Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 1 (of 2)Howitt, William
History
Homes and Haunts of the Most Eminent British Poets, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Howitt, William
Literary landmarks -- Great Britain; Poets, English -- Homes and haunts
But, overlooking all these hazards, Spenser came hither full of bright
views of the future. "The sunshine of the years to come," says the
author we have been quoting, "were to atone for the darkness and the
gloom of life's morning." His poetry, which had been previously of a
pastoral cast, became now imbued with the wildness of the sylvan
solitude around him: wood-nymphs and fairies were inhabitants he could
summon up at will, and with them the hill-tops about him were peopled.
Such names of places and things as his musical ear pronounced
inharmonious were exchanged for others which quaint fancy suggested, and
which read more sweetly in his tender verse. He sang sweet strains of
the bridal or separation of his rivers; told how their stern sires, the
mountains, ofttimes forced their unwilling inclinations, and brought
about a union which the water-nymph detested; and how sometimes she, in
her faithful attachment to the one she loved, effected her wish by a
circuitous course, or even sought beneath the earth's surface the waters
dear to her bosom. Before an imagination so vivid the iron desolateness
of Kilcolman vanished; and in its stead a fairy world arose to gladden
the eyes of the dreamer with its bowers of bliss, and enchanted palaces,
and magnificence more gorgeous than the luxuries of Ind.
"The Ballyhowra Hills, which formed the northern boundary of the poet's
retreat, appeared in this new world under the feigned title of the
Mountains of Mole; while the highest of them, which, like Parnassus, has
a double summit, was dignified by the name of "Father." Sometimes
Spenser seems to have extended the name of Mole to the entire range of
hills which run along the northern and eastern limits of the county of
Cork, and divide it from Limerick and Tipperary. In one place he speaks
of a river rising from the Mole, and thence styled by him Molana; which
undoubtedly takes its origin from the Tipperary Hills. The plain in
which his castle stood was rebaptized in Helicon by the name of Armulla
Dale. Of his two streamlets, one was suffered, for a special purpose, to
retain its original name of Bregoge, _i. e._, false, or deceitful:
"'Bregog hight
So hight became of his deceitful traine;'
and the other, the Awbeg, was specially appropriated to himself by the
name of Mulla:
"'And Mulla mine, whose waves I whilom taught to weep.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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