An Irish Group

Small brother, flit in here, since all aroundThe frost hath gripped the ground;And oh! I would not like to have you die.We's help each other,Little Brother Beady-eye.

One might continue to cite examples: the rapid unrhymed dialogue of "Grey Matter," which continues so long as there is a touch of controversy in the talk of husband and wife, and changes to a lyric measure as emotion rises; the real childlikeness of the "Children's Song"; or the mingled pain and sweetness of "To Christina at Nightfall," epitomising life in its philosophy and reflecting it in its art. But it is unnecessary to go further; and this last little poem (I will not do it violence by extracting any part of it) is perhaps the most complete vindication of our poet's theories. Never surely were impressions so vivid conveyed with a touch at once so firm and tender; never were thought and feeling so intense rendered with such gracious homeliness.

The spirit of poetry is native to Ireland. It awakened there in the early dawn, and has hardly slumbered in two thousand years. Probably before the Christian era it had become vocal; and as long as twelve hundred years ago it had woven for the garment of its thought an intricate and subtle prosody. You would think it had grown old in so great a time. You would almost expect to find, in these latter days, a pale and mournful wraith of poetry in the green isle. You would look for the symbol of it in the figure of some poor old woman, like the legendary Kathleen ni Houlihan, who is supposed to incarnate the spirit of the country. But even while you are looking it will happen with you as it happened before the eyes of the lad in the play by Mr Yeats. The bent form will straighten and the old limbs become lithe and free, the eyes will sparkle and the cheeks flush and the head be proudly lifted. And when you are asked, "Did you see an old woman?" you will answer with the boy in the play:

I did not; but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen.

So it is with the later poetry of Ireland. Onewould not guess, in the more recent lyrics, that these singers are the heirs of a great antiquity. Their songs are as fresh as a blade of grass: they are as new as a spring morning, as young and sweet as field flowers in May. They partake of youth in their essence; and they would seem to proceed from that strain in the Irish nature which has always adored the young and beautiful, and which dreamed, many centuries ago, a pagan paradise of immortal youth which has never lost its glamour:

Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.

Doubtless we owe this air of newness largely to the rebirth of literature in the Isle. When we say that poetry has never slumbered there, we get as near to the truth as is possible; it seems always to have been quick, eager and spontaneous, and never to have drowsed or faded. But there was a black age when it was smitten so hard by external misfortune that it nearly died. It was early in the nineteenth century when, as Dr Hyde tells, "The old literary life of Ireland may be said to come to a close amidst the horrors of famine, fever and emigration." All that Dr Hyde and Lady Gregory have done to build up the new literary life of theirland cannot be fully realized yet. But out of their labours has surely sprung the movement which we call the Irish Literary Renaissance—a movement in which, disregarding cross currents, the detached observer would include the whole revival, whether popular or æsthetic. By fostering the Gaelic they have awakened in the people themselves a sense of the dignity of their own language and literature. By the translation of saga and romance, the patient gathering of folk-tale and fairy-lore, the search for and interpretation of old manuscripts, they have given to native poets a mass of material which is peculiarly suited to their genius. And since approximately the year 1890 they have seen their reward in the work of a band of brilliant writers. Romance is reborn in the novel; the poetry of the old saga blooms again in the lyric; and a healthy new development has given to Ireland what she never before possessed—a native drama.

Now it is true that the larger figures of the movement have receded a little; the one in whom the flame of genius burned most fiercely has passed into silence. And Synge being gone, there is no hand like his, cunning to modulate upon every string of the harp. There is no voice of so full a compass, booming out of tragic depths or shrilling satiric laughter or sweet with heroic romance;breathing essential poetry and yet rich with the comedy of life. It is a fact to make us grieve the more for that untimely end, but it is not a cause for despair. For there are many legatees of the genius of Synge. They are slighter figures—naturally so, at this stage of their career—but they belong, as he did, to the new birth of the nation's genius and they draw their inspiration directly from their own land.

