Western Daily Press, 27 March 1877, p. 6

It is gratifying to find a parish priest of the nineteenth century, like another George Herbert, cultivating the muse of poetry to such good purpose as the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley has done in his “Book of Bristol Sonnets.” The author is well known to us as a zealous and energetic promotor of the successful movement for the preservation of St. Werburgh’s Tower, and, though not a Bristolian by birth, is evidently a keen admirer of all that is historical or picturesque in our good old city. Indeed the present volume shows that it is possible for a comparative stranger to have a far more thorough acquaintance with local history, customs, traditions, and topography, than a large majority of our native citizens.

Mr. Rawnsley gracefully dedicates his book to the Rev. Edward Thring, the distinguished headmaster of Uppingham School, “with the gratitude and affection of an old pupil,” who, we must say, reflects, credit alike on his preceptor and his alma mater. He has evidently studied Wordsworth and Charles Tennyson Turner to great advantage and seems to be instinctively imbued with the idea and the “swing” of a sonnet. This species of versification is here applied not only in romantic stories and scenery, but to such prosaic sublunary matters as the Tramway Cars, the Steam “Hooter,” and the opening of Avonmouth Docks, and we are bound to admit that, so far from proving a reductio ad absurdam, these everyday things are so tastefully treated by our poet that his thoughts even on them are fraught with pleasure and profit to the most unpoetical mind.

To show the extent of the topics touched upon by Mr. Rawnsley, it will suffice to say that he takes us back to the imprisonment of Eleanor de Montfort in Bristol Castle, more than 600 years since, and carries us on by easy stages to the inauguration of the Port and Channel Dock last month, with respect to which sonnet we may admire the felicitous taste of our author without sharing his ominous forebodings!. Distance as well as date is a matter of little moment, for we find Bristol thoughts and associations travelling to Nibley Knoll, Tintern Abbey, and the “broad water of the West,” at Clevedon, till we feel that those places are, for poetical purposes at least, mere outskirts of our ancient city. One new feature is the fullness of the author’s explanatory notes, coupled with extracts from such authorities as Barrett, Seyer, John Taylor, and other local historians, which go far to enhance the value of the poetry.

Some half dozen of these sonnets have already appeared in our columns signed “H. D. R.” No fewer than six sonnets are devoted to views, and objects of interest in the neighbourhood of Ashley Hill, which appears to be a favourite standpoint and haunt of the poet’s.

We do not hesitate to take issue with the modest prefatory statement that this book “has little to recommend it,” and we anticipate that it will receive the merited recommendation of many a thoughtful reader. In one or two instances perhaps sufficient prominence has not been given to the main idea—the centre around which all other ideas should be grouped as subordinates. But it would be an unjust and thankless task to criticise such a work unfavourably on that account, and we therefore proceed to quote one of the most characteristic of the author’s efforts, which we think speaks volumes for his true poetic taste and keen observation.

The Great Fire in Christmas Street

1876

With ruin in their face, from far and near,
Ran the pale merchants on that dreadful night;
The Lansdown cotter shuddered at the sight;
And bold sea-captains crowded sail in fear!
Ha! the flames catch, they ramp from tier to tier!
Tiles slip, the roofs are skeletons of light!
Crash! and upspring huge fountains starry bright!
And, with a groan, walls reel and disappear!
That night the Frome ran steaming round the
      keels!
On heated bells Saint John gave forth the hour!
Choked, as they toiled, men plied their engine
      reels;
And still flames drank, and still they would devour;
Till surfeited they fell at break of day,
And in the sobbing streets black homeless ruin lay.

The note of exclamation might have been a little more sparingly used, but some of the metaphors are most vivid—notably the “sobbing streets.” A similar instance may be found in the sonnet on Berkeley Castle, where we have the mowing machines spoken of as a “knived chariot”—an epithet which recalls the war cars of the Ancient Britons, with their formidable scythes, the literal “mowing machines” of the dark ages! We think the specimen we have given cannot fail to call attention to the collection of which it is a fair sample.

We must take leave of this beautiful book (the exterior of which, emblazoned with the earliest of our city seals, is worthy of the interior) without expressing a hope that it will find a place in many a library, and, in the author’s words, teach its readers “to reverence what is honourable in the past, and live more nobly in the present.”

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