep 
 tional beauty and pathos is 
 
 EASTER EVE 
 
 Lo, now His deadliest foes prevail! 
 And where His bleeding footsteps fail, 
 Like wolves upon a victim s trail, 
 They gloat, in purple mockery, "Hail!" 
 
 O cloud ! O regal vesture torn ! 
 O shadow on the shoulders borne ! 
 O diadem ! one starry thorn 
 Shall blossom into Easter morn! 
 
 As you descend the slope of the Mountain of 
 Redemption, where the Passion-Flowers bloom, 
 lo ! you come upon the Divine Gardener sur 
 rounded by His spotless "Easter Lilies." 
 "Easter Morning" welcomes His presence; 
 "Rabboni" touchingly portrays His apparition 
 to Magdalen; and the witnesses to His Resur 
 rection are the 
 
 EASTER FLOWERS 
 
 We are His witnesses; out of the dim 
 Dank region of Death we have risen with Him. 
 Back from our sepulchre rolleth the stone, 
 And Spring, the bright Angel, sits smiling thereon. 
 
 [96] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 We are His witnesses. See, where we lay 
 The snow that late bound us is folded away; 
 And April, fair Magdalen, weeping anon, 
 Stands flooded with light of the new-risen Sun! 
 
 Magdalen has captivated our poet s heart 
 with as sure dominion as she did the hearts of 
 Robert Southwell, Richard Crashaw and other 
 devout lyrists. Her name, her love, her tears, 
 her spikenard, lead the thought or adorn a 
 figure in half a score of his opals of verse. 
 "Rabboni" is not the least beautiful of these 
 tributes of love. 
 
 "I bring Thee balm, and lo, Thou art not here! 
 
 Twice have I poured mine ointment on Thy brow, 
 And washed Thy feet with tears. Disdain st Thou 
 now 
 
 The spikenard and the myrrh? 
 
 "Has Death, alas, betrayed Thee with a kiss 
 
 That seals Thee from the memory of mine?" 
 "Mary!" It is the self-same Voice Divine. 
 
 "Rabboni!" only this. 
 
 [97] 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 MARY IN HIS VERSE. DOGMAS 
 
 There is a heavenly attraction for the poet in 
 Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, the most 
 glorious type of womanhood, the lily of purity, 
 the Spouse all fair and without spot, the Woman 
 clothed with the sun of divine glory and love. 
 Father Tabb s devotion to this perfect ideal of 
 human holiness can scarcely be conceived ex 
 cept by one who is profoundly imbued with a 
 like sentiment of tender filial piety. 
 
 Is not this piety set like a hidden jewel in the 
 lines which recall the adoption of our race by 
 Mary on Calvary? 
 
 SON OF MARY 
 
 She the Mother was of One 
 Christ, her Saviour and her Son. 
 And another had she none? 
 Yea: her Love s beloved John. 
 
 My readers are already acquainted with the 
 volumes "An Octave to Mary" and "The 
 Rosary in Verse," dedicated to her love. These 
 rich offerings, however, were not enough for 
 one who so often soared above the stars to be 
 hold her in her beauty. He portrays her from 
 the beginning in 
 
 [98] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION 
 
 A Dew-drop of the darkness born, 
 
 Wherein no shadow lies; 
 The blossom of a barren thorn, 
 
 Whereof no petal dies; 
 A rainbow beauty passion-free, 
 Wherewith was veiled divinity. 
 
 The poet paints in sublime colors the "Fiat" 
 of "The Annunciation," "the flaming word" 
 that brought the Eternal down to a Virgin s 
 womb. And the mystery is retold in "The In 
 carnation." 
 
 A weight to bow Thy Godhead to the ground, 
 And lift to Heaven a lost humanity. 
 
 We have had glimpses of the Mother s love 
 liness shrouded in the glory of her Babe in The 
 Nativity; and we have stood with her under the 
 Cross, suffused with emotions of awe and love 
 such as stirred the depths of the poet s soul while 
 he gazed and wrote. Yet see how he spans the 
 heavens to call us again in worship to the Man 
 ger and the Cross in 
 
 STABAT MATER 
 
 The star that in His splendor hid her own 
 
 At Christ s Nativity, 
 Abides a widowed satellite alone 
 
 On tearful Calvary. 
 
 The triumph of his Queen, the crowning act 
 of her Assumption into Heaven, the priest-poet 
 hymns in more than one loving effusion. I 
 
 [991 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 quote a strain in which lowly imagery, wedded 
 to celestial beauty, bears witness to the holy 
 audacity of Love in treating of divine things, 
 Love, grown familiar spirit to spirit with 
 the high courts of the invisible world. 
 
 THE ASSUMPTION 
 
 Behold! the mother bird 
 
 The Fledgeling s voice hath heard ! 
 
 He calls anew, 
 "It was thy breast 
 That warmed the nest 
 
 From whence I flew. 
 Upon a loftier tree 
 Of life I wait for thee ; 
 Rise, mother-dove, and come, 
 Thy Fledgeling calls thee home!" 
 
 Father Tabb s passionate love of the Dogmas 
 of the Church has found ardent utterance in his 
 poems, as one is forced to confess; indeed, I 
 almost dare to say they form his chief message. 
 The priest chants in high and worthy and per 
 suasive verse the Eternal Truths, the deep mys 
 teries of the Faith: "God, the All in All," Im 
 mortality, the Creation, the Fall and Redemp 
 tion, the supreme love of God and of the 
 neighbor, Heaven, hell (with shuddering beauty 
 defending God s justice), and Purgatory, the 
 Sacraments and the Virtues, the glories of the 
 Priesthood and the Religious State. In truth, 
 the harvest of heavenly wisdom garnered in 
 these little sheaves of poesy is incalculable; and 
 
 [100] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 the Sovereign Truth to whom they are conse 
 crated, as was the whole life of the poet, has 
 shed into them the perfumed essence of heavenly 
 grace, that unction we find so often in the writ 
 ings of saints and holy men. 
 
 To that most loyal son of the Church, as to 
 Francis Thompson, "the very arrangement of 
 the liturgical year is a suggested epic, based as 
 it is on a deep parallel between the evolution 
 of the seasons and that of the Christian soul of 
 the human race." 
 
 [101] 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 CONSIDERATION OF OTHER POEMS. TRAGEDY 
 AND FANCY 
 
 It has been said by one who studied under 
 Father Tabb and knew him well that the sug 
 gestive possibilities of his verse are limited only 
 by the capacity of the reader; and nothing 
 could be truer, for one must study some of these 
 gnomic verses as a problem dig into them as 
 into a mine to make them yield up all the pre 
 cious gems of thought, of fancy, of allusion, 
 that lie hidden under the rich loam of word and 
 phrase. 
 
 What mighty epics have been wrecked by time 
 Since Herricic launched his cockle-shells of rhyme ? 
 
 sang Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and he himself 
 floated a number of the same frail boats upon 
 the sea of poesy. But I conceive that Herrick 
 and Aldrich and many others of famous name, 
 not excluding Richard Crashaw in his "Steps 
 to the Temple," would veil their colors before 
 Father Tabb s "cockle-shells" and without envy 
 behold them far in the lead. 
 
 Yet Father Tabb at times, though rarely, 
 gave larger play to his thought. U A Sigh of the 
 Sea," which I consider one of the most finished 
 
 [102] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 allegories I know, is expanded to eight quat 
 rains; so also is The Cloud," standing "above 
 the eternal snows" his first published effort, of 
 which he remarked "God gave me the Cloud." 
 Six enchanting quintets, varied in metre, are 
 dedicated "To the Wood Robin," and the same 
 number to "Echoes," for which the poet has 
 lovingly appropriated the stanza of Shelley s 
 "Ode to a Skylark," with perfect musical effect. 
 In the third stanza he addresses them : 
 
 Children of the distance, 
 
 Shall I call in vain? 
 From your slumbers waking, 
 
 Speak to me again 
 As erst in childhood woke your soft Aeolian strain ! 
 
 And "The Swallow" "skims o er the tide" in 
 
 a brilliant craft of six sestets. 
 
 Tragedy chants its note of human desolation 
 
 in many of the noble quatrains, nowhere, to my 
 
 mind, with greater poignancy than under the 
 
 symbol of 
 
 THE MAST 
 
 The winds that once my playmates were 
 No more my voice responsive hear, 
 Nor know me, naked now and dumb, 
 When o er my wandering way they come. 
 
 In "Giulio," a poem of rhymed couplets (iam 
 bic tetrameter) which reads with the ease of 
 blank verse, Sorrow tells her tale with fuller 
 utterance. Brief yet piercing, thirty-six lines 
 
 [103] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 suggest two life histories, one "dead to all but 
 misery!" the other waiting 
 
 The consecrating vow 
 Of priesthood. 
 
 How the poet has painted the agony of a sin 
 ning and repentant heart, merging at last into 
 ecstatic joy at meeting with the loved one in 
 the solemn hour of Death s anointing! 
 
