The Catholic World Volume I Part 67

Gone from us--dead to us--he whom we worshipped so!

Low lies the altar we raised to his name; Madly his own hand hath shattered and laid it low-- Madly his own breath hath blasted his fame.

He whose proud bosom once raged with humanity.

He whose broad forehead was circled with might; Sunk to a time-serving, driveling inanity-- G.o.d! why not spare our loved country the sight?

Was it the gold of the stranger that tempted him?

Ah! we'd have pledged to him body and soul-- Toiled for him--fought for him--starved for him--died for him-- Smiled though our graves were the steps to hi s goal.

Breathed he one word in his deep, earnest whispering?

Wealth, crown, and kingdom were laid at his feet; Raised he his right hand, the millions would round him cling-- Hush! 'tis the Sa.s.senach ally you greet.

It is a curious and, indeed, a very touching trait in O'Connell's character that an imputation conveyed in this form had a power to wound him which all the articles of the morning papers and all the speeches of the evening debates had not. This redoubtable master of every weapon of invective, whose weighty words sometimes fell on his adversary like one of Ossian's t.i.tans hurling boulders, or again burst into a motley cascade of quip, and crank, and chaff, and wild, rampant ridicule, that (sometimes rather coa.r.s.e and personal) was at its best, to other rhetoric, as the music of an Irish jig is to all other music, nevertheless had his Achilles' tendon. The man who loved to call himself "the best abused man in the universe" was as weak before the enemy who attacked him according to the rules of prosody as if he lived in the age when every Celt in Kerry piously believed that a man, if the metre were only made sufficiently acrid, might be rhymed to death, in the same manner {476} as an ancestor of Lord Derby was, according to the Four Masters. [Footnote 98]

[Footnote 98: "John Stanley came to Ireland as the king of England's viceroy--a man who gave neither toleration nor sanctuary to ecclesiastics, laymen, or literary men; but all with whom he came in contact he subjected to cold, hardship, and famine; and he it was who plundered Niall, the son of Hugh O'Higgin, at Uisneach of Meath; but Henry D'Alton plundered James Tuite and the king's people, and gave to the O'Higgins a cow in lieu of each cow of which they had been plundered, and afterward escorted them into Connaught. The O'Higgins, on account of Niall, then satirized John Stanley, who only lived live weeks after the satirizing, having died from the venom of their satires. This was the second instance of the poetical influence of Niall O'Higgin's satires, the first having been the Clan Conway turning gray the night they plundered Niall at Clodoin, and the second the death of John Stanley."--_Annals of the Four Masters._ A.D. 1414.]

Lady Wilde's verse has not at all the same distinctively Celtic character as Mr. Ferguson's. He aspires to be

Kindly Irish of the Irish, Neither Saxon nor Italian;

and his choice inspirations come from the life of the clans.

Speranza's verse, so far as it has a specially Irish character, is of the most ancient type of that character. It is full of oriental figures and ill.u.s.trations. It is, when it is most Irish, rather cognate to Persian and Hebrew ways of thinking, forms of metaphor, redundance of expression--in its tendency to adjuration, in its habit of apostrophe, in its very peculiar and powerful but monotonous rhythm, which seems to pulsate on the ear with the even, strident stroke of a Hindoo drum. Where this peculiar poetry at all adapts itself to the vogue of the modern muse, it is easy to see that Miss Barrett had very great influence in determining the mere manner of Lady Wilde's genius. When in the midst of one very powerful poem, "The Voice of the Poor," these lines come in--

When the human rests upon the human, All grief is light; But who lends one kind glance to illumine Our life-long night?

The air around is ringing with their laughter-- G.o.d has only made the rich to smile, But we--in our rags, and want, and woe--we follow after, Weeping the while.

--we are tempted to note an unconscious homage to the author of "Aurora Leigh." But the character of Lady Wilde's verse is far more colored by the range of her studies than by the influence of any special style. The general reader, who may not breathe at ease the political atmosphere of the earlier part of this volume, will pause with pleasure to observe the spirit, grace, and fidelity of the translations which succeed. They are from almost every language in Europe, whether of Latin or Teutonic origin, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Danish, and Russian. Among these may be mentioned in particular two hymns of Savonarola, which are rendered so exquisitely that one is tempted to suggest that the _"Carmina Sedulii,"_ with much more of the ancient Irish hymnology, are as yet untranslated into the tongue now used in Ireland. It is a work peculiarly adapted to her genius. The first quality of Lady Wilde's poetry is that lyrical power of which the hymn is the finest development; and her most striking poems are those which a.s.sume the character of the older and more regular form of ode.

