Every lover of Irish poetry is familiar with “The Fairies” of the late William Allingham. He is an Irish rather than distinctively a Celtic poet in the strict sense of the word; but every now and again he strikes the genuine Celtic note, as in his well-known “Fairies,” and the little poem called the “Æolian Harp,” by which he is also represented here. Much the best critical summary of his life-work is to be found in the brief memoir by Mr W. B. Yeats in Miles’ Poets and Poetry of the Century, Vol. V., p. 209. Among the innumerable love songs of the Irish peasantry there are few more beautiful than Allingham’s “Mary Donnelly.” As Mr Yeats says, he was “the poet of little things and little moments, and neither his emotions nor his thoughts took any wide sweep over the world of Man and Nature.” His “Laurence Bloomfield” is already practically forgotten; but many of the lighter and often exquisitely deft lyrics of his early life will remain in the memory of the Irish people, and one or two at least in English literature.
THOMAS BOYD.
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So far as I know, Mr Thomas Boyd has not published any volume of verse. Some of his poems have appeared in United Ireland, among them the beautiful lines, “To the Lianhaun Shee.”
EMILY BRONTË. (1818-1848.)
[PAGE 97]
It may be as well to explain to those readers who take it for granted that Emily Brontë is to be accounted an English poet, that she was of Irish nationality and birth. The name Brontë, so familiar now through the genius of herself and her sister, was originally Prunty. Everything from her pen has a note of singular distinction; but perhaps she could hardly be more characteristically represented than by the poem called “Remembrance.” The, in quantity, meagre poetic legacy of the author of Wuthering Heights is comprised (under her pseudonym, Ellis Bell) in the volume Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell.
STOPFORD A. BROOKE.
[PAGE 98-100]
“The Earth and Man” and “Song” (from the poem called “Six Days”) are from Mr Stopford Brooke’s volume, Poems (Macmillan & Co.). These seem to me fairly representative of the distinctive atmosphere which Mr Brooke conveys in all his poetry. See particularly his Riquet of The Tuft (1880) and Poems (1888).
JOHN K. CASEY.
[PAGE 101-3]
Most of Mr Casey’s poems appeared above the signature “Leo.” Born in 1846, the son of a peasant, his early efforts to make literature his profession were handicapped by inevitable disadvantages. In 1876 he was arrested as a Fenian conspirator, and imprisoned. This, combined with the influence of his unselfish patriotism and the popularity of many of his lyrics, gave him a recognised place in the Irish Brotherhood of Song.
GEORGE DARLEY. (1795-1846.)
[PAGE 104]