Henry Scott Holland

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Henry Scott Holland was born at Ledbury, Herefordshire, on 27th January, 1847.  As well as teaching at Christ Church College, Holland found time to publish several books and articles including The Duties of the Parochial Clergy Toward Some Forms of Modern Thought (1873). Holland also began visiting industrial slums in Britain. He was deeply shocked by what he discovered and began to argue for Mission Houses to be built that would serve as a point of contact between the "academic community and the deprived classes". In 1884 Holland left Oxford University and became a canon at St. Paul's Cathedral. Holland's experience of social problems in London convinced him that the Church of England needed to change. In his controversial book Lux Mundi (1889) Holland argued that Christianity was to be experienced, not contemplated. He suggested that the Church needed to reject the "old truths" and to "enter into an understanding of the new social and intellectual movements of the present". Holland pointed out that the "streets of London reek with human misery" and the Church could no longer afford to ignore this suffering. Holland advocated radical reform, or what he called, the "Christianization of the social structure whereby all men live in accordance with the principles of divine justice and human brotherhood". In 1910 Holland returned to Oxford University as Regius Professor of Divinity. Holland's health deteriorated after 1914 and he was restricted in the work that he could do. Henry Scott Holland died on 17th March, 1918. Source

[Death is nothing at all]

Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

 

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

 

Call me by the old familiar name.

Speak of me in the easy way which you always used.

Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

 

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.

Let it be spoken without an effort, without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

 

Life means all that it ever meant.

It is the same as it ever was.

There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?

 

Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you, for an interval,

somewhere very near,

just round the corner.

 

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

 

Published:

1909

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Modernism

Anthology Years:

2022

2024

Themes:

Death & Loss

Faith & Hope

Love & Relationships

Literary Devices:

Alliteration

the repetition of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words appearing in succession

Enjambment

a line break interrupting the middle of a phrase which continues on to the next line

Imperative

an instruction or a command

Metaphor

a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic

Pleonasm

the use of more words than necessary to express meaning, redundancy

Rhetorical Question

a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered