A NEW IRISH POET.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIV, Issue 11, 5 February 1897, Page 28

A NEW IRISH POET.

" Under the Quicken Boughs," by Norah Hopper, is a remarkable book of verse, says the London JVcirx. It has all that such literature should have in liberal measure — fire, tenderness, descriptive felicity and a sort of unfore&eenness which is the strongest note of real feeling. It is but a collection of short pieces, chiefly on liish themes. This is the true Celtic revival — the revival of the poetry that begins by being good and is only Celtic, or anything else of a specialised character, in the second place. In the poem called "Vagrants" we have many of these characteristics combined in one short piece. The descriptive facilities are perfect, and no single touch can be foretold. The '• Gold Song," again, is hardly to be surpassed for the way in which it baffles the probabilities all through, and for its resultant spontaneity of effect. You really do not know what is going to happen, in metre or in sentiment, till it has happened, just as you never know in some of the choicest effects in Nature itself :—: — '' Gold of butterflies, gold of bees, Gold of ragweeds and golden seas ; G old on gorses for kissing sake. Which of these will you touch and take, Moirin, Moirin .' Golden butterfly's not for me. I'll ha' none o' the golden bee ; My heart of gold shall not beat nor break, Though I love the gorsea for kissing's sake, Mother, Mother. Then rest you merry, through heat and cold, Sweet lips of cherry, sweet heart of gold ; Yet Gold-heart surely shall come some day. To cry for gray wings to fly away. Morin. Moirin. And this surely must have an honoured place in all anthologies of the sword of which it sings :—: — It was welded in fires of Eve's own kindling and tempered in tears that Lillith wept. Fires that were tended of Dhoul and Druid and gods that woke while the others slept. And the fire was hallowed with prayer and sighing of saints that took it for sleeping-place, With life unborn and with life undying, with prayers unanswered and granted grace. The fire was watched of the dark Fornoroh, from wistful twilight to windy dawn, De Danaans fed it with quicken-branches the wild Shee came from their dancing lawn ! They sang wild songs to the red fire's flashing, they sang to the rod fire's falling glow, And ours are the fire and the &word it v elded, but free for us now the wild songs go. The felicities of phrasing are innumerable :—: — Fiacra, Fiacra, Call all your waves to heel. There's a grey fog over Dublin of the curses. Or this from the opening of the magnificent '-Thor Asleep," dedicated to William Morris :—: — Lord of the Plains of Trembling, Master of Bondsmen — Thor. Where are you sleeping, son of earth, while the men go down to the war / Are the giants slain and the giants" bane laid by. with its battles o'er 1 And this is true to the feeling and imagination that have their own law, while the verse, as verse should, owns a proper allegiance to the metrical powers that be.