Part 20

Every lover of Irish poetry is familiar with “The Fairies” of the late William Allingham. He is an Irish rather than distinctively a Celtic poet in the strict sense of the word; but every now and again he strikes the genuine Celtic note, as in his well-known “Fairies,” and the little poem called the “Æolian Harp,” by which he is also represented here. Much the best critical summary of his life-work is to be found in the brief memoir by Mr W. B. Yeats in Miles’ _Poets and Poetry of the Century_, Vol. V., p. 209. Among the innumerable love songs of the Irish peasantry there are few more beautiful than Allingham’s “Mary Donnelly.” As Mr Yeats says, he was “the poet of little things and little moments, and neither his emotions nor his thoughts took any wide sweep over the world of Man and Nature.” His “Laurence Bloomfield” is already practically forgotten; but many of the lighter and often exquisitely deft lyrics of his early life will remain in the memory of the Irish people, and one or two at least in English literature.

THOMAS BOYD. PAGE 95

So far as I know, Mr Thomas Boyd has not published any volume of verse. Some of his poems have appeared in _United Ireland_, among them the beautiful lines, “To the Lianhaun Shee.”

EMILY BRONTË. (1818-1848.) PAGE 97

It may be as well to explain to those readers who take it for granted that Emily Brontë is to be accounted an English poet, that she was of Irish nationality and birth. The name Brontë, so familiar now through the genius of herself and her sister, was originally Prunty. Everything from her pen has a note of singular distinction; but perhaps she could hardly be more characteristically represented than by the poem called “Remembrance.” The, in quantity, meagre poetic legacy of the author of _Wuthering Heights_ is comprised (under her pseudonym, Ellis Bell) in the volume _Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell_.

STOPFORD A. BROOKE. PAGE 98-100

“The Earth and Man” and “Song” (from the poem called “Six Days”) are from Mr Stopford Brooke’s volume, _Poems_ (Macmillan & Co.). These seem to me fairly representative of the distinctive atmosphere which Mr Brooke conveys in all his poetry. See particularly his _Riquet of The Tuft_ (1880) and _Poems_ (1888).

JOHN K. CASEY. PAGE 101-3

Most of Mr Casey’s poems appeared above the signature “Leo.” Born in 1846, the son of a peasant, his early efforts to make literature his profession were handicapped by inevitable disadvantages. In 1876 he was arrested as a Fenian conspirator, and imprisoned. This, combined with the influence of his unselfish patriotism and the popularity of many of his lyrics, gave him a recognised place in the Irish Brotherhood of Song.

GEORGE DARLEY. (1795-1846.) PAGE 104

This remarkable poet, who has so strangely lapsed from public remembrance, was in his own day greatly admired by his fellow-poets and the most discerning critics of the period. Mrs Browning, and Robert Browning still more, were deeply impressed by what is now his best known production--_Sylvia: a Lyrical Drama_ (1836); and Alfred Tennyson was so struck by the quality of the young poet’s work that he volunteered to defray the cost of publishing his verse. Lord Tennyson frequently, in conversation, alluded to George Darley as one of the “hopelessly misapprehended men”; and we have Robert Browning’s own authority, says Darley’s latest biographer, Mr John H. Ingram, for stating that _Sylvia_ did much to determine the form of his own early dramas. _Sylvia_, again, charmed Coleridge; and in 1836, Miss Mitford, whom Mr Ingram calls a leading spirit among the _literati_ of her day, writes:--“I have just had a present of a most exquisite poem, which old Mr Carey (the translator of Dante and Pindar) thinks more highly of than any poem of the present day--‘Sylvia, or The May Queen,’ by George Darley. It is exquisite--something between the ‘Faithful Shepherdess’ and the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream.’”