The readers of Mr. William Allingham's early writings were in general gratefully surprised when it was announced that he was the author of a very remarkable poem, of the order of eclogue, which appeared by parts in _Fraser's Magazine_ in 1863. His earlier poems, chiefly songs and verse of society, were pleasing from a certain airy grace and lightness; but on the whole their style was thin and jejune. Of late, his faculties have evidently mellowed very rapidly, and his language has become more animated, more concentrated, and more sustained.

"Laurence Bloomfield in Ireland" has had, as it were, a triple success--the success of a pamphlet, the success of a novel of Irish life, and its own more proper and legitimate success, as a regular pastoral, skilfully conceived, carefully executed, in which the flow of thought is sustained at a very even, if not a very lofty level throughout, {477} and whose language is on the whole admirably harmonized, full of happy allusional effects, of quaint, minute, picturesque delineation, and of a certain graceful and easy energy.

Mr. Gladstone has quoted some of its lines in a speech on the budget as an excuse for maintaining the duty on whisky; and he is not the only Englishman who has derived from its perusal an unexpected insight into some of the more perplexing problems of Irish life. Certainly, Mr. Allingham's views of Irish society, when he touches on questions of religion and politics, are not our views. He is an Ulster Protestant by religion, and an advanced liberal (we take it) in politics. But making those allowances, it must be admitted that he shows the poet's many-sided sympathetic mind in every page of this very remarkable poem. "It is," as he fairly says, "free from personalities, and neither of an orange nor a green complexion; but it is Irish in phraseology, character, and local color--with as little use as might be of a corrupt dialect, and with no deference at all to the stage traditions of Paddyism." It is divided into twelve chapters, and it is written in pleasantly modulated pentameters.

The story is of the life of a young squire, who was on the point of declaring himself a Young Irelander in his youth. His guardian, to cut the folly short, sent him incontinently to Cambridge, thence to the continent. He returns to Ireland in his twenty-sixth year, and finds the population decimated by the famine, and agitated by agrarian conspiracy. The neighboring gentry are bent, as conacre has ceased to pay, on supplanting the population by cattle. The population suppurates into secret societies. Laurence Bloomfield, long revolving the difficulties of his lot, and abhorring pretty equally the crimes of each cla.s.s against the other--determined, moreover, to be neither exterminator, demagogue, nor absentee--resolves to live among the people of his estate like a modern patriarch, and see what patience, kindness, a good understanding, and enlightened management may be able to effect. He extinguishes the Ribbon lodge, fastens his tenantry by equitable leases to the glebe, and gradually finds in the management of his estate a career of easy, pleasant, and even prosperous power.

In the course of ten years, Lisnamoy has become an Irish Arcadia, and Mr. Allingham's honest muse rises accordingly to sing a hero even more memorable in his way than the Man of Ross.

Bloomfield first promulgates his peculiar views of territorial administration at a dinner of his landlord neighbors in Lisnamoy House, where the wholesale eviction of the tenantry of a large neighboring district is proposed on the plea that--

"This country sorely needs A quicker clearance of its human weeds; But still the proper system is begun, And forty holdings we shall change to one."

Bloomfield his inexperience much confessed, Doubts if the large dispeopled farms be best,-- Best in a wide sense, best for all the world (At this expression sundry lips were curl'd),-- "I wish but know not how each peasant's hand Might work, nay, hope to win, a share of land; For ownership, however small it be, Breeds diligence, content, and loyalty, And tirelessly compels the rudest field, Inch after inch, its very most to yield.

Wealth might its true prerogatives retain; And no man lose, and all men greatly gain."

It is from the ill-concealed contempt of his cla.s.s for such thoughts as these, that Bloomfield's resolution to remain in Ireland and administer his own estate arises.

The story, as it is evolved, presents some charming sketches of character. Hardly even Carleton has delineated so admirably the nature and habits of the Irish peasant family as Mr. Allingham has done in his picture of the Dorans. How easy and natural, for example, is the portrait of Bridget Doran:

Mild oval face, a freckle here and there, Clear eyes, broad forehead, dark abundant hair, Pure placid look that show'd a gentle nature, Firm, unperplex'd, were hers; the maiden's stature Graceful arose, and strong, to middle height, With fair round arms, and footstep free and light; She was not showy, she was always neat In every gesture, native and complete, Disliking noise, yet neither dull nor slack, Could throw a rustic banter briskly back, Reserved but ready, innocently shrewd,-- In brief, a charming flower of womanhood.

