The poetry and song of Ireland

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' THE

Introduction

The many-sided Celtic nature has no more distinct aspect than its poetic one. The Celt is a born poet or lover of poetry. His mental method is symbolic like a Persian rather than picturesque like an Italian or logical like an Anglo-Saxon.

The Poet has been more highly honored by the Irish race than by any other, except perhaps, the Jews. But the Jewish poet was removed from the masses, a man apart, a monitor, a Prophet. The Irish poet and bard was the very voice of the people, high and low, sad and merry — the song-maker, the croonchanter, the story-teller, the preserver of history, the rewarder of heroes.

In the old days of Celtic freedom, art and learning, the poet was part of the retinue or household organization of every Irish prince or chieftain.

The claim of the poet in Arthur O'Shaughnessy's exquisite ode is nowhere more readily allowed than in Ireland: —

" Wb are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams: World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams; Yet we are the movers and shakers,

Of the world forever, it seems.

" With wonderful deathless ditties, We build up the world's great cities,

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire's glory; One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown; And three with a new song's measure,

Can trample a kingdom down.

*' A breath of our inspiration.

Is the life of each generation;

A wondrous thing of our dreaming,

Unearthly, impossible-seeming, The soldier, the king and the peasant

Are working together in one, Till our dream shall become their present,

And their work in the world be done."

viii INTRODUCTION.

POST-MORTEM.

Aug. 27, 1881.

" Shall mine eyes behold thy glory, O my country? Shall mine eyes behold thy glory?

Or shall the darkness close around them, ere the sun-blaze Breaks at last upon thy story?

" When the nations ope for thee their queenly circle, As a sweet, new sister hail thee, Shall these lips be sealed in callous death and silence, That have known but to bewail thee?

" Shall the ear be deaf that only loved thy praises, When all men their tribute bring thee? Shall the mouth be clay, that sang thee in thy squalor, When all poets' mouths shall sing thee?

" Ah! the harpings and the salvos and the shoutings Of thy exiled sons returning!

I should hear, though dead and mouldered, and the grave damps Should not chill my bosom's burning.

" Ah! the tramp of feet victorious! I should hear them 'Mid thp shamrocks and the mosses, And my heart should toss within the shroud and quiver, As a captive dreamer tosses.

" I should turn and rend the cere-clothes round me, Giant-sinews I should borrow, Crying, ' O my brothers, I have also loved her, In her lowliness and sorrow.

" ' Let me join with you the jubilant procession, Let me chant with you her story; Then contented I shall go back to the shamrocks, Now mine eyes have seen her glory.' "

No land in human history has evoked deeper or more sacrificial devotion than Ireland; and, it is fitting that her poets should he the voice of this profound feeling. There are joyous notes in their gamut, they sing at times merrily, boldly, amorously, but the unceasing undertone is there, like a river in a forest. How touching is the question of D'Arcy McGee, written in a strange country, where he had earned fame and power:—

" Am I remember'd in Erin —

I charge you, speak me true — Has my name a sound, a meaning

In the scenes my boyhood knew ?

Does the heart of the Mother ever

Recall her exile's name ?

For to be forgot in Erin,

And on earth is all the same."

INTRODUCTION. ix

But the days of gloom and travail are passing away from Ireland, and her scattered children "are like the ocean sand." Generations intensely Irish in blood and sympathies have never seen Ireland. They have been born under American, Australian and Argentine skies; they wander by Canadian rivers and vast American lakes; they tend their flocks on South African and New Zealand valleys. And the fancy of the poet must feed on what it sees as well as on what it dreams. Arthur O'Shaughnessy's noble poem, " The Song of a Fellow Worker," unconsciously brings to mind a street in London— for his life was passed in the vast city. In his almost" peerless prefatory ode (to " Music and Moonlight,") he is abstract as a Greek of old — one of the singers for mankind, unrelated, unrestrained. There is a rare far-sighted philosophy in this dream of a poet, calmly placing his non-productive class highest and apart from the industrious, the potential, the ambitious, the utilitarian.

