9664

JAMES CLARENCE MANGAN

1803-1849

N THE summer of 1894 some workmen engaged in removing a mass of rubbish, to make room for a new building in one of the poorer quarters of Dublin, came upon the ruins of an old cellar. A casual passer-by happened to notice the old wall, with its low window looking out upon a level with the narrow and squalid alley. Moved by some bookish recollection, he realized that he was standing at the corner of Bride Street and Myler's Alley, known in the older days as Glendalough Lane; and that the miserable vestige of human habitation into which the rough navvies were driving their pickaxes had once been the poor shelter of him who,—

"Worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,

Had fled for shelter to God, who mated
His soul with song."

From this spot James Clarence Mangan, wasted with famine and already delirious, was carried by the Overseers of the Poor to the sheds of Meath Hospital in June 1849; too late, alas! to save the dying man, who in the years of his young manhood had sung and suffered for Ireland. A few friends gathered about him to comfort his patient and gentle soul, and to lay his bones in the cool clay of Glasnevin.

The life of Mangan is a convincing proof that differences of time and place have no influence upon the poet's power. Poverty and Want were the foster-brothers of this most wonderful of Ireland's gifted children. His patient body was chained to daily labor for the sordid needs of an unappreciating kindred, and none of the pleasant joys of travel and of diversified nature were his. He was born in Fishamble Street, Dublin, in 1803, and never passed beyond the confines of his native city; but his spirit was not jailed by the misery which oppressed his body. His wondrous fancy swept with a conqueror's march through all the fair broad universe.

Like Poe and Chatterton, Mangan impaired his powers by the use of intoxicants. He was very sensitive about the squalor of his surroundings, and was reticent and shy in the company of more fortunate men and women: but with admirable unselfishness he devoted his days, his toil, and the meagre rewards which came to him from his work, to the care and sustenance of his mean-spirited kindred.

For years he labored in the hopeless position of a scrivener's clerk, from which he was rescued by the interest of Dr. Todd, and was made an assistant librarian of Trinity College. There it was his habit to spend hours of rapt and speechless labor amid the dusty. shelves, to earn his pittance. Dr. Petrie subsequently found him a place in the office of the Irish Ordnance Survey; but Mangan was his own enemy and foredoomed to defeat. He wielded a vigorous pen in Ireland's cause, and under various names communicated his own glowing spirit to his countrymen through the columns of several periodicals. He published also two volumes of translations from the German poets, which are full of his own lyric fire but have no claim to fidelity. It was in his gloomy cellar-home that he poured out the music of his heart. When he died, a volume of German poetry was found in his pocket, and there were loose papers on which he had feebly traced his last thoughts in verse. Mangan will forever remain a cherished comrade of all gentle lovers of the Beautiful and True.

XVII-605

Steeds pranced round anon with stateliest housings,
Bearing riders prankt in rich array,

Like flushed revelers after wine-carousings:
'Twas the dawning of the day!

Then a strain of song was chanted,
And the lightly

Floating sea-nymphs drew anear.

Then again the shore seemed haunted
By hosts brightly

Clad, and wielding shield and spear!

Then came battle shouts - an onward rushing —
Swords, and chariots, and a phantom fray.
Then all vanished: the warm skies were blushing
In the dawning of the day!

Cities girt with glorious gardens,
Whose immortal

Habitants in robes of light
Stood, methought, as angel-wardens
Nigh each portal,

Now arose to daze my sight.

Eden spread around, revived and blooming;
When-lo! as I gazed, all passed away:
I saw but black rocks and billows looming
In the dim chill dawn of day!

R

THE NAMELESS ONE

OLL forth, my song, like the rushing river
That sweeps along to the mighty sea;
God will inspire me while I deliver

My soul of thee!

Tell thou the world, when my bones lie whitening Amid the last homes of youth and eld,

That there was once one whose veins ran lightning No eye beheld.

Tell how his boyhood was one drear night hour; How shone for him, through his griefs and gloom, No star of all heaven sends to light our

Path to the tomb.

Roll on, my song, and to after ages

Tell how, disdaining all earth can give,

He would have taught men, from wisdom's pages, The way to live.

And tell how, trampled, derided, hated,

And worn by weakness, disease, and wrong,

He fled for shelter to God, who mated

His soul with song

With song which alway, sublime or vapid,
Flowed like a rill in the morning beam,
Perchance not deep, but intense and rapid
A mountain stream.

Tell how this Nameless, condemned for years long
To herd with demons from hell beneath,

Saw things that made him, with groans and tears, long For even death.

Go on to tell how, with genius wasted,

Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love,
With spirit shipwrecked, and young hopes blasted,
He still, still strove.

Till, spent with toil, dreeing death for others,

And some whose hands should have wrought for him (If children live not for sires and mothers), His mind grew dim.

And he fell far through that pit abysmal,

The gulf and grave of Maginn and Burns,— And pawned his soul for the devil's dismal Stock of returns.

But yet redeemed it in days of darkness,

And shapes and signs of the final wrath, When death, in hideous and ghastly starkness, Stood on his path.

And tell how now, amid wreck and sorrow,

And want, and sickness, and houseless nights,
He bides in calmness the silent morrow,
That no ray lights.

And lives he still, then? Yes: old and hoary
At thirty-nine, from despair and woe,
He lives, enduring what future story
Will never know.

Him grant a grave too, ye pitying noble,

Deep in your bosoms! There let him dwell! He too had tears for all souls in trouble

Here and in hell.

ST. PATRICK'S HYMN BEFORE TARAH

T TARAH to-day, in this awful hour,
I call on the holy Trinity:

Glory to him who reigneth in power,

The God of the elements, Father and Son

And Paraclete Spirit, which Three are the One, The ever-existing Divinity!

At Tarah to-day I call on the Lord,

On Christ, the omnipotent Word,
Who came to redeem from death and sin
Our fallen race;

And I put and I place

The virtue that lieth and liveth in
His incarnation lowly,

His baptism pure and holy,

His life of toil and tears and affliction,
His dolorous death-his crucifixion,

His burial, sacred and sad and lone,

His resurrection to life again,

His glorious ascension to Heaven's high throne, And, lastly, his future dread

And terrible coming to judge all men—

Both the living and dead.

At Tarah to-day I put and I place

The virtue that dwells in the seraphim's love. And the virtue and grace

That are in the obedience

And unshaken allegiance

Of all the archangels and angels above,
And in the hope of the resurrection

To everlasting reward and election,
And in the prayers of the fathers of old,
And in the truths the prophets foretold,
And in the Apostles' manifold preachings,
And in the confessors' faith and teachings;
And in the purity ever dwelling

Within the immaculate Virgin's breast,
And in the actions bright and excelling

Of all good men, the just and the blest.

At Tarah to-day, in this fateful hour,
I place all heaven with its power,