Christ came walking adown the way,
    The broken cottage was open wide,
There, in her coffin, a young child lay,
    And pale for sorrow the mother cried,
    “Hadst Thou been here she had never died.”

The men were on strike, and the money was spent,
    The doctors said they could do no good,
So off with his pick, my master went,
    But he came back bruised, and covered with blood,
    He had dared, for his darling, to seek some food.

And the Christ, in pity He groaned a groan
    “Have the children hereabout asked for bread
And the hand of the fathers given a stone,—
    That now the fathers are stoned instead,
    And their own babes wither, and die unfed”?

Then Christ went on thro’ the wind and cold
    And the poor man crouched at an empty grate,
Cried “Sir be with us as once of old,—
    I starve, while our leaders in comfort prate,
    But dearer coal cannot mend my state.

And Christ made answer, “I too felt
    The cold, while others were warmed at the fire;
Thro’ all the centuries men have knelt
    To kiss my robe, they have not come higher
    To God,—Love’s warmth was my soul’s desire”.

And the Christ went thence to the meeting room,
    The Union leaders, they bade him in,
He heard their passionate fret and fume,
    With talk of coal-proprietor’s sin,
    And vows of vengeance, if money should win.

And He said, in a pause,—“Have ye never heard
    That all under God have equal rights
But they who follow great mammon for Lord
    Have equal wrongs, but unequal fights
    The Law of Service alone unites”. 

Then the Christ He came to the Hall of debate,
    Where the grim coal-owners were talking loud,
He called the man from the empty grate,
    He brought the child in her coffin’s shroud,
    And he summoned outside a hungry crowd.

Rights of property,—owner’s choice,—
    Rights of Capital,—contracts free,—
Claims of manor, with lordly voice,
    Cries of coal coming over the sea
    Mingled with Mammon’s unholy glee.

But lo! in a hush,—out spake the Christ,
    “God who made it, He claims the coal
How shall labour be fairly priced
    And the broken heart of a land be whole
    Till Love for the Living have paid its toll”?

From the street of the city, from far-off glen,
    At the saying of Christ there came a sound,
And the great blast-furnaces roared “Amen”
    And a cheer ran thundering under-ground,
    And the factory wheels went humming round.

For Love of the Living to help the land,
    For love of the dying to keep alive,
The masters reached to the men a hand,—
    And the men their hands in return would give
    And Labour and Capital ceased to grieve.

(Unpublished poem. RR/3/1 in the Rawnsley Archives)

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As we neared the entrance to the gorge our minds were distressed beyond measure by the advertisements advocating visits to the rival caves.  Cox was clearly the man who had the key to stalactite secrets.  Gough was the man who kept in his cavern-treasury echoes of 80,000 years ago, and the skull and bones of a prehistoric troglodite.  To judge by photographs of the skull of the old cave-dweller, dentists were not needed in those days.  It was a great relief to turn from this touting for custom to the beautiful sheet of water, the sound of whose fall at the weir into the garden of the Cliff hostelry filled the air, but whose shining surface, here and there white with water-crowfoot, gave back so much of reflection of white cloud and garden beauty as to rebuke us by its generosity, its motto clearly being “To give is better than to get.” (pp. 66-67)

This sheet of water, with its garden ground, its poplar trees, and its cottages, each bowered in roses or gay with “bridal wreath,” is the picturesque feature of the entrance to the gorge, and when we see how badly treated it has been by the throwing into it of potsherds and broken china, we cannot but fear that in a few years’ time its beauty will be entirely lost to inhabitants and visitors by being enclosed with some huge protective wall, for the Bristol Water Company has lately obtained power over it by Act of Parliament by a purchase not only of the water-pool, but of the Cliff Hotel and its grounds close by; and though they agreed not to take water from this emergency source if less than three million gallons of water are passing down to the village, they probably have also obtained powers to protect by any means they choose their fountain head, with certain loss to the amenity of the approach to the gorge. (pp. 67-68)

High up above the cottages, on the left hand as we neared the gateway of the gorge, lay couchant the huge lion-rock.  The beauty of tree growth on the right hand, filled with the song of the willow warbler, the fresh green leafage in contrast with the grey cliff behind was delightful, and it was with real sense of relief we found ourselves away from all the busy life of the village, in the calm tranquillity of the great precipices high above us. (p. 68)

The jackdaws, it is true, clamoured from the clefts, but no other sound broke the silence, which seemed to grow as we passed upward, and we were soon opposite the debris heaps that mark the work of the steam stone-breaker, that as late as 1912 was doing its best, in the interests of road metal contracts, to destroy the beauty of the northern cliff at this point.  We could not help contrasting the peace and quiet of to-day with the clatter and clang of the quarry that distressed us when we last visited the gorge. (p. 68)….

