"The sweet, sublime 'Athenian Bee'
And Hippo's seer, who ran
Through every range of thought, I see
Combined in this new man."
When Thomas Moore was visiting Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, nearly fifty years ago, they both agreed that much of the poetry then appearing in periodicals, and passing comparatively unnoticed, would, not many years before, have made the reputation of the writers. If they were alive now, with how much stronger emphasis would they make a similar remark! Magazine poetry in England now is as superior to that of 1825 as that of 1825 surpassed that of 1775. There are not a few poets at this moment, whose names are scarcely known, who would, at an earlier period of English literature, have been crowned with laurel by general consent. The great poets of this century have raised the standard of poetry, and verse nowadays is what Scott and Wordsworth, Byron and Moore, Shelley and Tennyson, have made it. Mr. Aubrey de Vere, in the time of Daniel, Carew, Drummond, and Drayton, would have been a star of the first magnitude; whereas he is now, partly on account of his Catholic principles, observed and admired by the public far less than he deserves. Born of a Protestant family, and educated in the Protestant religion, he has in ripe years chosen the better part, and embraced the faith of the large majority of his countrymen. He has thrown himself into the views of Irish Catholics on political subjects, and has, without disloyalty to the existing government, reproduced in modern verse the passionate sentiments of Irish chieftains, captives, exiles, emigrants, and serfs of the soil in days long past. Residing, however, chiefly in England, and representing, as he does, the later colonists of Ireland, we may venture to class him among English authors, or, at least, to consider his poems as a contribution to English Catholic literature. Occasional obscurity and faulty rhymes are, in his case, redeemed by poetry's prime excellence—originality of thought and expression. Lines pregnant with truth and beauty are constantly recurring, and the deeply religious feeling which pervades all has the great advantage of not being expressed in hackneyed and conventional language. The May Carols is a perfect conservatory of lovely images clustering round the central figure of immaculate Mary. The 21st carol, on "The Maryless Nations," is perhaps better known in the United States than in England, for it is said that this prophet is less honored in his own country than in America; yet it may fairly be quoted here as a very favorable specimen of Mr. Aubrey de Vere's reflective verse:
"As children when, with heavy tread,
Men sad of face, unseen before,
Have borne away their mother dead,
So stand the nations thine no more.
"From room to room those children roam,
Heart-stricken by the unwonted black:
Their house no longer seems their home;
They search, yet know not what they lack.
"Years pass: self-will and passion strike
Their roots more deeply day by day;
Old servants weep; and 'how unlike'
Is all the tender neighbors say.
"And yet at moments, like a dream,
A mother's image o'er them flits;
Like hers, their eyes a moment beam,
The voice grows soft, the brow unknits.
"Such, Mary, are the realms once thine
That know no more thy golden reign.
Hold forth from heaven thy Babe divine!
Oh! make thine orphans thine again."
There is another "May Carol" which has always struck us as particularly beautiful, because so highly figurative. Metaphor and music make up the soul of poetry. It is an apostrophe to the south wind, and is headed by the motto, Adolescentulæ amaverunt te nimis, a text from the Canticles, which sufficiently explains the mysticism of the lines:
"Behold! the wintry rains are past,
The airs of midnight hurt no more;
The young maids love thee. Come at last:
Thou lingerest at the garden door.
"'Blow over all the garden; blow,
Thou wind that breathest of the South,
Through all the alleys winding low,
With dewy wing and honeyed mouth.