Decadents, Symbolists, Anti-Decadents

LIONEL JOHNSON

Poems 1895

Lionel Johnson (1867-1902) was the most learned of the poets of the Rhymers’ Club, a classicist, medievalist, and disciple of Pater. He was also a critic, author of a study of the novels of Hardy and contributor of essays and reviews to literary journals. He was an Englishman who fell under the spell of Ireland, and a convert to Catholicism. With Yeats he links the poetry of the Decadence to the Irish Literary Revival.

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His are the whitenesses of soul
That Virgil had: he walks the earth
A classic saint, in self-control,
And comeliness, and quiet mirth.

His presence wins me to repose:
When he is with me, I forget
All heaviness: and when he goes,
The comfort of the sun is set.

But in the lonely hours I learn,
How I can serve and thank him best:
God! trouble him: that he may turn
Through sorrow to the only rest.

(‘A Friend’, page 69)

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Poetry of the 1890s