Kemble at Trinity (I)

<Kemble at Trinity College, Cambridge. Membership of the Apostles. Undergraduate notebooks in the Library of Congress. Hooper Declamation Prize 1827.>

Among Kemble's friends at Trinity in the late 1820s were Hallam, Thackeray, and Tennyson. In 1829 or 1830 Tennyson wrote a sonnet 'To J.M.K.', celebrating Kemble's decision to abandon his original intention to pursue a career in law, and instead to pursue a career in the Church. At the same time, the sonnet reflects Tennyson's presumption (as a fellow-Apostle) that Kemble would be anything but conventional.

To J.M.K 

My hope and heart is with thee – thou wilt be 
 A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest 
 To scare church-harpies from the master's feast; 
 Our dusted velvets have much need of thee: 
 Thou art no sabbath-drawler of old saws, 
 Distilled from some worm-cankered homily; 
 But spurred at heart with fieriest energy 
 To embattail and to wall about thy cause 
 With iron-worded proof, hating to hark 
 The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone 
 Half God's good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk 
 Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne 
 Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark 
 Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.
 
<Departure from Cambridge on the 'Spanish Expedition', 1830-1.>