Volume 4, Issue 2, Fall 2007
Keith Andrew Massey
Pages 5-10
Vergilian Allusions In Newman’s “Kindly Light”
What is the literary antecedent to Newman’s famous “Lead, Kindly Light”? This essay proposes that Newman’s phrase—“Kindly Light”— is an allusion to a specific passage of Vergil’s Aeneid. Understood in this light, Newman’s poem is a prologue to the epic journey Newman began as he returned to England to commence the Oxford Movement.