The John Bradburne Memorial Door

John Bradburne was a prolific poet: indeed, he seems to have found verse a more congenial medium of expression than prose. The following, very perfect sonnet, gives the title to Fr. John Dove's biography:

Strange vagabond that knows not what to seek!
The rest you lack lies not this far afield:
Much babel tumult makes your hearing weak,
And all replete with sights your eyes are sealed.
Far out you've strayed to find your inmost soul
But souls their eloquence in stillness find:
Be still then! let God’s silence make you whole,
For He alone can calm your troubled mind.

Your heart's desire is nearest, though unseen,
Your haven of perfection close at hand;
And that drear quest was as a fevered dream;
God's love within you is your native land.
So search none other, never more depart,
For you are homeless, save God keeps your heart.

John's verse constitutes a direct bridge to English Romanticism, but he draws on older traditions too – the Metaphysical tradition, at his best, and the Elizabethan age – which is refreshing for the contemporary reader who must feel that the modernist poets and their successors have sated themselves to artistic, intellectual and spiritual exhaustion on their own self-conceit. There are other comparisons which suggest themselves: it would be interesting to know, for example, whether John knew, or whether he re-invented in his own person, the Goliardic verse of the Latin Middle Ages, in which he would have been so much at home. John is also an astute and humorous satirist; and many a child (in addition to his many older correspondents) must have derived pleasure from his simpler verses.

Some lines of John's verse have been excerpted to accompany the photographs which follow. Much of John's poetry is complex – and, although often an individual verse is succinct, the poem as a whole inclines to be expansive – so it does not lend itself readily to the sort of plucking which is required for the florilegium. However, some attempt has been made to select lines which represent the different genres and traditions in which John writes.