Miss Rosa Mulholland has at last been induced to gather her poems into a
volume which will be dear to all lovers of poetry into whose hands it
may fall. No person with the faintest glimmering of insight into the
subtle mechanism of literary composition in its higher forms could study
the prose writings of the author of "The Wicked Woods of Tobereevil," of
"Eldergowan," and many other dainty fictions, without being sure that
the writer of such prose was a poet also, not merely by nature but by
art; and many had learned to follow her initials through the pages of
certain magazines. The present work contains nearly all of these
scattered lyrics; and, along with them, many that are now printed for
the first time combine to form a volume of the truest and holiest poetry
that has been heard on earth since Adelaide Procter went to heaven.
The only justification for the too modest title of "Vagrant Verses,"
which gleams from the cover of this pretty volume, lies in the fact that
this most graceful muse wanders from subject to subject according to her
fancy, and pursues no heroic or dramatic theme with that exhaustive
treatment which exhausts every one except the poet. The poems in this
collection are short, written not to order, but under the manifest
impulse of inspiration, for the expression only of the deeper thoughts
and more vivid feelings of the soul. Except the fine lyrical and
dramatic ballad, "The Children of Lir," which occupies eight pages, and
the first five pages given to "Emmet's Love," none of the rest of the
seventy poems go much beyond a page or two, while they range through
every mood, sad or mirthful, and through every form of metre.
We have named the opening poem, which is an exquisitely pathetic
soliloquy of Sarah Curran, a year after the death of her betrothed,
young Robert Emmet--a nobler tribute to the memory of our great orator's
daughter than either Moore's verse or Washington Irving's prose. But the
metrical interlacing of the stanzas, and the elevation and refinement of
the poetic diction, require a thoughtful perusal to bring out the
perfections of this poem, which, therefore, lends itself less readily to
quotation. We shall rather begin by giving one shorter poem in full,
taken almost at random. Let it be "Wilfulness and Patience," as it
teaches a lesson which it would be well for many to take to heart and to
learn by heart:--
I said I am going into the garden,
Into the flush of the sweetness of life;
I can stay in the wilderness no longer,
Where sorrow and sickness and pain are so rife;
So I shod my feet in their golden sandals,
And I looped my gown with a ribbon of blue,
And into the garden went I singing,
The birds in the boughs fell a-singing too.
Just at the wicket I met with Patience,
Grave was her face, and pure and kind,
But oh, I loved not her ashen mantle,
Such sober looks were not to my mind.
Said Patience, "Go not into the garden,
But come with me by the difficult ways,
Over the wastes and the wilderness mountains,
To the higher levels of love and praise!"
Gaily I laughed as I opened the wicket,
And Patience, pitying, flitted away.
The garden glory was full of the morning--
The morning changed to the glamor of day.
O sweet were the winds among my tresses,
And sweet the flowers that bent at my knees;
Ripe were the fruits that fell at my wishing,
But sated soon was my soul with these.
And would I were hand in hand with Patience;
Tracking her feet on the difficult ways,
Over the wastes and the wilderness mountains,
To the higher level of love and praise!
The salutary lesson that the singer wants to impress on the young heart,
is here taught plainly and directly even by the very name of the piece.
But here is another very delicious melody, of which the name and the
purport are somewhat more mysterious. It is called "Perdita."
I dipped my hand in the sea,
Wantonly--
The sun shone red o'er castle and cave;
Dreaming, I rocked on the sleepy wave;--
I drew a pearl from the sea.
Wonderingly.
There in my hand it lay:
Who could say
How from the depths of the ocean calm
It rose, and slid itself into my palm?
I smiled at finding there
Pearl so fair.
I kissed the beautiful thing,
Marvelling.
Poor till now I had grown to be
The wealthiest maiden on land or sea,
A priceless gem was mine,
Pure, divine!
I hid the pearl in my breast,
Fearful lest
The wind should steal, or the wave repent
Largess made in mere merriment,
And snatch it back again
Into the main.
But careless grown, ah me!
Wantonly
I held between two fingers fine
My gem above the sparkling brine,
Only to see it gleam
Across the stream.