 Fancy everywhere irradiates Father Tabb s 
 pages, as we have seen. Here is a poem which 
 lets us into the secret of her enchantment, an 
 inspiration for an artist, and so dripping with 
 melody that it seems, like many others, to have 
 been composed to an inward music. 
 
 FANCY 
 
 A boat unmoored, wherein a dreamer lies, 
 The slumberous waves low-lisping of a land 
 
 Where Love, forever with unclouded eyes, 
 
 Goes, wed with wandering Music, hand in hand. 
 
 Would you see a perfect creation of Fancy s 
 delicate brush? Look at sound magically trans 
 formed into vision in 
 
 WHISPER 
 
 Close cleaving unto Silence, into sound 
 
 She ventures as a timorous child from land, 
 
 Still glancing, at each wary step, around, 
 Lest suddenly she lose her sister s hand. 
 
 [104] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 How fanciful is The Mist!" Suddenly 
 metamorphosed into the mythic Eurydice, she 
 rises from the darkness with Orpheus, now the 
 singing Lark 
 
 That leads her to the Dawn 
 With rhapsodies of star delight, 
 Till looking backward in his flight 
 
 He finds that she is gone. 
 
 "Star delight?" a pupil questioned one day. 
 "The poet perhaps suggests," I conjectured, 
 "that as when Orpheus came up from the dark 
 ness of Erebus with his lost love, the sight of 
 the starry heavens delighted him, so the stars 
 are still in the sky, though shrinking away, 
 as the Lark soars and sings in shrill de 
 light. And Orpheus lyre, you know, was set 
 in the heavens by the ancients the beautiful 
 little Constellation, Lyra, with all its star-chord 
 seven. But I fear my hints will not satisfy 
 so readily some of the grown-ups who have 
 cavilled at the obscurity of "The Mist." 
 
 Father Tabb frankly plays with his imagery, 
 but how often he rises from loveliest fancy to 
 the deepest philosophy of life, as in 
 
 THE SEA-BUBBLE 
 Yea, a bubble though I be, 
 Love, O man, that fashioned thee 
 Of the dust, created me 
 Not of earth, but of the sea: 
 Kindred blossoms then are we 
 Time-blooms on eternity. 
 
 [105] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 A tender fancy is hidden under the lines "To 
 Violet B. on Her Wedding-Day": 
 
 "Sweet it is for Love to live," 
 
 Thus a Blossom whispered me, 
 "But for Love a life to give 
 
 (Tell my sister Violet 
 For a blossom, too, is she) 
 Sweeter yet." 
 
 Had Father Tabb chosen to enrich the world 
 of music with songs of his inditing, what a 
 prophecy of success he has bequeathed us in 
 "Come to Me, Robin!" in "Fade Not Yet, O 
 Summer Day!" and in 
 
 Over the sea, over the sea, 
 My love he is gone to a far countrie ; 
 But he brake a golden ring with me, 
 The pledge of his faith to be. 
 
 We can well forego the songs of earth, how 
 ever, since our priest-poet has taught us sweet 
 songs of the heavenly clime. 
 
 ;io6] 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE SONNETS 
 
 Many bards have sung the praises of the 
 Sonnet: and Wordsworth in luminous lines re 
 minds us that 
 
 with this key 
 
 Shakespeare unlocked his heart ; the melody 
 Of this small lute gave ease to Petrarch s wound ; 
 A thousand times this pipe did Tasso sound; 
 
 and Gilder adds: 
 
 This was the flame that shook with Dante s breath ; 
 The solemn organ whereon Milton played. 
 
 Few, indeed, among the "Enamored archi 
 tects of airy rhyme," of differing ages and liter 
 atures, have failed to test their powers upon this 
 form of poetry which has outlasted seven cen 
 turies, and has invaded with its fairy or solemn 
 or tragic touch every domain of knowledge, 
 human and divine, every issue of life and death, 
 of time and eternity. Yet, strange to say, 
 Father Tabb held such an instinctive aversion 
 to the sonnet its complexities and restraints 
 that only through the unceasing importunities 
 of a brother professor he was at last prevailed 
 upon to overcome his repugnance. To this 
 happy influence we owe some of the most per- 
 
 [107] 
 
 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 feet sonnets in the English language, too few, 
 alas ! for there are only thirty, I believe, in all. 
 
 The reader will find a pleasant suggestion of 
 Shakespeare in several of these "little pictures 
 painted well." Although intricate and elabo 
 rate in form, they speak to us the simple lan 
 guage of the heart. The rhymed octave is 
 always regular; the sestet, is, in general, classic, 
 yet, since there are no less than eighteen differ 
 ent ways in which a poet may lawfully adapt its 
 two or three rhymes, one is not surprised to find 
 Father Tabb adjusting the rhyme-order to the 
 exigencies of his thought. Add to this his deli 
 cate management of the cesura, the climax gen 
 erally of octave and sestet, the singing quality 
 of his verse, the unity which pervades every son 
 net, and, above all, the exalted realm of his 
 thought, his fancy, and his personal sympathies, 
 and who shall say that our poet-priest has not 
 won unfading glory by touching, though reluct 
 antly, this sonnet-lyre with its fourteen golden 
 strings ? 
 
 Apart from the sacred sonnets I think my 
 preference is for "Forecast," with its pictorial 
 wealth of fancy and note of prophecy, which 
 was surely verified in Father Tabb himself, who 
 might well have been the babe upon whose spirit 
 
 The dream, the song, the odor, each in one 
 Upbreathing as a starry vapor, spread, 
 And from the golden minarets of morn, 
 Far heralding the unawakened sun, 
 A rapture as of poesy outshed. 
 
 [108] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 "Solitude" spheres as much grief for the loved 
 and lost in its fourteen lines of faultless rhythm, 
 exquisite phrasing and imagery, and striking 
 climax, as Tennyson s u ln Memoriam." "Love s 
 Retrospect," too, is a memorial urn, garlanded 
 with flowers, touched with sunlight, and dewed 
 with tears; it consecrates a passing away of such 
 moment to the poet that he could complain it 
 had left 
 
 a world henceforth to me 
 In everlasting twilight. 
 
 Earlier pages have presented to my readers 
 characteristic quotations from the sonnets. 
 "Glimpses," "Daybreak," "The Dead Tree," 
 abound in beauty and pathos; and "St. Afra 
 to the Flames!" how exultantly she challenges 
 them: 
 
 Delay not! Leap the barriers and fire 
 The citadel, the heart. A flame is there 
 To which your kiss is coldness. 
 
 "Golgotha" and other of these art studies I 
 must leave to the reader s quiet meditation, re 
 producing only a memory of the Night of Sor 
 row in "The Paschal Moon," which should be 
 inscribed in letters of gold and read often by 
 every heart that loves the Holy Hour. Note 
 the strength and profound pathos of the first 
 line, and the power and dignity of the double 
 climax, rising to the sublime in the sestet. 
 
 [109] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 THE PASCHAL MOON 
 
 Thy face is whitened with remembered woe ; 
 For thou alone, pale satellite, didst see, 
 Amid the shadows of Gethsemane, 
 
 The mingled cup of sacrifice o erflow ; 
 
 Nor hadst the power of utterance to show 
 The wasting wound of silent sympathy, 
 Till sudden tides, obedient to thee, 
 
 Sobbed, desolate in weltering anguish, low. 
 
 The holy night returneth year by year; 
 
 And, while the mystic vapors from thy rim 
 Distil the dews, as from the Victim there 
 
 The red drops trickled in the twilight dim, 
 The ocean s changeless threnody we hear, 
 
 And gaze upon thee as thou didst on Him. 
 
 [no] 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 PERSONALITY OF THE POET 
 
 A few paragraphs cited from a brief review 
 of our poet by an intimate friend will supply a 
 hiatus in these pages. 
 
 "Poet, soldier, priest, Father Tabb united 
 in one personality the qualities which distin 
 guished each individual calling. As a poet he 
 was an idealist, seeing beauty and harmony in 
 the lowliest as well as the highest things. As a 
 soldier he was fearless and unswervingly loyal 
 to the cause he had championed in his youth, 
 while as a priest he was sympathetic and helpful 
 to all with whom he came in contact. He pos 
 sessed the heart and faith of a little child, com 
 bined with the confidence in an ever-loving and 
 watchful Providence that gave him courage to 
 live joyously, yet at all times face death un 
 flinchingly. 
 
 "In appearance Father Tabb was slender of 
 figure, slightly above the medium height and 
 quick of movement an active man, who en 
 joyed long walks through the blossoming coun 
 try and whose eye and spirit were attuned to 
 catch the beauty of every flower by the wayside. 
 