Here we touch a constant feature of Irish poetry. Dr. Hyde tells that from the earliest times the bards were imbued with the spirit of nationality: that their themes were always of native gods and heroes, and that they were, in a sense, the guardians of national existence. The singers of a later day curiously resemble them in this. Sometimes it is a matter of outward likeness only, the new poets having drawn directly upon the stories which have been placed in their hands from the old saga. But much more often it is a rooted affinity—a thing of blood and nerve and mental fibre. Then, although the gods may bear another name and the heroes be of a newer breed and the national ideal may be enlarged, it is still with these things that the poets are preoccupied.

This has become to the scoffer a matter of jest, and to the grumbler a cause of complaint—that theIrish poet is obsessed by race. They say that they can guess beforehand what will be the mood, the manner and the subject of nine Irish poems out of ten. They are very clever people, so they probably could get somewhere near the mark. And they would naturally find themselves cramped in these narrow bounds. Religion and history and national ideals would give them no scope. But when they maintain that this is a radical defect, I am not at all convinced. I remember that many of the world's great books proceeded from an intense national self-consciousness; and I ask myself whether it may not be a law in the literary evolution of a people, as well as in their political development, that they proceed by way of a strong, free and proud spirit of nationality to something wider. The reply may be that that is a relatively early stage through which, in a normal literary progress, Ireland should have passed long since. True, but normal growth and advance have never been possible to her; and recalling the events of her history, it is something of a marvel that the literary genius should have survived at all.

In contrast with modern English poetry, impatient as it is to escape from tradition, these traits which mark a line of descent so clearly are the more striking. One may even smile a little at them—whimsically, as we do when we see a youth or a young girl reproducing the very looks and tones and gestures of an older generation. There is something comical in the unconscious exactitude of it. But the laugh comes out of the deeper sources of comedy. There lies below it, subconsciously perhaps, a profound sense of those things in life which are most precious and most enduring.

One of the gayer features of this family likeness is the persistence of a certain kind of satire. We know from Dr Hyde'sLiterary History of Irelandthat an important function of the ancient bards was to satirize the rivals and enemies of their chieftain. They had, of course, to sing his victories, to inspire and encourage his warriors and to weave into verse the hundreds of romances which had come down to them from times older still. But their equipment was not complete unless it included a good stinging power of ridicule; and theollamh, or chief bard, was commonly required to castigate in this way the king of some other province who happened to have given offence. But it is not to be supposed that the rivalollamhwould remain silent under the punishment inflicted on his lord; and one can imagine the battle of wits which would follow. Or, if we need any assurance as to the caustic power of the bard, it may be found in one quaintincident. The hero Cuchulain was ranged against Queen Maeve of Connacht in her famous raid into Ulster about the year 100B.C.Maeve was astute as well as warlike, and when she had failed several times to induce Cuchulain to engage singly with one of her warriors, she sent to him a threat that her bards "would criticize, satirize and blemish him so that they would raise three blisters on his face" ... and Cuchulain instantly consented to her wish.

I cannot guess how many blisters have been raised by Irish satirists since that date, but I know the art has not died out. There are modern practitioners of it. Synge made the national susceptibility smart; and yet his satire, to the mere onlooker, would seem sympathetic enough. So, too, with Miss Susan Mitchell. She pokes fun at her compatriots with perfect good humour and we cannot believe that they would be annoyed by it. But you never can tell. Perhaps the witty philosophy of "The Second Battle of the Boyne" would not appeal to an Ulster Volunteer; and it is conceivable that even a Nationalist might resent the sly shaft at the national pugnacity. The opening stanza tells about an old man, whose name of portent is Edward Carson MacIntyre. His little grandchild runs in to him from the field carrying a dark round thingthat she has found, and she trundles it along the floor to the old man's feet.

Now Edward Carson MacIntyreWas old, his eyes were dim,But when he heard the crackling sound,New life returned to him."Some tax-collector's skull," he swore,"We used to crack them by the score.""Why did you crack them, grandpapa?"Said wee Victoria May;"It surely was a wicked thingThese hapless men to slay.""The cause I have forgot," said Mac,"All I remember is the crack."....."And some men said the GovernmentWere very much to blame;And I myself," says MacIntyre,"Got my own share of fame.I don't know why we fought," says he,"But 'twas the devil of a spree."

