I felt the treasure slide
Under the tide;
I saw its mild and delicate ray
Glittering upward, fade away.
Ah! then my tears did flow,
Long ago!
I weep, and weep, and weep,
Into the deep;
Sad am I that I could not hold
A treasure richer than virgin gold.
That Fate so sweetly gave
Out of the wave.
I dip my hand in the sea,
Longingly;
But never more will that jewel white
Shed on my soul its tender light.
My pearl lies buried deep
Where mermaids sleep.
Some readers of this Magazine are, no doubt, for the first time making acquaintance with Miss Mulholland under this character in which others have known her long; and even these newest friends know enough of her already to pronounce upon some of her characteristics. She is not influenced by the spell of modern culture which has invested the poetic diction of recent years with an exquisite expressiveness and delicate beauty. But, while her style is the very antithesis of the tawdry or the commonplace, she has no mannerisms or affectations; she belongs to no school; she does not deem it the poet's duty to cultivate an artificial, recherche, dilettante dialect unknown to Shakespeare and Wordsworth—if we may use a string of epithets which can only be excused for their outlandishness on the plea that they describe something very outlandish. Her meaning is as lucid as her thoughts are high and pure. If, after reading one of her poems carefully, we sometimes have to ask "What does she mean by that?" we ask it not on account of any obscurity in her language, but on account of the depth and height of her thoughts.
The musical rhythm of our extracts prepares us for the form which many of Miss Mulholland's inspirations assume—that of the song pure and simple. Those last epithets have here more than the meaning which they usually bear in such a context; for these songs are not only eminently singable, but they are marked by a very attractive purity and simplicity. There are many of them besides this one which alone bears no other name than "Song."
The silent bird is hid in the boughs,
The scythe is hid in the corn,
The lazy oxen wink and drowse,
The grateful sheep are shorn.
Redder and redder burns the rose,
The lily was ne'er so pale,
Stiller and stiller the river flows
Along the path to the vale.
A little door is hid in the boughs,
A face is hiding within;
When birds are silent and oxen drowse,
Why should a maiden spin?
Slower and slower turns the wheel,
The face turns red and pale,
Brighter and brighter the looks that steal
Along the path to the vale.
Here and everywhere how few are the adjectives, and never any slipped in as mere adjectives. Verbs and nouns do duty for them, and the pictures paint themselves. There is more of genius, art, thought, and study in this self-restraining simplicity than in the freer and bolder eloquence that might make young pulses tingle.
This remarkable faculty for musical verse seems to us to enhance the merit of a poem in which a certain ruggedness is introduced of set purpose. At least, we think that the subtle sympathy, which in the workmanship of a true poet links theme and metre together, is curiously exemplified in "News to Tell." What metre is it? A very slight change here and there would conform it to the sober, solemn measure familiar to the least poetical of us in Gray's marvellous "Elegy in a Country Churchyard." That elegiac tone already suits the rhythm here to the pathetic story. But then the wounded soldier, who, perhaps, will not recover after all, but may follow his dead comrade—see how he drags himself with difficulty away from the old gray castle where the young widow and the aged mother are overwhelmed by the news he had to tell; and is not all this with exquisite cunning represented by the halting gait of the metre, in which every line deviates just a little from the normal scheme of five iambics?
Neighbor, lend me your arm, for I am not well,
This wound you see is scarcely a fortnight old,
All for a sorry message I had to tell,
I've travelled many a mile in wet and cold.