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The occasional sketches of Irish scenery are also very vividly outlined. This of Lough Braccan is not perhaps the best, but it is the most easily detached from the text:

Among those mountain skirts a league away, Lough Braccan spread, with many a silver bay And islet green; a dark cliff, tall and bold, Half-m.u.f.fled in its cloak of ivy old, Bastioned the southern brink, beside a glen, Where birch and hazel hid the badger's den, And through the moist ferns and firm hollies play'd A rapid rivulet, from light to shade.

Above the glen, and wood, and cliff, was seen, Majestically simple and serene, Like some great soul above the various crowd, A purple mountain-top, at times in cloud Or mist, as in celestial veils of thought, Abstracted heavenward.

We may give another specimen of Mr. Allingham's power of delineation, which shows that he has studied Irish country life as well as Irish scenery and Irish physiognomy.

Mud hovels fringe the "fair green" of this town, A spot misnamed, at every season brown, O'erspread with countless man and beast to-day, Which bellow, squeak, and shout, bleat, bray, and neigh.

The "jobbers" there each more or less a rogue, Noisy or smooth, with each his various brogue, Cool, wiry Dublin, Connaught's golden mouth, Blunt northern, plaintive sing-song of the south, Feel cattle's ribs, or jaws of horses try.

For truth, since men's are very sure to lie, And shun, with parrying blow and practised heed, The rushing horns, the wildly prancing steed.

The moistened penny greets with sounding smack The rugged palm, which smites the greeting back; Oaths fly, the bargain like a quarrel burns, And oft the buyer turns, and oft returns: Now mingle Sa.s.senach and Gaelic tongue; On either side are slow concessions wrung; An anxious audience interfere; at last The sale is closed, and whisky binds it fast, In case of quilting upon oziers bent, With many an ancient patch and breezy rent.

This is as true a picture in its way as Mdlle. Rosa Bonheur's "Horse-fair."

Mr. Aubrey de Vere's "Inisfail" comes last on our list, but certainly not least in our estimation. No poet of Young Ireland has like him seized and breathed the spirit of his country's Catholic nationality, its virginal purity of faith, its invincible patience of hope, and all the gentle sweetness of its charity. Young Ireland rather studied the martial muse, and that with an avowed purpose. "The Irish harp," said Davis, "too much loves to weep. Let us, while our strength is great and our hopes high, cultivate its bolder strains, its raging and rejoicing; or if we weep, let it be like men whose eyes are lifted though their tears fall." Mr. de Vere has tried every mood of the native lyre, and proved himself master of all. His "Inisfail" is a ballad chronicle of Ireland, such as Young Ireland would have thought to be a worthy result of all its talents, and such as, in fact, Mr.

Duffy at one time proposed. But it must be said that its heroic ballads are not equal to those of Young Ireland. Some one said of a very finished, but occasionally frigid, Irish speaker, fifteen years ago, that he spoke like "Sheil with the chill on." A few of Mr. de Vere's ballads have the same effect of "Young Ireland with the chill on." They want the verve, the glow, the energy, the resonance, which belong to the best ballads of "The Spirit of the _Nation_." Of the writers of that time, Mr. D'Arcy McGee is perhaps, on the whole, the most kindred genius to his. Mr. de Vere has an insight into all the periods of Irish history in their most poetical expression which Mr.

McGee alone of his comrades seems to have equally possessed. Indeed, if Mr. Me Gee's poems were all collected and chronologically arranged--as it is to be hoped they may be some day soon--it would be found that he had unconsciously and desultorily traversed very nearly the same complete extent of ground that Mr. de Vere has systematically and deliberately gone over. But though no one has written more n.o.bly of the dimly glorious Celtic ages, and many of his battle-ballads are instinct with life, and wonderfully picturesque, it is easy to see that Mr. McGee's best desire was to follow the footsteps of the early saints, and the _Via Dolorosa_ of the period of the penal laws. These, {479} too, are the pa.s.sages over which Mr. de Vere's genius most loves to brood, and his prevailing view of Ireland is the supernatural view of her destiny to carry the cross and spread the faith. Young Ireland wrote its bold, brilliant ballads as a part of the education of the new nationality that it believed was growing up, and destined to take possession of the island--"a nationality that," to use Davis's words again, "must contain and represent all the races of Ireland. It must not be Celtic; it must not be Saxon; it must be Irish. The Brehon law and the maxims of Westminster, the cloudy and lightning genius of the Gael, the placid strength of the Saxon, the marshalling insight of the Norman; a literature which shall exhibit in combination the pa.s.sions and idioms of all, and which shall equally express our mind, in its romantic, its religious, its forensic, and its practical tendencies.

