Moore used to say playfully, that he was called, in order to dignify his
occupation, "a provision merchant." When on his way to Bannow in 1835 to
spend a few days with his friend Thomas Boyse,--a genuine gentleman of
the good old school,--he records his visit to the house of his maternal
grandfather. "Nothing," he says, "could be more humble and mean than the
little low house that remains to tell of his whereabouts."
I visited this house in the summer of 1864. It is still a small "general
shop," situate in the old corn-market of Wexford. The rooms are more
than usually quaint. Here Mrs. Moore lived until within a few weeks of
the birth of her illustrious son. We are gratified to record, that, at
our suggestion, a tablet has been placed over the entrance-door, stating
in few words the fact that there the mother was born and lived, and that
to this house the poet came, on the 26th of August, 1835, when in the
zenith of his fame, to render homage to her memory. He thus writes of
her and her birthplace in his "Notes" of that year:--"One of the
noblest-minded, as well as most warm-hearted, of all God's creatures was
born under that lowly roof."
[I] I find in Earl Russell's memoir the date given as the 26th of
February; but Mrs. Moore altered it in my MSS. to February 25.
[J] Trinity College, Dublin.--Thomas Moore, son of John Moore, merchant,
of Dublin, aged 14, pensioner, entered 2d June, 1794. Tutor, Dr.
Burrows.
[K] Alluding to a pamphlet-letter I had printed, addressed to Repealers,
when the insanity of Repeal (now happily dead) was at fever-heat.
[L] "One of them (my chief muse) was a remarkably pretty girl; when I
turned round to her, as she accompanied my triumphal ear, and said,
'This is a long journey for you,' she answered, with a smile that would
have done your heart good, 'Oh, I only wish, Sir, it was three hundred
miles!' There's for you! What was Petrarch in the Capitol to
that?"--_Journal_, &c.--This "pretty girl's" name is ----, and, strange
to say, she still keeps it.
[M] Moore was married to Miss Elizabeth Dyke, at St. Martin's Church, on
the 25th of March, 1811.
[N] There were two who sought to throw filth upon the poet's grave, and
they were his own countrymen,--Charles Phillips and John Wilson Croker.
The former had written a wretched and unmeaning pamphlet, which he
suppressed when a few copies only were issued; and I am proud to believe
it was in consequence of some remarks upon it written by me, for which
he commenced, but subsequently abandoned, proceedings against me for
libel. The atrocious attack on Moore in the "Quarterly Review" was
written by John Wilson Croker. It was the old illustration of the dead
lion and the living dog. Yet Croker could at that time be scarcely
described as living; it was from his death-bed he shot the poisoned
arrow. And what brought out the venom? Merely a few careless words of
Moore's, in which he described Croker "as a scribbler of all work,"
words that Earl Russell would have erased, if it had occurred to him to
do so. Another countryman, Thomas Crofton Croker, assailed after his
death the man whose shoe-latchets he would have been proud to unloose
during his life. Moreover, his earliest slanderer was also of his own
country,--an author named Quin. Of a truth it has been well said, A
prophet is never without honor save in his own country. The proverb is
especially true as regards Irish prophets. Assuredly, Moore was, and is,
more popular in every part of the world than he was or is in Ireland.
The reason is plain: he was, so to speak, of two parties, yet of
neither: the one could not forgive his early aspirations for liberty,
uttered in imperishable verse; the other could not pardon what they
called his desertion of their cause, when he saw that England was
willing to do, and was doing, justice to Ireland.
[O] A bronze statue of Moore has been erected in College Street, Dublin.
It is a poor affair, the production of his namesake, the sculptor. Bad
as it is, it is made worse by contrast with its neighbor, Goldsmith,--a
work by the great Irish artist, Foley,--a work rarely surpassed by the
art of the sculptor at any period in any country.
ON BOARD THE SEVENTY-SIX
[Written for Bryant's Seventieth Birthday.]
Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea,
Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the side;
Her scuppers, from the waves' clutch staggering free,
Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide;
Sails, shrouds, and spars with pirate cannon torn,
We lay, awaiting morn.
Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair;
And she that bore the promise of the world
Within her sides, now hopeless, helmless, bare,
At random o'er the wildering waters hurled;
The reek of battle drifting slow a-lee
Not sullener than we.
Morn came at last to peer into our woe,
When lo, a sail! Now surely help is nigh;
The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge; but no,
Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by
And hails us:--"Gains the leak? Ah, so we thought!
Sink, then, with curses fraught!"
I leaned against my gun still angry-hot,
And my lids tingled with the tears held back;
This scorn methought was crueller than shot;
The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack,
Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far
Than such fear-smothered war.
There our foe wallowed like a wounded brute,
The fiercer for his hurt. What now were best?
Once more tug bravely at the peril's root.
Though death come with it? Or evade the test
If right or wrong in this God's world of ours
Be leagued with higher powers?
Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag
With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs;
Some, caitiff, would have struck the starry flag
That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs
Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done
'Neath the all-seeing sun.
But one there was, the Singer of our crew,
Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful sign,
But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew;
And couchant under brows of massive line,
The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet,
Watched, charged with lightnings yet.
The voices of the hills did his obey;
The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song;
He brought our native fields from far away,
Or set us 'mid the innumerable throng
Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm
Old homestead's evening psalm.
But now he sang of faith to things unseen,
Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust;
And words of doughty cheer he spoke between,
That made all earthly fortune seem as dust,
Matched with that duty, old as time and new,
Of being brave and true.
We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,--
Manhood to back them, constant as a star;
His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords,
And sent our boarders shouting; shroud and spar
Heard him and stiffened; the sails heard and wooed
The winds with loftier mood.
In our dark hour he manned our guns again;
Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's store;
Pride, honor, country throbbed through all his strain;
And shall we praise? God's praise was his before;
And on our futile laurels he looks down;
Himself our bravest crown.
THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.
I.
Here comes the First of January, Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Five, and we
are all settled comfortably into our winter places, with our winter
surroundings and belongings; all cracks and openings are calked and
listed, the double windows are in, the furnace dragon in the cellar is
ruddy and in good liking, sending up his warming respirations through
every pipe and register in the house; and yet, though an artificial
summer reigns everywhere, like bees, we have our swarming-place,--in my
library. There is my chimney-corner, and my table permanently
established on one side of the hearth; and each of the female genus has,
so to speak, pitched her own winter-tent within sight of the blaze of my
camp-fire. I discerned to-day that Jennie had surreptitiously
appropriated one of the drawers of my study-table to knitting-needles
and worsted; and wicker work-baskets and stands of various heights and
sizes seem to be planted here and there for permanence among the
bookcases. The canary-bird has a sunny window, and the plants spread out
their leaves and unfold their blossoms as if there were no ice and snow
in the street, and Rover makes a hearth-rug of himself in winking
satisfaction in front of my fire, except when Jennie is taken with a fit
of discipline, when he beats a retreat, and secretes himself under my
table.
Peaceable, ah, how peaceable, home and quiet and warmth in winter! And
how, when we hear the wind whistle, we think of you, O our brave
brothers, our saviours and defenders, who for our sake have no home but
the muddy camp, the hard pillow of the barrack, the weary march, the
uncertain fare,--you, the rank and file, the thousand unnoticed ones,
who have left warm fires, dear wives, loving little children, without
even the hope of glory or fame,--without even the hope of doing anything
remarkable or perceptible for the cause you love,--resigned only to fill
the ditch or bridge the chasm over which your country shall walk to
peace and joy! Good men and true, brave unknown hearts, we salute you,
and feel that we, in our soft peace and security, are not worthy of you!
When we think of you, our simple comforts seem luxuries all too good for
us, who give so little when you give all!
But there are others to whom from our bright homes, our cheerful
firesides, we would fain say a word, if we dared.
