Thus we admire much of Inisfail for the wonderful adaptiveness which revivifies for us the dead feelings of dead generations, while at the same time we cannot thoroughly like nor enjoy it. There is great artistic taste throughout, but the poetical merit, as indeed might be expected, Appears to us to be greatest in the delineations from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century--neither too far nor too near in point of time. The outlawry times elicit some fine lines: in fact, violation of law seems always to bring our author out at his best. Of the earlier poems, perhaps the best are The Malison and The Faithful Norman. These are of the first, or pure Irish period. The next, or Irish-Norman epoch, is full of the best and the worst of our author's verse. Of The Bard Ethell we have spoken before. The Bier that Conquered is a striking poem, as are also the quaint, rambling, suggestive lines called The Wedding of the Clans. Amid several long, fierce, and highly Gaelic exultations over battles, chiefs, and things in general, we find a noble poem. The Bishop of Ross, which we really regret we cannot quote here. Just before it, however, is one of the best which we may have space for:
"Thus babble the strong ones, 'The chain is slackened! Ye can turn half round on your sides to sleep! With the thunderbolt still your isle is blackened, But it hurls no bolt upon tower or steep. We are slaves in name! Old laws proscribed you; But the king is kindly, the Queen is fair. They are knaves or fools who would goad or bribe you A legal freedom to claim. Beware!'
"We answer and thus: Our country's honor To us is dear as our country's life! That stigma the bad law casts upon her Is the brand on the fame of a blameless wife Once more we answer: From honor never Can safety long time be found apart; The bondsman that vows not his bond to sever, Is a slave by right, and a slave in heart!"
There is the true ring about this--strength and spirit both. Close by it is another--the only one of the odes we like--The Suppression of the Faith in Ulster, which is of the same calibre.
The last book (there are three) is full of beauty as the style grows modern. But we have cited so much that is beautiful, that we prefer quoting one of the few but forcible instances where our most Christian poet gives vent to his very considerable powers of sarcasm: