DENIS FLORENCE MACCARTHY. (1817-1882.)
[PAGE 135]
Mr Maccarthy, who was a barrister in Dublin, and one of the main supports of the Nation, is best known by his fine translations of Calderon’s Dramas. The “Lament,” by which he is here represented, has always seemed to me his most haunting lyrical achievement. It is necessary to add, however, that this poem is somewhat condensed from the original—which is weakened by diffuseness. The score or so of lines beginning “As fire-flies fade,” have been favourites with many poets of Maccarthy’s own time and later.
JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN. (1803-1849.)
[PAGE 137]
While it is not the case, as sometimes averred, that Mangan was, or is, to Ireland what Burns is to Scotland, it is indisputable that the claim may be made for him rather than for any other Irish poet of the Early Victorian period. In fire and energy his faculty is unsurpassed by any of his poetic countrymen, though we may dispute Sir Charles Gavan Duffy’s assertion that Mangan “has not, and perhaps never had, any rival in mastery of the metrical and rhythmical resources of the English tongue.” Mangan was the child of a small tradesman of Dublin, where, in 1803, he was born. From childhood, fate dealt hardly with him. Abandoned in his early boyhood, he was indebted to a relative for his education; but when, in his fifteenth year, he became a copyist in a lawyer’s office, at a small pittance, his kindred discovered him and compelled him to share his meagre gains with them. For ten years thereafter he toiled in this bitter bondage. In his own words:—“I was obliged to work seven years of the ten from five in the morning, winter and summer, to eleven at night; and during the three remaining years, nothing but a special Providence could have saved me from suicide.” No wonder that, from an early period in his life, he found relief from his misery in drink; but it was misery and unbroken ill-fortune and adversity, much more than the curse of his fatal habit, that really killed him. There is a period in his life which is a blank, “a blank into which he entered a bright-haired youth and emerged a withered and stricken man.” His first chance for a happier life came with his appointment to a minor post in the University Library of Dublin, and it was during this time that most of his best work was done. His highest level is reached in his brilliant free paraphrases of German originals: Anthologia Germania (1845). His later years were darkened by the worst phases of his malady, and he died (as in most part he had lived, in misery and poverty) in Meath Hospital, in his forty-seventh year. He has written one lyric that Irishmen will always account immortal: “Dark Rosaleen”—a wild and passionate rhapsody on Ireland herself. “Dark Rosaleen,” “Silk of the Kine,” “The Little Black Rose,” “Kathleen Ny Houlahan”—these were at one time the familiar analogues of Ireland. Of his Oriental paraphrases the most stirring is “The Karamanian Exile.” Strangely enough, Mangan’s Irish renderings are less happy than those poems which he based upon German and Oriental originals; but sometimes, as in the beautiful “Fair Hills of Eiré, O!” after the Irish of Donough mac Con-Mara, he has bequeathed a memorable lyric. Of poems that are strictly original, nothing seems to me more characteristic of Mangan than “The One Mystery” (see p. 142).
ROSA MULHOLLAND.
[PAGE 144]
This accomplished prose-writer and poet was born in Belfast. Since her Vagrant Verses (1886) she has published many stories and poems, and is a regular contributor to the leading Irish periodicals. Her “Fionnula” is one of the happiest renderings of the legend of the Swan Daughters of Lir; but is too long for quotation in the text. “The Wild Geese,” by which she is represented here, is eminently characteristic. Her latest poem, and one of her best, appears under the title “Under a Purple Cloud” in the autumn number of The Evergreen. It is a vision of Earth personified, and opens thus:
Under a purple cloud along the west
The great brown mother lies and takes her rest,
A dark cheek on her hand, and in her eyes
The shadow of primeval mysteries.
Her tawny velvets swathe her, manifold,
Her mighty head is coifed in filmy gold,
Her youngest babe, the newly-blossomed rose
Upon her swarthy bosom feeds and grows.
With her wide darkling gaze the mother sees
Her children in their homes, the reddening trees,
Roofing wet lawns, fruit-laden lattices,
Blue mountain domes, and the grey river-seas.
THE HON. RODEN NOËL. (1834-1894.)
[PAGE 146]
Mr Roden Noël was son of the first Earl of Gainsborough, grandson of Lord Roden of Tullymore in Ireland, and nephew to the present Marquis of Londonderry. By birth, descent, training, and sympathy, he considered himself an Irishman: though he was half English by blood, and lived the greater part of his life in England, while his intellectual homage was largely evoked by Hellenic mythology and lore, and by Teutonic mysticism and speculation. It was this confused blending of influences which, perhaps, militated so strongly against the concentration of his brilliant abilities into long-sustained and organic creative effort. With all his shortcomings, he still remains a poet of genuine impulse and occasionally of high distinction; and some of his lyrics and ballads, of a more essentially human interest than his more ambitious work, are likely to be held in honourable remembrance. The “Lament for a Little Child” (see p. 146) has passed into literature; as, indeed, may perhaps be said of the book whence it comes: A Little Child’s Monument (1881). In one of his Cornish poems he begins thus:—
“For me, true son of Erin, thou art rife,
Grand coast of Cornwall, cliff, and cave, and surge,
With glamour of the Kelt.”