The Irish standard., 1892-05-21
WOMEN OF ERIN,
Interesting Sketches of Some OF
Ireland's Distinguished Fe-
male Poets.
IN LITERATURE AND ART,
Irishwomen of a Century Ago, as
Well as of To-Day, Con-
sidered.

SlOer0d.
Since AS, says Katherine lyman, we
have heard but little of women in poetry
till within the last few years, and if the
renaissance in little has come now it is
not because the times have any special
inspiration, but because women are
learning their own powers and to culti-
vate them. We move very slowly in Ire
land, and it is noticeable that while an
terror to '48 We had Irishwomen who
we're acknowledged poets in England, as
Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Norton, Lady Duff
ferin, and we may claim that great and
lonely genius Emily Bronte, women at
home in Ireland had not attempted to
sing. Now that we have begun they
come quickly, and perhaps it may be
that the first comers will soon begin to
lose their first prominence, which is as
that of the early drops in shower.
A little volume published few years
ago called "Poems and Ballads of Young
Ireland contained, with some remark
able poetry, contributions from two or
three women who belong to the latter
day Irish poetry. OF these two are since
dead, Ellen OLeary and Rose Kavanagh.
Both we're my dear friends, but it is not
friendship makes me think of them that
they are among the most beautiful per-
sonalities of any time of literature.
Ellen O'Leary was truly noble woman,
masculine in heroism and truth, femin-
inc in purity and tenderness. She was
the only woman I have ever met the
distinctly heroic type, incapable of fear
of apything which meant merely injury
to the body or the life of the body. She
was strongly unseiish, living life quite
outside herself in the human beings she
loved and the country she would have
died for. She was a royal woman by ma
ture, one who wore a crown Of dignity
and nobility patent to the dullest sight.
1t was noble face. Watts would have
painted her beautifully. She had regu-
lar features with warm-colored SKIN,
which kept it's satin snloothness to the
last Her grey eyes looked at you
straight, you could we'll believe they
were never strained in all her life by fear
or dishonor. Scarcely any other woman
could be what she was in the Fenian
days--tried, trusted, strong of heart and
cool of head, though the conspiracy had
for mainstring the brother who was
her life's love.
have placed Miss O'Leary's poetry in
our own time, though she was writing
on the Irish People under her brothers
editorship in '67; but she reached the
highest political development, think,
in the latter days of her life, and in those
latter days her poems were first snatched
from dead newspaper to be preserved
in book, which, unhappily, only saw
the light when she was gone. Rose
whose name have linked
along with hers, belonged more correctly
to our day. She was still a girl when
death took her in the February of this
year. Her poetry I have praised SO
often that need not dwell upon it here;
but. beautiful and artless as it is, it does
no injustice to Rose. She was but find
ing the way to her literary expression,
and in her poems and stories she has
left find little enough trace of her.
Her letters are best of all, perhaps; out
Of q phrase, word, a bit of experience,
her dear face sometimes looks as it did
in life. Mrs. Gilbert whom we all know
as Miss Mullholland, is one who kept
the lamp of Irish literature alight in
somewhat dark days. Her work has
been mainly in prose, but it is prose OF
the most poetical. No wonder it has dc.
lighted fast1dious critics s-Dickins and
Ruskin and Mr.. Gladstone, whose judg-
mont, however, is somewhat discounted
10y his over-praise of such poor work as
'Mademoiselle Ike Since it happens
his dictum can confer vogue on books,
one wishes (for the sake of literature)
that ne used it as legitimately always as
ne did in the case of "Marcella Grace"
1 think in this book Mrs. Gilbert reached
her highwater mark. There is strong
and passionate life in it, and it shows us
another side of the nature which We
knew to be SO gifted in depicting the
dreams and fantasies and characters and
stories SO delicate aid ethereal that they
are like the visions Of an exquisitely at
! tuned Imagination rather than any thing
we recognize in every day life. I Her Her
poems have often the same piictt ttoorial qnall-
'tles as the descriptive passages e. her