Thou that bendest shall not break; WISDOM. -The Sphinx. LAW. What is the range that Nature gives her own? With frost or fire she stays their flying feet, And holdeth each within its native zone: The pine its love the palm, shall never meet; Nowhere do roses bloom from beds of ice, Nowhere in valleys laughs the edelweiss. JOHN JOHN TODHUNTER. [OHN TODHUNTER was born in Dublin, Dec. 30th, 1839. His father was a timber merchant; his grandfather a Cumberland man who had settled in Dublin as a merchant; his great-grandfather a ship-owner in a small way, who sailed his own ships as officer, trading as a coaster along the Irish Sea. His mother and immediate relations were Irish, and all good Quakers; and he still remembers the wearisomeness of the silent Quaker meetings. Attwelve years old we find him at a Quaker boarding school learning some French and Greek, among other things, and telling stories, remembered or invented, to his school-fellows before going to sleep at night. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a Quaker firm of tea and sugar importers, where, as collector, he made acquaintance with well-nigh all the streets of dear, dirty Dublin, and something of the life that went on in them. So far he had been almost shut out from literary and artistic influences, except that his father sketched a little, and now and then whistled an Irish air, though music was regarded by the Quakers, as the most diabolical of arts, all evil in their way. But now he got hold of Scott, Moore, above all, Byron, whom he used to carry in his pocket when going to pay duties at the Custom House, and read in some quiet corner while the sugar-hogsheads were a-weighing. After Byron came Spenser, Milton, Tennyson, Browning, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley. At about eighteen he began to write verses, a skit containing imitations of some of his favorite poets gaining him an introduction to Archbishop Whately. In 1860 a performance of Handel's 64 Messiah in Christ-Church Cathedral came as a great awakening to his imagination. It was the first great music he had heard. Here was music not in any way a thing of the devil, but certainly a divine revelation. After this he began timidly to go to the opera instead of prayer-meetings; heard the great singers, and became music mad. At last, finding it impossible to settle down to business, Mr. Todhunter entered Trinity College in 1862, with the object of studying medicine. He soon became a member of the "Undergraduate Philosophical Society "(really a literary society ) and made the acquaintance of Edmund and George Armstrong, the poets, and of Edward Dowden, now the well-known professor of English literature. In college he tried to combine literature with science, and began his hospital work where he won the marked confidence of Dr. Hudson, and the famous Dr. Stokes, whose clinical clerk he was. The poet in him, however, asserted itself in the fact of his taking a much deeper interest in the patients as human beings than as cases." They in turn liked him, for he would al 44 ways listen to their stories sympathetically. In spite of much ill-health consequent upon a bad fever, he obtained several medical prizes, and after a trip to Switzerland for his health took his medical degree in 1867. While in college he three times won the Vice-Chancellor's prize for English verse, and in 1866 his first published poem appeared in the Cornhill Magazine, then edited by Thackeray. In 1869 Mr. Todhunter went to Vienna and there completed his medical studies. Returning in the spring of 1870, he married Miss Ball, sister of the present Astronomer Royal for Ireland, Sir Robert Ball, and settled in Dublin as president physician to Cork St. Fever Hospital. In the autumn of 1870 he succeeded Professors Ingram and Dowden to the chair of English Literature at Alexandra College, Dublin, where he lectured twice a week for four years. In 1871 his wife died, leaving one child who died in 1874. After this Mr. Todhunter finding he had taken no root in Dublin, determined to abandon medicine for literature. In 1876 his first volume of poems, "Laurella and Other Poems," appeared; in 1878, "Acestis"; and in 1879 he married Miss Digby, of Dublin, and finally settled in London. Since then he has published "A Study of Shelley," "The True Tragedy of Rienzi,"" Forest Songs,' Helena in Troas," and "The Banshee and Other Poems," the last a volume containing some fine Irish poems. "Helena in Troas is a drama, Greek in form. It was acted with great success in 1886, under the direction of Mr. E. W. Godwin, F. S. A. W. B. Y. ON THE SEUFZERS-BANK. WHERE is thy breast, bright Daughter of the Morn? Where are thine arms to give my longing rest, That I may die, and find myself new-born? Where is thy breast? Oh, let thy beauty pasture my desire, Appease, arouse, sustain me in some sphere Where passion's tears may turn to action's fire! Appear! appear! THE BLACK KNIGHT. A BEATEN and a baffled man, In failure gray. The knights ride east, the knights ride west, For ladyes' tokens blithe of cheer, Each bound upon some gallant quest; While I rust here. RECONCILIATION. DARE not to tell me I have lost thee, Like wailing ghosts against thee cry. Mine, mine thou art —our spirits mingled Or pine apart in pale despair. Dare not to tell me thou hast found me For thy great dreams too mean a thing; Kiss me once more! thy sin's forgiven; NOCTURNE. INTO the night, the odorous summer night, And dimness of the earth like slumber now. O summer night, O scented summer night! of peace? Fill her with rich ache of my desire, Sandal her feet with speed to come to me. The golden summer dusk broods in the boughs, Between the starlight pale and glimmering lake; The night's heart throbs, and with it throbs my own, Through the wild-throbbing throat of nightingales. O summer night, O blissful summer night, REMORSE. "A fine woman! A fair woman! A sweet woman!The pity of it, Iago!-0, Iago, the pity of it, Iago!" THE wild wind dolefully Howls o'er the wintry plain, And shrieks o'er the desolate sea, Like a soul in pain. The old house shudders and groans, I sit by a dying fire, Watching the embers red; And the midnight is ghostly around me, And the house abed. And as gust after gust shrieks seaward, I seem to hear in the pauses drear, The time throb audibly by. O dreadful world, where one foolish fault – One paltry mistake Will make such mischief as God Himself Can never unmake! I feel the wings of the ages Sweep over me in their course, And the wheels of the universe crush me With irresistible force. THE CHRIST-CHILD. THE Christ-child came to my bed one night, His grave child's eyes looked wistfully, I planted it in a nook of my own, And watered it with my weeping. And there it strikes its roots in the earth, And opens its leaves to heaven; And, when its blossoms have happy birth I shall know my sins forgiven. THE DEAD NUPTIAL. It was a nuptial of the dead, THE SHAN VAN VOCHT OF '87. I. THERE'S a spirit in the air, Says the Shan van Vocht, And her voice is everywhere, Says the Shan van Vocht; Though her eyes be full of care, Even as Hope's, born of Despair, Her sweet face looks young and fair, Says the Shan van Vocht. 2. And she bears a sword of flame, Says the Shan van Vocht, For she comes old rights to claim, And old wrongs burn up in shame: And 'tis Justice is her name, Says the Shan van Vocht. 3. There's a land I've loved of old, In her sorrows unconsoled, 4. For a thing shall come to pass, Says the Shan van Vocht, Though her foes wear fronts of brass, Says the Shan van Vocht, They turn pale, they quake-alas! They have seen the Bodach-glas, And they wither like the grass, Says the Shan van Vocht. MAGNOLIAS. THOU pale sad moon, slow-waning, night by night, From thy fair throne, when nightly thou didst busk Thy swelling bosom in more silvery light, I breathed on Como's shore the odorous dusk |