M'CARTHY'S POEMS.' IN taking a survey of the contributions to literature during the last fifty years, it may possibly be a surprise to many that Ireland produces, comparatively, fewer poets than the sister isle. While, in the higher walks of the divine art, England, in the age that is just passing, can boast of many a great name - Byron and Shelley, Southey, Wordsworth, and Tennyson-Ireland has added to the foremost ranks but one-that of Moore. The English press, too, has teemed with the works of those who occupy the second place in the aristocracy of poetry-Montgomery and Bayley, Letitia Landon and Elizabeth Barrett; Bulwer Lytton, and Macaulay, and Taylor, and a host of others. Ireland has but her half-dozen names or so, which enjoy a fame beyond the shores of the land that gave them birthWolfe and Anster, Mangan and Ferguson, and a few others, most of whom have written too little to keep themselves permanently before the public, complete the number. Against Bulwer as a dramatist, we may, indeed, place our own Knowles in honourable competition. Miss Hamilton, "Speranza," and others, may take their places beside Mrs. M'Lean and Miss Barrett. Beside the "Festus" of Bayley, we shall not fear to put the "Judas of Starkey. We believe " no living writer exceeds Mangan, whom we have but recently lost, in the vigour of his style, the vividness of his fancy, his wonderful mastery of language, and exhaustless power of rhyme and versification; while the spirit-stirring ballads of Macaulay do not surpass, in energy, in passion, or in power, the political songs which, within the last few years, some young and ardent spirits (be it for good or for evil, we shall not here discuss) have sent through the length and breadth of the land. How it happens that we do not contribute in a larger degree to the published poetry of these kingdoms would be a subject of inquiry not without interest, and perhaps profit, but we fear, too, not without pain. It cer tainly arises from no intellectual inferiority; nor do we think it can be attributed to want of intellectual culture. The genius of the Irish mind we believe to be as capacious, as brilliant, as imaginative, and as keenly susceptible of all poetic influences as that of our neighbours at the other side of the Channel. Whether it has the same amount of energy or an equal aptitude for toilful study, may be perhaps questioned. These last are, after all, important elements in the production of successful literary performance of any kind at the present day, when the rules of composition and artistic power have so largely usurped the place once occupied by genius alone when the refinement of intellect has gained the superiority over mere native talent, and, as a thoughtful and elegant foreign critic has observed, "everything is matter of observation, even the mode of ob serving, and everything is governed by rules, even to the art of imposing rules." There be those who will tell us that this state of things, to which we have adverted, is in some sort due to the moral and political position of Ireland -that while feuds and heartburnings rend and inflame her; while opposing races and conflicting creeds harass and distract her; while her people are struggling for the full participation of the constitutional privileges of a free people, and are depressed by the weight of unequal burthens, men's minds are not sufficiently free from engrossment or debasement to cultivate with full ardour the higher branches of poetry. There may be some truth in the assertion. The muse of poetry loves tranquillity and repose. Undoubtedly she may be found on the battle-field, and in the dungeon: in every vicissitude of life the light of her divine influence may cheer and illuminate. But she is best wooed amid the "Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics; Original and Translated." By Denis Florence M'Carthy. Small 8vo. James McGlashan, Dublin; Wm. S. Orr and Co., London and Liverpool. 1850. peaceful shades of contemplation; and they woo her most successfully who are in the enjoyment of the full birthright of freedom; whose spirit no wrongs agitate or depress, whose heart feels no bondage. But we shall not here discuss this topic whether these causes exist in reality, or only in the fantasies of discontented minds. With more pleasure shall we turn to the consideration of that class of poetry in which Ireland stands unsurpassed, we mean that which has its foundation in feeling and passion, rather than thoughtful meditation, and will flourish amid tumult and trial-lyrical poetry. Nor is it surprising that lyrical poetry should abound in Ireland. It is that species of poetry in which a temperament and organisation such as the Irish possess will be ever most ready to find utterance. It is that in which the poet can most freely abandon himself to vivid impressions, and best express his own emotions-an effusion of passion, and an overflow of sentiment and needs for its exhibition a verse of the most harmonious structure, and language of the most melodious sound. Thus music, uttered or understood, is an indispensable element of the lyrical, and a nice sense of the beautiful in sound and cadence is essential to its successful cultivation. They who know Ireland need not be told how thoroughly she is a land of song. The wild and tender