"Ocean before, the summer sky above
Who could pourtray the mountains' purple smiles—
And all the opal hues of earth and heaven,
Foam fringing forests, heather-tufted Isles;
The roseate dawn—purpureal pomps of even—
And young Atlantic's petulant, shifting wiles?
Who could do aught but mar the true expression
Where all is change? Then why a record shape
Of scenes whose nature glories in succession
From wood to wave—from wave to distant cape—
Like the young poet's dream, fair beyond all possession."
Photo—Lawrence, Dublin.
At Parknasilla.
Here in the demesne lands of a Bishop's Old Palace, the Southern Hotel new palace has been built. The green turf of its lawn extends down to the water's edge. It is a land of arbutus and myrtle, of glades laden with the pink and white blossoms of oleander and rhododendron, and thick with bells of fuschias, the fair daffodils of Shakespeare and Herrick, that fade away too soon:
"Daffodils that come
Before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty."
Derreen, away in the lap of the landscape, found favour of Froude, and at Kilmackilloge he found material for his novel. The beautiful Garinish Island is like a little paradise, lost in a land where all is lovely. Around the shores, and in the sandy caves, the beautiful seals cluster, and at times are so tame as to answer the shrill whistle of the boatman, and show their lovely forms on the water's surface near at hand. We live in sceptical times, when
"The powder, the beauty, and the majesty,
That had their haunts in dale, or piney mountain,
Or forests by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths—all these have vanished.
They live no longer in the faith of reason."
But still here, along the old-world shores, where daylight dies, the superstitions and traditions of the pagan past still linger among them, and there is none more interesting than that which teaches the fishermen to regard these beautiful-eyed, plaintive-voiced creatures with tenderness. The souls of the dead, drowned at sea, who die out of friendship with God, go into the bodies of the seals, and there through the ages await the Trump of the Archangel to call them before the Great White Throne.