Think of a mother receiving a letter with such a passage as this in it!
It is extracted from one we have just seen, written by a private in the
army of Sheridan, describing the death of a private. "He fell instantly,
gave a peculiar smile and look, and then closed his eyes. We laid him
down gently at the foot of a large tree. I crossed his hands over his
breast, closed his eyelids down, but the smile was still on his face. I
wrapped him in his tent, spread my pocket-handkerchief over his face,
wrote his name on a piece of paper, and pinned it on his breast, and
there we left him: we could not find pick or shovel to dig a grave."
There it is!--a history that is multiplying itself by hundreds daily,
the substance of what has come to so many homes, and must come to so
many more before the great price of our ransom is paid!
What can we say to you, in those many, many homes where the light has
gone out forever?--you, O fathers, mothers, wives, sisters, haunted by a
name that has ceased to be spoken on earth,--you, for whom there is no
more news from the camp, no more reading of lists, no more tracing of
maps, no more letters, but only a blank, dead silence! The battle-cry
goes on, but for you it is passed by! the victory comes, but, oh, never
more to bring him back to you! your offering to this great cause has
been made, and been taken; you have thrown into it _all_ your living,
even all that you had, and from henceforth your house is left unto you
desolate! O ye watchers of the cross, ye waiters by the sepulchre, what
can be said to you? We could almost extinguish our own home-fires, that
seem too bright when we think of your darkness; the laugh dies on our
lip, the lamp burns dim through our tears, and we seem scarcely worthy
to speak words of comfort, lest we seem as those who mock a grief they
cannot know.
But is there no consolation? Is it nothing to have had such a treasure
to give, and to have given it freely for the noblest cause for which
ever battle was set,--for the salvation of your country, for the freedom
of all mankind? Had he died a fruitless death, in the track of common
life, blasted by fever, smitten or rent by crushing accident, then might
his most precious life seem to be as water spilled upon the ground; but
now it has been given for a cause and a purpose worthy even the anguish
of your loss and sacrifice. He has been counted worthy to be numbered
with those who stood with precious incense between the living and the
dead, that the plague which was consuming us might be stayed. The blood
of these young martyrs shall be the seed of the future church of
liberty, and from every drop shall spring up flowers of healing. O
widow! O mother! blessed among bereaved women! there remains to you a
treasure that belongs not to those who have lost in any other wise,--the
power to say, "He died for his country." In all the good that comes of
this anguish you shall have a right and share by virtue of this
sacrifice. The joy of freedmen bursting from chains, the glory of a
nation new-born, the assurance of a triumphant future for your country
and the world,--all these become yours by the purchase-money of that
precious blood.
Besides this, there are other treasures that come through sorrow, and
sorrow alone. There are celestial plants of root so long and so deep
that the land must be torn and furrowed, ploughed up from the very
foundation, before they can strike and flourish; and when we see how
God's plough is driving backward and forward and across this nation,
rending, tearing up tender shoots, and burying soft wild-flowers, we ask
ourselves, What is He going to plant?
Not the first year, nor the second, after the ground has been broken up,
does the purpose of the husbandman appear. At first we see only what is
uprooted and ploughed in,--the daisy drabbled, and the violet
crushed,--and the first trees planted amid the unsightly furrows stand
dumb and disconsolate, irresolute in leaf, and without flower or fruit.
Their work is under the ground. In darkness and silence they are putting
forth long fibres, searching hither and thither under the black soil for
the strength that years hence shall burst into bloom and bearing.
