Publish their wistfulness abroad:
I have not spoken of these things,
Save to one man, and unto God.
By no means insignificant is the "criticism of life" throughout this poetry. Lionel Johnson was one of a little band who through all the turmoil of late nineteenth-century thought—through the storms of rationalism and materialism and so-called realism—kept their faces steadfastly toward the East. Truth and Beauty shone as twin stars before his quiet gaze; it was his supreme achievement to create works of art which "suffice the eye and save the soul beside." His message, all along, was one of reconciliation. He contrived to be at once the apostle of culture and of devotion, of art and of nature, of modernity and of the ancient. His love for Catholicity and for Ireland nowise lessened his joy in England; nor did his exultation in the forest wilds dull his ears to the call of London's thoroughfares. One marvels, seeing the gracious harmony of his pages, where the imagined hostility could have lain. Now, of course, one cause of this comprehensive view was the aloofness of his attitude. His sensitiveness was very exquisite, his sympathy with human experience was very keen; but he stood a little apart from life. His was the attitude of philosopher and contemplative; although never that of the mere academician. Perhaps his own interior struggle served to obviate a natural tendency toward exclusiveness, and to unite the poet with his great labouring and suffering brotherhood. It is never easy for a temperament like Johnson's to overcome its intolerance for many aspects of human nature. It is never easy to recognise that the spirit is willing and the flesh