I felt the treasure slide
Under the tide;
I saw its mild and delicate ray
Glittering upward, fade away.
Ah! then my tears did flow,
Long ago!
I weep, and weep, and weep,
Into the deep;
Sad am I that I could not hold
A treasure richer than virgin gold.
That Fate so sweetly gave
Out of the wave.
I dip my hand in the sea,
Longingly;
But never more will that jewel white
Shed on my soul its tender light.
My pearl lies buried deep
Where mermaids sleep.
Some readers of this MAGAZINE are, no doubt, for the first time making
acquaintance with Miss Mulholland under this character in which others
have known her long; and even these newest friends know enough of her
already to pronounce upon some of her characteristics. She is not
influenced by the spell of modern culture which has invested the poetic
diction of recent years with an exquisite expressiveness and delicate
beauty. But, while her style is the very antithesis of the tawdry or the
commonplace, she has no mannerisms or affectations; she belongs to no
school; she does not deem it the poet's duty to cultivate an
artificial, _recherche_, dilettante dialect unknown to Shakespeare and
Wordsworth--if we may use a string of epithets which can only be excused
for their outlandishness on the plea that they describe something very
outlandish. Her meaning is as lucid as her thoughts are high and pure.
If, after reading one of her poems carefully, we sometimes have to ask
"What does she mean by that?" we ask it not on account of any obscurity
in her language, but on account of the depth and height of her thoughts.
The musical rhythm of our extracts prepares us for the form which many
of Miss Mulholland's inspirations assume--that of the song pure and
simple. Those last epithets have here more than the meaning which they
usually bear in such a context; for these songs are not only eminently
singable, but they are marked by a very attractive purity and
simplicity. There are many of them besides this one which alone bears no
other name than "Song."
The silent bird is hid in the boughs,
The scythe is hid in the corn,
The lazy oxen wink and drowse,
The grateful sheep are shorn.
Redder and redder burns the rose,
The lily was ne'er so pale,
Stiller and stiller the river flows
Along the path to the vale.
A little door is hid in the boughs,
A face is hiding within;
When birds are silent and oxen drowse,
Why should a maiden spin?
Slower and slower turns the wheel,
The face turns red and pale,
Brighter and brighter the looks that steal
Along the path to the vale.
Here and everywhere how few are the adjectives, and never any slipped in
as mere adjectives. Verbs and nouns do duty for them, and the pictures
paint themselves. There is more of genius, art, thought, and study in
this self-restraining simplicity than in the freer and bolder eloquence
that might make young pulses tingle.
This remarkable faculty for musical verse seems to us to enhance the
merit of a poem in which a certain ruggedness is introduced of set
purpose. At least, we think that the subtle sympathy, which in the
workmanship of a true poet links theme and metre together, is curiously
exemplified in "News to Tell." What metre is it? A very slight change
here and there would conform it to the sober, solemn measure familiar to
the least poetical of us in Gray's marvellous "Elegy in a Country
Churchyard." That elegiac tone already suits the rhythm here to the
pathetic story. But then the wounded soldier, who, perhaps, will not
recover after all, but may follow his dead comrade--see how he drags
himself with difficulty away from the old gray castle where the young
widow and the aged mother are overwhelmed by the news he had to tell;
and is not all this with exquisite cunning represented by the halting
gait of the metre, in which every line deviates just a little from the
normal scheme of five iambics?
Neighbor, lend me your arm, for I am not well,
This wound you see is scarcely a fortnight old,
All for a sorry message I had to tell,
I've travelled many a mile in wet and cold.
Yon is the old gray chateau above the road,
He bade me seek it, my comrade brave and gay;
Stately forest and river so brown and broad,
He showed me the scene as he a-dying lay.
I have been there, and, neighbor I am not well;
I bore his sword and some of his curling hair,
Knocked at the gate and said I had news to tell,
Entered a chamber and saw his mother there.
Tall and straight with the snows of age on her head,
Brave and stern as a soldier's mother might be,
Deep in her eyes a living look of the dead,
She grasped her staff and silently gazed at me.
