Mary Patmore's life they resided first at "Heron's Ghyl" (an extensive Sussex estate which Coventry spent several healthful years in supervising and improving) and later at old Hastings by the sea. The circumstances of the family were, of course, vastly more felicitous than during the early days; and now for the first time in his life Patmore found leisure for continuous concentrated study, as well as for that quiet meditation which is the seed-time of creative thought. His preoccupation with theology proved more absorbing than ever; so that he often spent four hours a day upon the works of the more mystical saints—Bernard and John of the Cross, St. Teresa's Road to Perfection, and always the monumental Summa. In the symbolic teaching of Emanuel Swedenborg, also, he found many points of agreement, being wont to declare that the latter's "Catholic doctrine without Catholic authority" would deceive, if possible, the very elect.
A slender volume of nine Odes, printed for private distribution in 1868, inaugurated Coventry Patmore's second and greatest poetic period. Superficially, there may seem but slight continuity between these searching and paradoxical poems and the domestic Angel—yet in essence they are close akin. For the master-passion of Patmore's life and the abiding inspiration of his poetry were identical: his work was one long Praise of Love. And so it was to an artistic and mystical development rather than to any temperamental breach that these odes bore witness. Our poet spoke, indeed, a language little intelligible to his countrymen; and the white heat of his passion, his seemingly esoteric psychology, and his uneven but arresting metres inspired dismay rather than any other emotion. Few of those men (poets, for the most part) to whom the
