“Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.”
Philip James Bailey Festus
Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
Festus (1839)
Philip James Bailey war ein englischer Jurist und Dichter.
Philip James Bailey wuchs in Nottingham auf, wo sein Vater Thomas Bailey den Nottingham Mercury redigierte. Er studierte in Glasgow Jurisprudenz und wurde 1840 Rechtsanwalt. Bayley widmete seine Zeit aber hauptsächlich der Dichtung und vollendete im 20. Jahr seinen Festus , eine lyrisch-dramatische Bearbeitung der Faustsage, welche allgemein Anklang fand. Elf Jahre später folgte das Gedicht The angel world , welches er in späteren Ausgaben des Festus mit diesem vereinigte. Aber Letzteres wie auch die Dichtungen The mystic und The universal hymn sprachen die Lesewelt viel weniger an. Außerdem ist das satirische Werk The age; politics, poetry and criticism zu erwähnen. Auf noch anderem Feld hat sich Bailey in The international policy of the great powers versucht. Später lebte der Dichter in seiner Vaterstadt.

“Poets are all who love, who feel great truths,
And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.”
Philip James Bailey Festus
Scene XVI, The Hesperian Sphere
Festus (1839)
“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.”
Philip James Bailey Festus
Scene V, A Country Town
Festus (1839)
Kontext: We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
Life's but a means unto an end; that end
Beginning, mean, and end to all things, — God.
The dead have all the glory of the world.
“I cannot be content with less than heaven;
Living, and comprehensive of all life.”
Philip James Bailey Festus
Festus (1839)
Kontext: I cannot be content with less than heaven;
Living, and comprehensive of all life.
Thee, universal heaven, celestial all;
Thee, sacred seat of intellective time;
Field of the soul's best wisdom: home of truth,
Star-throned.
Philip James Bailey Festus
Scene IV, A Mountain; Sunrise. Compare: "The surest plan to make a man / Is to think him so", J. R. Lowell, Biglow Papers, II, ii. St. 9
Festus (1839)
“America thou half-brother of the world!
With something good and bad of every land.”
Philip James Bailey Festus
Scene X, Earth's Surface
Festus (1839)
Philip James Bailey Festus
Festus (1839)
“Who never doubted never half believed
Where doubt there truth is—'t is her shadow.”
Philip James Bailey Festus
Scene V, A Country Town; comparable to Alfred, Lord Tennyson "There lives more faith in honest doubt / Believe me, than in half the creeds."
Festus (1839)
Philip James Bailey Festus
Scene XI, A Village Feast
Festus (1839)