A Book of Irish Verse. Various

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      These three poets published much of their best work before and during the Fenian movement, which, like 'Young Ireland,' had its poets, though but a small number. Charles Kickham, one of the 'triumvirate' that controlled it in Ireland; John Casey, a clerk in a flour-mill; and Ellen O'Leary, the sister of Mr. John O'Leary, were at times very excellent. Their verse lacks, curiously enough, the oratorical vehemence of Young Ireland, and is plaintive and idyllic. The agrarian movement that followed produced but little poetry, and of that little all is forgotten but a vehement poem by Fanny Parnell, and a couple of songs by Mr. T.D. Sullivan, who is a good song-writer, though not, as the writer has read on an election placard, 'one of the greatest poets who ever moved the heart of man.' But while Nationalist verse has ceased to be a portion of the propaganda of a party, it has been written, and is being written, under the influence of the Nationalist newspapers and of Young Ireland societies and the like. With an exacting conscience, and better models than Thomas Moore and the Young Irelanders, such beautiful enthusiasm could not fail to make some beautiful verses. But, as things are, the rhythms are mechanical, and the metaphors conventional; and inspiration is too often worshipped as a Familiar who labours while you sleep, or forget, or do many worthy things which are not spiritual things. For the most part, the Irishman of our times loves so deeply those arts which build up a gallant personality, rapid writing, ready talking, effective speaking to crowds, that he has no thought for the arts which consume the personality in solitude. He loves the mortal arts which have given him a lure to take the hearts of men, and shrinks from the immortal, which could but divide him from his fellows. And in this century, he who does not strive to be a perfect craftsman achieves nothing. The poor peasant of the eighteenth century could make fine ballads by abandoning himself to the joy or sorrow of the moment, as the reeds abandon themselves to the wind which sighs through them, because he had about him a world where all was old enough to be steeped in emotion. But we cannot take to ourselves, by merely thrusting out our hands, all we need of pomp and symbol, and if we have not the desire of artistic perfection for an ark, the deluge of incoherence, vulgarity, and triviality will pass over our heads. If we had no other symbols but the tumult of the sea, the rusted gold of the thatch, the redness of the quicken-berry, and had never known the rhetoric of the platform and of the newspaper, we could do without laborious selection and rejection; but, even then, though we might do much that would be delightful, that would inspire coming times, it would not have the manner of the greatest poetry.

      Here and there, the Nationalist newspapers and the Young Ireland societies have trained a writer who, though busy with the old models, has some imaginative energy; while Mr. Lionel Johnson, Mrs. Hinkson, Miss Nora Hopper, and A.E., the successors of Allingham and Ferguson and Mr. de Vere, are more anxious to influence and understand Irish thought than any of their predecessors who did not take the substance of their poetry from politics. They are distinguished too by their deliberate art, and with their preoccupation with spiritual passions and memories. Mr. Lionel Johnson and Mrs. Hinkson are both Catholic and devout, but Mr. Lionel Johnson's poetry is lofty and austere, and, like Mr. de Vere's, never long forgets the greatness of his Church and the interior life whose expression it is, while Mrs. Hinkson is happiest when she embodies emotions, that have the innocence of childhood, in symbols and metaphors from the green world about her. She has no reverie nor speculation, but a devout tenderness like that of S. Francis for weak instinctive things, old gardeners, old fishermen, birds among the leaves, birds tossed upon the waters. Miss Hopper belongs to that school of writers which embodies passions, that are not the less spiritual because no Church has put them into prayers, in stories and symbols from old Celtic poetry and mythology. The poetry of A.E., at its best, finds its symbols and its stories in the soul itself, and has a more disembodied ecstasy than any poetry of our time. He is the chief poet of the school of Irish mystics, which has shaped Mr. Charles Weekes, who published recently, but withdrew immediately, a curious and subtle book, and Mr. John Eglinton, who is best known for the orchestral harmonies of his 'Two Essays on the Remnant,' and certain younger writers who have heard the words, 'If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them,' and thought the labours that bring the mystic vision more important than the labours of any craft.

      Except some few Catholic and mystical poets and Prof. Dowden in one or two poems, no Irishman living in Ireland has sung excellently of any but a theme from Irish experience, Irish history, or Irish tradition. Trinity College, which desires to be English, has been the mother of many verse-writers and of few poets; and this can only be because she has set herself against the national genius, and taught her children to imitate alien styles and choose out alien themes, for it is not possible to believe that the educated Irishman alone is prosaic and uninventive. Her few poets have been awakened by the influence of the farm-labourers, potato-diggers, pedlars, and hedge-schoolmasters of the eighteenth century, and their imitators in this, and not by a scholastic life, which, for reasons easy for all to understand and for many to forgive, has refused the ideals of Ireland, while those of England are but far-off murmurs. An enemy to all enthusiasms, because all enthusiasms seemed her enemies, she has taught her children to look neither to the world about them, nor into their own souls where some dangerous fire might slumber.

      To remember that in Ireland the professional and landed classes have been through the mould of Trinity College or of English Universities, and are ignorant of the very names of the best writers in this book, is to know how strong a wind blows from the ancient legends of Ireland, how vigorous an impulse to create is in her heart to-day. Deserted by the classes from among whom have come the bulk of the world's intellect, she struggles on, gradually ridding herself of incoherence and triviality, and slowly building up a literature in English which, whether important or unimportant, grows always more unlike others; nor does it seem as if she would long lack a living literature in Gaelic, for the movement for the preservation of Gaelic, which has been so much more successful than anybody foresaw, has already its poets. Dr. Hyde, who can only be represented here by some of his beautiful translations, has written Gaelic poems which pass from mouth to mouth in the west of Ireland. The country people have themselves fitted them to ancient airs, and many that can neither read nor write, sing them in Donegal and Connemara and Galway. I have, indeed, but little doubt that Ireland, communing with herself in Gaelic more and more, but speaking to foreign countries in English, will lead many that are sick with theories and with trivial emotion, to some sweet well-waters of primeval poetry.

      W.B.Y.

      The editor thanks Mr. Aubrey de Vere, Mr. T.W. Rolleston, Dr. J. Todhunter, Mr. Alfred Perceval Graves, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Mr. Lionel Johnson, A.E., Mr. Charles Weekes, Mr. John Eglinton, Mrs. Hinkson, Miss Dora Sigerson (Mrs. Clement Shortes), and Miss Nora Hopper for permission to quote from their poems, Lady Ferguson and Mrs. Allingham for leave to give poems by Sir Samuel Ferguson and William Allingham, and Messrs Chatto & Windus for permission to include a song of Arthur O'Shaughnessy's. Two writers are excluded whom he would gladly have included—Casey, because the copyright holders have refused permission, and Mr. George Armstrong, because his 'Songs of Wicklow,' when interesting, are too long for this book.

OLD AGE

       Table of Contents

      From the 'Deserted Village'

      In all my wanderings round this world of care,

       In all my griefs—and God has given my share—

       I still had hopes my later hours to crown,

       Amidst these humble bowers to lay me down;

       To husband out life's taper at the close

       And keep the flame from wasting by repose;

       I still had hopes, for pride attends us still,

       Amidst the swains to show my book-learned skill,

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