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Scotsman, 14 March 1887, p. 4

A writer who, apparently, visits all the places of interest along the English coast and makes his tours the excuse for a series of sonnets, must not grumble if readers are reminded of the humorous criticism made by the authors of “Rejected Addresses” upon Sir W. Scott’s “Rokeby”—that the poet was journeying by easy stages to London, and intended to “do” all the gentlemen’s houses by the way. Mr. H. D. Rawnsley, however, in his Sonnets Round the Coast shows a true poetic spirit, which would make a seemingly formal travel in search of the poetic almost excusable. His sonnets are of a high order, and he frequently invests antiquarian relics with an interest which future tourists, with his verses in their hands, will readily appreciate. Mr Rawnsley takes his readers over the Isle of Wight, where, of course, he turns to Lord Tennyson with some well-finished complimentary lines. Thence he journeys along the Cornish coast, Bristol Channel, by Barmouth, Dolgelly, and Cardigan, to Lancashire and Cumberland. Then a flight is made to the North-East coast; and Mr Rawnsley gives us two fine sonnets on George Wishart and the late Principal Shairp. Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, is noted—

No more on Hawkshaw Rig the shepherd’s son
Waves, to the murmur of melodious streams,
What tales he learned beside his mother’s knee,
But somewhere on a lily-blossomed lea,
He leads the pure Kilmeny gently on,
And finds another friend to share his dreams.

The late Principal Tulloch is also apostrophised in lines of great beauty, as the following specimen will show—

And if before thine ears were stopped by Death
No message came of that last battle-cry,
Where friends fought fierce with argument for swords,
Thou knowest now, from out men’s cloudy breath
And strife of indistinguishable words,
God rolls his car of Truth to Victory.

There is no need to follow Mr Rawnsley along the Northumberland, Yorkshire, and Lincolnshire coasts; enough has been said to indicate that his volume possesses very great merit, which should render it widely acceptable.

Hampshire Advertiser, 19 March 1887, p. 7

Sonnets Round the Coast.—In this delightful little book Mr Rawnsley has shown that he is an appreciative observer of the beauty of our coasts, the main features of which he fixes in the mind, by brief, telling, descriptions. There is a conciseness in his lines, and a charm of expression which will secure for these sonnets, we think, a favourable reception. They may be compared to exquisite cabinet pictures of coast scenery. We only wish he had devoted a few more sonnets to the Solent and South-Western Coasts. Between the Needles and Portland there are several beautiful spots that might have been dilated upon.

Globe, 29 April 1887, p. 1

Vacancy for a Poet.—“Must be able to put together at least four different rhymes, and to finger out correctly the decasyllabic metre. Character immaterial, provided applicant has a good command of adjectives. Alliteration not objected to.” Anyone complying with conditions above advertised has a fine opening before him. Mr. H. D. Rawnsley, sonneteer-in-ordinary to the Lake District, has recently given to the world 200 odd “Sonnets Round the Coast,” –beginning from Farringford, and working round westward as far as Spilsby. One advantage of this branch of sonneteering is that it can be done from a fishing-smack or a private steam-launch, and, if the sea be choppy, certain influences are created decidedly favourable to poetry—all the best verses having about them a decided flavour of sickness, disease, or, best of all, impending dissolution. But the marvel of the matter is that Mr Rawnsley has left untouched some of the most poetical of our shores—all that part, in fact, which from Deal to Ramsgate runs, with a handsome margin on either side. Will nobody now come forward to crown with laurel the White Cliffs of Dover, to lay a wreath of verse upon the pebbles of Margate, to sing of bathing machines and bath chairs, of the pier, the castle upon the sand, and the local minstrels? Is nobody capable of rising in verse to the heights – or rather, we should say, to the sandy slopes – attained in a sister art by Mr. Frith, R.A.?

Birmingham Daily Post, 29 April 1887, p. 7

Sonnets Round the Coast—“Be bold, be bold,” is good advice; but the sequent caution is not to be disregarded, “Be not overbold.” A volume of sonnets is almost too much of a good thing. A dainty, delicate, gem-like thing is a perfect sonnet, bet even the greatest masters’ happy efforts are almost to be counted on the fingers, and one reads one or two and lays the treasured volume aside. To produce some hundreds of sonnets that shall be readable as a volume almost passes the wit of man, and when in this inherent difficulty the adventurer gives them a topographical turn and “does” the coast of England, writing sonnets on every point of observation, it is impossible to avoid much sameness in thought and expression. The sonnets are correct in form, they are often happy, and the writer has been more successful than we should have thought possible in varying the note. The book, typographically a very pretty and attractive one, will repay an occasional dip into it, though we should have recommended it with more confidence if it had been less monotonous. We subjoin a specimen:

Bamborough Castle

High on its rock the ruddy castle glowed,
Like some huge monster, crawled from out
the seas,
The isles of Farne, Northumbria’s Cyclades,
Broke the blue tide that toward the fortress flowed;
Thither his forty keels bold Ida rowed,
There Aidan bent the saintliest of knees,
And Oswald’s hand, that heard the beggar’s pleas
And could not taste corruption, alms bestowed.
No saints seek refuge now, no warriors come,
Thy use is gone, thou tower-encircled steep—
But like the spring of Bebban’s basalt well
Thou dost renew thy strength; thy citadel
Is garrisoned with girls who learn to keep
By arts of peace the inviolable home.

Illustrated London News, 14 May 1887, p. 26

Sonnets Round the Coast—Here is another true British poet, the Vicar of Crosthwaite, Keswick; he is a personal friend of Lord Tennyson, and of his brother, the late rev. Charles Tennyson Turner, whose disciple he has been in the exquisite art of composing that peculiar jewel of versifiers, the perfect sonnet, which is most fit for idyllic contemplations. Mr Rawnsley has been yachting along the shores of the Isle of Wight, and from Portland to Weymouth to Plymouth—we wish he had seen more of Devonshire—thence all round Cornwall, and up the Bristol Channel. He has visited Barmouth, he is quite at home on the North Lancashire and Cumberland coasts. On the eastern seaboard he is familiar with St. Andrews, with the coast of Northumberland, and with those of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. So are many English people: but here is one who can write, upon so many places, above two hundred thoughtful and beautiful little poems, each of the regular fourteen lines, without a fault or flaw in their prescribed metrical structure; and who never fails to express a clear idea, or a noble sentiment, in pure, strong, and unaffected language. Opening his little volume at random, a very good sonnet is found on every page; and it is frequently such as the reader at once feels to be precisely what ought to be the meditation of a good Englishman, acquainted with the past history of his native land, who visits those particular places of its shores. Mr Rawnsley makes fine poetry of Skegness, Boston Church tower, and the Lincolnshire fens.

Graphic, 28 May 1887, p. 4

Sonnets Round the Coast—It must be frankly confessed that a volume consisting entirely of modern sonnets of the ordinary type is apt to be rather wearisome reading; still there is a certain amount of pleasure to be derived from “Sonnets Round the Coast.” . . . The pieces are fairly good of their kind, and treat of natural scenery and legendary matter in an interesting style. Judging from the notes, the author has no very high opinion of his readers’ probable fund of ordinary knowledge.

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Western Daily Press, 15 October 1881, p. 6

The Rev. H. D. Rawnsley is favourably known to Bristol readers for his poetical compositions, some of which are no doubt well remembered as good examples of felicitous rhythm, combined with that poetic appreciation which invests even common subjects with real interest. Alexander Smith tells us that murky clouds become “a wreathed splendour in the declining sun,” and it is the mission of successful writers of poetry to invest the ordinary landscape with the special charm that is associated with glowing light. Mr. Rawnsley has found at the English lakes his themes for the one hundred and twenty sonnets in this pleasant volume. He reminds us in a prefatory note of James Spedding’s remark that sonnets to be appreciated should be read one by one, with intervals between long enough to permit the impression of each to get out of the other’s way, but this advice, good as it may be, is not generally followed. The writers of sonnets are a caste by themselves—for when we have named Milton, Drummond of Hawthornden, and Wordsworth, and a few others—including perhaps Spenser and Shakspere—we have almost exhausted the sonneteers who stand in the front rank. In many of Mr. Rawnsley’s sonnets there is a freshness which seems to take us into the presence of the veritable atmosphere of the lakes, and they are marked by great variety as well as a certain melodiousness which will cause them to be read. We make one extract:--

Windermere—Autumn

Blue as the waves upon the Midland seas,
The first has rimmed thy shaggy banks with gold,
And—messenger of coming change—the cold
From Troutbeck blown, and over Fairfield’s knees,
Sweeps with a touch of winter; and the trees—
Tall fires about the bluffs and headlands bold—
Burn through the woods in colours manifold,
To fall in ashes at the earliest breeze.
These are the gifts of Autumn—azure floods
And amber reeds, and gold among the woods:
But I would give this colour, all this store,
For one bird-voice along thy silent shore—
Would welcome utter leaflessness—to hear
The cuckoo’s voice come over Windermere.

London Daly News, 22 December 1881, p. 3

[The Sonnets] . . . are modest and graceful echoes of the large utterance of Wordsworth. Higher praise than this they do not ask for, but it is well deserved.