Now Edward Carson MacIntyreWas old, his eyes were dim,But when he heard the crackling sound,New life returned to him."Some tax-collector's skull," he swore,"We used to crack them by the score."

"Why did you crack them, grandpapa?"Said wee Victoria May;"It surely was a wicked thingThese hapless men to slay.""The cause I have forgot," said Mac,"All I remember is the crack."

.....

"And some men said the GovernmentWere very much to blame;And I myself," says MacIntyre,"Got my own share of fame.I don't know why we fought," says he,"But 'twas the devil of a spree."

Again it is possible (though hardly probable one would think) that Mr George Moore does not really enjoy the fun so cleverly poked at him in the stanzas, "George Moore Comes to Ireland." Safe in our own detachment, the criticism seems delicious, brightly hitting off the personality which has grown so familiar in Mr Moore's work, and especially in"Hail and Farewell": the delightful garrulity, the disconcerting candour, the intimacy and naïve egoism, and the perfectly transparent what-a-terror-I-was-in-my-youth air. The speaker in the poem is, of course, Mr Moore himself; and it will be seen how cunningly the author has caught his attitude, particularly to the work of Mr W. B. Yeats—

I haven't tried potato cake or Irish stew as yet;I've lived on eggs and bacon, and striven to forgetA naughty past of ortolan and frothy omelette......But W. B. was the boy for me—he of the dim, wan clothes;And—don't let on I said it—not above a bit of pose;And they call his writing literature, as everybody knows.If you like a stir, or want a stage, or would admirèd be,Prepare with care a naughty past, and then repent like me.My past, alas! was blameless, but this the world won't see.

I haven't tried potato cake or Irish stew as yet;I've lived on eggs and bacon, and striven to forgetA naughty past of ortolan and frothy omelette.

.....

But W. B. was the boy for me—he of the dim, wan clothes;And—don't let on I said it—not above a bit of pose;And they call his writing literature, as everybody knows.

If you like a stir, or want a stage, or would admirèd be,Prepare with care a naughty past, and then repent like me.My past, alas! was blameless, but this the world won't see.

When Miss Mitchell's satire is engaged on personalities in this way, it has a piquancy which may obscure the subtler flavour of it. But the truth is that it is often literary in a double sense, both in subject and in treatment. So we may find a theme of considerable general interest in the world ofliterature, treated in the allusive literary manner which has so much charm for the booklover. And to that is added a racy and vigorous satirical touch. Thus, for instance, is the question of Synge'sPlayboyhandled. Ridicule is thrown on the stupid rage with which it was received, and on the folly which generalized so hotly from the play to the nation, deducing wild nonsense against a whole people and its literature because the man who killed his father in the story is befriended by peasants. Here is a snatch of it:

I can't love Plato any moreBecause a man called Sophocles,Who lived in distant Attica,Wrote a great dramaŒdipus,About a Greek who killed his da.I know now Plato was a sham,And Socrates I brush aside,For Phidias I don't care a damn,For every Greek's a parricide.

So, too, comes the burlesque touch in the "Ode to the British Empire":

God of the Irish Protestant,Lord of our proud Ascendancy,Soon there'll be none of us extant,We want a few plain words with thee.Thou know'st our hearts are always setOn what we get, on what we get.

The genial temper of this work pervades even the political pieces. Miss Mitchell is no respecter of persons or institutions: she finds food for derision in friend as well as foe. But her laughter is not bitter—unless, perhaps, a tinge comes in when she touches that old source of bitterness, the gulf between the Saxon and the Celt—

We are a pleasant people, the laugh upon our lipGives answer back to your laugh in gay good fellowship;We dance unto your piping, we weep when you want tears;Wear a clown's dress to please you, and to your friendly jeersTurn up a broad fool's face and wave a flag of green—But the naked heart of Ireland, who, who has ever seen?

There is, however, a more important strain of heredity in the new Irish poetry; and it comes directly through the renaissance of which we have already spoken. There are two lines of development which begin in that rebirth; but they proceed almost at right angles from each other. One, the clearer and more direct, is towards work of a specifically literary order. The other is tending to a simple and direct rendering of life. On the one hand we find poetry which is romantic in manner and heroic in theme. This is largely of narrative form, and seems to hold within it the promise ofepic growth. On the other hand, there is a lyric form of less pretension and wilder grace; music so fresh and apparently artless as to mock the idea of derivation. Yet it, too, owes its vitality to the same impulse, and is, perhaps, its healthiest blossoming.