We walked up the gorge, and felt its grandeur grow upon us.  Not since we visited the back side of the Monte dei Fiori at Varese, had we seen such limestone buttresses and pinnacles as we saw below the Winding Rock and the Castle Rocks at Cheddar.  The beauty of the bastion cliffs was enhanced by the fact that both Winding Rock and pinnacles are set in a curve which gives the most extraordinary play of light and shadow.  Tier upon tier the mighty bastions rise, clothed here with ivy, there plumed with the foliage of ash and seedling birch, and wherever turf could obtain a foothold it jewelled the great castle-keeps with inset of emerald.  Solemnly silent and stern at the base, their upper parapets were filled with the sound of daws; and the wings of ravens, as they sailed out poised in mid-air, sent down their tint dappling shadows. (pp. 70-71)

Quite the most remarkable point of view in the whole walk was when, suddenly turning a corner, the pinnacles, like miniature Aiguilles Dru, rose out of velvet-dark shadow into blazing sunlight.  By easy gradient and on a perfect roadway we walked still farther up the gorge, and now the sternness of the pass gave way to hanging woods on the one side, and grassy fellside pasture on the other, that went by easy slope to blue heaven, and was dotted here and there by hazel and thorn-tree growth.  We recognized at once the difference of altitude by the fact that thorn trees long out of flower in the valley were still blossoming here. (p. 71)

We had virtually reached the summit of the pass, when we noticed a gap in the wall that had once been a gateway, which gave access on the right hand, by a very steep path, to the heart of a pine wood, and feeling sure if we could pass through that wood and gain open country at the top we should obtain a magnificent panoramic view of the Cheddar valley and seaward plain, we clomb up through a wood that in the wind was full of the sound of the sea, and in twenty minutes reached the open country beyond. (p. 71)

Away to the south-west stood up the conical hill with its tower of Glastonbury Tor, the plain of corn and grass rolled into the blue-grey distance of the Quantock hills.  But for magnificent bursts of rain we should have seen the Bristol Channel.  The plateau inland on both sides of the gorge, dotted here and there with single farm buildings, showed that the plough in this time of war had been busy in unexpected places.  Back through the wood into the gorge, from cold wind into sunny quiet we came; so downward, the wonder of the cliffs growing all the way, we descended to the village, and as we passed the silent quarry we could not help being thankful that the National Trust had been enabled to prevent threatened destruction by the stone-getters, and that Lord Bath, who was the owner of the cliffs on the mountain side of the gorge, had consented to refuse permission for quarrying, and so was the protector of the noble gorge for all who should ever visit it.  (pp. 71-72)

(A Nation’s Heritage, pp. 65-73)

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Sir,—I shall be glad if you can find space for the enclosed appeal to the children of the North, and may I add that I should take it as a favour if any masters and mistresses, or any one interested in boys and girls, would enlist their sympathy in the matter and read this appeal to them. H. D. Rawnsley.

To the School-Children of the North.  How Children Can Help the Empire and Nation to Victory and Peace.  Many children have money given them or earned by them which they spend upon themselves.  You are all asked now to spend it upon help to the nation and Empire in this terrible time of war.  Every shilling we can lend the Government helps us in our great struggle for right, humanity, and liberty—for victory and peace.  If you will save your pence by putting them in the school savings bank, I am sure your teacher will obtain for you from the Post Office a voucher for 5s., and if you go on buying more 5s. vouchers until you have twenty you can exchange them for a £3 Stock Certificate, and you will then receive interest at the rate of 4s. 6d. a year, with the security of the British Government behind it.  You will, in addition, get a bonus of 1s.  Up to December 1 you can draw out the cash from the Post Office Savings Bank if you find it necessary.  The country is now spending £3,000,000 a day on the war, and must find the money out of the savings of its citizens.  No saving is too small to count.  If forty-five millions of people save on an average even of 2s. 6d. a week it means that £300,000,000 a year are saved.

