Emily Lawless

“ Irish Nature was the Nature she knew best, and it inspired the last songs she gave us so gallantly, on the brink of death.
And Irish Nature was to her the symbol of all Nature, that Nature through which alone she faced mystery and found the Highest. She had in her poetry, as in herself, a twofold relation to Nature. There was the external aspect; the physical tie by which she became part of the earth and its teeming life; which made her in younger years adore movement—the rush through the air on a horse, the cleaving of the waves as she swam ”

“ Even objects inside the garden, plants that have been perhaps put there by one’s own hands; clumps say, of bamboos and reedy grasses—Arundo donax or the like—assume suddenly new, and slightly savage aspects when one sees them sweeping to and fro, or buckling like so many fishing rods under the lash of a sudden tempest. The commonplace is not really unescapable, though it often seems as though it were. There are wider, freer notes, which only need awakening to stir, and thrill us with their presence. The imagination leaps to meet them, and feels them to be its right. ”

“ It seemed to Grania like a voice outside herself, a voice roaring confirmations of her own thoughts, and, with an impulse of disburdening herself of some at least of these, she went on:
‘Isn’t it queer, Honor, to think of all the trouble there is, far and near, over the whole, big world? Sure when one looks out over the sea and the land yonder, and beyond that again, and thinks of it all, there seems to be nothing but trouble and trouble and trouble, and more trouble upon the top of trouble. ”

“ And yet, so strangely are we made, that a dozen years hence, if you examined one of the inhabitants of your ideal arcadia, you would probably find that all his, or her, dreams of the future, all his, or her, visions of the past, still clung, limpet-fashion, to these naked rocks, these melancholy dots of land set in the midst of an inhospitable sea, which Nature does not seem to have constructed with an eye to the convenience of so much as a goat! ”

“ Perhaps if we think of the Lapps of the present day, and picture them wandering about the country, catching the hares and rabbits in nooses, burrowing in the earth or amongst rocks, and being, not impossibly, looked down on with scorn by the great Irish elk which still stalked majestically over the hills; rearing ugly little altars to dim, formless gods; trembling at every sudden gust, and seeing demon faces in every bush and brake, it will give us a fairly good notion of what these very earliest inhabitants of Ireland were probably like. ”

“ These bog-pools flutter ere they sink to rest,
And o’er this surface, level as a floor,
Yon blue reek trails its idle way to west.
It comes from thee, brown shieling, late bereft
Of thy last fledgelings; tenement outworn,
Long marked for desolation, and now left
To two old hearts, submissive, but forlorn.
How like some wintry nest it shows to-night;
While over its bent thatch a young curved moon
Peers through thin clouds scarce greyer than her light
Peers wistfully, as if arrived too soon,
Or doubtful of her welcome. ”

“ Grania shivered and felt sick. Something in the look and extraordinary apathy of the woman, something in the hideous squalor of the house, affected her as no poverty—not even that of the Dalys at home—had ever done before. She raked together the embers, and put a few fresh sods of turf on the fire—seeing that the woman of the house was either too ill or too indifferent to do anything—then sat down on a low creepy opposite to her, feeling chilled to the bone and utterly miserable. ”

“ Outside the wind howled, sweeping with a vicious whirl over the long naked ledges, loosening here and there a thin flake of stone, which spun round and round for a moment like a forest leaf, then fell with a light pattering noise upon the ridge below. Inside the sods crackled dully, as the fire blown by Grania ran along their ragged brown sides, or shot into a flame whenever a stray fibre helped it on. ”

“ Grania looked up. A new idea, a sudden curiosity, was stirring in her mind.
‘But did you never care for e’er a one, Honor?’ she asked, reddening and speaking quickly: ‘never for e’er a one at all—not when you were young? Sure, Honor, you must! Think a bit, sister, and tell me. Arrah! why wouldn’t you tell me? Isn’t it all past and done now?’
‘“Care”? Is it I, child? “Care”! God keep you, no! What would ail me to care?’ the elder sister asked in tones of genuine astonishment. ‘Auch! men is a terrible trouble, Grania, first and last. ”

