Twenty Golden Years Ago is by no means a poetical poem, but there is poetry in it. There is no poetical poem by Mangan. But he has written no serious verses in which there is not poetry.
After giving Mangan’s own verse account of what he was like in his own regard at about forty years of age, I copy what Mitchel saw when the poet was first pointed out to him:—
“Being in the College Library [Trinity, Dublin], and having occasion for a book in that gloomy apartment of the institution called the ‘Fagal Library,’ which is the innermost recess of the stately building, an acquaintance pointed out to me a man perched on the top of a ladder, with the whispered information that the figure was Clarence Mangan. It was an unearthly and ghostly figure, in a brown garment; the same garment (to all appearance), which lasted till the day of his death. The blanched hair was totally unkempt; the corpse-like features still as marble; a large book was in his arms, and all his soul was in the book. I had never heard of Clarence Mangan before, and knew not for what he was celebrated, whether as a magician, a poet, or a murderer; yet took a volume and spread it on a table, not to read, but with the pretence of reading to gaze on the spectral creature on the ladder.”
I never met any one who had known Mangan. Mitchel did not know the name of the woman who lured him on with smiles that seemed to promise love. He always addressed her in his poems as Frances. Some time ago the name of the woman was divulged. It is ungallant of me to have forgotten it, but such is the case. The address at which Mangan visited her was in Mountpleasant Square, Dublin. At the time I saw the name of the lady I looked into a directory of 1848 which I happened to have by me, and found a different name at the address given in the Square. I know the love affair of the poet took place years before his death in 1849, but people in quiet and unpretentious houses in Dublin, or correctly Ranelagh, often live a whole generation in the same house.
Here I find myself in a second puzzle. So long as I thought merely of writing this rambling account of “My Borrowed Poet,” I decided upon trying to say something about the stupidity of women and poets in general. But I don’t feel in case to do so when I glance up at the face of Mangan hanging on the wall, and bring myself to realise the fact that this face now looking so dead and unburied was young and bright and perhaps cheerful when he went wooing in Ranelagh.
Instead of saying anything wise and stupid and commonplace about either poets or women, let me quote here stanzas which must have been written some day when he saw sunshine among the clouds:—
THE MARINER’S BRIDE.
“Look, mother! the mariner’s rowing
His galley adown the tide;
I’ll go where the mariner’s going,
And be the mariner’s bride!
“I saw him one day through the wicket,
I opened the gate and we met—
As a bird in the fowler’s net,
Was I caught in my own green thicket.
O mother, my tears are flowing,
I’ve lost my maidenly pride—
I’ll go if the mariner’s going,
And be the mariner’s bride!