Two poems by Coventry Patmore for his 100th birthday

• Departure
• It was not like your great and gracious ways! 
• Do you, that have naught other to lament, 
• Never, my Love, repent 
• Of how, that July afternoon, 
• You went, 
• With sudden, unintelligible phrase, 
• And frighten’d eye, 
• Upon your journey of so many days 
• Without a single kiss, or a good-bye? 
• I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon; 
• And so we sate, within the low sun’s rays, 
• You whispering to me, for your voice was weak, 
• Your harrowing praise. 
• Well, it was well 
• To hear you such things speak, 
• And I could tell 
• What made your eyes a growing gloom of love, 
• As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove. 
• And it was like your great and gracious ways 
• To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear, 
• Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash 
• To let the laughter flash, 
• Whilst I drew near, 
• Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear. 
• But all at once to leave me at the last, 
• More at the wonder than the loss aghast, 
• With huddled, unintelligible phrase, 
• And frighten’d eye, 
• And go your journey of all days 
• With not one kiss, or a good-bye, 
• And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d: 
• ‘Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.

• Magna Est Veritas
• Here, in this little Bay, 
• Full of tumultuous life and great repose, 
• Where, twice a day, 
• The purposeless, gay ocean comes and goes, 
• Under high cliffs, and far from the huge town, 
• I sit me down. 
• For want of me the world’s course will not fail: 
• When all its work is done, the lie shall rot; 
• The truth is great, and shall prevail, 
• When none cares whether it prevail or not.

Coventry Patmore (1823-1896) was an English poet and literary critic who wrote largely about domestic life—and domestic bliss—in his poems. After the death of his first wife, Emily, he began writing poems to express his grief over his loss. Soon after her death in 1862, Patmore entered the Catholic Church. While not as well-known as other Victorian poets, Patmore is considered an exemplar of Victorian verse in both style and craft. He was born on July 23, 1823.