“ In Ireland itself the permanent effects of the disaster differed of course in different places and with different people, but in one respect it may be said to have been the same everywhere. Between the Ireland of the past and the Ireland of the present the Famine [pg 402] lies like a black stream, all but entirely blotting out and effacing the past. Whole phases of life, whole types of character, whole modes of existence and ways of thought passed away then and have never been renewed. The entire fabric of the country was torn to pieces and has never reformed itself upon the same lines again. ”

“ She is haunted by the strange bewitching surge of the waves of the Atlantic, of the Western waves “wild with all regret.” For her the rolling brown stretches of bog and of peat-moss, with the blue smoke hanging low over them, and their carpet of faithful little peat-flowers, mean home, the enchanted home we all know, where we have played in childhood and felt the first thrills of youth; the moist silver sky, the solitary, ageless stone crosses, the ruined churches, the hovels, the sad, shining lakes make the country where her spirit dwells. ”

“ I thought, as I let the tap run for a few minutes, and stood to watch the water beginning to create little rills and runnels for itself, and to feed the dry copse, the dead leaves, brambles, withered bracken, everything within reach, with the first full rush of its benevolence.
I do not know that I am more given than other people to proclaiming aloud that I have too many blessings; that Nature has been too generous, and too bountiful in her benefits on my behalf. ”

“ Why should people go on living so? she thought. Why should they go on living at all, indeed? Why, above all, should they marry and bring more wretched creatures into the world, if this was to be the way of it? How stupid, how useless, how horrible it all was! Yes, Honor was right, the priests were right, the nuns were right, they were all right—there was no happiness in the world, none at all—nowhere! Murdough Blake?—well, Murdough Blake would be just like the rest of them, just like every other husband—worse, perhaps, than some. ”

“ There being no earth for it to dry into, it poured over the level slabs, sweeping from slab to slab almost as the sea swept over the rocks between the tide-marks. Watching it at such moments, it would have seemed to you as if the whole island would shortly become one great waterfall, or scarcely perceptible reef for the Atlantic to roll over, the water, as it descended upon the slabs, falling into the troughs or tunnels laid ready for it, and out of them again until it found rest in the final trough awaiting it at the bottom. ”

“ Grania, a born aristocrat—all children are born aristocrats—shared this feeling in the strongest degree, and was well aware that Teige was in some way or other immensely inferior to herself, and therefore a person only to be tolerated when no more attractive company was to be had. She sat for some time longer with her feet dangling over the top of the fort, a quaint little red-petticoated figure, the solitary spot of colour in all that desolate greyness. ”

“ Entangling, swaying, revolving, escaping, past to the strand;
Escaping, yet never escaped, never utterly gone from reach;
Which is it? I ask and would know, as I watch at hand,
Here on the beach.
To-night they seem weary of warfare, these ancient foes,
Weary of love as of hate; of eddying kisses or blows;
Even as we, as I, grow weary of eddying thought,
Of the waves of the mind, of the soul and its foam-like woes,
Rising unsought. ”

“ The light that is gilding yonder cumulus is as capable of inspiring great thoughts here to-day in a Surrey copse, as ever it was in Delphi, or in Argos, or in Jerusalem. It may awaken just as resounding emotions, it may inspire just as great deeds to the hearts of yonder passers-by in a dogcart, as it did to the Assailants of Troy, or to the Seekers of the Golden Fleece. The constituents of all greatness, of all poetry, heroism, and sanctity are for ever amongst us. It is only the right recipients of them that are alas! ”

“ As far as her own sensations went, she might have been rowing there the whole live-long night, so benumbing and sleep-like was that torpor. How long she really had been rowing she could not in the least have told, but her thoughts or her dreams were suddenly cut short—cut into as it were—by another wild cry from Phelim. This time it was much more than a cry, it was an actual scream; a shrill, discordant screech, such as some animals give when they are in the intensest throes of terror. Grania on her side started violently, and turned round. ”

“ Few more tragic positions have been described or can be conceived than that of this old man-so loved, so hated, so reverenced, so detested--who had been so audaciously, triumphantly successful in his day, and round whom the shadows of night were now gathering so blackly and so swiftly. Despair was tightening its grip round the hearts of all Irishmen, and it found its strongest hold upon the heart of the greatest Irishman of his age. ”

“ A flare of wild moonlight was gleaming upon the stunted thorn-bushes; the platform of rock on which she stood stretched away, grey and level, but living creature of any sort or kind there was none. Overhead the clouds swept to and fro in bewildering masses; the wind blew coldly; the moon, which for a moment had shone so vividly, disappearing suddenly between rolling clouds, so that the whole platform became indistinguishable.
Grania waited a while, peering eagerly round into all the fissures, hoping for another gleam of moonlight which might enable her to discover the delinquent. ”

“ As daylight wanes the red glow increases, lighting up the big pine trunks, and awakening in one’s mind vagrant suggestions of camp fires, and forest settlements, while at other times it has the practical advantage of making many garden operations possible which, without such a speedy refuge to fly to, would in this chill-evoking climate of ours scarce be practicable.
It is odd what minute deviations from the everyday stir the mind, and help it to shake off that crust of routine, which it ought to be the aim of all of us to get rid of. ”

“ Murdough’s astonishment and delight burst out then and there like a fountain; burst into a torrent of words—vague, iridescent, incoherent. Projects of every sort—races to be won, victories over rivals, money, much money, to be earned in the future—they all poured forth; flew and hurtled through the air; one golden scheme jostling against another in its hurry to express itself. Grania listened, but her eyes never lost that oddly intent, wistful expression. ”

“ Out of it comes freshness, out of it comes gladness,
In it sleep the breezes that set the soul awhirl,
Hope and all enchantments, Love the wily wizard,
Memory with her deep caves, and open gates of pearl.
Therefore idle Shannon, spendthrift amongst rivers,
Pourer forth of treasure to the waste indifferent night,
Love we you, and cherish, bringer to our thresholds
Harsh and bitter weather—melody and light. ”

“ Few races of which the world has ever heard are as imaginative as that of the Celt, and at this time the imagination of every Celt must have been largely exercised in the direction of the malevolent and the terrible. Even now, after fourteen hundred years of Christianity, the Connaught or Kerry peasant still hears the shriek of his early gods in the sob of the waves or the howling of the autumn storms. Fish demons gleam out of the sides of the mountains, and the black bog-holes are the haunts of slimy monsters of inconceivable horror. ”

“ There’s mothers enough in the world and to spare, too! Anyone can be a mother—small thanks to them! Oh, no, Grania sweet, acushla machree, love of my heart, ’tis your soul, ’tis the precious, precious soul of you that I’ve always wanted, and cried after, and longed for, ever since first I had you to myself. ”

“ The result was that, almost before he had realised that she had returned and that she was standing beside him, Murdough felt two arms about his neck, clinging tighter, tighter still, pressing about it in a convulsive, panic-stricken embrace, close and clinging as that of the very fog without, only warm, very warm, and very human; desperation in every touch of it, anger, too, but above all love—a love that could kill its object, but that would never fail it ”

“ Yet the Rock-clan, the Rock-clan is dearest still of all!
Therefore little garden, garden all unheeded,
Watched by no warder save some rash indifferent gull,
Here at your rock-edge a tribute pen I offer,
Vowed long since to you and yours, if rusted now and dull
Rough, very rough, hath been your children’s nurture,
Helped by no shelter, no balmy Zephyrs blest,
Wild, most wild their mistress, wayward, fierce, bewitching,
Queen of moods and shadows, tempest-stirring West! ”

“ It is a quilt by night, a shawl by day, a head-gear, an umbrella for an entire brood of children to run out under in the rain—nay, the man of the house himself will often not disdain to take a turn of it, especially on occasions which do not bring him too directly into the light of publicity. This last, by the way, was a privilege which poor Pete Durane had never dared to claim.
Even after the children had been got rid of Grania felt it impossible for her to enter upon the subject of her visit—a delicate one in any case—while there were strangers present. ”