In poems of this kind and in deeper ones from the spiritual side of her nature, as well as in those of valor and daring, she uses such words as are tipped with a penetrative point; but in some of her sonnets, such as “The
Chantry,” in a narrative poem, such as “The Vigil in Tyrone,” though not without picturesque quality, in “The Squall,” despite its frequently fine imagery, and often in the dramatic poem, “A Martyr’s Idyl,” the words are too much weighted to carry to the mark; they suggest undue care in selection which interposes between the motive of the poem and the sympathy of the reader. One pauses to consider the words; and the initial impulse, like a spent shell, falls at his feet. Miss Guiney’s diction is, in the main, peculiarly crisp and apposite; but she does not always hold to the directness of appeal that distinguishes her truest work, but withdraws herself into subtleties, often beautiful, but too remote. “A Martyr’s Idyl” is a dramatically conceived incident, well wrought as to scene and character, and having many passages of great beauty; but the effort to keep the expression to the manner of the time results in a lack of flexibility in the style that is now and then cumbrous. On the whole, it is not in a dramatic poem of this sort that Miss Guiney best reveals herself, but in such inspirations as she has taken—
Neither from sires nor sons,
Nor the delivered ones,
Holy, invoked with awe.
Her best work answers, by practical demonstration, her own query:
“Where shall I find my light?”
“Turn from another’s track,
Whether for gain or lack,
Love but thy natal right.