What is true of nations is true of individuals. It may seem now winter
and desolation with you. Your hearts have been ploughed and harrowed and
are now frozen up. There is not a flower left, not a blade of grass, not
a bird to sing,--and it is hard to believe that any brighter flowers,
any greener herbage, shall spring up, than those which have been torn
away: and yet there will. Nature herself teaches you to-day. Out-doors
nothing but bare branches and shrouding snow; and yet you know that
there is not a tree that is not patiently holding out at the end of its
boughs next year's buds, frozen indeed, but unkilled. The rhododendron
and the lilac have their blossoms all ready, wrapped in cere-cloth,
waiting in patient faith. Under the frozen ground the crocus and the
hyacinth and the tulip hide in their hearts the perfect forms of future
flowers. And it is even so with you: your leaf-buds of the future are
frozen, but not killed; the soil of your heart has many flowers under it
cold and still now, but they will yet come up and bloom.
The dear old book of comfort tells of no present healing for sorrow.
_No_ chastening for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous, but
_afterwards_ it yieldeth peaceable fruits of righteousness. We, as
individuals, as a nation, need to have faith in that AFTERWARDS. It is
sure to come,--sure as spring and summer to follow winter.
There is a certain amount of suffering which must follow the rending of
the great chords of life, suffering which is natural and inevitable; it
cannot be argued down; it cannot be stilled; it can no more be soothed
by any effort of faith and reason than the pain of a fractured limb, or
the agony of fire on the living flesh. All that we can do is to brace
ourselves to bear it, calling on God, as the martyrs did in the fire,
and resigning ourselves to let it burn on. We must be willing to suffer,
since God so wills. There are just so many waves to go over us, just so
many arrows of stinging thought to be shot into our soul, just so many
faintings and sinkings and revivings only to suffer again, belonging to
and inherent in our portion of sorrow; and there is a work of healing
that God has placed in the hands of Time alone.
Time heals all things at last; yet it depends much on us in our
suffering, whether time shall send us forth healed, indeed, but maimed
and crippled and callous, or whether, looking to the great Physician of
sorrows, and coworking with him, we come forth stronger and fairer even
for our wounds.
We call ourselves a Christian people, and the peculiarity of
Christianity is that it is a worship and doctrine of sorrow. The five
wounds of Jesus, the instruments of the passion, the cross, the
sepulchre,--these are its emblems and watchwords. In thousands of
churches, amid gold and gems and altars fragrant with perfume, are seen
the crown of thorns, the nails, the spear, the cup of vinegar mingled
with gall, the sponge that could not slake that burning death-thirst;
and in a voice choked with anguish the Church in many lands and divers
tongues prays from age to age,--"By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy
cross and passion, by thy precious death and burial!"--mighty words of
comfort, whose meaning reveals itself only to souls fainting in the cold
death-sweat of mortal anguish! They tell all Christians that by
uttermost distress alone was the Captain of their salvation made perfect
as a Saviour.
Sorrow brings us into the true unity of the Church,--that unity which
underlies all external creeds, and unites all hearts that have suffered
deeply enough to know that when sorrow is at its utmost there is but one
kind of sorrow, and but one remedy. What matter, _in extremis_, whether
we be called Romanist, or Protestant, or Greek, or Calvinist?
We suffer, and Christ suffered; we die, and Christ died; he conquered
suffering and death, he rose and lives and reigns,--and we shall
conquer, rise, live, and reign; the hours on the cross were long, the
thirst was bitter, the darkness and horror real,--_but they ended_.
After the wail, "My God, why hast thou forsaken me?" came the calm, "It
is finished"; pledge to us all that our "It is finished" shall come
also.
Christ arose, fresh, joyous, no more to die; and it is written, that,
when the disciples were gathered together in fear and sorrow, he stood
in the midst of them, and showed unto them his hands and his side; and
then were they glad. Already had the healed wounds of Jesus become
pledges of consolation to innumerable thousands; and those who, like
Christ, have suffered the weary struggles, the dim horrors of the
cross,--who have lain, like him, cold and chilled in the hopeless
sepulchre,--if his spirit wakes them to life, shall come forth with
healing power for others who have suffered and are suffering.
Count the good and beautiful ministrations that have been wrought in
this world of need and labor, and how many of them have been wrought by
hands wounded and scarred, by hearts that had scarcely ceased to bleed!
