The other mention occurs in the former of the two cantos Of Mutability. There the poet sings that the place appointed for the trial of the titles and best rights of both 'heavenly powers' and 'earthly wights' was
. . . vpon the highest hights
Of Arlo-hill (Who knowes not Arlo-hill?)
That is the highest head (in all mens sights)
Of my old father Mole, whom Shepheards quill
Renowmed hath with hymnes fit for a rurall skill.
His poem called Colin Clouts Come Home Again, written in 1591, and dedicated to Sir W. Raleigh 'from my house at Kilcolman the 27 of December, 1591'{5}— written therefore after a lengthy absence in England— exhibits a full familiarity with the country round about Kilcolman. On the whole then we may suppose that his residence at Kilcolman began not later than 1588. It was to be roughly and and terribly ended ten years after.
We may suppose he was living there in peace and quiet, not perhaps undisturbed by growing murmurs of discontent, by signs of unrepressed and irrepressible hostility towards his nation, by ill-concealed sympathies with the Spanish invaders amongst the native population, when the Armada came and went. The old castle in which he had lived had been one of the residences of the Earls of Desmond. It stood some two miles from Doneraile, on the north side of a lake which was fed by the river Awbeg or Mulla, as the poet christened it.
'Two miles north-west of Doneraile,' writes Charles Smith in his Natural and Civil History of the County and City of Cork, 1774, (i. 340, 341)—'is Kilcoleman, a ruined castle of the Earls of Desmond, but more celebrated for being the residence of the immortal Spenser, when he composed his divine poem The Faerie Queene. The castle is now almost level with the ground, and was situated on the north side of a fine lake, in the midst of a vast plain, terminated to the east by the county of Waterford mountains; Bally- howra hills to the north, or, as Spenser terms them, the mountains of Mole, Nagle mountains to the south, and the mountains of Kerry to the west. It commanded a view of above half the breadth of Ireland; and must have been, when the adjacent uplands were wooded, a most pleasant and romantic situation; from whence, no doubt, Spenser drew several parts of the scenery of his poem.'
Here, then, as in some cool sequestered vale of life, for some ten years, his visits to England excepted, lived Spenser still singing sweetly, still, as he might say, piping, with the woods answering him and his echo ringing. Sitting in the shade he would play many a 'pleasant fit;' he would sing
Some hymne or morall laie,
Or carol made to praise his loved lasse;
he would see in the rivers that flowed around his tower beings who lived and loved, and would sing of their mutual passions. It must have sounded strangely to hear the notes of his sweet voice welling forth from his old ruin—to hear music so subtle and refined issuing from that scarred and broken relic of past turbulencies —
The shepheard swaines that did about him play
. . . with greedie listfull eares
Did stand astonisht at his curious skill
Like hartlesse deare, dismayed with thunders sound.
He presents a picture such as would have delighted his own fancy, though perhaps the actual experience may not have been unalloyed with pain. It is a picture which in many ways resembles that presented by one of kindred type of genius, who has already been mentioned as of affinity with him—by Wordsworth. Wordsworth too sang in a certain sense from the shade, far away from the vanity of courts, and the uproar of cities; sang 'from a still place, remote from men;' sang, like his own Highland girl, all alone with the 'vale profound' 'overflowing with the sound;' finding, too, objects of friendship and love in the forms of nature which surrounded his tranquil home.