"Among eminent persons," says Emerson, "those who are most dear to men are not of the class which the economist calls producers; they have nothing in their hands; they have not cultivated corn nor made bread; they have not led out a colony nor invented a loom." So sings Arthur O'Shaughnessy: —

"But we, with our dreaming and singing,

Ceaseless and sorrowless we!

The glory about us clinging

Of the glorious futures we see, Our souls with high music ringing:

O men! it must ever be That we dwell, in our dreaming and singing,

A little apart from ye.

" For we are afar with the dawning

And the suns that are not yet high, And out of the infinite morning

Intrepid you hear us cry — How, spite of your human scorning,

Once more God's future draws nigh, And already goes forth the warning

That ye of the past must die."

Patriots, too, in other causes than Erin's are "the sea-divided Gael." No love for Ireland was ever more passionately laid around her feet than Father Abram Eyan's devotion to the South and her " Lost Cause. " There is no deeper note of manly dejection, no more poignant word of defeat than his " Conquered Banner." The sweat and smoke-stain of the battle are on his face when the waved hand puts aside the beloved flag: —

"Furl the Banner, for 'tis weary; Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary,

Furl it, fold it — it is best.

For there's not a man to wave it, And there's not a sword to save it, x INTRODUCTION.

And there's not one left to lave it In the blood which heroes gave it; And its foes now scorn and brave it; Furl it, hide it,— let it rest."

Father Eyan is a fitting voice for a Lost Cause. At his brightest he is sad. The shadow of the South 's failure in the field seems hardly ever to lift from his spirit. His is the yearning of a soul that cannot compromise — that walks with death ' ' down the valley of Silence ' ' sooner than accept new and strange conditions. But with the indestructible will of the poet and patriot he sends out " Sentinel Songs " to keep watch and ward over those who fell in the brave fight, that the victor may not trample on their graves and blot out their names forever: —

" Songs, march! he gives command, Keep faithful watch and true; The living and dead of the conquered land Have now no guards save you.

" List! Songs, your watch is long, The soldiers' guard was brief; Whilst right is right, and wrong is wrong Te may not seek relief."

Another phase of the Irish poetical nature, and a noble one, is moral, prophetic, and symbolical. This is well exemplified by William Allingham, a poet who touches two strong Irish keys, the peasant's song and the philosopher's vision, on consecutive pages — as for instance, his popular " Farewell to Ballyshannon and the Winding Banks of Erin," and his wonderful little poem, " The Touchstone." Another poem of Allingham's seems to me to be one of the best examples of an Irish song, for its melody and spirit — "Among the Heather." Observe the flow of these lines: —

"One evening walking out, I o'ertook a modest < "When the wind was blowing cool and the harvest-leaves were falling: " Is our road by chance, the same? Might we travel on together? " "01 keep the mountain-side," (she replied,) "among the heather."

But Allingham's "Touchstone" is a poem of another kind altogether. It is the utterance of a deep thought in allegory— the only means of expressing it whole, or without the cheap setting of mere intellectuality. The very rhythm suits the story as if invented for it: —

"A man there came, whence none can tell, Bearing a touchstone in his hand; And tested all things in the land By its unerring spell."

The poem will be read many times during a lifetime by him who reads it once; and it will never be forgotten. It will feed the mind with rare fancy to reflect on the strewn ashes, each grain of which " conveyed the perfect charm."

