Th. Xr. K.
The Poems of Rosa Mulholland.[4]
Miss Rosa Mulholland has at last been induced to gather her poems into a volume which will be dear to all lovers of poetry into whose hands it may fall. No person with the faintest glimmering of insight into the subtle mechanism of literary composition in its higher forms could study the prose writings of the author of "The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil," of "Eldergowan," and many other dainty fictions, without being sure that the writer of such prose was a poet also, not merely by nature but by art; and many had learned to follow her initials through the pages of certain magazines. The present work contains nearly all of these scattered lyrics; and, along with them, many that are now printed for the first time combine to form a volume of the truest and holiest poetry that has been heard on earth since Adelaide Procter went to heaven.
The only justification for the too modest title of "Vagrant Verses," which gleams from the cover of this pretty volume, lies in the fact that this most graceful muse wanders from subject to subject according to her fancy, and pursues no heroic or dramatic theme with that exhaustive treatment which exhausts every one except the poet. The poems in this collection are short, written not to order, but under the manifest impulse of inspiration, for the expression only of the deeper thoughts and more vivid feelings of the soul. Except the fine lyrical and dramatic ballad, "The Children of Lir," which occupies eight pages, and the first five pages given to "Emmet's Love," none of the rest of the seventy poems go much beyond a page or two, while they range through every mood, sad or mirthful, and through every form of metre.
We have named the opening poem, which is an exquisitely pathetic soliloquy of Sarah Curran, a year after the death of her betrothed, young Robert Emmet—a nobler tribute to the memory of our great orator's daughter than either Moore's verse or Washington Irving's prose. But the metrical interlacing of the stanzas, and the elevation and refinement of the poetic diction, require a thoughtful perusal to bring out the perfections of this poem, which, therefore, lends itself less readily to quotation. We shall rather begin by giving one shorter poem in full, taken almost at random. Let it be "Wilfulness and Patience," as it teaches a lesson which it would be well for many to take to heart and to learn by heart:—
I said I am going into the garden,
Into the flush of the sweetness of life;
I can stay in the wilderness no longer,
Where sorrow and sickness and pain are so rife;
So I shod my feet in their golden sandals,
And I looped my gown with a ribbon of blue,
And into the garden went I singing,
The birds in the boughs fell a-singing too.
Just at the wicket I met with Patience,
Grave was her face, and pure and kind,
But oh, I loved not her ashen mantle,
Such sober looks were not to my mind.