Page:The Sad Years.djvu/22

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

DORA SIGERSON



pression for an ardent and manifold personality which itself transcended all her work, whether in poetry, sculpture or painting. Her poetry was saluted by the greatest contemporary names in England: Meredith, Francis Thompson, Swinburne, and the present writer has seen her name as the subject of lecture on the noticeboards of the Sorbonne. What faults lay on the surface of her verse were more than compensated for by its intensity, an intensity often tragic, “stoned by continual wreckage of her dreams,” but always filled with pity. In the “Songs of the Irish Rebellion” and in her later work generally which we, in Ireland, will always consider her best, the passion that consumed her burnt away these superficial defects, themselves characteristic of her impetuous spirit. The poet of “Ireland,” of the “Wind on the Hills,” of “Ceann Dubh Dilis,” of “Sixteen Dead Men,” will always be remembered on that honourable roll of artists who, to the gain of both, fused with their art, the strong love of the people.

[xiv]