Do not only save your money for the war’s sake, but save now for your own sake, because you will learn a lesson in thrift for life.  Save also for the country’s sake, and because work and wages are good now, and hard times will come after the war.  Remember the more we have saved and can spend on home productions, the less need there will be to send money out of the country to buy from abroad.  We are now buying £1,000,000 worth of goods a day from foreign countries more than they are buying from us.

Be careful about food.  Eat less meat and more oatmeal porridge and vegetables.  To waste food is as bad as to waste ammunition.  Before you spend anything, think if it is necessary.  Especially give up buying sweets and spending money on amusements.  Do not think it necessary to have both jam and butter on your bread.  If you have potatoes, ask your mother to bake or boil them in their jackets; so cooked, a plate of potatoes will feed five, whereas if peeled they will only feed four.

Your elder brothers are giving up their lives to the country.  It is not too much to ask you children to give up unnecessary luxuries during this terrible war time.  Be proud to have the chance of assisting the Government and nation by a little self-sacrifice.  Ask your fathers and mothers to help in this matter.  One last word.  The holidays are coming on, and we are short-handed on the farms and in the shops and mills.  Let every boy and girl determine to offer their services during the holidays to help in this crisis by the work of their hands.  In Germany, I believe, all the children who are of age to do so are taking their share in the burden of extra work that has been cast upon those who cannot go to war.  Every one of us from time onward has to work harder, and to endeavour to be productive.  Germany has learned that secret.  I believe there is hardly an acre of land available this year that is not made to bear some kind of food for the wants of the people.  Let the children take this to heart, and determine not to be outdone by the German boys and girls in efforts to help their nation.

(Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 9 July 1915, p. 7)

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It was with a kind of heart-thrill not to be forgotten that, one morning, at school, I opened a letter from my father in which was enclosed a message from that “true poet, surely to be found, when truth is found again,” Charles Tennyson Turner, an elder brother of the Laureate.  My father had sent him one of my school-day sonnets, and the old poet had been kind enough not only to read it, but to criticise it.  So it came to pass that correspondence sprang up between us, which ended in my looking upon him as my mentor in the music of the sonnet, and as my most unwearying of counsellors in matters pertaining to the “Terza Rima.” (p. 221)

I have just been reading some of those quaint faded letters, scribbled upon any kind of piece of paper that was handy; often on a bit of sermon paper, always exact as to date of month and year, always full of tender dealing with a boy’s verses, and scholarly criticism both of thought and rhyme, and I have been wondering at the kindness and graciousness of them.  It was not till after correspondence for ten years that we met.  He was a great invalid, and, when I was at home in Lincolnshire for vacation, it often chanced he was away at Bournemouth, or Bath, or Barmouth. (pp. 221-222)

But one bitter day in early January of 1876, I found myself at Grasby Vicarage, gone thither to see the poet in his pastoral home, and to talk of that which was of poetry dearest to his heart, the structure of the sonnet.  I shall never forget the first impression made upon my mind, as I jogged up with a kind of farm-boy and cowboy and gardener’s boy in one, through the freezing snow-bound flats of dreariest Lincolnshire, and came to the poet’s home. (p. 222)….

Arrived at Grasby, one was struck by the homeliness, the extreme plainness of all the surroundings.  The tiles in the front Hall had long since lost their mortar, and clattered and moved as one passed toward the poet’s dining-room.  Upstairs and downstairs the same simplicity pervaded the house.  There was not a stick of unnecessary furniture in the place.  But who can describe that richest of all furnishing that filled the house—the genial welcoming,—the tender questions of the welfare of those at home,—the knowing of all one’s belongings by name, the little reminiscences of the early days of one’s father and mother?  Or who can forget, whoever experienced it, the solicitude with which, with their own aged hands, those dwellers in the Grasby Vicarage seemed determined to wait upon their young guest, almost ashamed to be thus entreated by his elders? (pp. 223-224)….