 "In manner he was cordially responsive or 
 shy and reserved, according to his intimacy with 
 
 [in] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 those with whom he was associating. About 
 Ellicott City his face and figure were familiar 
 to the entire community, with whom his rela 
 tions were cordial in the extreme. Into the 
 homes of a few families of the neighborhood 
 the poet came and went as the mood impelled 
 him. Always a welcome guest, he here cast 
 aside reserve and was frankly interested in the 
 affairs of the day, ready to discuss with boyish 
 enthusiasm topics light or serious, the last novel, 
 the latest drama for he now and again at 
 tended a good play an inspiring concert or the 
 affairs of the nation." 
 
 I have to confess that, lacking the interesting 
 details of his life history, I have been compelled 
 to look into his poems for revelations of him 
 self of his inner life, of course, but also of 
 his habits, and of external accidents and cir 
 cumstances. I know nothing more engrossing, 
 more toil-begetting, more perplexing, than the 
 study of a great poet through his poems; yet 
 nothing more rewarding, more satisfying on the 
 whole, though many of these products of his 
 brain and heart may tantalize you with their 
 indecipherable significance. What more obvious 
 illustration is afforded than some of the Eliza 
 bethan writers, whose enigmatic lines conceal 
 volumes of biography; startling, perplexing, 
 irreconcilable to tradition, they often portray 
 a whole inner and outer life. 
 
 [112] 
 
3 
 
 <: 
 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 These pages have furnished to the reader 
 more knowledge of the poet through his poems 
 than through the paucity of my memoirs. Per 
 haps with a little pleasant searching we may 
 glean a few more grains of truth. 
 
 "Matin-Song" pictures to us the opening of 
 Father Tabb s day. He gave the dawning 
 hours to God and counselled others to the prac 
 tice. It is well to learn the poem for its perfect 
 beauty of thought and diction, and to obey its 
 call, keeping the altar of the heart "free for 
 sacrifice." With what authoritative earnestness 
 the poet-priest utters the invitation ! 
 
 MATIN-SONG 
 
 Arise ! Arise ! 
 
 Dawns not the day without thy wakening eyes ; 
 The mist that on them lies 
 Delays the blossom of the eastern skies. 
 Tis at their light alone the darkness flies, 
 And Night, despairing, dies; 
 Behold thine altar free for sacrifice! 
 
 Arise ! Arise ! 
 
 And yet how many poems announce that 
 Father Tabb was a victim of insomnia ! "Sleep 
 quiets all but me," he laments. In "The Agony," 
 a perfect sonnet, he wrestles 
 
 as did Jacob, till the dawn, 
 With the reluctant Spirit of the Night 
 That keeps the keys of Slumber. 
 
 The Scriptural wrestling is carried out in ex 
 quisite detail, till at last the Angel 
 
 [113] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 breathed upon my brow; 
 And as the dew upon the twilight hill 
 
 So on my spirit, overwearied now, 
 Came tenderly the benediction, Sleep. 
 
 Insomnia" is a prayer. 
 
 E en this, Lord, Thou didst bless; 
 
 For twas while others calmly slept around 
 That Thou alone in sleeplessness wast found 
 To comfort me. 
 
 We may be pretty sure that under such re 
 current night watchings Father Tabb courted 
 a siesta in the afternoon; so he seems to hint 
 in the playful tableau, 
 
 BARGAINS 
 
 "What have you in your basket?" 
 
 I questioned Mother Sleep. 
 "Ah, many a golden casket 
 
 Of jewel-dreams I keep 
 At pastime prices for the friend 
 Who s half an hour or more to spend." 
 
 A hidden life, yet how fruitful in activities 
 was his ! He husbanded the precious moments 
 valued the present as containing the whole of 
 life. 
 
 Tis in the Present I am free 
 
 The mental die to cast; 
 The future yet of mastery 
 
 Is palsied as the past ; 
 Between, the breathless balance still 
 Awaits the hesitating will. 
 
 [114] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 Among many current events that had an 
 abiding interest for the poet we find 
 
 DARIEN 
 
 Thou partest sea from restless lover-sea 
 That, yearning, dream and wait 
 
 The wedding of their waters, soon to be, 
 When Science opes the gate. 
 
 I feel that I am treading on sacred ground 
 when I venture into the temple of his memories. 
 "The Departed" are very near and dear to 
 him; they cannot wholly pass away, 
 
 For spirits in eternity, 
 
 As shadows in the sun, 
 Reach backward into time as we, 
 
 Like lifted clouds, reach on. 
 
 In "Retrospect," all his "old-time griefs" 
 are seen in a new phase : memory transfigures 
 them, 
 
 For there, in reconcilement sweet, 
 
 The human and divine, 
 The loftiest and the lowliest, meet 
 
 On Love s horizon-line. 
 
 Now memory travels back to his Vita Nuova, 
 and he interrogates "The Summer Wind" : 
 
 Art thou the self-same wind that blew 
 When I was but a boy? 
 
 Its voice is sadder, perchance the echo of 
 his own, he muses, now dwelling "beside a sea 
 
 [115] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 of memories." And as loved ones come back 
 under its spell, he questions in surprise : 
 
 Are all the voices lost to me 
 
 Still wandering the world with thee ? 
 
 What a story of loneliness of heart, of thirst 
 for sympathy from his fellows is intimated in 
 "Exaltation!" He apostrophizes the "Leaf 
 upon the highest bough, the Poet of the woods" 
 a symbol of himself and of all souls great in 
 art. The second stanza reads: 
 
 O leaf upon the topmost height, 
 Amid thy heritage of light, 
 
 Unsheltered by a shade, 
 Tis thine the loneliness to know 
 That leans for sympathy below, 
 
 Nor finds what it hath made. 
 
 Who does not recall Michel Angelo, alone 
 Amid his frescoes half divine, 
 
 longing for a word of sympathy, of appreciation 
 from a human being; and this failing, behold! 
 he pulls his Crucifix from his breast, raises it 
 aloft before his last wonderful creation, and 
 asks beseechingly: "Is that not beautiful, my 
 Lord?" This longing is the seal of the kinship 
 of genius with his brother-man. 
 
 [116] 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 A SACRIFICE. "CONSECRATION" 
 
 There is a group of poems that to me are 
 redolent of the incense of life s supreme sacri 
 fice. I consider they can have but one solu 
 tion and that a heavenly one ties rent wil 
 lingly that two souls might walk in a higher 
 vocation, a parting till the eternal years. 
 "Love s Autograph" reads: 
 
 Once only did he pass my way. 
 
 "When wilt thou come again? 
 Ah, leave some token of thy stay!" 
 
 He wrote (and vanished), "Pain." 
 
 "An Influence" is permeated with a celestial 
 loveliness: the symbol in the last stanza rises 
 into sublimity with u a life s libation." 
 
 I see thee heaven s unclouded face 
 
 A vacancy around thee made; 
 Its sunshine a subservient grace 
 
 Thy lovelier light to shade. 
 
 I feel thee as the billows feel 
 
 A river freshening the brine; 
 A life s libation poured to heal 
 
 The bitterness of mine. 
 
 I quote the poem "Consummation" without 
 comment. It veils an experience that only the 
 deep sympathetic insight of a rare reader, per 
 haps, can understand or interpret. 
 
 [n7l 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 The interval 
 We both recall, 
 To each was all 
 
 A moment s space 
 That time nor space 
 Can e er efface. 
 
 Tis all our own 
 A secret known 
 To us alone: 
 
 My life to thee, 
 As thine to me, 
 Eternity. 
 
 It is not without an emotion of holy awe that 
 we can take the poet s hand and enter with him, 
 at his own solicitation, into the sanctuary where 
 that solemn sacrifice of the heart is 
 
 ENSHRINED 
 
 Come quickly in and close the door, 
 For none hath entered here before, 
 The secret chamber set apart 
 Within the cloister of the heart. 
 
 Tread softly ! Tis the Holy Place 
 Where memory meets face to face 
 A sacred sorrow, felt of yore, 
 But sleeping now forevermore. 
 
 Love would not wake it, nor efface 
 Of anguish one abiding trace, 
 Since e en the calm of Heaven were less, 
 Untouched of human tenderness. 
 
 [118] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 "Cloistered" adds another crystal stone to 
 this edifice of conjecture: 
 
 Within the compass of mine eyes 
 Behold a lordly city lies 
 
 A world to me unknown, 
 Save that along its crowded ways 
 Moves one whose heart in other days 
 
 Was mated to mine own. 
 
 I ask no more; enough for me 
 One heaven above us both to see, 
 
 One calm horizon-line 
 Around us, like a mystic ring 
 That Love has set, encompassing 
 
 That kindred life and mine. 
 
 There are other poems and parts of poems in 
 which these sublimated memories of the poet 
 "are mirrored small in Paradise." An edifice 
 of conjecture, I have conceded: yet it is not all 
 conjecture to me, and I often wonder if the 
 grave has closed over that 
 
 secret known 
 To us alone, 
 
 and if only at the gates of eternity it shall be 
 unfolded by the Angel of Sacrifice, with other 
 heroic acts of immolation made by the poet- 
 priest. 
 