The treasury of Irish romance has been eagerly drawn upon by the literary poet; and splendid stories they are for his purpose. Every one by this time knows the incomparable Deirdre legend, in one or other of the fine versions by Mr Yeats, Mr Trench or Synge. Deirdre, as a heroine of the ancient world, positively shines beside a Helen or a Cleopatra. In her is crystallized the Celtic conception of womanhood, with her free, clean, brave, generous soul; magnificently choosing her true mate rather than wed the High King Conchubar; and with her lover magnificently paying the penalty of death.

We have become almost as familiar, too, with the Hosting of Maeve, the prowess of Cuchulain, and the mythological figures of Dagda and Dana, who are the Zeus and Hera of early Irish religion. Here is a fragment of a poem by Mr James Cousins called "The Marriage of Lir and Niav." The personages of the story belong to very early myth. To find Lir you must go back past the heroes and the demigods: further still, past the gods themselves, to their ancestors. For Lir was the fatherof Mananan the sea-god; and he was the Lord of the Seven Isles. Niav (or Niamh) is described as the Aphrodite of Irish myth; which probably accounts for the symbolism in the passage where Lir first sees her—

But, as upon the breathless hour of eve,The gentle moon, smiling amid the wreckAnd splendid remnant of the flaming feastWherewith Day's lord had sated half the world,Sets a cool hand on the tumultuous waves,And soothes them into peace, and takes the throne,And beams white love that wakens soft desireIn waiting hearts; so in that throbbing pauseCame Niav, daughter of the King whose nameMay not be named till First and Last are one.... And He who stoodUnseen, apart, marked how about Her form,Clothed white as foam, Her sea-green girdle hungLike mermaid weed, and how within her wakeThere came the sound and odour of the sea,The swift and silent stroke of unseen wings,And little happy cries of mating birds;

This poem appeared in one of Mr. Cousins' earlier books,The Quest, published in 1904; and it is interesting to observe in it the little signs which indicate the nearness of the poet at that time to the source of his inspiration. The stories from the three great national cycles of romance had been made accessible in the years just preceding; and thepoetic imagination seems to have been charmed by their quaint manner as well as stimulated by their vigour. Hence we find in this poem one or two familiar epic devices which have apparently been adopted as a means to catch the tone of the old story, and to convey a sense of its antiquity. There is, for instance, the trick of repetition that we know so well, a whole phrase recurring, either word for word or varied very slightly, at certain intervals through the poem. Thus we have the phrase which appears in the passage quoted above, and which is several times repeated in other places—

—the King whose nameMay not be named till First and Last are one.

Thus, too, we find the frequent use of simile of an involved and elaborate order. Mr Cousins reveals himself as poet and artist in this device alone. Imagination and mastery of technique are alike implied in fancies so beautifully wrought. The opening lines of the passage we have given supply an example, and another may be taken from "Etain the Beloved." It is simpler than most, but it illustrates very aptly the grace of idea and expression which is characteristic of this poet. The scene is an assembly of the people before King Eochaidh; and the chief bard is presenting their urgent petition to him—

He ceased, and all the faces of the crowdShone with the light that kindles when the boonOf speech has eased the heart; as when a cloudFalls from the labouring shoulder of the moon,And all the world stands smiling silver-browed.

In the same poem of Etain we may note the free use of description and the rich colour and profuse detail which mark romantic work of this kind. The story of Etain has a mythological association. She was the beloved wife of Mider, one of the ancient gods; but she seems to have been driven out of the hierarchy and to have become incarnate in the form of a young girl of great beauty. King Eochaidh, not knowing of her divine origin, wooed her and made her queen. But Mider followed her to earth and won her back from her human lover. There is an exquisite stanza in which the King sends to seek for his bride, and tells how they will find her—

"She shall be found in some most quiet placeWhere Beauty sits all day beside her kneeAnd looks with happy envy on her face;Where Virtue blushes, her own guilt to see,And Grace learns new, sweet meanings from her grace;Where all that ever was or will be wisePales at the burning wisdom of her eyes."