Finally, a native government, which shall know and rule by the might and right of all, yet yield to the arrogance of none;--these are the components of such a nationality." And such was the dream that seemed an easy eventuality twenty years ago. But Mr. de Vere writes after the famine and in view of the exodus. His mind goes from the present to the past by ages of sorrow--of sorrow, nevertheless, illumined, nurtured, and sustained by divine faith and the living presence of the Church. So in the most beautiful poem of this volume, he sees the whole Irish race carrying an inner spiritual life through all their tribulation in the guise of a great religious order of which England is the foundress, and the rules are written in the statute-book. We cannot select a better specimen of the thorough Catholic tone of Mr.

de Vere's genius, and of the vivid power and finished grace of his poetry, than this:

There is an order by a northern sea Far in the west, of rule and life more strict Than that which Basil rear'd in Galilee, In Egypt Paul, in Umbria Benedict.

Discalced it walks; a stony land of tombs, A strange Petraea of late days, it treads!

Within its court no high-tossed censer fumes; The night-rain beats its cells, the wind its beds.

Before its eyes no bra.s.s-bound, blazon'd tome Reflects the splendor of a lamp high hung: Knowledge is banish'd from her earliest home Like wealth: it whispers psalms that once it sung.

It is not bound by the vow celibate, Lest, through its ceasing, anguish too might cease; In sorrow it brings forth; and death and fate Watch at life's gate, and t.i.the the unripe increase.

It wears not the Franciscan's sheltering gown; The cord that binds it is the strangers chain; Scarce seen for scorn, in fields of old renown It breaks the clod; another reaps the grain.

Year after year it fasts; each third or fourth So fasts that common fasts to it are feast; Then of its brethren many in the earth Are laid unrequiem'd like the mountain beast.

Where are its cloisters? Where the felon sleeps!

Where its novitiate? Where the last wolf died!

From sea to sea its vigil long it keeps-- Stern foundress! is its rule not mortified?

Thou that hast laid so many an order waste, A nation is thine order! It was thine Wide as a realm that order's seed to cast, And undispensed sustain its discipline!

It is another curious ill.u.s.tration of the _Hibernis ipsis Hibernior_ that a de Vere, who is, moreover, "of the caste of Vere de Vere,"

should have so intimate a comprehension of the Celtic spirit as is often shown in these poems, especially in the use of those allegories which are so characteristic of the period of persecution, and in some of his metres that appear to be instinct with the very melody of the oldest Irish music. Here, indeed, we seem to taste, in a certain vague and dreamy sensation, which the mere murmur of such verses even without strict reference to the words produces, all the charm of which that ancient poetry might have been capable, if it were still cultivated in a language of living civilization. Several of these poems, if translated into Irish verse, would probably pa.s.s back without the change of an idiom--so completely Celtic is the whole conception of the language. The dirges, for example, appear on a first reading to be only English versions of Irish poems belonging to the time of the Jacobites and the Brigade--until, as we examine more carefully, we observe that the allegory is {480} wrought out with all the finish of more modern art, and that the metaphors are brought into a more just inter-dependence than the native bard usually thought necessary.

The tenderness that approaches to a sort of worship of Ireland under the poetical personification of a mother wailing for her children, again and again breaks out in Mr. de Vere's verse; and in all the range of Irish poetry it is nowhere more exquisitely expressed. The solemn beauty of the following verses is like that of some of those earliest of the melodies, whose long lines, with their curious rippling rhythm, were evidently meant for recitation as well as for musical effect:

In the night, in the night, O my country, the stream calls out from afar; So swells thy voice through the ages, sonorous and vast; In the night, in the night, O my country, clear flashes the star: So flashes on me thy face through the gloom of the past.

I sleep not; I watch: in blows the wind ice-wing'd and ice-fingered: My forehead it cools and slakes the fire in my breast; Though it sighs o'er the plains where oft thine exiles look'd back, and long lingered, And the graves where thy famish'd lie dumb and thine outcasts find rest.

Hardly less sad, but in so different a spirit as to afford a contrast that brings us to a fair measure of the variety of Mr. de Vere's powers, is a poem of the days of the brigade. The wife of one of the soldiers who followed Sarsfield to France after the capitulation of Limerick, and entered the Irish brigade of Louis XIV., is supposed, sitting by the banks of the Shannon, to speak:

River that through this purple plain Toilest (once redder) to the main, Go, kiss for me the banks of Seine!