 There is a touchingly personal poem which 
 has long been for me a source of perplexed 
 study "Consecration." An English critic 
 said he would be grateful to anyone who would 
 explain to him the first verse, which reads as 
 follows : 
 
 [119] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 The Twilight to my Star, 
 
 Her hoary head 
 A Hope receding far, 
 
 To Life re-led. 
 
 The "Twilight," "hoary head," suggested 
 age. "My Star" just rising, was, of course, 
 his youth. "My Star" could scarcely be "To 
 Life re-led"; but "her hoary head to Life re-led 
 a Hope receding far," is easily comprehensible; 
 the comma omitted after far would give this 
 reading. With the punctuation as it stands, 
 "Her hoary head" is made "A Hope receding 
 far," which in my opinion cannot be made to 
 harmonize with the context. 
 
 My concern, however, was not with textual 
 criticism. I ached to know who the dear "Twi 
 light" was. But first the reader must have the 
 full text. 
 
 The Twilight to my Star, 
 
 Her hoary head 
 A Hope receding far 
 
 To Life re-led. 
 
 Apart and poor I lay; 
 
 My fevered frame 
 Slow withering away, 
 
 When soft she came, 
 
 From comfort, to my care ; 
 
 And Pity sweet 
 Subdued her, kneeling there, 
 
 To kiss my feet. 
 
 [120] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 A Magdalen adored 
 
 Her God in Thee : 
 A greater love, O Lord, 
 
 Anointed me. 
 
 I wondered vainly if "Twilight" were the 
 Mammy whom he so loved, or perhaps his 
 mother, or an elderly relative. And was u his 
 fevered frame slow withering away" after the 
 horrors of his prison life? I could not cease 
 admiring the tenderness and humility of the act 
 recorded in the third stanza, the last line itali 
 cized by the poet himself: 
 
 And Pity sweet 
 Subdued her, kneeling there, 
 To kiss my feet. 
 
 At last, just as this little book is prepared 
 for the press, the solution comes to me from a 
 dear young friend of the poet. While teaching 
 at Saint Paul s School, Baltimore, in 1868, 
 young Professor Tabb became seriously ill of 
 typhoid fever. He was removed to the home 
 of Charles Herman, M. D., where every care 
 and attention was lavished on him, especially 
 by the doctor s aged mother, whose heart over 
 flowed with love and compassion for the South 
 ern youth. One day when the fever was at its 
 height, she entered the sickroom and, believing 
 herself undetected by the patient, who seemed 
 asleep, the venerable old lady "kneeling there" 
 
 [121] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 kissed his feet, and by her act, compared to 
 Magdalen s, has immortalized herself most 
 sweetly in "Consecration." i think the poet 
 raises the poem to a climax in giving it so ex 
 alted a title. 
 
 [122] 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 THE POET S FAILING SIGHT 
 
 An unpretentious little poem entitled "The 
 Tree," written in 1905, in which I solicited of 
 Father Tabb another harvest of fruit in a new 
 book of poems, called forth the following re 
 sponse : 
 
 "March 3, 1905. 
 
 "Thank you, dear , for The Tree 
 
 which ... If you knew me personally you 
 would never so idealize a poor old limb. How 
 very much enchantment a little distance lends! 
 . . . I am the last of my family now, my 
 sister and the boy I love both being gone to, I 
 hope, a happier world. All that has happened 
 shows the goodness of God, for my loss is their 
 gain. Remember them sometimes ! 
 The older I grow, the more am I impressed by 
 the wonderful Ancient Mariner, and I should 
 like to be present at your lecture. May all suc 
 cess attend it ! 
 
 "Yours in Christ faithfully, 
 
 "JOHN B. TABB." 
 
 His tender and protecting love for his sister 
 is touchingly manifest in a previous letter (Jan 
 uary 5, 1903). 
 
 [123] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABS 
 
 "Thank you, dear , for your cordial 
 
 greeting, and know that you have my best 
 wishes and blessing for the year just begun. 
 
 . . My vacation was, for the most part, 
 spent at my sister s bedside. She is a partial 
 paralytic, and so helpless that she cannot stand 
 alone. The summer is always most trying for 
 her; so, except when I went to the Springs for 
 my eyes, every vacation has been spent with her 
 at home. Say a prayer for her sometimes." 
 
 This intense brotherly love inspired some of 
 his most pathetic poems. I think "Noche 
 Triste," "The Night that Bore Me to my 
 Dead," and "Consolation" were inscribed to her 
 memory. Their union of heart and their perfect 
 congeniality in regard to the spiritual and 
 aesthetic relations of life made the great solace 
 of his later years ; and her pride in him was pro 
 portioned to the depth of her sisterly affection. 
 The "lecture" alluded to was an illustrated 
 reading of Coleridge s poem by my pupils. 
 
 Father Tabb refers to his failing sight in a 
 letter of March, 1906. "My eyesight, dear 
 
 , though better than it was, forbids me 
 
 much more than my necessary work, and even 
 this sometimes I have to postpone to a more 
 convenient season. 
 
 It was evidently during this season that his 
 prayerful attitude of soul toward his affliction 
 as well as his painful balancing between hope 
 and fear found expression in the pathetic poem, 
 
 [124] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 FIAT LUX 
 
 "Give us this day our daily bread," and light: 
 For more to me, O Lord, than food is sight; 
 
 And I at noon have been 
 In twilight, where my fellow-men were seen 
 "As trees" that walked before me. E en today 
 From time to time there falls upon my way 
 A feather of the darkness. But again 
 It passes ; and amid the falling rain 
 Of tears, I lift, O Lord, mine eyes to Thee, 
 
 For lo! I see! 
 
 The last lines in his own hand with which 
 the poet favored me came penciled on a postal, 
 the three central lines so intermingled that a 
 powerful reading glass was necessary to locate 
 the words. "20 July, 08. Your prayers, dear 
 
 , have not kept me from the dark, but 
 
 enable me to bear it with greater patience. 
 How very few men can say that in the detrac 
 tion of daylight a great blessing too is theirs! 
 God keep you and bring you closer to Himself 
 prays daily, Always your friend in Xt, John 
 B. Tabb." 
 
 In the middle of August through a friend 
 he gave this statement to the public press : "My 
 sight nearly gone, I remain where I am not 
 as the faculty would generously have me, a pen 
 sioner of the college but paying as long as I 
 am able, full board. It is only to keep me from 
 seeking some asylum that the faculty consents 
 to my having my own way the greatest kind 
 ness it can do me." 
 
 [125] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 Later in the same year a postal, probably in 
 the hand of one of his boys, brought me words 
 of cheer: 
 
 "Nov. 27, 08. 
 
 u Thank you, dear , for your very 
 
 kind letter. Thank God, I am able still to say 
 the Mass daily a blessing I may hope to have 
 even in the dark. My dear boys leave nothing 
 undone for my happiness, so do not imagine me 
 gloomy or depressed. With blessing, and ask 
 ing your pious remembrance, I am always your 
 friend in Christ, 
 
 "JOHN B. TABS." 
 
 (Signed in pencil by himself.) 
 
 Father Tabb s poems had for many years 
 been a sine qua non in my poetry classes. Only 
 the poetry of the Bible or portions of the 
 Shakespearean drama could elicit a greater 
 share of enthusiasm. A morning with the poet- 
 priest was a morning of perfect delight as well 
 as of literary culture. During this and the pre 
 vious year his approaching blindness had 
 wrought upon their sympathies ; and as Thanks 
 giving Day neared, desiring to pay him a little 
 tribute of gratitude and respect, they united in 
 purchasing a basket of fruit which they ex 
 pressed to him for that morning. The usual 
 prompt answer (in an alien hand) bore them 
 this message: 
 
 [126] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 "Nov. 28, 08. 
 
 "My dear young Friends: I have never 
 before been willing to be judged by my fruits; 
 but now, through your kindness, I could ask 
 nothing better. With blessing, believe me very 
 gratefully yours, 
 
 "JOHN B. TABB." 
 
 But to me came a letter deprecating "so 
 costly a gift from your pupils." The closing 
 lines were: "Please let nothing like it ever be 
 done again, and make the girls know how grate 
 ful I am to them." 
 
 [127] 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 BLINDNESS. DECLINE OF HEALTH 
 
 The affliction that had been threatening our 
 poet from early childhood, though long de 
 layed, had then come at last. He accepted its 
 apparently intolerable conditions in a noble and 
 resigned spirit. Partial helplessness was now 
 his earthly lot, yet the soul that had loved soli 
 tude and communion with God and nature was 
 now lifted into a mountain air of spirituality, 
 where, though the agony of Gethsemane sweeps 
 over the lower faculties, yet hope and love pre 
 vail, and maintain in the summit of the spirit 
 the serene atmosphere in which the indwelling 
 of God is known and enjoyed. His own word 
 vouches for this in his poem "Going Blind," 
 published in the Atlantic Monthly, through 
 which the world first learned that its favorite 
 poet sat in darkness. 
 
