(verses) I had written
I burnt before I became a Jesuit (i.e. 1868) and re-
solved to write no more, as not belonging to my profession,
unless it were by the wish of my superiors; so for seven
years I wrote nothing but two or three little presentation
pieces which occasion called for. But when in the winter
of '75 the Deutschland was wrecked in the mouth of the
Thames and five Franciscan nuns, exiles from Germany
by the Falck Laws, aboard of her were drowned I was
affected by the account and happening to say so to my
rector he said that he wished some one would write a poem
on the subject. On this hint I set to work and, though
my hand was out at first, produced one. I had long had
haunting my ear the echo of a new rhythm which now
I realised on paper. ... I do not say the idea is altogether
new . . . but no one has professedly used it and made it
the principle throughout, that I know of. ... However
I had to mark the stresses . . . and a great many more
oddnesses could not but dismay an editor's eye, so that
when I offered it to our magazine _The Month_ . . . they
dared not print it.'

Of the _two or three presentation pieces_ here mentioned
one is certainly the Marian verses 'Rosa mystica', published
in the 'The Irish Monthly', May '98, and again in Orby
Shipley's 'Carmina Mariana', 2nd series, p. 183: the
autograph exists.

Another is supposed to be the 'Ad Mariam', printed in
the 'Stonyhurst Magazine', Feb. '94. This is in five
stanzas of eight lines, in direct and competent imitation of
Swinburne: no autograph has been found; and, unless
Fr. Hopkins's views of poetic form had been provisionally
deranged or suspended, the verses can hardly be attributed
to him without some impeachment of his sincerity; and
that being altogether above suspicion, I would not yield to
the rather strong presumption which their technical skill
supplies in favour of his authorship. It is true that the
'Rosa mystica' is somewhat in the same light lilting man-
ner; but that was probably common to most of these
festal verses, and 'Rosa mystica' is not open to the
positive objections of verbal criticism which would reject
the 'Ad Mariam'. He never sent me any copy of either
of these pieces, as he did of his severer Marian poems
(Nos. 18 and 37), nor mentioned them as productions of
his serious Muse. I do not find that in either class of
these attempts he met with any appreciation at the time;
it was after the publication of Miles's