Darley was the eldest child of Arthur Darley, of the Scalp, County Wicklow. The poet, however, was not born there, but in Dublin, in the year 1795. While he was a child, his parents emigrated to the United States; and the boy spent the first ten years of his life at the family home in Wicklow. In due time, and subsequent to the return of his parents from America, he went through the usual scholastic routine, though he did not graduate at Trinity College, Dublin, till his twenty-fifth year--a delay in great part due to what, then and later, he considered a disastrous impediment of speech. From the loss of a scholarship to the social deprivations he underwent in London, this infirmity, he declared, was his evil fortune. His first book, _The Errors of Ecstasie_, was published (1822) in London, where he had settled. Needless to say, as this volume consists mainly of a dialogue between a Mystic and the Moon, the reading public remained in absolute ignorance of the new poet. His second book (1826) consisted of a series of prose tales and verses, collectively entitled--_The Labours of Idleness; or, Seven Nights’ Entertainments_--set forth as by “Guy Penseval.” Three years later appeared his chief work, _Sylvia_. Notwithstanding its divers shortcomings, some of them frankly acknowledged by the author himself, _Sylvia_ is a creation of genuine imagination, and possesses a haunting and quite distinctive charm. Both the merits and demerits of his too often uncontrolled style are adequately indicated in the criticism of Mr Ingram: “[frequently] his wild Celtic fancy breaks its curb and carries him into clouds of metaphor as marvellous as they are musical, although often the flight ends by a hasty and undignified descent to commonplace earth.” There is no commonplace, however, in his exquisite faëry verse, which, in the words of the same critic, “is among the loveliest in the language; at times is even sweeter than Drayton’s, and is as fantastic as Shakespeare’s own.”

For ten years the poet kept silence; but in 1839 he issued his fragmentary and extraordinary _Nepenthe_--a poem which, with all its brilliant quality and daring richness of imagery, might well be taken as an example of the Celtic genius _in extremis_--so unreservedly does he give way to an uncontrolled imagination. Perhaps the best thing said about _Nepenthe_ is in a letter from the author himself, wherein he writes:--“Does it not speak a heat of brain mentally Bacchic?”

Nothing that Darley published afterwards enhanced his reputation. Lovers of his best work, however, should read the posthumous volume of his “Poems” edited by R. and M. J. Livingstone--a rare volume, as it was printed for private circulation. It contains some of the songs from an unpublished lyrical drama called _The Sea Bride_; and it is from this that the “Dirge,” quoted at page 104 in this book, comes. In this posthumous collection also is included the following striking and characteristic lyric:--

THE FALLEN STAR.

A star is gone! a star is gone! There is a blank in Heaven, One of the cherub choir has done His airy course this even.

He sat upon the orb of fire That hung for ages there, And lent his music to the choir That haunts the nightly air.

But when his thousand years are passed, With a cherubic sigh He vanished with his car at last, For even cherubs die!

Hear how his angel brothers mourn-- The minstrels of the spheres-- Each chiming sadly in his turn And dropping splendid tears.

The planetary sisters all Join in the fatal song, And weep this hapless brother’s fall Who sang with them so long.

But deepest of the choral band The Lunar Spirit sings, And with a bass-according hand Sweeps all her sullen strings.

From the deep chambers of the dome Where sleepless Uriel lies, His rude harmonic thunders come Mingled with mighty sighs.

The thousand car-borne cherubim, The wandering eleven, All join to chant the dirge of him Who fell just now from Heaven.

After a life of great intellectual activity, but of singular isolation and of misanthropic unhappiness, George Darley died in London on the 23rd of November 1846, in his fifty-first year. For further information as to the personality and writings of this strange, undeservedly neglected, but unbalanced man of genius, the reader may be referred to the delightful edition of _Sylvia_, with Introduction, by Mr John H. Ingram, published by Mr J. M. Dent (1892).

AUBREY DE VERE. PAGE 105-6

Mr Aubrey De Vere is one of the most scholarly poets of Ireland. All his work is informed with a high and serious spirit; and though the bulk of it is not distinctively Celtic, either in sentiment or utterance, not even distinctively Irish, he has written some poems which are as dear to Nationalists and Celticists as is almost any other verse by contemporary poets. Mr Aubrey De Vere is the younger brother of Sir Stephen De Vere, Bart. (the translator of Horace, and himself a poet of distinction), and son of Aubrey De Vere, the poet friend of Wordsworth. He was born in 1814, and has lived most of his life, with long intervals in London and in several parts of Europe, at his birthplace, Curragh Chase, Adare, Co. Limerick. Among his most noteworthy writings are:--_The Waldensees_ (1842); _The Search after Proserpine_ (1843); _Poems_ (1853); _The Sisters_ (1861); _The Infant Bridal: and other Poems_ (1864); _Irish Odes_ (1869); _The Legends of St Patrick_ (1872); _Alexander the Great_, a poetical drama (1874); and another drama, _St Thomas of Canterbury_ (1876); _Antar and Zara: and other Poems_ (1877); _Legends of the Saxon Saints_ (1879); and _The Foray of Queen Meave_, based upon an ancient Irish epic (1882). Since then Mr Aubrey De Vere has published a Selection of his poems and one or two books of a religious nature. His best prose work is to be found in his _Essays chiefly on Poetry_ (1887), and _Essays chiefly Literary and Ethical_ (1889).