melodies which yet linger in her sylvan valleys and her lone mountains attest this; strains which a few sedulous collectors, with a pious love like that of" Old Mortality," have deepened in their tracings on the national heart, and, partially gathering them amongst the homesteads of the older people, have given them permanency and fame, while one great poet has conferred a glory, as wide-spread as it is immortal, upon every melody to which he has sung. Others have followed where he ledand more, assuredly, will still follow, till we trust to see a body of lyrical poetry in Ireland (as there is in Scotland) which shall seize upon and secure all those beautiful melodies as yet unindividualised to our hearts by the spell of language; those airy tenements of sound that are as it were floating about, drifting and purposeless, until the spirit of language shall enter into, and animate them, giving to each the individuality of a new and beautiful being the soul of poetry in the body of music. It is time, however, that we should leave these speculations into which we have been seduced to wander, and turn to the consideration of the volume which is in some sort answerable for them. The poems of Mr. M'Carthy, which are now before us, afford as happy evidence of the truth of some of the statements we have been putting forward, and of our boast of Irish lyrists, as we could wish to adduce. Though some few of the poems in the book are, in form, not lyrical, yet in reality even they partake largely of its spirit and its colouring; indeed one can scarce pause at the conclusion of a stanza that the ear does not ring with the fancied tone of the still vibrating lyre-string. The pervading characteristics of Mr. McCarthy's muse are a vivid fancy, an imagination rich and warm, an intense perception of the beautiful, especially in natural objects; great descriptive powers, and a peculiar felicity in the use of striking and picturesque similes and illustrations, with a vocabulary ornate, classical, and harmonious. These are to be found everywhere in the volume, united often to great vigour of thought and to great depth of tenderness and passion. To the readers of THE DUBLIN UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE Some of these poems will be familiar, as having from time to time appeared in our pages, and earned for their author a high popularity; and we are much pleased now to find those, together with his other numerous compositions, collected in a volume. The principal poems, in point of length, are four in number, which we shall briefly glance at before we come to the Songs and Ballads. "The Bellfounder," which is based on a legend with which most southerns are acquainted, and in itselfhighly poetic, has been managed by Mr. M'Carthy with considerable ability. There is throughout the poem the bold and manly tone of one who understands the dignity of labour and the nobility of virtue, intermixed with some pictures of domestic life that are touched with a fine hand. In the founding of the bell one is naturally reminded of Schiller's magnificent poem, and yet Mr. M'Carthy's description is, we think, very fine, though less minute than that of the great German. We give the passage: "In the furnace the dry branches crackle, the crucible shines as with gold, "Tis for this that the bellows are blowing, that the workmen their sledge-hammers wield, Now they enter, and now more divinely the Saints' painted effigies smile, And are bless'd in the name of that God to whose honour they ever shall ring.” "Alice and Una" perhaps affords as good a specimen as any other of the peculiar powers of our author. The measure is exceedingly harmonious, the style light and playful, the imagery is vivid, and the description of the moonlight ride of the fairy-thralled lover is full of animation and spirit, while the enchanted halls of "Una" are drawn with a rich and picturesque fancy. Here are two pictures of female beauty, both highly finished. The first is Alice the mortal: "Alice was a chieftain's daughter, and, though many suitors sought her, "She was gentler and shyer than the light fawn that stood by her, And her eyes emit a fire soft and tender as her soul; Love's dewy light doth drown her, and the braided locks that crown her Through the forests in the evening, when cathedral turrets toll, And the purple sun advanceth to its goal." Next look at this of the fairy Una, as her bright eyes are bending over her mortal lover : "These eyes are not of woman-no brightness merely human But nature's bright works vary-there are beings, light and airy, Sweet sisters of the moonbeams and daughters of the sun, "As summer lightning dances amid the heaven's expanses, Thus shone the burning glances of those flashing fairy eyes; Three splendours there were shining-three passions intertwining- With jealousy's green lustre, as troubled ocean vies With the blue of summer skies! "She was a fairy creature, of heavenly form and feature- "But when at times she started, and her blushing lips were parted, You'd think you saw the gliding of two rosy clouds dividing, Take it all in all, this is a very fine legendary poem; yet it is not without its faults. There is almost too much melody about it. The rythm is too round, if we may be allowed the word, for a poem of its length, and the rhymes too