And grew more grey and old, The women, soft of heart, Men grew of equal mind, The very dogs, 'twas said, But when three years were gone You may count each whitening bone. And then it came to pass All gently of him spake, For Francis his dear sake, Whose Brother Wolf this was. ROSE KAVANAGH BORN at Killadroy, County Tyrone, on June 23, 1859, and died of consumption on February 26, 1891. She was a contributor of poems and stories to the Irish papers, &c., and a bright future was predicted for her. Her early death caused widespread regret among readers of Irish literature, and a deep sense of loss to the personal friends to whom her sweet and noble character had endeared her. A collected edition of her poems has been published in Dublin, ST. MICHAN'S CHURCHYARD INSIDE the city's throbbing heart From life's hard highway, life's loud mart. Each Dublin lane and street and square The sound stole soft as whispered prayer. A little, lonely, green graveyard, While other sunbeams went and came His land must write with Freedom's flame.1 The slender elm above that stone, Its summer wreath of leaves had thrown A robin the bare boughs among, And quiet heart, and bird and tree, But full of balm and soothing sweet, For those who sought that calm retreat; Each crowded street and thoroughfare Was echoing round it-yet in there Referring to the grave of Robert Emmet. ALICE FURLONG MISS FURLONG's small volume of poems, ROSES AND RUE, which appeared in 1899, has attracted much recognition from the leading organs of literary criticism. Her poetry has delicacy, pathos, and music, and much power of drawing a vivid picture in few words. The authoress was born in the Co. Dublin about 1875, and has written much in prose and verse for The Irish Monthly and other periodicals. THE DREAMER A WIND that dies on the meadows lush, Along the limpid horizon borne In the dim shadow of the eaves A quiet stir of lifted leaves ! As in the old, beloved days, She wandereth by happy ways. With half-awakened twitterings, The young birds preen their folded wings! To him who long ago forgot. Athwart the meadowy, dewy-sweet, A wind comes wandering on light feet! In the bird's house of emerald She never broke her passionate heart! Pipeth clear from the orchard close A thrush in the bowers of white and rose ! For full delight of birds and flowers JANE BARLOW MISS JANE BARLOW's admirable sketches of peasant-life in Ireland have in a few years gained for her a well-deserved reputation among the Irish writers in prose of the present generation; it may be doubted indeed whether any one has to the same extent sounded the depths of Irish character in the country districts and touched so many chords of sympathy, humour, and pathos. Of her work in verse, with which I have here to do, a portion, and that perhaps the most significant, falls into the same category. BOGLAND STUDIES (among which 'Terence Macran' may be included) are indeed, save for the metrical form, just another volume of the IRISH IDYLLS which have charmed and delighted so many readers. It is not merely the peasant dialect that is faithfully and picturesquely reproduced, but the working of the rural mind and the emotions of the heart, fully and sympathetically understood; so much so that in the eight studies thus classed together it has become inevitable that in each case the narrator should be the peasant himself or herself. It is because the author has so completely succeeded in identifying herself with her characters that the language employed by them as means of expression is so veritably and vividly Irish, natural, and not put on. Thus the flashes of wit, the neat turns of phrase, the quick and apt similes, the quaint and picturesque form and colour of language, strike the reader not only as characteristic, unmistakable Irish sayings, exactly such as are to be caught flying in every village, but they arise naturally out of the thought. One recognises that at that juncture the peasant would have said either what he is made to say, or something very like it, and bearing the same individual semblance. Hence while such passages are eminently quotable, they lose somewhat by quotation apart from their context. It is because the individual and the environment have between them created the psychological moment that the peasant's quaint philosophy breaks out so aptly in such passages as or For it's aisier risin' a quarrel than sthrikin' a match on a wall; So thinks I to meself; but sure, musha, wan's thoughts is like beads off a thread, Slippin' each after each in a hurry: an' so I kep' considherin' on ; or Thin the bugle rang out -- Och, I've ne'er heard the like, yet wan aisy can tell They'd ha' lep' all the locked gates of Heaven to ride with that music to Hell; or again 'T is the same as if God an' the Divil tuk turns to be ownin' the earth. It would be hypercritical to examine the metre too closely; the narrative comes rushing quickly, with sudden irregular gusts, as one feels it would naturally come. For my present purpose, that of selection, this unity and continuity has one inconvenience; the stories in BOGLAND STUDIES are too long for one of them to be quoted here in its entirety, and being in fact short stories' they are too ably written to permit of abbreviation, and extracts would be quite unrepresentative of Miss Barlow's excellence in this line. I can only hope that what I have said will cause readers to turn to them with something of that zest which those who know her prose writings do not need to have the critic's help in awakening. In TH' OULD MASTER we have a tragedy of the sea told |