I thought I'd better be dead than meet her eye;
She guessed it all, I'd never a word to tell.
Taking the sword in her arms she heaved a sigh,
Clasping the curl in her hand, she sobbed and fell.
I raised her up; she sate in her stately chair,
Her face like death, but not a tear in her eye.
We heard a step, a tender voice on the stair
Murmuring soft to an infant's cooing cry.
My lady she sate erect, and sterner grew,
Finger on mouth she motioned me not to stay;
A girl came in, the wife of the dead I knew,
She held his babe, and, neighbor, I fled away!
I tried to run, but I heard the widow's cry.
Neighbor, I have been hurt and I am not well:
I pray to God that never until I die
May I again have such sorry news to tell.
The next piece we shall cite has travelled across the Atlantic, and come
back again under false pretences, and without its author's leave or
knowledge. Some years ago an American newspaper published some pathetic
stanzas, to which it gave as a title "Exquisite Effusion of a Dying
Sister of Charity." One into whose hands this journal chanced to fall,
read on with interest and pleasure, feeling the verses strangely
familiar--till, on reflection, he found that the poem had been published
some time before in _The Month_, over the well-known initials "R. M." As
the American journalist named the Irish convent where the Sister of
Charity had died--not one of Mrs. Aikenhead's spiritual daughters, but
one of those whom we call French Sisters of Charity--the reader
aforesaid went to the trouble of writing to the Mother Superior, who
gave the following explanation: The holy Sister had been fond of reading
and writing verse; and these verses with others were found in her desk
after her death and handed over to her relatives as relics. They not
comparing them very critically with the nun's genuine literary remains,
rashly published them as "The Exquisite Effusion of a Dying Sister of
Charity." The foregoing circumstances were soon afterwards published in
the _Boston Pilot_; but the ghost of such a blunder is not so easily
laid, and the poem reappears in _The Messenger of St. Joseph_ for last
August, under the title of "An Invalid's Plaint," and still attributed
to the dying Nun, who had only had the good taste to admire and
transcribe Miss Mulholland's poem. In all its wanderings to and fro
across the Atlantic many corruptions crept into the text; and it would
be an interesting exercise in style to collate the version given by _The
Messenger_ with the authorized edition which we here copy from page 136
of "Vagrant Verses," where the poem, of course, bears its original name
of "Failure."
The Lord, Who fashioned my hands for working,
Set me a task, and it is not done;
I tried and tried since the early morning,
And now to westward sinketh the sun!
Noble the task that was kindly given
To one so little and weak as I--
Somehow my strength could never grasp it,
Never, as days and years went by.
Others around me, cheerfully toiling,
Showed me their work as they passed away;
Filled were their hands to overflowing,
Proud were their hearts, and glad and gay.
Laden with harvest spoils they entered
In at the golden gate of their rest;
Laid their sheaves at the feet of the Master,
Found their places among the blest.
Happy be they who strove to help me,
Failing ever in spite of their aid!
Fain would their love have borne me onward,
But I was unready, and sore afraid.
Now I know my task will never be finished,
And when the Master calleth my name,
The Voice will find me still at my labor,
Weeping beside it in weary shame.
With empty hands I shall rise to meet Him,
And when He looks for the fruits of years,
Nothing have I to lay before Him
But broken efforts and bitter tears.
Yet when He calls I fain would hasten--
Mine eyes are dim and their light is gone;
And I am as weary as though I carried
A burthen of beautiful work well done.
I will fold my empty hands on my bosom,
Meekly thus in the shape of His Cross;
And the Lord, Who made them frail and feeble,
Maybe will pity their strife and loss.
It might have been expected that so skilful an artist in beautiful words
would be sure occasionally to find the classic sonnet form the most
fitting vehicle for some rounded and stately thought. About half a dozen
sonnets are strewn over these pages, all cast in the true Petrarchan
mould, and all very properly bearing names of their own, like any other
form of verse, instead of being labelled promiscuously as "sonnets." The
following is called "Love." What a sublime ideal, only to be realized in
human love when in its self-denying sacredness it approaches the divine!
