Miss Augusta Winthrop and Her Critics

Irish Jesuit Province

Miss Augusta Winthrop and Her CriticsSource: The Irish Monthly, Vol. 19, No. 213 (Mar., 1891), pp. 148-151Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20498170 .

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148 The lrish Monthly.

MISS AUGUSTA WINTHROP AND HER CRITICS.

"Doctors differ," and so do critics. I had the privilege lately of looking over a collection of public and private oriticisms on a dainty little volume, " The Bugle Call and other poems," by Miss Augusta Winthrop, of Boston-on which this Magazine pro nouncedc its opinion last Mlarch, singling otut for special prais& "Sweet Friend" ancd " Three Souls." We may give the last as a sample:

As the arrow which falls in a flame;

As the lips which shall never speak name;

As a cordial out-poured on the sand;

As the vessel that shall not reach land';

As the egg that is flung to the ground

As the ear that shall never hear, sound;

As the grain that has mouldered in earth;

As the life that shall never reach birth;

As the epic destroyed with the brain;

As the athlete defeated and slain;

As a gloom, Egypt's darkness above,

Is the Soul which shall never know Love!

Like the bee as he waits for the rose,

Like the bulb ere her lily unclose,

Like the pearl hidden still in the shell,

Like the haven-bound boat on the swell,

Like the earth at the whisper of spring,

Like the nestling that soon will take wing,

Like the field where a harvest lies hid,

Like the stirring, yet dumb, chrysalid,

Like the tree when the sap leaves its root,

Like the bloom that is pledge of the fruit,

Like the aloe, her blossoming near,

Is the Soul waiting Love to appear!

As the rock-buried fountain set free;

As the salmon that.reaches the sea;

As the morning that conquers the night;

As the eyes newly-opened to sight;

As the seer with his vision revealed;

As the shout of the lips that were sealed;

As the hour that has opened the womb;

As the psyche who bursts from her tomb;

As the age-prisoned gem in the sun;

As the victor whose laurel is won;

As the snared dove, unloosed to her nest;

Is the Soul Love has clasped to his breast!



Miss Augutusta Winthrop and her Crttics. 149

This poem is the ohoice of almost every reviewer also; but one

of these objects to certain lines, while one of the private reviewers bestows special praise on one of the obnoxious lines. The Boston Couurier, while saying that "the whole conception is strong and fine," thinks the second line of the last stanza commonplace: that, namely, which tells us that the soul which Love has clasped to his breast is " as the salmon that reaches the sea." Yet this is the

very line that another brilliant young Boston lady, Louise Imogen Guiney, finds best of all. " The poem has in full your iintellectual boldness and freshness of phrase, which is a precious thing in this dear day of triolets. 'The salmon that reacheth the ,sea,' as a symbol of attainment, delights me especially. Not many

poets would think of the beautiful fresh-water fellow shooting oceanwards in spring, unless he had angling blood in him."

A true criticism passed on the same poem occurs in the letter of one who does not hold the faith which would be expected to

make such an objection. It is not priest or nun, but a sturdy Pro testant British sailor, who writes as follows: " In the higher and nobler sense of the word love, which includes the love of Jonathan for David, and of my dear mother for myself, is there any human soul which shall never know it ? I think not. God even in this

workaday world is too good to allow it; for the soul which should never know it would, indeed, be in the darkness of Egypt. Taking the word in its lower and narrower sense, a soul might

never know it and yet do tolerably well without it." How far may we pry into the letters that are joined with these

printed criticisms ? No harm to quote the Autocrat of the Break fast Table. "Your little book (he says), like everything which comes from your hand, is stamped with the sincerity of nature, and not wanting in the graces of art. I am thankful that you have the many-chorded harp of language to play your heart-music on, and greatly pleased and flattered that you should have honoured my name with a place on one of its first pages." For the book is "again most lovingly dedicated to Louise Chandler Moulton and

Oliver Wendell Holmes." Mr. Russell Lowell, whose prose is so exquisite that we do not

tbink so often as we ought of his poetry, read this little book with great pleasure, " all the more because I found in it a sweetness and a constancy that I have always loved in your great ancestor, who is one of my patriot saints." The late American Ambassador at the



