The Poetry of Freemasonry

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Please do not assume that a book's appearance in 'The Builder' library means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe. The Webmaster >S\.> ^A my. CfforttcU Ittioeraitg ffithtarg atljara, Sf*m l»rk FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030294510 The Poetry of Freemasonry. ROBERT MORRIS, LL.D. MASONIC POET-LAUREATE. ^TT-^Kl^ /•/-,./;/ ( Ilis /,,/r,/ p/ln/n--ni//l) THE Poetry of Freemasonry, ROB MORRIS, LL.D. WRITER AND LECTURER ON FREEMASONRY FOR FORTY YEARS, AND BY UNIVERSAL CONSENT MASONIC POET-LAUREATE. WITH PORTRAIT AND AN AUTHENTIC BIOGRAPHY WRITTEN BY HIS SON ROB MORRIS. Jamgue opus exegi, quod non Jovis ira luc ignis, Nee poteritferrum, nee edax obolere vetustas. —OviD. CHICAGO, NEW YORK, LONDON, BERLIN, PARIS. THE WERNER COMPANY. 1895. Copyright, By Robert Morris, LL.D. 1884. Copyright, 1 895. By The Werner Company, R.W. WILLIAM JAMES HUGHAN, OF TORQUAY, ENGLAND, AUTHOR OF VARIOUS WORKS ILLUSTRATING THE EARLY HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY IN GREAT BRITAIN, PAST SENIOR GRAND DEACON OF THE UNITED GRAND LODGE OF ENGLAND, Etc., Etc. WITH PROFOUND ADMIRATION FOR YOUR TALENT, INDUSTRY, AND AMIABLE QUALITIES, AND THE MOST ARDENT GRATITUDE FOR YOUR PERSONAL KINDNESS, I DEDICATE TO YOU THIS LAUREATE. EDITION. INDUCTION. INDEBTED as I am to a rare circle of intelligent friends for my title and my title page, and many of the prose thoughts interspersed through these pages, it is nevertheless thought best that I should write my own Preface and subscribe it with my own name. This counsel I the more readily accept, as it enables me to speak as if personally to the large number of Brethren, at whose request many of these pieces were composed. In former editions- their names were attached respectively to the various odes and poems, but for good reasons they are omitted in this. When in 187 1, the disastrous fire in Chicago destroyed the plates of my Masonic Poems and many other works, I resolved never again to publish. The fire fiend had followed me so far and fast since 1837 that I felt too old and too indigent to challenge him further. But the importunities of friends and the gentle yearnings of authorship were, after all, too much for me; and in 1875 I made a collection of some four hundred of my poetical productions, long and short, and gave them to the winds. They have been well received by the reading world, ten editions having been taken up, and an increasing demand appears now to exist. So I am induced to make one more contribution to Masonic literature (my last), in this large and tasty edition, and courteously commend the efforts of forty years to the patronage of the Masonic Craft. Those who have honored my poems by perusal are aware that they were composed, for the most part, up07i the wing. On horseback, on foot, in coach and in car, at wayside inns and on the sea, the genius of song has found me and inspired me in the modest way that appears in these pages. Emphatically, my contribu- tions to the poetry of Masonry z.^^ fugitive pieces. What I might have done could I have had leisure,— could I have found kind friends to give me the means of leisure for half a year,— will never be known. Years, verging upon threescore and ten, blunting eye and ear and dulling the sense deeper than both, warn me to be content that "what is writ is writ." Twenty years since, before a brilliant assembly of Masons and their lady guests at Indianapolis, Indiana, I expressed, in effect, the following thoughts upon "The Poetry of Masonic Literature": INDUCTION. If Masonic literature may justly be divided, like other branches of human knowledge, into departments, then we may style one of those divisions Poetry. The biographical, historical and ritualistic divisions, added to that which is termed belles-lettres, in which fiction is introduced by way of parable, make up the ordinary understanding of Masonic literature, to which I would add Poetry as the complement. It is not too much to say that this branch of Masonic learning has been over- looked and neglected by Masonic writers. The Order has had among its votaries Walter 'Scott, Lamartine, Thomas Moore, William Cowper, James Hogg, Robert Burns, George D. Prentice, George P. Morris, Charles Mackay, James P Percival, and many others of poetic fame,— men whose effusions will survive while sweet sentiments, wedded to melodious diction, have any value; but the united efforts of all these poets applied to Masonic themes scarcely fill a dozen pages. Burns wrote one Masonic ode, and rested. It is his "Adieu, a heart-vvarm, fond adieu," a piece so exquisitely affecting, so filled with Masonic imagery that we cannot read it without sensations of regret that he wrote no more. Scott, Hogg, Moore, Mackay, none of them, so far as I know, ever contributed so much as a line to the poetry of Masonic literature. George P. Morris composed at least one ode, " Man dieth and wasteth away," which is worthy the man and the theme. Giles F. Yates contributed a para- phrase of the 133d Psalm, which has gone into large use in our lodges, "Behold, how pleasant and how good." Thomas Smith Webb left one upon record, "All hail to the morning," abounding with poetic fire and Masonic imagery. David Vinton gave us "Solemn strikes the funeral chime," which has found extraordinary favor as a funeral hymn. With this our stock of Masonic poetry is exhausted. Not but that there is much jingle, mixed with stanzas of merit scattered through the pages of our books and periodicals, but they are not such as will be selected by future writers to exemplify this Masonic age. And why is this? Does not the subject of Freemasonry suggest to the poetic mind a flight skyward ? If religion, and especially that derived from the contem- plation of the Holy Scriptures, constitutes so favorable a theme for poets because of its extraordinary array of imagery,— types, symbols, emblems and what not,— does not Freemasonry abound even more in such things? In fact, Freemasonry is composed of allegory, types, imagery, etc.; it is in itself a true "chamber of imagery." The very nature and purpose of the Order is to teach one thing by means of another, — to suggest an inward truth by an outward emblem. Yet the great writers whose are names given above seem never to have recognized this. Robert Burns in found the murmur of a brook and the warbling of a bird the vlll. IXDUCTIOX. voice of his mistress. Walter Scott saw through the outlines of a rusty lance- head or broken pair of spurs the imagery of a well foughten field. Thomas Moore drew from the twang of a ncketty lute wails of lamentation for the deca- dence of his green old Ireland. All this is in the nature of suggestion, the very essence of poetry. Yet these men could look coldly upon the most pregnant images of Freemasonry, the G, the Broken Column, the ^Mystic Pillars, and a score of others; they could listen to a rehearsal of the Masonic covenants without once considering the inexhaustible mine of poetic thought of which these were only the surface. As compared with any other theme, I would give the preference to Symbolical ^Masonry as the richest in poetic thought, and I can only hope that the day is not distant when a great poet will arise who will be to Freemasonry what Scott was to chivalry, Moore to patriotism.

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