And quite unguessed of by our sapient crowd?
At all events I who now speak to you
Would gladly—should some gracious power deign
(Say once or twice perchance in sixty years)
To make me the recipient of like gift,
And claim the promise—gladly would I vow
Here on my oath no mortal save myself
Should see, hear, aye or catch a rumour of it.
And Emily Lawless would have been capable of keeping that vow. The sincere love of poetry is a very purifying affection; her devotion to what was big made her big, and she showed a large humility where poetry was concerned—both in the way she accepted criticism from any one who cared, however insignificant, and in the modest place that she assigned to herself among singers. Notwithstanding, now and again she caught that “spacious phrase.” There are words, fragments, that run in our heads and make us wonder from which great poet they come, until we remember they are hers. They generally recall the Elizabethans, and the verse of the Elizabethans it was whose poetry most affected and most influenced her.
In one way these last poems have an especial distinction. They bear the marks of her struggle with bodily misery and marks of the victory she won. They are scarred, but they prove the final dominance of her mind. And although her lyrics of sleeplessness and suffering, such as “Night-Sounds” and “Resurgence,” haunt the hearer with their poignant weariness, their waking nightmares, yet they bear in them a note of endurance which may well strengthen others in like stress; and a better note—the conviction of that deeper truth wrested from illness which the strong man misses. Few poets have sung about pain, and fewer still without preaching. To have done this is characteristic of Miss Lawless.