150 The Irish Monthly.

Court of St. James's alludes here to the fact that our poet is a

lineal descendant of Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts, who is one of the glories of the colonial history of America. The oldl Puritan would have disowned this fervent convert, who has almost become an Irishwoman in the ardour of her adoption of the faith

of Ireland. If ever there was an Irishwoman born outside her native country, it is Augusta Winthrop, who, these obligingly communicative American newspapers inform us, was born at

Boston on the 30th June, 1858, and has spent a great part of her

life in the Isle of Wight-which makes her Irish accent all the more remarkable. " Erin Acushla " is the name of one of her

poems. "How did you learn to say Acushla someone asked. "Well, love taught me, just as he sends the tears to my eyes, and the blood leaping in my heart-veins, when I come near Fastuet lighthouse in the Cunard steamer, and hang over the bulwarks straining to catch the first clear view of the bold coast line of Ire

land." In the poem that we have just named she herself asks:

What long-forgotten sire Bequeathed these veins the fire

Of his deep life-desire, Dear Emerald Land ?

Any one who has read "Margery Daw" or "Prudence Palfrey'" will be glad to read a kind and cordial note from Thomas Bailey Aldrich. " I have delayed thanking you for your little volume, in order that I might first read it, and so be able to tell you how

delicate and sweet I found the lyrics. One always has one's favourite in a book of poems, and I have discovered mine in 'Compensation' and 'Three Souls;' you touch a fine chord there."'

I venture to quote again the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, to whom the last of these poems was shown before it was included in his young friend's second volume:-" There is no doubt that your impulse to express yourself in warm and melodious verse is a natural, genuine one. Each of these two poems has the true note which belongs to the singer. If I had found ' The Three Souls' in an old collection of the British Poets, although I might have said that one or two expressions are rather modern, I should have thought it justified itself in taking its place with thle authors. Time has set his seal of approval on."

I take these extracts without getting any leave to do so, what



Gathered Early. 151

ever I may feel bound to do before using them. With the same

reserve I copy the postscript from a kind letter of the poet,

Whittier, with its quaint little bit of ungrammatical Quakerism. Lindley Murray was a Catholic, not a Quaker. " I hope thee do

not think I am such a bigot as to be less pleased with thy verse

b)ecause it is written by a Catholic. Thomas a Kempis, Augustine, and Fenelon are very dear to me."

It was of an earlier volume that he for whom there is universal

mourning-John Boyle O'Reilly-wrote some two years ago: "Were it not for your New England name, I should be assured

that a countrywoman o mine had written 'Queenstown Harbour'-r t,nJer, true, and deep-sighted poem. I have read only one or two others, but enough to show me that it is no

common hand on the keys."

GATHERED EARLY.*

HjlE tender buid has fallen, nipped in its early bloom; 1The heart we fondly cherished is lifeless in the tomb. The eye is closed for ever that beamed with heavenly light, The rosy dawn of morning is swallowed up in night.

Oh! what can lift the shadow that o'er our hearts was cast, When pealed the knell of sorrow to tell that all was past ? While round her grave we gathered 'mid chokirig sobs to pray, Our tears of love and anguish might wipe her debts away.

The laugh of joyous music, the sunny smile she wore, The heart so pure and gentle, are ours, alas! no more. No more her home shall know her-Rostrevor's woods no more; Time's tide has ebbed, revealing the great eternal shore.

O darling, gone for ever! but let us not complain, If He who lent her to us has called her home again.

He saw her ripe in virtue, and hence the early call The fruit that ripens soonest is ever first to fall.

One day we all shall follow the way that she has trod; May death be but the portal through which we pass to God! Till then o'er life's dark waters her image fair shall gleam, The morning star of mem'ry to light us with its beam.

3. M. R.

$ In memory of a young friend who died suddenly at Rostrevor, in her

fourteenth year.



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Miss Augusta Winthrop and Her Critics