How many priests of consolation is God now ordaining by the fiery
imposition of sorrow! how many Sisters of the Bleeding Heart, Daughters
of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, are receiving their first vocation in
tears and blood!
The report of every battle strikes into some home; and heads fall low,
and hearts are shattered, and only God sees the joy that is set before
them, and that shall come out of their sorrow. He sees our morning at
the same moment that He sees our night,--sees us comforted, healed,
risen to a higher life, at the same moment that He sees us crushed and
broken in the dust; and so, though tenderer than we, He bears our great
sorrows for the joy that is set before us.
After the Napoleonic wars had desolated Europe, the country was, like
all countries after war, full of shattered households, of widows and
orphans and homeless wanderers. A nobleman of Silesia, the Baron von
Kottwitz, who had lost his wife and all his family in the reverses and
sorrows of the times, found himself alone in the world, which looked
more dreary and miserable through the multiplying lenses of his own
tears. But he was one of those whose heart had been quickened in its
death anguish by the resurrection voice of Christ; and he came forth to
life and comfort. He bravely resolved to do all that one man could to
lessen the great sum of misery. He sold his estates in Silesia, bought
in Berlin a large building that had been used as barracks for the
soldiers, and, fitting it up in plain commodious apartments, formed
there a great family-establishment, into which he received the wrecks
and fragments of families that had been broken up by the war,--orphan
children, widowed and helpless women, decrepit old people, disabled
soldiers. These he mad his family, and constituted himself their father
and chief. He above with them, and cared for them as a parent. He had
schools for the children; the more advanced he put to trades and
employments; he set up a hospital for the sick; and for all he had the
priestly ministrations of his own Christ-like heart. The celebrated
Professor Tholuck, one of the most learned men of modern Germany, was an
early _protege_ of the old Baron's, who, discerning his talents, put him
in the way of a liberal education. In his earlier years, like many
others of the young who play with life, ignorant of its needs, Tholuck
piqued himself on a lordly skepticism with regard to the commonly
received Christianity, and even wrote an essay to prove the superiority
of the Mohammedan to the Christian religion. In speaking of his
conversion, he says,--"What moved me was no argument, nor any spoken
reproof, but simply that divine image of the old Baron walking before my
soul. That life was an argument always present to me, and which I never
could answer; and so I became a Christian." In the life of this man we
see the victory over sorrow. How many with means like his, when
desolated by like bereavements, have lain coldly and idly gazing on the
miseries of life, and weaving around themselves icy tissues of doubt and
despair,--doubting the being of a God, doubting the reality of a
Providence, doubting the divine love, embittered and rebellious against
the power which they could not resist, yet to which they would not
submit! In such a chill heart-freeze lies the danger of sorrow. And it
is a mortal danger. It is a torpor that must be resisted, as the man in
the whirling snows must bestir himself, or he will perish. The apathy of
melancholy must be broken by an effort of religion and duty. The
stagnant blood must be made to flow by active work, and the cold hand
warmed by clasping the hands outstretched towards it in sympathy or
supplication. One orphan child taken in, to be fed, clothed, and
nurtured, may save a heart from freezing to death: and God knows this
war is making but too many orphans!
It is easy to subscribe to an orphan asylum, and go on in one's despair
and loneliness. Such ministries may do good to the children who are
thereby saved from the street, but they impart little warmth and comfort
to the giver. One destitute child housed, taught, cared for, and tended
personally, will bring more solace to a suffering heart than a dozen
maintained in an asylum. Not that the child will probably prove an
angel, or even an uncommonly interesting mortal. It is a prosaic work,
this bringing-up of children, and there can be little rosewater in it.
The child may not appreciate what is done for him, may not be
particularly grateful, may have disagreeable faults, and continue to
have them after much pains on your part to eradicate them,--and yet it
is a fact, that to redeem one human being from destitution and ruin,
even in some homely every-day course of ministrations, is one of the
best possible tonics and alteratives to a sick and wounded spirit.