News is brought to the King that Etain is found, and he goes to the remote and lonely place thathis messengers have told him of. He comes upon her unaware—

There by the sea, Etain his destined brideSat unabashed, unwitting of the sightOf him who gazed upon her gleaming side,Fair as the snowfall of a single night;Her arms like foam upon the flowing tide;Her curd-white limbs in all their beauty bare,Straight as the rule of Dagda's carpenter.

There is, too, in this poetry of Mr Cousins, a very tender feeling for Nature. Perhaps it does not quite accord with the spirit of the wild time out of which the stories came; but that opens up a larger question into which we are not bound to enter. For if we are going to quarrel with the treatment of epic material in any but the vigorous, 'primitive' manner, we shall make ourselves the poorer by rejecting much beautiful poetry. We may even find ourselves robbed of Virgilian sweetness. But most of us will be wise enough to take good things wherever we find them; and may, therefore, rejoice in stanzas like these, which describe the stirring of wild creatures at dawn:

Somewhere the snipe now taps his tiny drum;The moth goes fluttering upward from the heath;And where no lightest foot unmarked may come,The rabbit, tiptoe, plies his shiny teethOn luscious herbage; and with strident humThe yellow bees, blustering from flower to flower,Scatter from dew-filled cups a sparkling shower.The meadowsweet shakes out its feathery mass;And rumorous winds, that stir the silent eaves,Bearing abroad faint perfumes as they pass,Thrill with some wondrous tale the fluttering leaves,And whisper secretly along the grassWhere gossamers, for day's triumphal march,Hang out from blade to blade their diamond arch.

The meadowsweet shakes out its feathery mass;And rumorous winds, that stir the silent eaves,Bearing abroad faint perfumes as they pass,Thrill with some wondrous tale the fluttering leaves,And whisper secretly along the grassWhere gossamers, for day's triumphal march,Hang out from blade to blade their diamond arch.

There is, however, a very different manner in which these early legends are being treated by some of the Irish poets. One may call it 'Celtic,' in the hope of conveying some impression of it in a single word. But if you would get nearer than that, you may take one or two fragments from Mr Yeats'The Celtic Twilight—such as "the voice of Celtic sadness and of Celtic longing for infinite things ... the vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of the Celtic heart." And to phrases like that, which adumbrate the spirit of the work, you must add a style which is allusive, mystic, and symbolical: in fact, a mode of expression rather like Mr Yeats' own early poetry. But the crux of the matter lies there. For the production of really good work of this kind demands just the equipment which Mr Yeats happens to possess: the right temperament and the right degree (a high one) of poetic craftsmanship. It is arare combination—unique, of course, in so far as the element of individuality enters. And attempts which have been made to gain the same effects with a different natural endowment have failed in proportion as temperament was unsuited or 'the capacity for taking pains' was less. Hence 'Celtic' poetry, in the specific sense, has fallen into some disfavour. Yet when mood and material and craft 'have met and kissed each other,' it is clear that authentic beauty is created; and that of a kind which cannot be made in any other way. Thus we might choose, from the romantic work of Miss Eva Gore Booth, passages where all the desirable qualities seem to meet. There is, for instance, the poem which prefaces herTriumph of Maeve, from which I take the last two stanzas. Here is finely caught that unrest of soul which we have been taught to believe essentially Celtic; though it probably haunts every imaginative mind, of whatever race.

There is no rest for the soul that has seen the wild eyes of Maeve;No rest for the heart once caught in the net of her yellow hair—No quiet for the fallen wind, no peace for the broken wave;Rising and falling, falling and rising with soft sounds everywhere,There is no rest for the soul that has seen the wild eyes of Maeve.I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hillAnd I know that the deed that is in my heart is her deed;And my soul is blown about by the wild winds of her will,For always the living must follow whither the dead would lead—I have seen Maeve of the Battles wandering over the hill.