 GOING BLIND 
 
 Back to the primal gloom 
 
 Where life began, 
 As to my mother s womb 
 
 Must I a man 
 
 Return : 
 Not to be born again, 
 
 But to remain: 
 
 And in the School of Darkness learn 
 What mean 
 
 The things unseen. 
 
 [128] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 And the same assurance is reiterated in 
 "Proximity." 
 
 If closer to the Living Light 
 In darkness let me stay. 
 
 Memory had laid up a rich associational mass 
 in the beauty and glory of nature, in the mental 
 and spiritual treasures which he could still en 
 joy; and the friendship and love which clung to 
 him from a multitude of admirers and friends 
 was a pleasure and a solace; but he who had 
 portrayed in deathless pictures the invisible 
 glories of the saints, of the King and the Queen 
 of Saints, took his chief delight now in closer 
 companionship with them. His steps led him 
 often to the Chapel, where his heart ever dwelt; 
 and he still had the happiness of offering the 
 daily Sacrifice of the Mass. He made his afflic 
 tion indeed a diadem upon his priestly brow. 
 
 His joyous and optimistic spirit still led him 
 as of old into the sunny fields of humor; he 
 could even make merry with his blindness. One 
 of his limericks refers to a current event of the 
 year, and is entitled 
 
 HIGH FLYERS 
 
 There once were two brothers named Wright 
 Who rose in aerial flight; 
 
 But a poet I know 
 
 That much higher could go, 
 For he soared till he got out of sight. 
 
 [129] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 His health in the meantime was persistently 
 failing; he bore it philosophically, for death had 
 no terrors for him. Indeed, the thought of 
 death in its various aspects seemed to have a 
 supreme attraction for his contemplative mind. 
 His early poems proclaim that "Death is but 
 a tenderness"; that it is u sweet to tired mor 
 tality"; and "The Gossip," "The Tollmen," 
 and especially "My Messmate," which opens 
 thus: 
 
 Why fear thee, brother Death, 
 That sharest, breath by breath, 
 This brimming life of mine? 
 
 make manifest the sweet relations that existed 
 in his mind between Life and Death. But now 
 the poems take on a deeper, more solemn note 
 there is a waiting, an expectancy, a keener reali 
 zation, of the awe-sweet change at hand; the 
 veil is falling; his eye glances from earth to 
 Heaven and from the coming Blessedness back 
 to the grave already yawning, full of "sunshine" 
 to welcome him "Dust to Dust." 
 
 "Later Poems," published posthumously, are 
 fragrant with suggestions of death and immor 
 tality, of the resurrection, and of the glories of 
 "Beatitude." 
 
 Yet more than one reveals to us the poet s 
 deep and feeling sense of his suffering and in 
 activity. Christ heartens him in 
 
 [130] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 HELPLESSNESS 
 
 In patience as in labour must thou be 
 
 A follower of Me, 
 Whose hands and feet, when most I wrought for thee, 
 
 Were nailed unto a tree. 
 
 Patience and hope dominate the lines "In 
 
 Extremis": 
 
 Lord, as from Thy body bleeding, 
 Wave by wave is life receding 
 
 From these limbs of mine : 
 As it drifts away from me 
 To the everlasting sea, 
 
 Blend it, Lord, with Thine. 
 
 A personal note of solemn import is struck in 
 the triad of stanzas of "The Vigil," "Stay for 
 Me Here." In the song, "Fade Not Yet," we 
 meet the truism: 
 
 Tis the darkened hours that prove 
 Faith or faithlessness in love. 
 
 The poet s consciousness of the nearer ap 
 proach of the pale Angel is intimated strik 
 ingly in "Death" : 
 
 I passed him daily, but his eyes, 
 On others musing, missed me, 
 
 Till suddenly, with pale surprise, 
 
 He caught and clasped and kissed me. 
 
 Since then his long-averted glance 
 
 Is fixed upon my countenance. 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 One of his latest gems, I think, was a little 
 allegorical poem which bore the title 
 
 IN BLINDNESS 
 
 For me her life to consecrate, 
 
 My Lady Light 
 Within her shadowy convent gate 
 
 Is lost to sight. . 
 
 I may not greet her; but a grace 
 
 A gleam divine 
 The rapture of her hidden face 
 
 Suffuses mine. 
 
 But the chimes of earth are growing faint and 
 the harmonies of the Eternal Kingdom are al 
 ready sounding in his ears. In the light of the 
 Divine Essence flowing into his spirit he sits 
 with darkened sense and transmits to us a mes 
 sage from Heaven in 
 
 BEATITUDE 
 
 And is it well with thee ? 
 
 Ay, past all dreaming, well! 
 
 For here we dwell 
 
 Where none may weep, 
 And Paradise is ours again to keep 
 The tree of Knowledge in the midst thereof. 
 
 All round us angels be 
 
 To guard the gateways, not with sword of flame, 
 But fragrant breathings of the holy Name, 
 That nevermore an after thought of sin 
 May enter in. 
 
 [132] 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 DEATH OF FATHER TABB. FUNERAL EULOGY 
 
 In the fall of 1909 the health of Father Tabb 
 suffered a sensible diminution; and in November 
 his illness bronchial became serious, his 
 physical weakness and sufferings being aug 
 mented, it was thought, by the reaction of his 
 helpless condition on his nerves. Yet his death 
 on the 1 9th came as a shock to everyone. So 
 much seemed yet in the power of the poet-priest 
 to do for the glory of God and for his fellow- 
 men, though "Light, the prime work of God, 
 to him extinct." 
 
 The last consolations of the Church had been 
 his, yet death had not seemed so imminent. 
 Only his physician was watching by his side 
 that fateful night, when, at 1 1 o clock, a sudden 
 sinking spell came over him and in a few min 
 utes all was over. Sorrow and pain and dark 
 ness had passed away forever, O Father, Poet 
 of God, 
 
 and the beam 
 
 Of everlasting morning woke upon 
 Thy dazzled gaze, revealing one by one 
 Thy visions grown immortal in its gleam ! 
 
 The funeral services were held at St. Charles 
 College on November 21, after which the re 
 mains of the beloved poet-priest were borne to 
 
 [133] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 Richmond, Va., and consigned to their last rest 
 ing place in Hollywood Cemetery. The eulogy 
 of Father Tabb s life and works was rightly 
 spoken by one of his most gifted priest-pupils, 
 the Reverend Daniel J. Connor, S. T. L., of St. 
 Peter s Cathedral, Scranton, Pa. Through his 
 gracious kindness I am enabled to place his 
 noble estimate of the life and character of his 
 beloved preceptor before my readers an esti 
 mate in which heart and mind have blended 
 their memories with a depth of appreciation and 
 affectionate penetration rarely met with. I give 
 it herewith : 
 
 "How powerless does death seem in a case 
 like this to win a real victory! It was surely 
 no violent transition by which the soul of 
 Father Tabb passed from the temporal to the 
 eternal. As an exiled spirit he seemed to tread 
 the rough paths of earth, where most of us are 
 content to find a home. It was never more than 
 the thinnest veil that separated him from the 
 invisible world, and hid from him the full mean 
 ing of those intimations far beyond, which he 
 made the subjects of his meditation and his 
 song. All nature was to him an apocalypse, a 
 partial revelation of the beauty that is eternal. 
 
 My God has hid Himself from me 
 Behind whatever else I see, 
 
 he said, and in these words it is not only the 
 poet that speaks, but the man as we all knew 
 
 [134] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 him ; and now by his death we do not feel that 
 a life has been rudely interrupted, as in most 
 cases involuntarily we do, but that rather it has 
 been emancipated and intensified. 
 
 u The world of spirit, which to him was as 
 vivid as the world of sense, is surely no strange 
 element for that ardent soul, which used material 
 things not as realities, but as shadows and sym 
 bols. The worshiper has but passed from the 
 portico into the temple. The light of faith 
 which was a lamp to him has guided him safely 
 through the darkness, and in his own beautiful 
 words : 
 
 The beam 
 
 Of everlasting morning wakes upon 
 His dazzled gaze, revealing one by one 
 His visions grown immortal in its gleam. 
 
 "But yet Father Tabb s death is an occasion 
 of more than ordinary sorrow. In him the lit 
 erary world has lost a great genius, our Alma 
 Mater has lost its chief ornament, and we have 
 lost more than all a true friend. As for the 
 value to be attached to Father Tabb s contribu 
 tion to our literature, only the most discriminat 
 ing critics have as yet discovered and ungrudg 
 ingly allowed him the place he is destined to 
 occupy among his contemporaries. The field of 
 his art was a limited one, his muse having never 
 aspired to anything more pretentious than the 
 lyric, the song that is 
 
 [135] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABS 
 
 Brief to the ear, but long 
 To love and memory, 
 
 but in his own province it is doubtful if he has 
 ever been surpassed. 
 