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A Book of Bristol Sonnets (1877)

Contents
Reviews

Sonnets at the English Lakes (1881)

Contents
Reviews

Sonnets Round the Coast (1887)

Contents
Reviews

Poems, Ballads, and Bucolics (1890)

Contents
Reviews

Valete: Tennysson and other Memorial Poems (1893)

Contents
Reviews

Idylls and Lyrics of the Nile (1894)

Contents
Reviews

Ballads of Brave Deeds (1896)

Contents
Reviews

The Darkened West: An Appeal to England for Armenia (1896)

Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy (1899)

Contents
Reviews

Ballads of the War (1900)

Contents
Reviews

A Sonnet Chronicle 1900-1906 (1906)

Contents
Reviews

Poems at Home and Abroad (1909)

Contents
Reviews

The European War, 1914-1915 (1915)

Contents
Reviews

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Western Daily Press, 27 March 1877, p. 6

It is gratifying to find a parish priest of the nineteenth century, like another George Herbert, cultivating the muse of poetry to such good purpose as the Rev. H. D. Rawnsley has done in his “Book of Bristol Sonnets.” The author is well known to us as a zealous and energetic promotor of the successful movement for the preservation of St. Werburgh’s Tower, and, though not a Bristolian by birth, is evidently a keen admirer of all that is historical or picturesque in our good old city. Indeed the present volume shows that it is possible for a comparative stranger to have a far more thorough acquaintance with local history, customs, traditions, and topography, than a large majority of our native citizens.

Mr. Rawnsley gracefully dedicates his book to the Rev. Edward Thring, the distinguished headmaster of Uppingham School, “with the gratitude and affection of an old pupil,” who, we must say, reflects, credit alike on his preceptor and his alma mater. He has evidently studied Wordsworth and Charles Tennyson Turner to great advantage and seems to be instinctively imbued with the idea and the “swing” of a sonnet. This species of versification is here applied not only in romantic stories and scenery, but to such prosaic sublunary matters as the Tramway Cars, the Steam “Hooter,” and the opening of Avonmouth Docks, and we are bound to admit that, so far from proving a reductio ad absurdam, these everyday things are so tastefully treated by our poet that his thoughts even on them are fraught with pleasure and profit to the most unpoetical mind.

To show the extent of the topics touched upon by Mr. Rawnsley, it will suffice to say that he takes us back to the imprisonment of Eleanor de Montfort in Bristol Castle, more than 600 years since, and carries us on by easy stages to the inauguration of the Port and Channel Dock last month, with respect to which sonnet we may admire the felicitous taste of our author without sharing his ominous forebodings!. Distance as well as date is a matter of little moment, for we find Bristol thoughts and associations travelling to Nibley Knoll, Tintern Abbey, and the “broad water of the West,” at Clevedon, till we feel that those places are, for poetical purposes at least, mere outskirts of our ancient city. One new feature is the fullness of the author’s explanatory notes, coupled with extracts from such authorities as Barrett, Seyer, John Taylor, and other local historians, which go far to enhance the value of the poetry.

Some half dozen of these sonnets have already appeared in our columns signed “H. D. R.” No fewer than six sonnets are devoted to views, and objects of interest in the neighbourhood of Ashley Hill, which appears to be a favourite standpoint and haunt of the poet’s.

We do not hesitate to take issue with the modest prefatory statement that this book “has little to recommend it,” and we anticipate that it will receive the merited recommendation of many a thoughtful reader. In one or two instances perhaps sufficient prominence has not been given to the main idea—the centre around which all other ideas should be grouped as subordinates. But it would be an unjust and thankless task to criticise such a work unfavourably on that account, and we therefore proceed to quote one of the most characteristic of the author’s efforts, which we think speaks volumes for his true poetic taste and keen observation.

The Great Fire in Christmas Street

1876

With ruin in their face, from far and near,
Ran the pale merchants on that dreadful night;
The Lansdown cotter shuddered at the sight;
And bold sea-captains crowded sail in fear!
Ha! the flames catch, they ramp from tier to tier!
Tiles slip, the roofs are skeletons of light!
Crash! and upspring huge fountains starry bright!
And, with a groan, walls reel and disappear!
That night the Frome ran steaming round the
keels!
On heated bells Saint John gave forth the hour!
Choked, as they toiled, men plied their engine
reels;
And still flames drank, and still they would devour;
Till surfeited they fell at break of day,
And in the sobbing streets black homeless ruin lay.

The note of exclamation might have been a little more sparingly used, but some of the metaphors are most vivid—notably the “sobbing streets.” A similar instance may be found in the sonnet on Berkeley Castle, where we have the mowing machines spoken of as a “knived chariot”—an epithet which recalls the war cars of the Ancient Britons, with their formidable scythes, the literal “mowing machines” of the dark ages! We think the specimen we have given cannot fail to call attention to the collection of which it is a fair sample.

We must take leave of this beautiful book (the exterior of which, emblazoned with the earliest of our city seals, is worthy of the interior) without expressing a hope that it will find a place in many a library, and, in the author’s words, teach its readers “to reverence what is honourable in the past, and live more nobly in the present.”