Irish Jesuit Province

Irish Poets and the SeaAuthor(s): Michael WalshSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 60, No. 713 (Nov., 1932), pp. 654-658Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20513382 .

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654

IRISH POETS AND THE SEA.

BY MICHAEL WALSH

WX ilEN I lived in Dublin one of my favourite winter walks was over the cliff paths of ilowth. A bracing walk above the winter sea.

Chesterton has a line in his poem about the great gales of Ireland:

"The sea that rose in the rocks at night Rose to his head like wine,,'

which reminds me of the sea beneath the cliffs of Ben Edar.

I love the sea in all its moodsin its wild white foam and anger and in its mote tranquil moods of lullaby and sparkling sunset.

There are many books about the sea-indeed, the sea is nature's greatest mystery and romance. The poetry of the sea? It is a poem itself and its theme is eternity. It is entitled, indeed, to a big space in the world's literature. Great poets have caught in their lines some thing of its magic and mystery, its supreme loneliness and indifference, and again its moods of companionship and sympathy.

And there is the cruel sea towards which the wives of the fishermen gaze on a stormy night. One by one it took the fine sons in that great poem-play of the sea

which Synge has left us. There are the sinister sea

sands -over which Mary went to " call the cattle home." There are the kinder " waters of separation "1 which inspired the beautiful and paradoxical plaint of poor, sad Dowson.

One is tempted here to linger with the sea of Tennry son or Matthew Arnold, or Masefield or Belloc, but the subject is too big and I shall be content with a few varied glimpses of the sea and strand from our modern Irish poets. In a slim volume of poems, entitled " Seventeen Sonnets," and published the other day,

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IRISH POETS AND THE SEA 655

Monk Gibbon gives us such lines from " West Ire land "2:

"All one whole day lying upon green hillside Quilt-patterned, little larger, I, mazing at beautyE

stay, Dumbfounded, sea like a mirror, her rocks at low

tide <Giving to it their name, the thousand Island bay. 0 beauty mist-hung, most months in rain eni

shrouided GCold beach in distance, five days revealed in the

year Nought that Greece showed me-Marathon's self

unclouded, Sunium's sea-girt temple-brought beauty more

near." There's from the West of Ireland for you-and

by one of our recognised poets. Here is another aspect of the sea-far out on the main deep. Indeed, the

" Main-Deep " is the name of the fragment. It is by

James Stephens:

"The long-rolling, Steady-p6uring Deep-trench6d Green bill6w:

The wide-topped Unbr6ken, Green-glacid Slow-sliding.

Cold-flushing -On-on-on

Chill-rushing Hush-hushing,

- - - Hush-hulshing - .

It was on mid-Atlantic, too, sailing from New York that "A i" was inspired to four lines that are outside

the world of his main vision; where, if I may use an ex

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656 THE IRISH MONTHLY

pression of his own, he has come back to the normal in verse. He is remembering that far-off ocean:

"How lonely and lovely those valleys That quivered with silver and gold

And changed in a dream to blue mountains From which snow was uprolled."1

In Yeatsian poetry, too, we have seas expresse(1 in the Yeatsian way:

" Beyond the open door the bitter sea The shining bitter sea is crying out."

Indeed, in one line of the " Sorrow of Love '-the third] line of the quatrain I am about to quote-he conveys to us the unceasing striving of the world's com

merce-the struggle that must go on and on: " And then you came with those red, mournful lips

And with you came the whole of the world's tears And all the trouble of her labouiring ships And all the trouble of her myriad years.'

Ah, those lines were written in the days of the younger Yeats-the Yeats that will endure. I fain would quote the whole of his " Rose of the World," whereiln he sings of:

c --- the pale waters in their wiLntry race

Under the passing stars-foam of the sky." What a fresh, original picture of the sea Katharine

Tynan brings us-a green country sea of grass. " The country washes to my door,

Green miles and miles in soft uproar, The thunder of the woods and then The back-wash of green surf again."

My first sea voyage was from Galway City to the big Island of Aran-and it was there I first learned to love the outer sea.

Alice Furlong sings: " I will forget

The moaning of the sea about Arran; Green beaches wet And grey rocks barren

The sea-moan against rocks that hinder and let! (I said, and in my saying rememberedi yet.)"

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IRISH POETS AND THE SEA 657

The sea has its place in the sad songs of the Gael. Towards its far horizon Ireland has watched out for the ships of hope-hope that always ended in disaster.

Over its stormy billows she saw her poor "c Wild Geese" " sail at the dawn of day "1 never to return. Over its

waste of waters, too, sailed those grim coffin ships, and her sad eyes have watched the emigrant vessel also go over the waves-often, indeed, to the lands of no-return ing. The ocean-tide flows into our songs of emigration and exile-it is the great gulf of separation.

It was an English poet in India who wrote thus of

an aged Irish Nu;n labouring in the Mission field there. She is looking forward to another visit to the old land before she dies, but she is so busy-so buny

"And Mother Anthony goes on thinkiing This year-next year-so much to do And Ireland's sinking, sinking, sinking, Into the westward blue !"

Our cliffs, our strands and our harbours, too, have their poets like Winifred Letts, whose dear little poem, "The Harbour," is so well known:

" My soul would travel back to find that strand From whence it came."

Stephen Gwynn, Seumas MacManus, Ethna Carbery -the winds of the ocean are in some of their poems the deep and heaving Atlantic, in which Ireland is cradled. And Francis Ledwidge looks at the low moon above the seas and yearns for "low-moon land."

But it is the glad holiday sea that gleams in that lovely and wistful poem from the Gaelic by George Sigerson:

"As chimes that flow o'er shining seas, When Morn alights on meads of May,

Faint voices fill the western breeze With whisp'ring songs from far away

Oh, dear the dells of Dunanore. A home is odorous Ossory;

But sweet as honey running o'er The golden shore of Far Away."

Ah, the golden shore of far away! What a magical

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I00 THE IRISH MONTHLY

line! It brings one thoughts of the isle of cloud and Iunset-that entrancing I-Brazil away on the ocean's

t'ill, whlich was to end the quest of the poor fishermen in the Gerald Griffin poem.

The huirry of the twentieth century has not killed, the dreamer within us, and I for one have often gazed at that far horizon where sky and water meet in a strange and alluring light, and felt within me a loneliness in deed for the golden shores of far-away.

LAKE NAIVASHA. Lovely as fairyland, Naivasha lies,

A lake of dreams; the great trees stepping down To the deep water's edge, its ripples blown, By dawn winds, soft as water-spirits' sighs. Voices of wild-fowl: sleepy calls anid cries, Soft notes, half-music; bird and nixie town Awaking, where dawn's loveliness is shown To the bright gaze of wild birds' watching eyes. Shimmering, glassy still, the wide lake sleeps. Blue water-lilies rock to fairy winds, And blue hills lift against the morning sky. Beauty her deathless secret ever keeps. I

Should man come here, he too that secret finds. Love could live here, and never say good-bye.

Ah! once discovered, beauty such as this Shall not be left to water-sprites and birds. A poet here, shall paint it into words, An artist's brush no lovely tint shall miss, Or lover fail to take his bridal kiss. Here, dreams come true; heroic fancy girds Its shining sword, to sweep away the herds Of doubts and sipas, which shadtw huiman bliss. Beside the lake, there stands a little house. One who loved beauty here has bluilt an inn For wedded lovers in this paradise. Beneath the light and shade of arching boughs, Here is a lovers' Eden, without sin. Beauty reflected in each other's eyes.

C. M. MALL@T.

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