From the same romance we may select a speech by Fionavar, Queen Maeve's beautiful young daughter. The sense of the supernatural enters here, for the occasion is Samhain, the pagan All Souls' Eve. It is a night when gods and fairies are abroad, and Fionavar has seen things strange and awesome:

As I came down the valley after dark,The little golden dagger at my breastFlashed into fire lit by a sudden spark;I saw the lights flame on the haunted hill,My soul was blown about by a strange wind.Though the green fir trees rose up stark and stillAgainst the sky, yet in my haunted mindThey bent and swayed before a magic storm:A wave of darkness thundered through the sky,And drowned the world....

InNera's Song, again, as in the whole romance,we find the element of dreams which is supposed to be an indubitable sign of the Celtic temperament. Nera, who is the Queen's bard, has just returned after an absence of one whole year in the Land of Faëry; and though it is autumn, his arms are full of primroses, the fairies' magical flower:

I bring you all my dreams, O golden Maeve,There are no dreams in all the world like theseThe dreams of Spring, the golden fronds that waveIn faery land beneath dark forest-trees,—I bring you all my dreams.I bring you all my dreams, Fionavar,From that dim land where every dream is sweet,I have brought you a little shining star,I strew my primroses beneath your feet,I bring you all my dreams.

I bring you all my dreams, Fionavar,From that dim land where every dream is sweet,I have brought you a little shining star,I strew my primroses beneath your feet,I bring you all my dreams.

There is yet another style in which the heroic tales are occasionally treated, and it is directly contrasted with either of those which we have just considered. Examples of it may be found in Miss Alice Milligan's book ofHero Lays, where it will be seen that the poet's chief concern is with the story itself, rather than with the manner of telling. In such a piece as "Brian of Banba," for instance, the action is clear and moves rapidly. There is a sense of morning air and light in the poem which is veryrefreshing after the atmosphere of golden afternoon, or evening twilight, in which we have been wandering. It comes partly from the blithe swing of the rhythm: partly from the vigour and clear strength of diction. And a true dramatic sense imparts the life and movement of quickly changing emotion.

Banba is one of the many beautiful old names for Ireland; and Brian was perhaps her greatest king. He lived about the time of our English Alfred and, like him, Brian fought continually against the invading Dane. He, too, when a young man, lived for a long time the life of an outlaw—outcast even from his own clan because he would not suffer the Danish yoke. The poem relates an incident of Brian's appearance at the palace of his brother, King Mahon, after a long absence. He strides into the gay assembly alone, his body worn thin by privation and his garments ragged.

"Brian, my brother," said the King, in a tone of scornful wonder,"Why dost thou come in beggar-guise our palace portals under?Where hast thou wandered since yester year, on what venture of lovehast thou tarried?Tell us the count of thy prey of deer, and what cattleherds thou hastharried......"I have hunted no deer since yester year, I have harried no neighbour'scattle,I have wooed no love, I have joined no game, save the kingly game ofbattle;The Danes were my prey by night and day, in their forts of hill andhollow,And I come from the desert-lands alone, since none are alive to follow.Some were slain on the plundered plain, and some in the midnightmarching;Some were lost in the winter floods, and some by the fever parching;Some have perished by wounds of spears, and some by the shafts ofbowmen;And some by hunger and some by thirst, and all are dead; but theyslaughtered firstTheir tenfold more of their foemen."

.....

"I have hunted no deer since yester year, I have harried no neighbour'scattle,I have wooed no love, I have joined no game, save the kingly game ofbattle;The Danes were my prey by night and day, in their forts of hill andhollow,And I come from the desert-lands alone, since none are alive to follow.Some were slain on the plundered plain, and some in the midnightmarching;Some were lost in the winter floods, and some by the fever parching;Some have perished by wounds of spears, and some by the shafts ofbowmen;And some by hunger and some by thirst, and all are dead; but theyslaughtered firstTheir tenfold more of their foemen."

The King impulsively offers him gifts for a reward, but Brian declines them:

"I want no cattle from out your herds, no share of your shiningtreasure;But grant me now"—and he turned to look on the listening warriors'faces—"A hundred more of the clan Dal Cas, to follow me over plain and pass:To die, as fitteth the brave Dal Cas, at war with the Outland races."

It must not be supposed, however, that these poets are working solely upon romantic themes,more or less in the epic manner. On the contrary, direct treatment of the saga is declining, even with the poets who, like those we have named, were formerly preoccupied with it. Mr Cousins' volume of 1915 is sharply symptomatic of the change. Subjects of more social and more immediate interest are engaging attention, and legendary material is passing into a phase of allusion and symbol. Concurrently, there is a development of the pure lyric which gives great promise, being sound and sweet and vigorous. It has all the signs of vitality, drawing its inspiration directly from life, keeping close to the earth, as it were, and often dealing with the large and simple things of existence.

One may not make too precise a claim here for affiliation with the literary revival; but observing the movement broadly, it would appear that this is its more popular manifestation, springing out of the devotion to the old language of the country, its folklore and the life of its people. That current of the stream would touch actual existence much more closely than æsthetic or academic study; and while one might regard Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats as the pioneers of the movement on the specifically literary side, on the other hand there are Dr Hyde, A. E., and others,whose influence must have counted largely in these new lyrics of life.

There are about half a dozen poets who are making these sweet, fresh songs. They have not published very much, but that follows from the nature of the medium in which they are working. Lyrical rapture is brief, and the form of its expression correspondingly small. Very seldom can it be sustained so long and so keenly as, for example, in Mr Stephens' "Prelude and a Song," for the wise poet accepts the natural limits of inspiration and technique. But this little group does not, of course, include all the Irish lyrists. The poets whom we may describe as literary—who have, at any rate, the more obvious connexion with the revival—have made beautiful lyrics too. But they are sharply contrasted in subject or style, or both, with those others. Thus we may take a "Spring Rondel" by Mr Cousins, which is supposed to be sung by a starling:

I clink my castanet,And beat my little drum;For spring at last has come,And on my parapetOf chestnut, gummy-wet,Where bees begin to hum,I clink my castanet,And beat my little drum."Spring goes," you say, "suns set."So be it! Why be glum?Enough, the spring has come;And without fear or fretI clink my castanet,And beat my little drum.

The lyrical virtues of that need no emphasis: the quick, true reflection of a mood: the lightness of touch and grace of expression. It is, however, mainly by qualities of form that one is delighted here—the art's the thing. To make a rondel at all seems an achievement; and to make it so daintily, with playful fancy and feeling caught to the nicest shade, almost compels wonder. But that is characteristic of the kind of verse of which I am speaking, another aspect of which may be seen in a captivating fragment which has been translated by this poet from the Irish of some period before the tenth century. It is called "The Student"; and to find the like of it, with its combined love of nature and of learning, one must seek a certain 'Clerk of Oxenford' and endow him with the spirit of his own springtime poet—

High on my hedge of bush and treeA blackbird sings his song to me,And far above my linèd bookI hear the voice of wren and rook.From the bush-top, in garb of grey,The cuckoo calls the hours of day.Right well do I—God send me good!—Set down my thoughts within the wood.

It is not often that these poets are occupied with "Modern Movements," wherein they differ from their English contemporaries. For that reason, it is the more significant that one public question has moved them deeply. Thus we find Miss Mitchell writing of womanhood:

Oh, what to us your little slights and scorns,You who dethrone us with a careless breath.God made us awful queens of birth and death,And set upon our brows His crown of thorns.

And Miss Gore-Booth, thinking of the sheltered ignorance of many women who oppose the suffrage for their sex, makes a little parable:

The princess in her world-old tower pinedA prisoner, brazen-caged, without a gleamOf sunlight, or a windowful of wind;She lived but in a long lamp-lighted dream.They brought her forth at last when she was old;The sunlight on her blanchèd hair was shedToo late to turn its silver into gold."Ah, shield me from this brazen glare!" she said.

The princess in her world-old tower pinedA prisoner, brazen-caged, without a gleamOf sunlight, or a windowful of wind;She lived but in a long lamp-lighted dream.

They brought her forth at last when she was old;The sunlight on her blanchèd hair was shedToo late to turn its silver into gold."Ah, shield me from this brazen glare!" she said.

