_September,_ 1916.
In this selection that Corporal Ledwidge has asked me to make from his
poems I have included "A Dream of Artemis," though it was incomplete
and has been hurriedly finished Were it not included on that account
many lines of extraordinary beauty would remain unseen. He asked me if
I did not think that it ended too abruptly, but so many pleasant things
ended abruptly in the summer of 1914, when this poem was being written,
that the blame for that may rest on a meaner, though more, exalted,
head than that of the poet.
In this poem, as in the other one that has a classical theme, "The
Departure of Proserpine," those who remember their classics may find
faults, but I read the "Dream of Artemis" merely as an expression of
things that the poet has seen and dreamed in Meath, including a most
beautiful description of a fox-hunt in the north of the county, in
which he has probably taken part on foot; and in "The Departure of
Proserpine," whether conscious or not, a crystallization in verse of
an autumnal mood induced by falling leaves and exile and the possible
nearness of death.
The second poem in the book was written about a little boy who used
to drive cows for some farmer past the poet's door very early every
morning, whistling as he went, and who died just before the war. I
think that its beautiful and spontaneous simplicity would cost some of
our writers gallons of midnight oil.
Of the next, "To a Distant One," who will not hope that when "Fame and
other little things are won" its clear and confident prophecy will be
happily fulfilled?
Quite perfect, if my judgment is of any value, is the little poem on
page 175, "In the Mediterranean--Going to the War."
Another beautiful thing is "Homecoming" on page 192.
"The sheep are coming home in Greece,
Hark the bells on every hill,
Flock by flock and fleece by fleece."
One feels that the Greeks are of some use, after all, to have
inspired--with the help of their sheep--so lovely a poem.
"The Shadow People" on page 205 seems to me another perfect poem.
Written in Serbia and Egypt, it shows the poet still looking
steadfastly at those fields, though so far distant then, of which he
was surely born to be the singer. And this devotion to the fields of
Meath that, in nearly all his songs, from such far places brings his
spirit home, like the instinct that has been given to the swallows,
seems to be the key-note of the book. For this reason I have named it
_Songs of Peace,_ in spite of the circumstances under which they were
written.
There follow poems at which some may wonder: "To Thomas McDonagh," "The
Blackbirds," "The Wedding Morning"; but rather than attribute curious
sympathies to this brave young Irish soldier I would ask his readers to
consider the irresistible attraction that a lost cause has for almost
any Irish-man.
Once the swallow instinct appears again--in the poem called "The
Lure"--and a longing for the South, and again in the poem called
"Song": and then the Irish fields content him again, and we find him
on the last page but one in the book making a poem for a little place
called Faughan, because he finds that its hills and woods and streams
are unsung. Surely for this if there be, as many believed, gods lesser
than Those whose business is with destiny, thunder and war, small gods
that haunt the groves, seen only at times by few, and then indistinctly
at evening, surely from gratitude they will give him peace.