Volume I Part 68 (1/2)

Tell him I loved, and love for aye, That his I am though far away-- More his than on the marriage-day.

Tell him thy flowers for him I twine When first the slow sad mornings s.h.i.+ne In thy dim gla.s.s; for he is mine.

Tell him when evening's tearful light Bathes those dark towers on Aughrim's height, There where he fought, in heart, I fight.

A freeman's banner o'er him waves!

So be it! I but tend the graves Where freemen sleep whose sons are slaves.

Tell him I nurse his n.o.ble race, Nor weep save o'er one sleeping face Wherein those looks of his I trace.

For him my beads I count when falls Moonbeam or shower at intervals Upon our burn'd and blacken'd walls:

And bless him! bless the bold brigade-- May G.o.d go with them, horse and blade, For faith's defense, and Ireland's aid!

Here the abrupt transition of tone in the last verse from the subdued melancholy of those which precede it is very fine and very Irish. One can fancy the widowed wife, in all her desolation, starting, even from her beads, as she thinks of Lord Clare's dragoons coming down on the enemy with their ”_Viva la_ for Ireland's wrong!”

Twenty years have now pa.s.sed since ”The Spirit of the _Nation_” gave some glimpses of the mine of poetry then latent in the Irish mind. In 1845 Mr. Gavan Duffy published his ”Ballad Poetry of Ireland”--a book which had the largest sale of any published in Ireland since the union and probably the widest influence. Upon this common and neutral ground Orange-man and Ribbon-man, Tory, and Nationalist, were perforce brought into harmonious contact; and ”The Boyne Water” lost half its virus as a political psalm when it was embalmed side by side with the ”Wild Geese” or ”w.i.l.l.y Reilly.” Behind the produce of his own immediate period, Mr. Duffy, in arranging his materials, could only find a few ballads by Moore, a few by Gerald Griffin, a few by Banim, Callanan, Furlong, and Drennan, that could be accounted legitimate ballad poetry. The rest was fast cropping up while he was actually compiling his collection, under the hot breath of the National movement, in a lavish and luxuriant growth. This impulse seems to have spent itself some years ago. Anything of real merit in the way of Irish poetry does not now appear in periodical literature more than once or twice in a year; and Mr. Thomas Irwin is the only recent writer whose verse may fairly be named in the same breath with that which we have now noticed. A rich grace and finish of {481} expression, a most quaint and delicate humor, and a fine-poised aptness of phrase, distinguish his poetry, which is more according to the taste that Mr. Tennyson has established in England than that of any Irish writer of the day.

Irish poetry seems now, therefore, to have pa.s.sed into a new and more advanced stage of development. Here are four volumes, by four separate writers, of poems, old and new--all published within a year; and all, we believe, decidedly successful, and in satisfactory course of sale.

Mr. Florence MacCarthy's poems had previously gone through several editions, and won enduring fame--perhaps more widely spread in America than even at home, on account of a quality somewhat kindred to the peculiar genius of the best American poets, and especially Longfellow, Poe, and Irving, that the reader will readily recognize in his finely-finished and most melodious verse. Nor should we omit to mention, in cataloguing the library of recent Irish poets, ”The Monks of Kilcrea,” a long romantic poem in the style of ”The Lady of the Lake,” which contains many a pa.s.sage that Scott might own, but of which the writer remains unknown. Thus Irish national poetry is acc.u.mulating, as it were, in strata. Mr. Duffy set on the t.i.tle-page of his ”Ballad Poetry” the Irish motto, _Bolg an dana_, which not all his readers clearly understood; but which, to all who did, seemed extremely appropriate at the time. ”This man,” say the Four Masters, speaking of a great bard of the fifteenth century, ”was called the _Bolg an dana_, which signifies that he was a common budget of poetry.”

And this was all that Mr. Duffy's Ballad Poetry professed to be. But what was only a budget of desultory jetsam and flotsam in 1845 is taking the shape of a solid literature in 1865; and those twenty golden years have at all events been well filled with ranks of rhyme.

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From The Month.

CONSTANCE SHERWOOD.

AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

BY LADY GEORGIANA FULLERTON.

CHAPTER VIII.

After I had been musing a little while, Mistress Bess ran into the room, and cried to some one behind her:

”Nan's friend is here, and she is mine too, for we all played in a garden with her when I was little. Prithee, come and see her.” Then turning to me, but yet holding the handle of the door, she said: ”Will is so unmannerly, I be ashamed of him. He will not so much as show himself.”

”Then, prithee, come alone,” I answered. Upon which she came and sat on my knee, with her arm round my neck, and whispered in mine ear:

”Moll is very sick to-day; will you not see her, Mistress Sherwood?”

”Yea, if so be I have license,” I answered; and she, taking me by the hand, offered to lead me up the stairs to the room where she lay. I, following her, came to the door of the chamber, but would not enter till Bess fetched the nurse, who was the same had been at Sherwood Hall, and who, knowing my name, was glad to see me, and with a curtsey invited me in. White as a lily was the little face resting on a pillow, with its blue eyes half shut, and a store of golden hair about it, which minded me of the glories round angels' heads in my mother's missal.

”Sweet lamb!” quoth the nurse, as I stooped to kiss the pale forehead.

”She be too good for this world. Ofttimes she doth babble in her sleep of heaven, and angels, and saints, and a wreath of white roses wherewith a bright lady will crown her.”

”Kiss my lips,” the sick child softly whispered, as I bent over her bed. Which when I did, she asked, ”What is your name? I mind your face.” When I answered, ”Constance Sherwood,” she smiled, as if remembering where we had met. ”I heard my grandam calling me last night,” she said; ”I be going to her soon.” Then a fit of pain came on, and I had to leave her. She did go from this world a few days after; and the nurse then told me her last words had been ”Jesu!