 "His work, however, was absolutely devoid 
 of that garishness and boisterousness which win 
 the quick applause. He said: 
 
 The noonday never knows, 
 What names immortal are. 
 
 Like that other Catholic poet, Francis Thomp 
 son, who died a year ago, his name was the 
 property of the few who are able to discern 
 genius when it comes unheralded, and, as in his 
 case, the world will no doubt be aroused to a 
 sense of its loss only by the announcement of 
 his death. 
 
 Tis night alone that shows 
 How star surpasseth star. 
 
 "Nature endowed him abundantly with the 
 gifts which make the poet. He was possessed 
 first of all with a rare faculty of intuition, upon 
 which, much more than upon reasoning, he de 
 pended as a guide, not only in detecting aesthetic 
 values, but also in judging the characters and 
 situations of every-day life. And well he might, 
 for it was well nigh infallible. This keenness 
 of perception enabled him to seize those more 
 elusive phases of beauty, which are like revela 
 tions of our hidden selves, that only the true 
 poet can make known to us. Then the exquisite 
 
 [136] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 music of his verse, which is almost suggestive of 
 some set melody, the sureness and felicity of his 
 expression, the purity of his language, the mas 
 culinity of his thought, the utter artlessness, if 
 I may say so, of his art these qualities consti 
 tute his unassailable patent of nobility in the 
 world of letters. 
 
 "But Father Tabb, as he will always linger 
 in our memory, was essentially a worshiper. 
 His art was not an end, but a means. Poetry 
 was for him not a substitution for religion, but 
 an inspiration that made religion the more nec 
 essary. Although he worshiped at a thousand 
 shrines, it was not the god of Pantheism, but 
 the God of faith, the God of Revelation. Child 
 of a generation content with the worship of 
 nature, he rose above the limitations of their 
 poetic creed; and true and responsive as he was 
 to the art tendencies of his day, he was not a 
 man to rest satisfied with tendencies, but went 
 straight for the conclusions toward which they 
 converged. 
 
 "Like St. Augustine in a former age, his soul 
 could never be contented with the vague mysti 
 cism in which literature is too often satisfied to 
 rest as if there were no higher philosophy. He 
 craved for personal and daily intercourse with 
 his Maker and Saviour. He found in a strong, 
 practical Christianity the fulfillment of these 
 aspirations, which it is one of the highest charms 
 of poetry of the past century to express; and 
 
 [i37] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 like another Augustine he could say to the in 
 tellects of his day, who made their religion con 
 sist of a kind of romantic but interminable and 
 impractical quest of the Holy Grail : Quaerite 
 quod quaeritis. Sed ibi non est ubi quaeritis. 
 His imagination could, it is true, detect God s 
 dwelling in the light of setting suns, but his faith 
 found a more real Presence in the light of the 
 sanctuary lamp. His religion was not a senti 
 ment, but a service. It found its best expression 
 not in beautiful verse, but in his heroic Chris 
 tian patience, his touching self-denial, his abso 
 lute and unreserved resignation to the will of 
 God. 
 
 u As to that one event of his life which meant 
 so much to him, and to which most of us here 
 owe the opportunity of knowing Father Tabb 
 at all, his conversion to the Catholic Church, 
 I feel utterly at a loss to speak. No one who 
 has not himself taken the step can tell either the 
 cost or the gain. Cost him it did without doubt. 
 Like so many illustrious converts of the last cen 
 tury, and in obedience to the same intellectual 
 impulse, Father Tabb unhesitatingly left com 
 panionships and associations from which one of 
 his affectionate nature and strong attachments 
 must have found it doubly hard to sever, and 
 sought a home in the midst of strangers 
 strangers not only to him, but often to his tastes 
 and sentiments and ideas. 
 
 "Yet no one can say that he did not find what 
 
 [138] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 he sought. He was content to lose his life, but 
 we are all witnesses how abundantly he gained 
 life by the sacrifices. If anyone ever found a 
 home in the Church, Father Tabb certainly 
 found one. Always a man of great spirituality, 
 of deep religious earnestness, of strong faith 
 and tender piety, he saw in Catholicity what his 
 soul had longed for. Man was there treated 
 as a supernatural being. Grace had its regular 
 means of operation side by side with nature in 
 a visible and imposing dispensation of Provi 
 dence, that seemed to be conducted in defiance 
 of all the laws of history, but yet was willing to 
 have its claims judged by the strictest historical 
 canons. The great truths of Revelation were 
 treated, not as something transcendental from 
 which the human reason could not trust itself 
 to draw conclusions, but as matters on which 
 not only the reason, but the emotions might take 
 hold, as naturally as the child loves its mother, 
 and as safely as a friend puts confidence in a 
 friend. Not only was there belief in the Real 
 Presence, but that belief used the same matter- 
 of-fact logic which we exercise in every-day 
 affairs. Catholics, he saw, not only defended 
 the dogma on principle, but paid visits to the 
 Blessed Sacrament. They not only believed in 
 the Communion of Saints, but they believed so 
 genuinely, so frankly, as to ask the Saints for 
 their intercession with God, and to pray for the 
 souls of their departed friends. 
 
 [139] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 "What these Catholic devotions became to 
 Father Tabb most of us well know, and those 
 of us who did not know, knew their friend only 
 partially. He was Catholic to his heart s core. 
 As he himself expressed it to a priest only a few 
 weeks since, who asked him the circumstances 
 of his conversion: I was always a Catholic 
 born a Catholic. Whenever any doctrine of the 
 Church was spoken of, I knew it was true as 
 soon as I heard it. I would have been a mem 
 ber of the Church years before I was if I had 
 learned what the Catholic doctrines were, and 
 had known that they were taught and practiced 
 in the Catholic Church. When at last he did 
 believe he believed with all his strength and all 
 his mind; and there is many a Catholic today 
 among those who were taught their religion at 
 their mother s knee, for whom Christ s presence 
 on the altar, Mary s influence and authority in 
 Heaven as the Mother of Jesus, the duty of 
 assisting the Souls in Purgatory, took on a new 
 meaning after they had met this amiable man of 
 God, this gentle yet irresistible witness to the 
 unseen. 
 
 "What is more gratifying, however, for us to 
 recall to day as we stand around the mortal re 
 mains of our friend is not what he got from 
 religion, but what he gave in return. Chris 
 tianity is beautiful, but it is austere. The shadow 
 of Calvary will obstinately throw its gloom over 
 the happiness of every Thabor. Human life is 
 
 [140] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 hard to idealize. Christianity alone has suc 
 ceeded in doing it, and she has done it not by 
 escaping from the -stern facts of mortal ex 
 istence or forgetting them, but by recognizing 
 and embracing them with a well-tempered spirit. 
 Dispose thyself to patience rather than to con 
 solation, says the Following of Christ, and to 
 carrying the Cross rather than to gladness ; and 
 it is the only philosophy that has stood the test 
 successfully. The world is full of quixotic 
 plans for a Millenium, and they would all be 
 gin by changing conditions. The Saints, on the 
 contrary, ended by changing conditions about 
 them, but they began by meeting them, by bow 
 ing to them as the inscrutable dispensations of 
 an All-Holy Will, that needs not our genius or 
 our talent, but only our obedience and our docil 
 ity, to accomplish its blessed purpose, as in 
 fallible on earth as in Heaven. 
 
 "Few men have been more deeply impressed 
 with the reality of Divine Providence than 
 Father Tabb, or have paid it a more sincere or 
 a more generous homage by their lives. The 
 presence of God was to him the most luminous 
 of truths. The will of God was the medium 
 through which he looked at whatever befell 
 him, and the thought that reconciled him to all 
 the asperities of his lot, and enabled him to bear 
 them with a cheerfulness and quiet patience that 
 will ever be a precious memory to the friends 
 that witnessed them. His resignation under 
 
 [141] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 that last great affliction which darkened his de 
 clining days among us was the fortitude of per 
 fect Christian faith. I have seen a St. Paul in 
 chains, was the exclamation of Ignatius friends 
 after visiting him in his prison at Salamanca. 
 It was also my sentiment a few months ago, 
 when I came out to St. Charles after hav 
 ing heard of Father Tabb s total and irrep 
 arable loss of eyesight. In reply to my in 
 quiries he answered that he was never happier 
 in all his life. Not a doubt now remained in 
 his mind of what God wished of him. And, he 
 added, if the Almighty came to me and said: 
 "John Tabb, you can have your eyesight back 
 by asking for it," I would not ask. I would be 
 afraid of proving unfaithful to responsibilities 
 of which I might not be fully aware. Now I 
 know perfectly what is God s will, and I am 
 resigned to it. 
 
 "I have said that Father Tabb s religion con 
 sisted not in sentiment, but service. The same 
 was characteristic of his friendship. He con 
 sidered no sacrifice of himself too great, no 
 demand upon his time or his means too large, 
 no personal concern or disappointment or aspi 
 ration too trivial, no necessities of sickness too 
 repulsive, when it was question of his friends. 
 His loyalty resembled more the unselfishness 
 and disinterestedness of a woman s devotion 
 than any quality we are accustomed to find in 
 man s love for man. 
 
