Scarce One More Loved

Dickens Returns on Christmas Day

by Theodore Watts Dunton (1832 – 1914)

“Dickens is dead!”  Beneath that grievous cry
London seemed shivering in the summer heat;
Strangers too up the tale like friends that meet:
“Dickens is dead!” said they, and hurried by;
Street children stopped their games – they knew not why,
But some new night seemed darkening down the street.
A girl in rags, staying her wayworn feet,
Cried, “Dickens dead?  Will Father Christmas die?”

City he loved, take courage on thy way!
He loves thee still, in all thy joys and fears.
Though he whose smile made bright thine eyes of grey –
Though he whose voice, uttering thy burthened years,
Made laughters bubble through thy sea of tears –
Is gone, Dickens returns on Christmas Day.

Dickens

by Charles Algernon Swinburne (1837- 1909)

Chief in thy generation born of men,
Whom English praise acclaimed as English-born,
With eyes that matched the worldwide eyes of morn
For gleam of tears or laughter, tenderest then
When thoughts of children warmed their light, or when
Reverence of age with love and labor worn,
Or godlike pity fired with godlike scorn,
Shot through them flame that winged thy swift live pen:
Where stars and suns that we behold not burn,
Higher even than here, though highest was here thy place,
Love sees thy spirit laugh and speak and shine
With Shakespeare and the soft bright soul of Sterne
And Fielding’s kindliest might and Goldsmith’s grace;
Scarce one more loved or worthier love than thine.