FRANCIS FAHY. PAGE 107

Author of _Irish Songs and Poems_, published under the pseudonym “Dreolin.” Mr Fahy is a member of the group of notable lyrists whose captain is Sir Samuel Ferguson.

SIR SAMUEL FERGUSON. (1810-1886.) PAGE 109

This celebrated poet and archæologist was born in Belfast. He has aptly been called a man of encyclopædic learning; but this learning did not prevent his becoming perhaps the foremost Irish poet of the Middle Victorian period. His most ambitious poetic work is _Congal: an Epic Poem_ (1872)--a work full of lofty imagination and epical music, but unfortunate in its metrical setting. His short poem, “The Forging of the Anchor,” is one of the most celebrated and popular poems of our era. Even yet, the influence of his _Lays of the Western Gael_ (1865) is considerable, and for good. “Cean Dubh Deelish” (darling dark head), of which several able, and one or two good translations have been made, finds its happiest interpreter in Ferguson. How many poets and lovers have repeated these lines--

“Then put your head, darling, darling, darling, Your darling black head my heart above; Oh, mouth of honey, with thyme for fragrance, Who, with heart in breast, could deny you love?”

PAGE 110

“Molly Asthore” is also a paraphrase. The original is ascribed to a celebrated Irish Gaelic bard, Cormac O’Con.

PAGE 112

“The Fair Hills of Holy Ireland,” is familiar to Irish men and women in every part of the world.

ALFRED PERCIVAL GRAVES. PAGE 113

One of the best known names of Ireland of to-day. Mr Graves, born in Dublin in 1846, is thoroughly national, and his delightful work is perhaps as adequately typical of the Irish spirit as that of any one man could be. His lyric faculty--or at any rate his movement, his verve--is unsurpassed by any living Irishman. These few examples of his poetical writings should win him many more readers. His first book, _Songs of Killarney_, was published over twenty years ago. Since then he has issued _Irish Songs and Ballads_, _Songs of Old Ireland_, and (1880) his best known collection, _Father O’Flynn: and other Irish Lyrics_. _Irish Songs and Airs_ is the title of his promised contribution to Sir Gavan Duffy’s Irish Library.

GERALD GRIFFIN. (1803-1840.) PAGE 121

The author of the lovely song, “Eileen Aroon” (Nellie, my Darling), was born in Limerick. His chief work is his novel, _The Collegians_, which has been pronounced to be “the most perfect Irish novel published.” I have heard that Tennyson once “went mooning about for days,” repeating with endless gusto, and with frequent expressions of a wish that he was the author of, the closing lines:--

Youth must with time decay, Eileen Aroon! Beauty must fade away, Eileen Aroon! Castles are sacked in war, Chieftains are scattered far, Truth is a fixèd star, Eileen Aroon!

NORA HOPPER. PAGE 123 ETC.

This young Irish poet made an immediate impression by her _Ballads in Prose_ (John Lane). Both in prose and verse she displays the true Celtic note, and often the unmistakable Celtic intensity. The lovely lyrics “April in Ireland,” and “The Wind among the Reeds,” are from _Ballads in Prose_. “The Dark Man” has not hitherto appeared in print, and I am indebted to Miss Hopper for her permission to quote it here. It is, I understand, to be included in her shortly forthcoming volume, to be published by Mr John Lane.

DOUGLAS HYDE, LL.D. PAGE 126

Dr Hyde, one of the foremost living expositors of Gaelic folklore in Ireland, was born about thirty-five years ago in the Co. Roscommon, where he has since resided. He graduated at Trinity College, Dublin, after an exceptionally brilliant University career. He is now President of the Gaelic League, and one of the acknowledged leaders of the Gaelic wing of the Celtic Renascence; but from the first he was in the front rank of those who are working for the preservation of the ancient Irish language and the rescue of its beautiful fugitive literature. Although best known by his Irish Tales, taken down at first hand from the peasantry, and other Folk-collections, and his invaluable and unique _The Love Songs of Connacht_ (Connaught), he is himself a poet of mark. (See, also, Note XI., _supra_.) Those who are in a position to judge declare his Gaelic poetry, which appears in the Irish Press above the signature “An Chraoibhin Aoibhinn,” to be of altogether exceptional excellence. The work Dr Douglas Hyde does deserves the most cordial recognition. No man has worked more whole-heartedly, more enthusiastically, and with more far-reaching success for the cause of the Irish-Gaelic language, folk-lore, and literature, and, it may be added, the best interests of the Irish of the soil.

