“A barren creed had starved me.”
God called him
“to fill the place of some
Ingrate who had thrown his childhood’s faith away,”
and within the consecrated precincts of the priesthood he discovered a gracious light upon his imagination—the light of Our Lady. So he has proved her poet; and the tributes that he lays at her feet are rich and warm with the full beating ardor of manhood’s love. The pure sensuousness which gives strikingly what the painters would call “fine flesh-tint” to the poems will prove a strong attraction to the fervent hearts of thousands who, like Father Hill, love the Mother of our Lord with an uncontrollable intensity of human affection, but who, unlike him, are unable fittingly to express that affection to her, or even to define it to themselves or to others. Father Hill is literally the knight of Mary, and he does more than the obligations of knighthood required; for, in addition to loving, fighting for, and seeking his reward from her, he sings her praise. He gives her at once his sword and his lyre. The beauty of this chivalry of the soul is not easily to be understood by the shallow or the thoughtless; yet even the irreverent will acknowledge its holiness, and the commonest mind will be unable
to resist its singular charms. Who can be insensible to such loyalty to the religious ideal as this?
“TO BE FORGIVEN.
“I call thee ‘Love’—‘my sweet, my dearest Love’
Nor feel it bold, nor fear it a deceit.
Yet I forget not that, in realms above,