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

I have only slipped away into the next room

I am I and you are you

Whatever we were to each other

That we are still

Call me by my old familiar name

Speak to me in the easy way 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 we always 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 effort

Without the ghost of a shadow in it

Life means all that it ever meant

It is the same as it ever was

There is absolute unbroken continuity

What is death but a negligible accident?

Why should I be out of mind

Because I am out of sight?

I am waiting for you for an interval

Somewhere very near

Just around the corner

All is well.

Nothing is past; 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

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

Metaphor

a comparison between two unrelated things through a shared characteristic

Rhetorical Question

a question asked for effect, not necessarily to be answered