GEORGE FRANCIS SAVAGE-ARMSTRONG. (1845 MR. GEORGE F. ARMSTRONG, perhaps the most fertile of Irish authors of his time, was born in Dublin County in May, 1845, and was educated partly by private tuition in the Channel Islands, and at Trinity College. He is the son of the late Edmund J. Armstrong, and brother of E. J. Armstrong (q.v.); in 1891 he assumed the name of Savage on the death of a maternal uncle. Returning from a tour in Normandy, whither he had accompanied his brother Edmund, he gained, in 1864, the highest distinction in English verse. In 1866 the gold medal for composition was awarded to him by the Historical Society; and in the following year his essays won the gold medal of the Philosophical Society, of which he was twice elected President. Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic,' appeared in 1869, and in 1870'Ugone,' a tragedy, which had been suggested by his travels and residence in Italy. In the following year he was appointed professor of history and English literature in Queen's College, Cork, which position he still holds. In 1872 he was presented with the degree of M.A. in Dublin University, revisited Italy and Switzerland, and published the first part of The Tragedy of Israel,' King Saul,' together with new editions of his former works. In 1874 appeared King David,' and in 1876 'King Solomon,' the second and final parts of 'The Tragedy of Israel.' In 1877 he brought out 'Life, Letters, and Essays' of his brother, and a new edition of the 'Poems' of the latter, the first edition having appeared under his editorship in 1865. "The distinct note, the original flavor, of Mr. Armstrong's poetry," says Mr. T. W. Rolleston in A Treasury of Irish Poetry,' appears to be formed by the union of his ornate and stately diction with the peculiar freshness and directness of his pictures of outdoor life. These pictures have the true quality of the plein air—they are not memories or dreams of Nature, but experiences, won by the toil that deepens the breath and braces the muscles upon the mountain-side, and that reader must surely have left his youth of body and spirit long behind in whose veins they do not stir the roving blood." 66 He himself tells us that "the love of Nature led in my brother's case and in mine to the love of poetry. At the age of twelve I had read all Shakespeare's plays and a vast deal of other poetry and prose besides. I used to spend hours, with a book of poetry in my hand, in the tops of the tall trees, reading, or on the side of the Dublin or Wicklow mountain, with a volume of Byron, or Scott or Wordsworth or Coleridge or Keats or Shelley, and lie in the heather, reading aloud poem after poem. "His work," says the authority quoted above, "is simple and objective in its conception, and forms the most important body of poetic work which has been produced outside the Celtic tradition since the time when Ferguson and Mangan began to lead the waters from that ancient source into the channels of modern Irish verse." THROUGH THE SOLITUDES. I. It was long past the noon when I pushed back my chair Girt with marketers laughing, and groups here and there Of maidens blue-eyed, hooded figures in shawls Of scarlet, and wild mountain lads in long hair, Rude carts, and rough ponies with creels, and gayly passed Up the street; through the starers and bargainers prest; And asked of an idler my way, and at last Struck out on the hill-road that winds to the west. II. And I thought, as I strode by the last heavy cart On the road, cracking whip, chatting loud, laughing wild, The husband and sire in knee-breeches and shoes), Though it was of the first of such journeys to me The sea winding in from afar, heard the roll Of the stream on the rocks, felt the autumn air blow Through my hair as I moved with light step on the way: And I said, "Let me drink to the dregs the black cup Of pain when 't is nigh; but if joy come to-day, Let me drain the last drop of the dæmon-wine up." Then I journeyed along through the moorlands, and crossed The mad stream by the bridge at the crest of the creek, And wound up the mountain to northward, and lost All sight of the village and hill-folk. III. A bleak Heavy cloud, dull and inky, crept over the sun IV. In under the hills The voice of the rills Ran the road, among moors where the myrtle stood dun, And the heather hung rusted. Was choked in gray rushes. No footstep was nigh. One rush-covered hut smoked aloft. Not a bird V. Then a sorrow crept writhingly over my heart At my loneliness, making the drearness too drear. By death desolated, of eyes that in vain Gazed out for a soul that no more would come back, Everywhere, black, Storm-shattered, the mountains loomed lonely above. A horror, a sickness slipt down through my blood. All my thoughts, all my dreams, all that memory's load, All the terror of loneliness, broke like a flood Over body and soul, and I shrank from the road. VI. I cowered at the frown of the mountains that hung My soul with dim fears; and I yearned but to taste The sadness and horror, the fear and the pain. "If God laid His hand On my life now, and suddenly, swiftly consigned From a world of bright faces, the park and the street, And the room, and the glances of languishing eyes, And I found myself out in a region of storms, A bodiless soul on its journey alone: Ah, methinks I would yearn for a land such as this, With dim dreams, for the heights that shut out the near bliss The realm of the dead, art thou journeying on? Art thou sad in the world that belieth its God In its pitiless coldness?" Then up to the sky I lifted my face, and I cried unto God. VII. And when back from the dream I had come, every rock THE SCALP. Stern granite Gate of Wicklow, with what awe, The Land beyond, whose very name could draw A radiance to our faces; till we saw, With airy peak and purple mountain-dome, And lawn and wood and blue bay flecked with foam, The Land indeed-fair truth without one flaw! Never may I with foot of feeble age Or buoyant step of manhood pass thy pale And feel not still renewed that awe, that joy (Of the dim Past divinest heritage) — Seeking the sacred realm thou dost unveil, THE MYSTERY. Year after year The leaf and the shoot; The worm at the root; Whither are tending, And whence do they rise, The cycles of changes, The worlds in their skies, The seasons that rolled Ere I flashed from the gloom, And will roll on as now When I'm dust in the tomb? |