True love is that which never can be lost:
Though cast away, alone and ownerless,
Like a strayed child, that wandering, misses most
When night comes down its mother's last caress;
True love dies not when banished and forgot,
But, solitary, barters still with Heaven
The scanty share of joy cast in its lot
For joys to the beloved freely given.
Love, smiling, stands afar to watch and see
Each blessing it has bought, like angel's kiss,
Fall on the loved one's face, who ne'er may know
At what strange cost thus, overflowingly,
His cup is filled, or how its depth of bliss
Doth give the measure of another's woe.
As this happens to be the solitary one among Miss Mulholland's sonnets,
which in the arrangement of the quatrains varies slightly from the most
orthodox tradition of this pharisee of song, I will give another
specimen, prettily named "Among the Boughs."
High on a gnarled and mossy forest bough,
Dreaming, I hang between the earth and sky,
The golden moon through leafy mystery
Gazing aslant at me with glowing brow.
And since all living creatures slumber now,
O nightingale, save only thou and I,
Tell me the secret of thine ecstacy,
That none may know save only I and thou.
Alas, all vainly doth my heart entreat;
Thy magic pipe unfolds but to the moon
What wonders thee in faery worlds befell:
To her is sung thy midnight-music sweet,
And ere she wearies of thy mellow tune,
She hath thy secret, and will guard it well!
Unstinted as our extracts have been, there are poems here by the score
over which our choice has wavered. Our selection has been made partly
with a view to the illustration of the variety and versatility displayed
by this new poet in matter and form; and on this principle we are
tempted to quote "Girlhood at Midnight" as the only piece of blank verse
in Miss Mulholland's repertory, to show how musical, how far from blank,
she makes that most difficult and perilous measure. But we must put a
restraint on ourselves, and just give one more sample, of the
achievements of the author of "The Little Flower Seekers" and "The Wild
Birds of Killeevy," in what an old writer calls "the melifluous meeters
of poesie." This last is called "A Rebuke." Was there ever a sweeter or
gentler rebuke?
Why are you so sad? (_sing the little birds, the little birds_,)
All the sky is blue,
We are in our branches, yonder are the herds,
And the sun is on the dew;
Everything is merry, (_sing the happy little birds_,)
Everything but you!
Fire is on the hearthstone, the ship is on the wave,
Pretty eggs are in the nest,
Yonder sits a mother smiling at a grave,
With a baby at her breast;
And Christ was on the earth, and the sinner He forgave
Is with Him in His rest.
We shall droop our wings, (_pipes the throstle on the tree_,)
When everything is done:
Time unfurleth yours, that you soar eternally
In the regions of the sun.
When our day is over, (_sings the blackbird in the lea_,)
Yours is but begun.
Then why are you so sad? (_warble all the little birds_,)
While the sky is blue,
Brooding over phantoms and vexing about words
That never can be true;
Everything is merry, (_trill the happy, happy birds_,)
Everything but you!
The setting of these jewels is almost worthy of them. The book is
brought out with that faultless taste which has helped to win for the
firm of No. 1 Paternoster Sq., such fame as poets' publishers. A large
proportion of contemporary poetry of the highest name, including till
lately the Laureate's, has appeared under the auspices of Kegan Paul,
Trench & Co., who seem to have expended special care on the production
of "Vagrant Verses."
And now, as we have let these poems chiefly speak for themselves, enough
has been said. We do not hesitate to add in conclusion, that those among
us with pretensions to literary culture, who do not hasten to contribute
to the exceptional success which awaits a work such as even our brief
account proves this work to be, will so far have failed in their duty
towards Irish genius. For this book more than any that we have yet
received from its author's hand--nay, more than any that we can hope to
receive from her, since this is the consummate flower of her best
years--will serve to secure for the name of Rosa Mulholland an enduring
place among the most richly gifted of the daughters of Erin.
Dublin, 1886. REV. MATTHEW RUSSELL, S. J.
* * * * *
CONFIDENCE is a plant of slow growth in an aged bosom.