The songs by which he is represented in this volume are from the _Love Songs of Connacht_ (Fisher Unwin, 1893), a book which is not only indispensable to the Celtic scholar, but should be in the hands of every lover of Celtic literature, old-time or new. All are translations, though perhaps paraphrastic rather than metaphrastic. Both in their music and in their intensity--in, also, their peculiar lyric lilt--they are distinctively West Irish. The collection from which these poems are drawn was issued as _The Fourth Chapter of the Songs of Connacht_. The preceding three appeared in the now defunct _Nation_. They were all originally written in Irish; but very wisely, or at any rate for us very fortunately, Dr Hyde interpolated translations. In these he has endeavoured to reproduce the vowel-rhymes as well as the exact metres of the original poems. We must hope to see the reprint, in like fashion, of the predecessors of this volume.

LIONEL JOHNSON. PAGE 133

Though come of a Dublin family, and otherwise Irish by descent, Mr Johnson was born at Broadstairs in Kent (1867). He first became known to the reading public, as a poet, by his contributions to _The Book of the Rhymers’ Club_, notable for their distinction of touch. Since then Mr Johnson has published much in prose and verse, though in book form he has not, I think, produced any other prose work than his admirable study of Thomas Hardy, or any other volume of poetry than his _Poems_. His work is not characterised by distinctively Celtic quality, though occasionally, as in “The Red Wind” and “To Morfydd,” the Celtic note makes itself audible. No doubt--to judge from internal evidence in his later writings--Mr Johnson’s poetic work, at least, will develop more and more along the line of his racial bent.

DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY. (1817-1882.) PAGE 135

Mr Maccarthy, who was a barrister in Dublin, and one of the main supports of the _Nation_, is best known by his fine translations of Calderon’s Dramas. The “Lament,” by which he is here represented, has always seemed to me his most haunting lyrical achievement. It is necessary to add, however, that this poem is somewhat condensed from the original--which is weakened by diffuseness. The score or so of lines beginning “As fire-flies fade,” have been favourites with many poets of Maccarthy’s own time and later.

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. (1803-1849.) PAGE 137

While it is not the case, as sometimes averred, that Mangan was, or is, to Ireland what Burns is to Scotland, it is indisputable that the claim may be made for him rather than for any other Irish poet of the Early Victorian period. In fire and energy his faculty is unsurpassed by any of his poetic countrymen, though we may dispute Sir Charles Gavan Duffy’s assertion that Mangan “has not, and perhaps never had, any rival in mastery of the metrical and rhythmical resources of the English tongue.” Mangan was the child of a small tradesman of Dublin, where, in 1803, he was born. From childhood, fate dealt hardly with him. Abandoned in his early boyhood, he was indebted to a relative for his education; but when, in his fifteenth year, he became a copyist in a lawyer’s office, at a small pittance, his kindred discovered him and compelled him to share his meagre gains with them. For ten years thereafter he toiled in this bitter bondage. In his own words:--“I was obliged to work seven years of the ten from five in the morning, winter and summer, to eleven at night; and during the three remaining years, nothing but a special Providence could have saved me from suicide.” No wonder that, from an early period in his life, he found relief from his misery in drink; but it was misery and unbroken ill-fortune and adversity, much more than the curse of his fatal habit, that really killed him. There is a period in his life which is a blank, “a blank into which he entered a bright-haired youth and emerged a withered and stricken man.” His first chance for a happier life came with his appointment to a minor post in the University Library of Dublin, and it was during this time that most of his best work was done. His highest level is reached in his brilliant free paraphrases of German originals: _Anthologia Germania_ (1845). His later years were darkened by the worst phases of his malady, and he died (as in most part he had lived, in misery and poverty) in Meath Hospital, in his forty-seventh year. He has written one lyric that Irishmen will always account immortal: “Dark Rosaleen”--a wild and passionate rhapsody on Ireland herself. “Dark Rosaleen,” “Silk of the Kine,” “The Little Black Rose,” “Kathleen Ny Houlahan”--these were at one time the familiar analogues of Ireland. Of his Oriental paraphrases the most stirring is “The Karamanian Exile.” Strangely enough, Mangan’s Irish renderings are less happy than those poems which he based upon German and Oriental originals; but sometimes, as in the beautiful “Fair Hills of Eiré, O!” after the Irish of Donough mac Con-Mara, he has bequeathed a memorable lyric. Of poems that are strictly original, nothing seems to me more characteristic of Mangan than “The One Mystery” (see p. 142).

