At times, the dimples round her mouth are lit
By rosy twilights from some image caught.
What does she think of? Of the open book
Whose penciled leaves are fluttering on her knee;
Or of the broken fountain in the grass;
Or of the dumb and immemorial rook,
Perched like a wingèd darkness on the tree,
And watching the great clouds in silence pass?

I know not; myriad are the phantasies,
That trouble the still dreams of maidenhood,
And wonderful the radiant entities

Shaped in the passion of her brain and blood.
O Fancy! through the realm of guesses fly,
Unlock the rich abstraction of her heart
(Her soul is second in the mystery):
Trail thy gold meshes thro' the summer sky;
Question her tender breathings as they part,
Tell me, Revealer, that she thinks of me.

WHERE?

A minute gone. She lingered here, and then

Passed, with face backward turned, through yonder door; The free fold of her garments' damask grain

Fashioned a hieroglyph upon the floor,

Then straightened, as it reached the corridor.

Down the long passages, I heard her feet
Moving-a crepitating music slow-
And next her voice, an echo exquisite,
But modulated in its tender flow-

A harp through which the evening breezes blow.

Upon the table, there were books and flowers,
And Indian trifles; a Mahratta blade

Whose ivory hilt sustained a cirque of towers,
Wedded by the inexplicable braid

On Vishnu's shrine at harvest full moon laid.

The curtains shook; a scarlet glamour crossed
The stained wood and the white walls of the room-
Wavered, retreated, trembled, and was lost

Between the statue's plinth, the console's gloom,
And yon tall urn of yellow blossomed broom.

I see her face look backward at me yet,
Just as she glided by the cypress chair;
Her happy eyes with happy tears are wet,
And, over bust and shoulders cool and fair,
Stream the black coils of her abundant hair.

In what far past-in what abysm of time,
Have I beheld that self-same look before?
There was no difference of hour or clime:
A garment made a figure on a floor,
Which straightened sweeping towards a corridor.

Rare trifles were around me, curtains blew,

And worked their restless phantasms on a ceil;

A sidelong bird across a casement flew,

Upon the table glittered graven steel,

And a low voice thrilled me with soft appeal.

All things were there, as all things are, to-day,
But where? I half remember, as a dream,
Such accidents, in epochs, long grown gray-
Such glory, but with ever-narrowing beam,
From which I'm severed by some shoreless stream.

Have I forgotten-is this flash of light,

Which makes the brain and pulse together start,

Some ray reflected from the infinite

Worlds, where I mayhap have left a heart-
The Infinite of which I am a part?

Who shall unriddle it? Return, sweet wife,
And with thy presence sanctify this pain;
Cling to my side, O faithful help of life!
Lest, in the hour when night is on the wane,
The destinies divide us two again.

160

DAVID J. O'DONOGHUE.

(1866)

DAVID J. O'DONOGHUE, biographer and editor, was born July 22, 1866, and was educated at a Catholic School. He began to write for the newspapers in 1886, and has written largely for Dublin journals, particularly Freeman's Journal, The Weekly Freeman, The National Press, and The Evening Telegraph. He writes chiefly on Irish literary, artistic, and musical subjects. He is one of the founders of the Irish Literary Society, London; Vice-President of the National Literary Society, Dublin; member of the Committee of the Feis Ceoil (annual Irish Musical Festival).

·

His publications are: Ireland in London' (with F. A. Fahy), 1887; The Poets of Ireland,' a Biographical Dictionary, 1891-93; revised edition begun 1901; The Irish Humorists,' 1892; Minor Irish Poets,' 1893; Humor of Ireland,' 1894; Introduction to Reliques of Barney Maglone,' 1894; Irish Poetry of the Nineteenth Century,' 1894; 'List of 1300 Irish Artists,' 1894; Fardorougha the Miser (Introduction to),' 1895; Writings of James Fintan Lalor,' 1895; Life of William Carleton,' 2 vols., 1896; edited Works of Samuel Lover,' 6 vols., 1898-1899; also 'The Black Prophet,' by Carleton, 1898; Biographical Catalogue of Collections of Irish Music,' 1899; Richard Pockrich, an Irish Musical Genius,' 1899; Life of Robert Emmet,' 1902. He is also the author of numerous articles in the 'Dictionary of National Biography' and a contributor to ‘A Treasury of Irish Poetry, in the English Tongue,' 1900.

AN IRISH MUSICAL GENIUS.

Readers of Goldsmith will remember the passage in the ninth chapter of The Vicar of Wakefield,' where the ladies from London with all their accomplishments threw the country-bred ladies entirely into the shade. "They would talk," says Goldsmith, "of nothing but high life and high-lived company, with other fashionable topics, such as pictures, taste, Shakespeare, and the musical glasses." In this last phrase, which is intended to be antithetical, Goldsmith expressed some contempt for an invention, which for several years previously had excited much comment and a good deal of amusement among the higher classes of English and Irish society. The Vicar of Wakefield' was written in 1761, when Richard Pockrich, the inventor of the instrument referred to, had been dead two years. Goldsmith had certainly heard a good deal of this remarkable man, a countryman of his own, and

had not improbably listened to his performances upon the glasses. That he expressed at least a shade of contempt for this invention in his now proverbial phrase is clear. He had not an excessive admiration of Shakespeare, as we know, but he delicately suggests the immense distance which separates the mind of the author of 'Hamlet' and that to which we owe the musical glasses-and implies, in short, that this last was one of the lowest conceivable examples of the exercise of ingenuity. But we may employ in Pockrich's defense the words (or their sense) which John O'Keeffe, the amiable dramatist, is said to have used when he heard that Scott, in 'St. Ronan's Well,' had put into the mouth of one of his characters what he considered to be a contemptuous phrase, "from Shakespeare to O'Keeffe." "From the top to the bottom of the ladder!" remarked O'Keeffe. "Well, he might have placed me a few rungs up!"

Pockrich was by no means a contemptible person. He was one of the many notable Irishmen of his day. His ingenuity was amazing, and was employed in a hundred different schemes and inventions, some of which, though scouted as chimerical by his rather unprogressive age, were eminently worthy of consideration, and are well within the region of the practical. The invention of the musical glasses has proved to be his most famous idea—it is the only one of his many suggestions which his contemporaries did not laugh out of court-but it is not by any means his highest claim to remembrance. The writers of his day recognized and appreciated "the concourse of sweet sounds" produced by Pockrich from ordinary drinking glasses, and lest modern readers should feel inclined to smile at the praise bestowed upon this ingenious contrivance, it need only be mentioned that some of the greatest minds of the time were enraptured with what is now regarded as a mere toy.

There are various contemporary references to the musical glasses which have more than common interest. The letters, especially, of notable people of the period often allude to them. In one of his admirable letters to Mason, Gray the poet says, under date Dec. 8, 1761: "Here is Mr. Delaval and a charming set of glasses that sing like nightingales, and we have concerts every other night." Horace

Walpole also mentions them in a letter: "The operas flourish more than in any latter years; the composer is Gluck, a German; he is to have a benefit, at which he is to play a set of drinking glasses, which he modulates with water. I think I have heard you speak of having seen some such thing." And finally, in an advertisement in the St. James' Chronicle of Dec. 3, 1761, there is the following paragraph: "At Mr. Sheridan's lecture on elocution, Miss Lloyd succeeds Miss Ford in performing on the musical glasses for the amusement of genteel company." Benjamin Franklin made a small improvement upon Pockrich's invention and called it by the Italian name of "Armonica" (a word which has been Englished by the addition of the letter H). This is not, of course, the small toy generally known by that name. Brockhill Newburgh, an Irish contemporary, refers to it as the instrument "with which the celebrated Miss Davies not long since so agreeably entertained the town," and adds, "it is no more than an improvement upon Mr. Pockrich's glasses, and it is to this gentleman's original invention we are indebted for one of the most pleasing instruments within the compass of sound." Gluck, the eminent composer, gave public performances in England and abroad upon Pockrich's glasses, and Beethoven, Mozart, and other great musicians wrote music for the improved form devised by Franklin. The latter in a letter, to Beccaria in 1762, refers to Pockrich thus "You have doubtless heard the sweet tone that is drawn from a drinking glass by passing a wet finger round its brim. One Mr. Puckeridge (sic), a gentleman from Ireland, was the first who thought of playing tunes formed of such tones. He collected a number of glasses of different sizes, fixed them near each other on a table, and tuned them by putting into them water more or less, as each note required. The tones were brought out by passing his fingers round the brim." Franklin goes on to inform Beccaria that Dr. Delaval, F.R.S., had attempted an improvement upon Pockrich's invention by greater care in choosing his glasses, and he proceeds to explain his own amended form, the "Armonica," of which he gives a drawing. His idea was simply to fix upon a stand a succession of globes of varying sizes, which were also to be played upon by wet fingers.