INTRODUCTION. xi

There is one remarkable feature absent from modern Irish poetry, from the "work of poets born in Ireland and other countries: the song- maker is rare, and becoming rarer. Allingham has written only a few songs; McCarthy not many; Alfred Perceval Graves a good many, and very good ones. In America the poets of the Irish have had only one eminent song-maker, Dr. Eobert Dwyer Joyce. His volume "Songs and Poems," is a most notable book of songs, written mainly to old Irish airs, which adds to their value and charm. Joyce had in a high degree the melody-sense and the brief one-idead and richly -chased song method. His ballads are stirring songs, as anyone knows who has ever heard the chorus of " The Iron Cannon " or " The Blacksmith of Limerick." In "Deirdre" and "Blanid," both noble epics, the songs interspersed are the high- water mark of Joyce's genius. We range the fields of literature to find more exquisite songs than " Forget me not," and " 0, Wind of the West that Bringest." Not only sweet to the ear but to the soul, the cry of the little blue-eyed blossom in the deadly embrace of the " bitter- fanged strong East wind: " —

" O woods of waving trees! O living streams, In all your noontide joys and starry dreams,

Let me, for love, let me be unforgot!

O birds that sing your carols while I die, list to me! O hear my piteous cry —

Forget me not! alas! forget me not! "

Joyce's life was a poem in its unrealities, achievements, agony and gloom. He died in the strength of manhood, beloved by the friends whom he had made, proudly secretive, but beyond hope, and heart-broken. He was so strong, so wise, and so harmless to man or woman, that his life, under fair conditions, would have been as fair and natural as the flow of a river. He wrote his songs in his happier years. He composed as he walked in the crowded city streets. On his daily rounds as an over-burdened physician, the strongly-marked face was usually pre-occupied, the sight introverted. He was always ' ' making a song," or working some of his characters in or out of difficult positions. A friend met him once in Boston and was passed unnoticed. He stopped the Doctor by touching his arm, and the spell was broken. " Oh man ! " cried the poet, with his rich Limerick utterance, " I was getting Deirdre down from the tower ! she's been up there for three months, with the ladder stolen; and I could'nt think how I was ever to get her down, without a balloon."

But in the streets, too, the chill of the secret grief would strike his heart like a breath from the grave, and the powerful form would shudder with the spirit's suffering. It was then he wrote the woful nameless little song in "Blanid," which I have called in this collection " The Cry of the Sufferer." There was no ■dainty seeking after artificial misery when Joyce wrote these lines: —

" The measured rounds of dancing feet, The songs of wood-birds wild and sweet, xii INTRODUCTION.

The music of the horn and flute, Of the gold strings of harp and lute Unheeded all shall come and go — For I am suffering, and I know!

No kindly counsel of a friend

With soothing balm the hurt can mend;

I walk alone in grief, and make

My bitter moan for her dear sake,

For loss of love is man's worst woe,

And I am suffering, and I know!"

Dr. Joyce won a distinct and deserved renown in America's literary capital. Eespect and affection met him in the street, the garret, and the drawingroom. Old Harvard honored him with a degree. The poor, among whom he labored unceasingly, and to whom he gave unstintedly of money and gratuitous attendance, repaid him with love. A physician, who took his vacant place and much of his practice, and who did not know Joyce, has since said: — " He was an e>rtraordinary man, and a very good man. His charity was never-ending. I find traces of it in every poor street and tenement-house I visit."

The splendid "Hymnos Paionios," or song of healing, by the Eev. Henry Bernard Carpenter, was sent after him to Ireland as a message of love, when he went there to die. The poem reached him in time to bring joy to his heart with the knowledge that the men whom he loved in America had given love in return, and would keep his memory green. Very beautiful are these strong: lines: —

" O saddest of all the sea's daughters, Ierne, sweet mother isle Say how canst thou heal at thy waters the son whom we lend thee awhile? When the gathering cries implore thee to help and to heal thy kind, When thy dying are strewn before thee, thy living ones crouch behind, When about thee thy perishing children cling, crying, ' Thou only art fair, We have seen through their maze bewildering that the earth-gods never spare: ' And the wolves blood-ripe with slaughter gnaw at thee with fangs of steel; Thou, Niobe-Land of the water, hast many children to heal. Yet heal him, Ierne, dear mother, thy days with his days shall increase, At the song of this Delphic brother, nigh half of thy pangs shall cease. Nor art thou, sweet friend, in a far land,— all places are near on the globe,— Our greeting wear for thy garland, our love for the festival robe. While we keep through glory and gloom two altar-candles for thee, Thy ' Blanid ' of deathless doom and thy dead but undying ' Deirdre.' "

In adding to this fine collection of Irish poems, originally compiled some years ago by another hand, I am necessarily restricted in space and in the number of the later Irish and Irish- American poets represented. But the names here are likely to " hold their own " till another generation gleans the literary field and throws away the crumbling ears.

