Lionel Johnson and Arthur Hugh Clough: An Ironic Debt

Abstract

In his textual notes to "A Burden of Easter Vigil" in The Collected Poems of Lionel Johnson, Ian Fletcher comments that "the title has a Pre-raphaelite suggestion" 1 and cites statements by A. J. Farmer that "Johnson est ici tout près d'Arnold et ces premières verses portent déjà l'empreinte de la souffrance intime qui est la raçon d'un age, trop avide de certitude" and (incorrectly) by A. W. Patrick, who "compares lines 16-20 with the [End Page 255] final stanza of Arnold's 'Obermann.'" 2 While the Pre-Raphaelite suggestion could possibly refer to D. G. Rossetti's "The Burden of Nineveh" and the influence of Arnold on Johnson especially during his formative years at Winchester had been profound, 3 there is another possible—although seemingly unlikely—source for the poem: Arthur Hugh Clough's "Easter Day. Naples, 1849."