 [142] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 If my grief his guerdon be, 
 
 My dark his light, 
 I count each loss felicity, 
 
 And bless the night/ 
 
 was the deliberate and unexaggerated expres 
 sion of the affection he bestowed on those he 
 loved. 
 
 "One word more. It is a great privilege to 
 stand here as spokesman for Father Tabb s 
 friends on this occasion and give utterance to 
 these few thoughts, which are not my sentiments 
 only, but the feelings, I am sure, of all who 
 knew him well; and I wish to use it for the one 
 purpose of asking those prayers, which we owe 
 to the deceased as friend, teacher, and, above 
 all, as the gentle influence that entered into the 
 spring tide of our lives like a benediction from 
 Heaven and molded our sentiments and char 
 acters more than we are aware. Father Tabb s 
 friendship did not cease at the brink of the 
 grave; Death but gave him a fuller oppor 
 tunity of proving its steadfastness and devo 
 tion. One of the greatest consolations of his 
 priesthood was the power it gave him of offering 
 the Holy Sacrifice for his departed dear ones. 
 And though his modesty would deprecate every 
 other sentiment to which I have given expres 
 sion, this one, I know, his own lips would utter 
 were they not deprived of the power: Have 
 pity on me, at least you, O my friends, for the 
 hand of the Lord has touched me. 
 
 [i43l 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY. FATHER TABB s SERMON ON 
 THE ASSUMPTION 
 
 After having completed the foregoing sketch 
 of the venerated priest-poet, Father John Ban 
 nister Tabb, I had the good fortune to discover 
 a sermon delivered by him in Virginia on August 
 15, 1894, the theme being "The Assumption of 
 the Blessed Virgin." It is the only piece of his 
 prose writing I have ever seen in print; and its 
 beauty of diction, its manifestation of ardent 
 love and devotion to the Mother of God, and 
 the clear exposition it contains of the doctrine 
 of the Assumption, both by logic and by analogy, 
 assure me that my readers will esteem this ser 
 mon a happy finish to the considerations they 
 have been asked to make upon the life and 
 poems of the saintly author. 
 
 We are indebted for this solitary specimen 
 of his powerful and persuasive prose to the 
 Reverend Michael J. Ahern, of Old Point Com 
 fort, a pupil and dear friend of Father Tabb, 
 and, like him, a son of the Old Dominion, who, 
 after a possession of twenty years, recently sent 
 the sermon to his friends and former fellow- 
 students of St. Charles College, the present Rev 
 erend Editors of the Baltimore Catholic Re 
 view. It was published in the issue of August 
 
 [144] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 22, 1914, where I saw it. There were some 
 missing lines, however, and I was emboldened 
 to write to Father Ahern for their recovery. 
 My reward was a tasteful booklet containing 
 the sermon printed under his own supervision, 
 the cover bearing beneath the title and author s 
 name Father Tabb s cherished quatrain on "The 
 Assumption." 
 
 Nor Bethlehem nor Nazareth 
 
 Apart from Mary s care ; 
 Nor heaven itself a home for Him 
 
 Were not His mother there. 
 
 Father Ahern writes: "I found the holo 
 graph manuscript of Father Tabb s sermon on 
 the Assumption in one of Newman s works; I 
 think it was Loss and Gain. Father Tabb 
 wrote the quatrain (which served him for a 
 text) in my room at old St. Peter s Cathedral. 
 At that time I happened to be secretary to the 
 late Bishop Van de Vyver and had invited 
 Father Tabb to keep up his good habit of 
 preaching on Lady Day. 
 
 "As he was always fond of me, he gladly con 
 sented and hence this gem. I asked him for 
 the manuscript, and much against his wont he 
 gave it to me. At Father Ed. Mickle s Jubilee 
 I mentioned that I had the sermon to Bishop 
 Donohue, Msgr. Starr, Msgr. Russell and 
 Father Shandelle, S. J., and they were of one 
 mind that I should have it published. I did so." 
 
 [i45l 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 SERMON ON THE ASSUMPTION 
 
 Delivered by Father Tabb August 15, 1894 
 
 The meaning of the feast of the Assumption 
 is this : that the body, as well as the soul, of the 
 Blessed Virgin has been taken up to Heaven; 
 that what will be done for the least of God s 
 saints in the general resurrection, has been done 
 for her already. This, and this only, is the 
 meaning of the mystery. 
 
 But a short time ago a meeting was held in 
 the State of Virginia, to which even the Presi 
 dent of the United States considered it a privi 
 lege to receive an invitation; and the object of 
 this gathering at Fredericksburg was to honor 
 the long-neglected grave of a woman named 
 Mary the mother of George Washington. 
 
 Suppose, when this project was planned, that 
 some one had raised this objection: that to show 
 such respect to the memory of the mother was 
 an insult to her son; would not people men, 
 women and children, have scouted this idea? 
 
 "But what," the objector might urge, "did 
 Mary Washington ever do for this people? 
 She never led our armies nor directed our af 
 fairs. Twas her son that secured us our liber 
 ties, not she." "True," we should answer, "but 
 like mother, like child, and it was to his mother, 
 as Washington well knew, that he owed his best 
 qualities. The influence of his father he could 
 
 [146] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 hardly remember; and had not his mother di 
 rected his course, he would never have been 
 what he was, nor have done what he did for 
 his country. As the tree is known by the fruit, 
 so the parent is known by the child; and in this 
 case the training of the mother alone bore its 
 fruit in her son." 
 
 Such is the warrant we should claim for our 
 conduct in the recent celebration; and such is the 
 warrant that the Church claims today in paying 
 her homage to the Mother of God. 
 
 The analogy is close. The common run of 
 men bear the stamp of both parents. It was 
 less so with Washington, who hardly knew his 
 father; and not so at all with Our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, who on earth had no father. His hu 
 manity came from his Mother alone. "He was 
 conceived of the Holy Ghost ; born of the Virgin 
 Mary." His virginal flesh was the fruit of a 
 Virgin: His whole human nature was the off 
 spring of hers. If, then, we honor the mother 
 of Washington, shall we not, following the self 
 same path, come to the honor of the Mother of 
 God? 
 
 Consider it more closely: God, had He 
 willed it so, might have created a new man, like 
 Adam, from the dust of the earth. He could 
 make the very stones of the street, as He tells 
 us, raise up children unto Abraham. But He 
 did not so will. As He spake by the mouth of 
 His holy prophet, U A Virgin shall conceive and 
 
 [147] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 bear a Son, and shall call His name Emmanuel. " 
 Behold, what a mother! Virginity her birth 
 right and Motherhood her dower, and out of 
 both a priceless possession of God as no other 
 could possess Him! His flesh is her flesh, and 
 her flesh alone, as no other child s could be that 
 had an earthly father. Bone of her bone, and 
 flesh of her flesh; closer than wedlock is the 
 union between them. But this fact reaches far 
 ther. The motherhood of Mary was to bring 
 God on earth. U A Virgin shall conceive and 
 bear a Son, and shall call His name Emmanuel 
 God with us." 
 
 But in His Divine nature there is no change. 
 He is and was everywhere before the Incarna 
 tion as He was and is now. The fact, then, 
 that He is brought nearer to us is in virtue of 
 His humanity; and hence it is that when He is 
 one with His Mother, then, and then only, is 
 He made one with us. 
 
 "It behooved Him to suffer," says St. Paul, 
 "for our salvation"; but the power to feel suf 
 fering, much less to die, was impossible even to 
 the Almighty God, except through that nature 
 that His Mother bestowed. Nor does Mary s 
 claim to our reverence stop here. What she 
 was to her Son in the order of generation she 
 was destined to be also in the order of influence. 
 Had she died at the time of Our Blessed Lord s 
 birth, she had fulfilled the prophecy. The Vir 
 gin had conceived and borne a Son; Emmanuel 
 
 [148] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 was with us ; the Incarnation was accomplished. 
 But it was not so to be. She was to think for 
 Him, speak for Him, act for Him; wrap Him 
 in swaddling clothes and lay Him in the man 
 ger; flee with Him from Herod, and bring Him 
 back from Egypt; find Him in the Temple and 
 return with Him to Nazareth, where for thirty 
 years He is subject to her. Nay; she must fol 
 low Him even unto Calvary, and stand in that 
 darkness at the foot of the Cross, that hers, the 
 first face He had looked upon on earth, might 
 be also the last. 
 
 Thus did our Blessed Lord make himself a 
 debtor to the Mother He had chosen. And 
 what shall be her recompense? 
 