Mr Cousins, too, has several noble sonnets on the theme, from which we may select part of the one called "To the Suffragettes":

Who sets her shoulder to the Cross of Christ,Lo! she shall wear sharp scorn upon her brow;And she whose hand is put to Freedom's ploughMay not with sleek Expediency make tryst:.....O fateful heralds, charged with Time's decree,Whose feet with doom have compassed Error's wall;Whose lips have blown the trump of DestinyTill ancient thrones are shaking toward their fall;Shout! for the Lord hath given to you the freeNew age that comes with great new hope to all.

Who sets her shoulder to the Cross of Christ,Lo! she shall wear sharp scorn upon her brow;And she whose hand is put to Freedom's ploughMay not with sleek Expediency make tryst:

.....

O fateful heralds, charged with Time's decree,Whose feet with doom have compassed Error's wall;Whose lips have blown the trump of DestinyTill ancient thrones are shaking toward their fall;Shout! for the Lord hath given to you the freeNew age that comes with great new hope to all.

The main point of contrast, in turning to the more 'popular' lyrics, is their simplicity. It is a difference of manner as well as of material. You will not find in this verse either an elaborate metrical form, or the treatment of questions such as that which we have just noted. Those things belong to a more complex condition, both of life and of letters, than that which is reflected here. And if such a contrast always implied separation in time, we could believe ourselves to be in a different epoch—a younger and more ingenuous age. But that, of course, by no means follows. Even if we regard it as figured by a kind of separation in space,with town and university on the one hand and the broad land and toiling people on the other, it is still too arbitrary and, moreover, it is incomplete. No room is found for the wanderers in neutral territory.

The contrast is rather like that between the newer English poetry and the old. It is indicative of a current of thought which is running throughout Europe, and which may be observed in England, stimulating the more vital work of contemporary poets. That, crudely stated, is a perception of the value of life—of the whole of life, sense and spirit, heart and brain and soul. As the poet is seized by it, he is carried into a larger and more vivid world, one of manifold significance and beauty which he had never before perceived. He grasps eagerly atallthe stuff of existence, persistently seeks his inspiration in life instead of in literature, and having rejected the artifice of conventional terminology, begins to create a new kind of poetry.

Now that undercurrent is not visible in a superficial glance at this poetry. Even native critics seem to have missed it, or tend to refer it to anything rather than to the whole movement of the national mind towards reality. But that is not surprising, indeed. For the limpidity of these lyrics is quite untroubled; they are innocent ofulterior purpose, and free from the least chill of philosophical questioning into origins or ends. The impulse out of which they came is instinctive: their very art, at least in the selection of themes, is spontaneous. An excellent example is the whole volume by Mr Joseph Campbell calledThe Mountainy Singer. He has another,Irishry, but although that is very interesting in its studies of Irish life, it is not so good as poetry, nor is it so apt to our present purpose, because a tinge of self-consciousness has crept into it. Let us take, however, the piece which gives its name to the first of these two books:

I am the mountainy singer—The voice of the peasant's dream,The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,The leap of the fish in the stream.Quiet and love I sing—The carn on the mountain crest,The cailin in her lover's arms,The child at its mother's breast......Sorrow and death I sing—The canker come on the corn,The fisher lost in the mountain loch,The cry at the mouth of morn.No other life I sing,For I am sprung of the stockThat broke the hilly land for bread,And built the nest in the rock!

I am the mountainy singer—The voice of the peasant's dream,The cry of the wind on the wooded hill,The leap of the fish in the stream.

Quiet and love I sing—The carn on the mountain crest,The cailin in her lover's arms,The child at its mother's breast.

.....

Sorrow and death I sing—The canker come on the corn,The fisher lost in the mountain loch,The cry at the mouth of morn.

No other life I sing,For I am sprung of the stockThat broke the hilly land for bread,And built the nest in the rock!

That comes directly out of life, and the confidence and sincerity of it are a result. The poet, become aware of the prompting of genius, loyally follows its leading through the common and familiar things of human experience. And partly because of his loyalty to himself; partly because he happens to be in touch with the land—quite literally the oldest and commonest thing of all, except the sea—there comes into his poetry a sense of natural dignity and strength. His themes are simple and touched with universal significance. Thus there is the song of ploughing:

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