The Henson Journals

[686]

Saturday, April 8th, 1916.

614th day

Brilliant sun, but a frost on the ground. There are now 11 rooks' nests in the one tree. I received the Holy Communion at 8 a.m. Hughes was the celebrant. I started on a sermon for Easter Day, designing to bring the Shakespeare association into direct relation to the message of the Festival. The Poet Laureate's book gave me the notion: and Ecclesiastes provided a suitable text in the extraordinarily suggestive words "He hath set eternity in their heart". Even the alternative readings "He hath set the world in their heart" or "He hath set ignorance in their heart," do not, I think, necessarily invalidate the passage for the purpose I have in hand, though they don't connect themselves with it so apparently.

Captn Lewis lunched here, & afterwards I shewed him & Miss Ramsay over the Castle. Then I gave him a copy of my "Robertson", & so parted from an excellent young officer with much esteem. I attended Evensong; Clarence Stock arrived by the afternoon train, and I took him for a walk after tea. He has made repeated but always unsuccessful efforts to get into the Army: his defective eyesight being judged to be a fatal barrier.

The Poet Laureate includes in his collection under the heading "The Saintly Company" the single line from Shakespeare's "Richard II".

"The setting sun, & music at the close."

But the whole passage hardly justifies the implication of his choice:–

He, that no more must say, is listen'd more

Than they whom youth and ease have taught to close;

More are men's ends mark'd, than their lives before;

The setting sun, and music at the close,

(As the last taste of sweets is sweetest,) last,

Writ in remembrance, more than things long past.

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