ROSA MULHOLLAND. PAGE 144

This accomplished prose-writer and poet was born in Belfast. Since her _Vagrant Verses_ (1886) she has published many stories and poems, and is a regular contributor to the leading Irish periodicals. Her “Fionnula” is one of the happiest renderings of the legend of the Swan Daughters of Lir; but is too long for quotation in the text. “The Wild Geese,” by which she is represented here, is eminently characteristic. Her latest poem, and one of her best, appears under the title “Under a Purple Cloud” in the autumn number of _The Evergreen_. It is a vision of Earth personified, and opens thus:

Under a purple cloud along the west The great brown mother lies and takes her rest, A dark cheek on her hand, and in her eyes The shadow of primeval mysteries.

Her tawny velvets swathe her, manifold, Her mighty head is coifed in filmy gold, Her youngest babe, the newly-blossomed rose Upon her swarthy bosom feeds and grows.

With her wide darkling gaze the mother sees Her children in their homes, the reddening trees, Roofing wet lawns, fruit-laden lattices, Blue mountain domes, and the grey river-seas.

THE HON. RODEN NOËL. (1834-1894.) PAGE 146

Mr Roden Noël was son of the first Earl of Gainsborough, grandson of Lord Roden of Tullymore in Ireland, and nephew to the present Marquis of Londonderry. By birth, descent, training, and sympathy, he considered himself an Irishman: though he was half English by blood, and lived the greater part of his life in England, while his intellectual homage was largely evoked by Hellenic mythology and lore, and by Teutonic mysticism and speculation. It was this confused blending of influences which, perhaps, militated so strongly against the concentration of his brilliant abilities into long-sustained and organic creative effort. With all his shortcomings, he still remains a poet of genuine impulse and occasionally of high distinction; and some of his lyrics and ballads, of a more essentially human interest than his more ambitious work, are likely to be held in honourable remembrance. The “Lament for a Little Child” (see p. 146) has passed into literature; as, indeed, may perhaps be said of the book whence it comes: _A Little Child’s Monument_ (1881). In one of his Cornish poems he begins thus:--

“For me, true son of Erin, thou art rife, Grand coast of Cornwall, cliff, and cave, and surge, With glamour of the Kelt.”

I do not think there is much “glamour of the Kelt” in Roden Noël’s work, but it may be discerned in one or two poems in each of his volumes, and in many of his lyrics and irregular lyrical compositions there is much of Celtic intensity and dream. Few poets have written of the sea with more loving knowledge and profound sympathy; hence it is that he is represented here by one characteristic sea-poem, called “The Swimmer”--as autobiographical as anything of the kind can be. The swimmer’s joy was Roden Noël’s chief physical delight. All who knew the man himself remember him as one of the personalities of his time, and as a man of individual distinction and charm. Besides the book already mentioned, his chief poetic volumes are _Beatrice and Other Poems_ (1868); _Songs of the Heights and Deeps_ (1885); and _A Modern Faust_ (1888). See also the Selection from his poems published in the Canterbury Poets Series (edited, with a Critical Introduction, by Mr Robert Buchanan), and the posthumous volumes _My Sea_ and _Selected Lyrics_ (Elkin Mathews).

CHARLES P. O’CONOR. PAGE 158

Besides this typical Irish song, Mr O’Conor has written other winsome lyrics of the same kind. One of the best is that called “Erinn” beginning--

“O, a lovely place is Erinn, in the summer of the year, Roseen dhu ma Erinn.”

This and “Maura Du of Ballyshannon” are from his _Songs of a Life_ (Kentish Mercury Office, 1875).

JOHN FRANCIS O’DONNELL. PAGE 160

This pretty Spinning Song is characteristic of the always deft and generally delicate and winsome lyrical writing of Mr Francis O’Donnell.

JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY. PAGE 161