It is remarkable that Boston, the literary centre of the Anglo-American stock,.

INTRODUCTION. xiiJ

should also promise a similar harvest for the Irish- American. Here at one and the same time were Dr. Joyce, Bev. H. B. Carpenter, Louise Imogen Guiney, James Jeffrey Eoche, Mrs. M. E. Blake and Katharine Conway —poets winninggarlands outside the limits of their own race. Indeed, no truer New England singer than Louise Guiney has come in a generation. Her ' ' Gloucester Harbor ' r is a memorable poem. How striking are these stanzas: —

" North from the beautiful islands, North from the headlands and highlands,

The long sea-wall, The white ships flee with the swallow; The day-beams follow and follow,

Glitter and fall.

" The brown ruddy children that fear not, Lean over the quay, and they hear not

Warnings of lips; For their hearts go a-sailing, a-sailing, Out from the wharves and the wailing

After the ships!"

It may be that the sweetest songs are sung in sorrow. An Irish air

"is full of farewells for the dying And murmurings for the dead."

It surely is true that "Affliction is a mother whose painful throes yield many sons, each fairer than the other." In the past, for nearly 1000 years, the Irish heart-song has been shaded by the woe of desolation. Dane and Saxon have oppressed and harried the land. There is no sorrow so piteous as the cry of weakness in the strangling grasp of Power. This cry is heard in all the songs of the Gael — even in the most joyous.

The future has a hoarded summer time for Ireland — when her ancient glory may be revived and surpassed. In the dream of Clarence Mangan he pictures the Irish realm of the 13th century: —

" I walked entranced

Through a land of morn; The sun, with wondrous excess of light,

Shone down and glanced

Over seas of corn, And lustrous gardens aleft and right.

Even in the clime

Of resplendent Spain, Beams no such sun upon such a land;

But it was the time,

'Twas in the reign, Of Cahal Mor of the Wine-red Hand."

The despair of the past is now rarely expressed by an Irish poet — and never xiv INTRODUCTION.

by the poet of the exiled race. Those who have wholly sung for Americans have expressed as deep love as those who had to stay and see the mothercountry in her sufferings. The poems of Daniel Connolly and James J. Roche are notable illustrations, as for instance this ftne poem from Mr. Roche:—

ANDROMEDA.

THEY chained her fair young body to the cold and cruel stone; The beast begot of sea and slime had marked her for his own; The callous world beheld the wrong, and left her there alone. Base caitiffs who belied her, false kinsmen who denied her, Te left her there alone !

My Beautiful, they left thee in thy peril and thy pain; The night that hath no morrow was brooding on the main; But lo ! a light is breaking of hope for thee again. 'Tis Perseus' sword a-flaming, thy dawn of day proclaiming

Across the western main.

O Ireland ! O my country ! he comes to break thy chain !

When the foreign blight is removed from Ireland; when the valleys and hills and rivers ring with happy Irish voices, the voices of the owners of the land; when the long silence is broken by the whirr of busy wheels; when the dark treasures are dug from the earth and fashioned into lovely Art; when the nets of the fishers in lough and river and ocean are burdened daily with the heaping wealth; when the ships sail in and out on every tide from the harbor-serried coast; when Irish marbles and porphyries are carved into precious forms of beauty, and Irish metals are worked into shapes of loveliness and use; when the Irishman stretches out his hand to the world full of his kindred and rejoices in other men's joy instead of constantly grieving over his own grief — then there shall come poets to Ireland with songs attuned to a new spirit, and the voice of the Celt shall be heard through a thousand years of triumph as it has been through a thousand years of pain.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY.