IRISH I'oi'/rkv. • 6q 



and idealism, and selling it U) the music t)f the most beautiful 

 stanzas in the lan<4ua,ge, amid the remote streams and wood- 

 lands of southern Ireland. 



Again, Ireland is dear to the muses as the home of Lycidas, 

 the high-souled young scholar, whose death on the Irish Sea 

 drew from Milton the meed of tears immortally melodious. 



Oliver Goldsmith, Irish and warm-hearted to the core, with 

 other native poets, gave Ireland a place in Eighteenth Century 

 poetry. But not until the end of that century did the new 

 United Ireland find her poetic voice, and that through William 

 Drennan, who invented the name " Emerald Isle," and whose 

 song " When Erin First Rose from the Dark Swelling Flood " 

 drew Irishmen together in national brotherhood. Sir Charles 

 Gavan Duffy and Thomas Davis, and the poets who wrote for 

 "The Nation " newspaper (founded by Duffy in 1842) car- 

 ried (m the work. Since their day the Irish passion for national 

 recognition has become a world-wide cry. 



From patriotism the poetry of Ireland passed to literary 

 themes drawn from Celtic mythology, in the work of Ireland's 

 most tragic poet, James Clarence Mangan. In his song 

 " Dark Rosaleen " this poet lamented the griefs of Ireland in 

 " melancholy of majestic music." 



The present notable " Celtic Revival " had its chief impe- 

 tus from Sir Samuel Ferguson's " Lays of the Western Gael 

 ( 1S64 ). Here were awakened the ancient medieval traditions 

 of the Cxreen Isle, and poetry found fresh and entrancing- 

 themes in the long-slumbering native sagas and ballads. 



Throughout the finer poetry of the Irish bards, as in that 

 of their Scotch and Welsh brethren, one feels the Celtic 

 glamour of which Matthew Arnold spoke, "the gift of ren- 

 dering with wonderful felicity the magical charm of nature 

 the intimate life of nature, her weird power and her 

 fairy charm. 



The honest, warm Irish humor phws half pathetically and 

 caressingly about the beloved home-places, " Belashanny and 

 the winding banks of F^rne," Gweedore, Kerrv, Limerick and 