Dinner was soon served, and, after early dinner, we adjourned to the little study, and there, as Charles Tennyson sat and read to me in his deep and beautiful voice, first this and then that sonnet, one was able to take his kind face in, and feel that he was every inch a Tennyson.  The same grand brow, the same broad chest, the same fine mouth, and the same deeply-lined furrows either side of it, the same finely-chiselled nose.  The eyes of the man dark and piercing, the complexion, the brown Spanish-looking colouring that were common to most of the family.  There was about him that picturesqueness quite unforgettable, that native dignity which must have made one pick this man out of a crowd, as being princely-born.  His loose coat, his white shirt collar and white cuffs turned back over his coat, gave a sort of old English look to the man, who reminded me of a well-known portrait of John Milton, as he sat and boomed out sonorously his favourite sonnets. (p. 226)….

It was not, however, till the following day, that I seemed to sound the deeps of his gentle heart.  Then, as he read me that tender sonnet entitled, “On Shooting a Swallow in Early Youth,” cccxxix.—I saw not secret, but very real tears on the poet’s face, and when he had finished reading it or chanting it, he was unable to say anything for a few minutes, such sorrow had possessed his soul. (pp. 227-228)….

That evening was given up to sonnet-talk.  I asked why it was that he had so stuck to the sonnet metre; he could only say that Alfred’s fame, and name, and great mastery of verse had so overshadowed him, that he had felt fearful of attempting any lyric or epic writing, and he had been content, perforce, with the “sonnet’s scanty plot of ground.”  I asked him why he had been silent so long—for his first volume of sonnets had appeared in 1830, and his second volume did not see the light till 1864.  He told me that he could not account for his dumbness.  He supposed the wells had been frozen at his heart—but, he added, “I think it was Alfred’s perfect work that made me feel so ashamed of my own poor attempts that I did not brace myself to the task.” (p. 230)….

Next morning we were summoned early to go through the cold to the colder little parish Church, to hear a curate read in a cold voice the morning prayers to our three selves.  I can see the quaint little company pattering through the snow.  Mrs. Tennyson in grey-frieze cloak, with what seemed to be a pair of clogs on her feet.  And the old poet with a huge frieze coaching-day cape whose collar was turned up to keep his ears from harm.  I remember, too, his tender and courtly solicitude for my own want of a great-coat, and how he insisted that a shawl or rug should be wrapped about my shoulders for the morning “office.”  Then we came back to breakfast.  It is true that tea was made, the bacon was fried and was likely to catch cold somewhat.  But nothing was to hinder the due performance of family prayers; for the servants had not been to the village church.  Prayers were duly, if somewhat slowly and largely, said, and, when we rose from our knees, the bacon looked like a marble “brecchia.”  I mention this tiny little incident to show how entirely, in a world where bacon and the comforts of a cosy breakfast were not the presiding spirits of that tender-hearted, high-souled household, lived and moved and had their being.  And I shall not soon forget the deeply reverential air with which the poet read the portion of Scripture and recited the prayers.  With what anxiety he asked of the old servant, as she floundered round the room, after the health of this or that parishioner.  For nearly thirty years had he made the woes and wants of the Grasby village his own.  He had built the Vicarage, the Church, the Schools, and now crippled and full of pain he would each morning go through the cold, and the mud and the rain, to pray with the people who could come to church, and for them, if they would not or could not. (pp. 231-233)….

The rest of the day we spent in sonnet-reading and recitations. (p. 233)….

It was in talking over “The Lover and His Watch,” cccxviii., that he showed me how much we miss, by refusing to see poetry in common things, and especially in thinking of all the mechanisms of our day as if they could have no poetry in them. (p. 241)….

I left Grasby very full of rich sonnet-music, and have never forgotten the sound of the sonneteer’s voice. (p. 242)….

In the following spring, on my wedding day, I wrote to thank him for a book he had, in his kindly thought, sent to me as a wedding present.  I chanced to tell him how, as we came from the church, my wife had gone aside a moment to lay her bridal bouquet upon her father’s grave in the Brathay churchyard.  In less than a week there came back a touching sonnet “The Wedding Posy,” cccxxxvi.  It was among the last he wrote.  I am not sure but that it was the very last.  His health was failing fast.  A little more than a year after, he who had suffered much passed quietly away to the land where there is no pain, on April 25, 1879.  His dear and saintly wife, the sister of Lady Tennyson, was not long separated from him: within a month they bore her body to rest beside his own in the Cheltenham Cemetery. (pp. 245-246)

(Memories of the Tennysons, pp. 221-247)

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