frequent; so that while we are surprised by the great mastery of language, we are yet somewhat fatigued by it. There is, too, an occasional affectation of levity of phrase or sentiment that is misplaced. We regret to find such words as fire and morn, used as dissyllables. Still it is a beautiful and a graceful poem; and if it has the languid softness of a fairy scene, it has all its richness and fragrance too. If its light be not strong as day, it is mellow as the moonshine. The finest pieces of thinking, to our mind, in it, are the reflections preceding the tale upon the wonders of modern science, which have superseded and rivalled the elder wonders of faery and magic. "Now that Earth once more had woken, and the trance of Time is broken, Blended with the lost Ideal, happy were the old world now— Faith and Work its vow! "Yes! the Past shines clear and pleasant, and there's glory in the Present; And the Future, like a crescent, lights the deepening sky of Time; And that sky will yet grow brighter, if the Worker and the Writer— If the Sceptre and the Mitre join in sacred bonds sublime. With two glories shining o'er them, up the coming years they'll climb, A wild and somewhat barbarous, though we admit a bold and chivalrous, predatory excursion of an Irish chieftain to despoil a neighbouring lord of his three most prized treasures, his wife, his horse, and his hound, is sung in "The Foray of Con O'Donnell.' The tale is thrown off in the happiest style of minstrel-craft. A pleasant and smooth stanza of eight octo-syllabic lines (the line which Walter Scott has consecrated to minstrelsy) carries one easily along alike through festal hall and midnight foray, and the interest never flags throughout. A poem of this sort, however, affords little opportunity for the higher qualities of poetry. It is essentially narrative, and little else, and we usually look for the descriptive rather than the reflective or the imaginative. It is the poetry of incident and action rather than of thought and passion. The ablest of these compositions is, however, beyond all question, "The Voyage of Saint Brendan." In this composition Mr. M'Carthy has produced a poem which, had he never written aught else, would entitle him to hold no mean place in literature. With all the charms of the lyrical, it has much of the dignity of the epic. The subject of the piece (the heaven-directed wandering of the saint in search of the happy islands), affords a fine scope for the exercise of a poetic mind. The incidents, as related in the legendary works, which Mr. McCarthy appears to have studied accurately and used with great skill, are themselves highly romantic. With such materials, invested with the charms of incident, the devotional fervour of religion, and the halo of antiquity, he has given us a poem at once vigorous, animated, and interest ing; full of fine thinking, of elevation and tenderness; sparkling with brilliant images and rich in vivid and forcible description of scenery. The voyage from the south-western coast of Ireland northward, along the shores of Kerry, Clare, and the province of Connaught, is described with a singular felicity of language and accuracy of detail, while every legend of the remarkable localities passed is interwoven with great skill and learning. If this fine poem were not already familiar to the readers of our pages, where it originally appeared, we should be tempted to quote largely from it. Nevertheless we cannot refrain from quoting a few lines from what we con sider not only a highly poetical but a singularly ingenious descriptive ornithology. In the course of his pilgrimage the saint lands, as the legend goes, on an island called the Paradise of Birds, and upon this fair scene Mr. M'Carthy takes occasion to place the most remarkable and lovely birds known to the ornithologists as denizens of America, and has pourtrayed them in language as admirable for its accurate delineation as it is for richness and beauty. One feels, indeed, while perusing it, as if he had before him an illustrated volume of the "American Ornithology," save that the pictorial portion is contributed by the pen of the poet instead of the pencil of the painter. Here we have the blue bird: "That strange bird whose Mocks all his brethren of the woodland bower— To whom indeed the gift of tongues is given, The musical rich tongues that fill the grove, Winging his arrowy flight rapid and strong, It is, however, in his strictly lyrical compositions that the genius of Mr. M'Carthy takes his highest flight, and in them, we think, he is yet sure to find his highest fame. Into these he throws his whole soul, his affections, his passions, his tastes, his feeling, his loves, his aversions. Truth, sincerity, and genuine unaffected sentiment pervade them, and shine out in every line. He feels the dignity of the bard, the great mission of poetry, and that feeling inspires and elevates him. Thus he describes what the poet is in "The Bridal of the Year:" "But who is this with tresses flowing, Flashing eyes and forehead glowing. From whose lips the thunder-music Pealeth o'er the listening lands? 'Tis the first and last of preachersFirst and last of priestly teachers; First and last of those appointed In the ranks of the anointed; With their songs like swords to sever Tyranny and Falsehood's bands! |