 If the servant that had faithfully used the 
 two talents was put over five cities, and he that 
 used five talents ruled over ten, what reward 
 shall our Blessed Lord give unto His Mother, 
 to whom was entrusted, not the treasure of this 
 world, but the unreserved guardianship of His 
 own Divine Person? Shall he not do for her 
 all and much more than He ever did for others? 
 Yet Enoch and Elias had been bodily trans 
 lated. The son of the widow, the daughter of 
 the ruler, the servant of the centurion had been 
 raised from the dead; and Lazarus, after four 
 days corruption of the grave, had been called 
 back to life again. What, then, remains to be 
 done for His Mother? 
 
 [149] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 Even had tradition taught us nothing of this 
 feast, would it not seem a necessity of love that 
 where her Son s body was, hers should be also? 
 It was sin that broke the union ot body and soul 
 that God had joined together. But in her was 
 no sin. She had paid indeed the penalty as her 
 Son himself had done, and why should her spot 
 less flesh linger in the tomb? He had hastened 
 the hour of His own Resurrection; why should 
 He not anticipate the time of His Mother s, 
 for whom, though He told her His hour was 
 not come, He had wrought His first miracle? 
 It was but to give her a privilege beforehand 
 that all were to have in the general resurrection. 
 Why delay it till then? 
 
 An Apostle had said to Him once upon earth : 
 "Lord, show us the Father"; and may we not 
 think that the citizens of Heaven, adoring the 
 Humanity at the right hand of God, might ask 
 of Him, "Show us thy Mother, O Lord! Thy 
 nature is twofold, and we see but one source 
 of it. Show us the Blessed Mother from whom 
 the other came. We will say to her, Hail ! full 
 of grace! as did Gabriel; we will cry, as did 
 Elizabeth, Whence is this to us! As among 
 women, we would call her blessed here; for to 
 which of the angels canst thou say Thou art my 
 Mother? " And would not His own Heart 
 have prompted the request? After His own 
 suffering and death in this world, it seemed but 
 the least He could do for His Father to ascend 
 
 [150] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 to Him in Heaven; and now when her course 
 is accomplished on earth, it seems but the least 
 He could do for His Mother to take her home 
 with Him. Has He forgotten Bethlehem? Has 
 He forgotten Nazareth? Is Heaven itself a 
 home for Him in the absence of His Mother? 
 She sleeps, but her heart waketh! Shall He 
 not shorten the time of her sleep? Arise, my 
 beloved, my fair one, my dove," are the words 
 of His canticle. "Let us go hence together! 
 The winter is past!" 
 
 And she in the joy of awakening, exclaims: 
 "Behold, I come quickly ! Yea : let us go hence ! 
 The wings of the morning are awaiting us ! 
 Let us rise as did the turtle doves I offered in 
 Thy Childhood and flee unto Thy mountain, 
 my God and my Son !" 
 
 DEO GRATIAS. 
 
 [151! 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 ST. CHARLES AND THE SULPITIANS. A 
 MEMORIAL TO THE POET-PRIEST 
 
 There are few chapters in Church History, 
 I think, more touching, more redolent of ex 
 alted virtue and heroic sacrifice than the story 
 of the advent of the early Sulpitians to our bar 
 ren shores in 1791, and their labors under that 
 Prince of noble Prelates, the Most Reverend 
 John Carroll, first Archbishop of Baltimore. 
 The heart leaps with high desires and the eyes 
 grow moist as we read of those renowned the 
 ologians and eminent professors, many of them 
 directors of famous European seminaries, a 
 Nagot, a Tessier, a Flaget, a Gamier, and 
 others of equal sanctity and erudition, exiling 
 themselves from their beloved France to open 
 in a strange land a mission that meant inevitably 
 trials, hardships and privations. 
 
 But a brief space after, when the horrors of 
 the French Revolution burst upon the world, 
 when the blood of thousands was flowing from 
 the guillotine, when the temples of God in 
 which they had worshiped were destroyed or 
 profaned, and the pure souls of their training 
 were scattered afar from the sanctuary on which 
 they had built their hopes, those holy and self- 
 denying Sulpitians were laying the foundations 
 
 [152] 
 
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THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 of the City of God in other equally pure and 
 lofty souls, destined to a more arduous and ex 
 tended mission dedicated to serve and com 
 fort souls dispersed over the great and inhos 
 pitable areas of our own rising Republic. 
 
 St. Mary s Seminary was their creation and 
 inherited their spirit; and St. Charles is the 
 offspring of this noble institution. Those daunt 
 less pioneers of San Sulpice, though defeated 
 and defeated in this last dear project of their 
 hearts, at length conquered the stubborn force 
 of circumstances; and the cornerstone of St. 
 Charles, the college of priestly vocations, was 
 laid by the aged patriot, Charles Carroll of Car- 
 rollton, in Ellicott City, Md., in 1831. 
 
 Since then nearly a century has flown by a 
 guardian spirit on wings of hope, bearing up 
 to the throne of the Eternal uncomputed treas 
 ures of holiness and merit from that temple of 
 His love, that home of peace and learning, that 
 nursery of young Levites, St. Charles College. 
 
 And there among his saintly brethren of the 
 priesthood, guarding and nourishing and loving 
 the ardent, intrepid youths Providence intrusted 
 to his care, our priest-poet watched happily, 
 day by day, divine grace working its hidden 
 wonders in their souls, like the u Sap" in the 
 tree, its appropriate symbol : 
 
 Strong as the sea, and silent as the grave, 
 
 It ebbs and flows unseen ; 
 Flooding the earth a fragrant tidal wave 
 
 With mist of deepening green. 
 
 [i53l 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 But the "fragrant tidal wave" of grace, only 
 angels behold "flooding the earth" kindling 
 a new and heavenly life in the hearts of men. 
 
 Alas! pilgrimages may no longer be made 
 to the spots rendered dear by Father Tabb s 
 presence. The old St. Charles College of Elli- 
 cott City, so cherished by thousands as their 
 Alma Mater, became a prey to the flames in 
 March, 1911, and was utterly destroyed. 
 Father Tabb s friends felt that it was through 
 a benign providence he was called away before 
 this catastrophe befell the sacred home around 
 which the tendrils of his heart had so long been 
 twined. How profound and lasting would have 
 been his sorrow! 
 
 Since his saintly spirit left 
 
 Its earthly habitation void and chill, 
 
 and went forth to receive the crown of justice 
 from his liege Lord and Master, six times the 
 spring flowers have bloomed and faded on his 
 grave in Hollywood Cemetery. 
 
 His memory has not faded away; he still 
 lives in the hearts of thousands whom he bene 
 fited. St. Charles College still breathes of his 
 presence. In many a pulpit voices are raised in 
 defense of the faith that are now pregnant with 
 power because of his cultured teachings. 
 
 It is a matter of surprise, therefore, that there 
 has been no movement as yet to create a 
 Memorial Father Tabb Scholarship for stu- 
 
 [154] 
 
THE PRIEST-POET 
 
 dents at St. Charles College, the institution so 
 dear to his heart, so embalmed with his pres 
 ence for thirty-five years as professor, priest 
 and poet. 
 
 No tribute to his memory could be more 
 grateful to Father Tabb. A poet s lovers and 
 admirers hasten after his death to erect a statue 
 of their favorite, or a monument or tablet en 
 chased with his name, with a panegyric of his 
 worth, that the eyes of men may witness to a 
 love which extends beyond the grave a loyalty 
 that can cheat even death of the beauty and 
 grace of its beloved and keep his name and 
 fame ever alive in the hearts of men. How 
 beautiful is this an honor to some of the 
 noblest traits of human nature! But to raise 
 a spiritual memorial to the beloved dead for 
 the eyes of God and His angels ! to place under 
 the sheltering roof of God s temple a soul that 
 longs u to serve Him in holiness and justice all 
 the days of his life," a soul that shall raise 
 daily to Him the Sacred Victim of our altars, 
 shall spend himself for the conversion and 
 guidance of souls in the way of truth and sanc 
 tity what more glorious to God than an offer 
 ing like this what more precious to His Holy 
 Church than such an ever-living memorial of her 
 departed Levite ! 
 
 It seems to me that only the suggestion is 
 necessary to Father Tabb s friends to set the 
 wheels of liberality in motion toward this great 
 
 [155] 
 
JOHN BANNISTER TABB 
 
 end. For a consummation so devoutly to be 
 wished we rely not alone on the long procession 
 of grateful and appreciative students whom 
 Father Tabb so ably led through the pleasant 
 paths of literature, not alone on his brethren 
 of the priesthood to whom his life and writings 
 were an honor, not alone on the hosts of friends 
 so near and dear to his heart; with equal cer 
 tainty of response we may appeal to the wide 
 circle of his readers, who for long years have 
 derived untold pleasure from the poems, have 
 been uplifted, taught and made better 
 by the heavenly influence of 
 JOHN BANNISTER TABB. 
 
 156 
 
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 LD21-100/,i-7, 33 
 
.P. 
 Joh; .rfiei 
 
 331051 
 
 33T05 
 
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