"O'er many a dark and dreary vale
They passed, and many a region dolorous;
O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp;
Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death—
A universe of death."
Or the following rhythmical painting of more than Miltonic massiveness and magnificence of imagination, from the "Orion" of R. H. Horne—a poem of more idiosyncratic merit than most poems upon the classical model. Orion thus describes the building of a palace for Hephaistos (Vulcan):
"So that great figures started from the roof,
And lofty coignes, or sat and downward gazed
On those who stood below and gazed above—
I filled it; in the centre framed a hall;
Central In that a throne: and for the light
Forged mighty hammers that should rise and fall
On slanted rocks of granite and of flint.
Worked by a torrent, for whose passage down
A gape I hewed. And here the god could take,
Midst showery sparks and swathes of broad gold fire,
His lone repose, lulled by the sounds he loved:
Or, casting back the hammer-heads until they stopped
The water's ebb, enjoy, if so he willed,
Midnight tremendous, silence, and iron sleep."
Both of which, though in their manner unparalleled, are, in a less degree, imbued with that which we may term POETIC ILLUMINATION; that which constitutes the felicitous sublimity of Ossian; in short, that for which only one simile, and that an impossible one—namely, shooting of a sun athwart the heavens at midnight—be adduced.
But—the seasons here specified being deemed insufficient—if further reasons be necessary for the adoption of of the parallelistic form in treating the ancient Gaëlic and Celtic compositions, these necessary reasons are fluent from the original form of those compositions, and from the fact that the parallelism is the only poetic form adapted to their style; which may be demonstrated by comparing the rhythmical collocation of a single poem, the Songs of Deardra, a Celtic poem in manuscript which will form the basis of the remainder of this paper, with the collocation of the parallelistic English rendering. Adopting phonographic equivalents for the Irish letters, the initial stanza of Deardra's song improvised as a farewell to Scotland, runs as follows;
"Ionmuin lioni an tio ud shoin,
Alba cona hionghantuio;
Nokha tliucfuinn aisde de,
Muna dtioefuinn re Noise."
And the parallelistic rendering, line for line, as follows:
"Dear to me that eastern shore;
Dear is Alban, land of delights.
Never would I have forsaken it,
Had I not come with Naesa."
Thus the translation is rendered exact, conveying not only the matter but, also, the manner of the original—without which last any translation is and must be defective. The song is thus continued: