which come immediately after it in this volume, and like the "Suabian
Legend," it is amongst Mr Hueffer's best things. One precious quality is
the temperament which pervades it--and the principal artistic
significance of all this work is to have expressed so strikingly an
exuberant and complex personality. Sensibility rules, perhaps; but
reflective power is visibly present, with a vein of irony running below
it, precipitated out of its own particular share of the bitterness that
nobody escapes. In one aspect after another this individuality is
revealed, and the changing moods are matched by changing forms. It
follows that there are many varied measures here; and most of them have
some new feature. A few are very irregular, and all are, of course,
modelled to suit the author's impressionistic theory. And the fact that
these forms are in the main so well adapted to their themes: that they
are so successful in conveying the desired impression, is as much as to
say that the poet has evolved a technique which perfectly suits his own
genius. It may or it may not carry much further than that; and the
extent to which the new instrument would respond to other hands may be
problematical. One would suppose that some of its qualities at least
would be a permanent gain, particularly the larger range which brings
within its compass so many fresh aspects of life on the one hand and on
the other a richer idiom. But whether or no these are qualities which
will pass into the substance of future poetry, there can be no question
that life seen through this particular temperament is interpreted
vividly by this method.
Thus we have the fulmination of "Süssmund's Address to an Unknown God";
violent, bitter, and unreasoned, the mere rage of weary mind and body
against the goads of modern existence. Thus, in the "Canzone _à la_
Sonata" as in "The Portrait" a single serious thought is rendered in
grave unrhymed stanzas which have all the dignity of blank verse with
something more than its usual vivacity; and thus, too, in "From Inland,"
one of the exquisite pieces of the volume, the whole of a tragedy is
suggested by the rapid sketching of two or three brief scenes. Again the
verse is perfectly fitted to the theme; the sober rhythm matching the
quietness of retrospect; memory tenderly grieving in simple rhymes which
vary their occurrence as emotion rises and falls.
"... We two," I said,
"Have still the best to come." But you
Bowed down your brooding, silent head,
Patient and sad and still....
... Dear!
What would I give to climb our down,
Where the wind hisses in each stalk
And, from the high brown crest to see,
Beyond the ancient, sea-grey town,
The sky-line of our foam-flecked sea;
And, looking out to sea, to hear,
Ah! Dear, once more your pleasant talk;
And to go home as twilight falls
Along the old sea-walls!
The best to come! The best! The best!
One says the wildest things at times,
Merely for comfort. But--_The best!_
Again, in "Grey Matter" and "Thanks Whilst Unharnessing," the colloquial
touch is right and sure. In the latter poem, the almost halting time of
the opening lines clearly suggests the tired horse as he draws to a
standstill in the early darkness of a winter evening: there is a quicker
movement as the robin's note rings out; the farmer's song is broken at
intervals as he moves about the business of unharnessing, and when he
stands at the open stable door, peering through the darkness at the
robin on the thorn, the impression of relief from toil, of gratitude for
home and rest, of simple kindliness and humanity, is complete--
Small brother, flit in here, since all around
The 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.
_An Irish Group_
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. One would 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 their land 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 the Irish 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's _Literary History of
Ireland_ that 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 the _ollamh_, 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 rival _ollamh_ would 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 quaint incident. The hero Cuchulain
was ranged against Queen Maeve of Connacht in her famous raid into
Ulster about the year 100 B.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 thing that she has
found, and she trundles it along the floor to the old man's feet.
Now Edward Carson MacIntyre
Was 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 thing
These hapless men to slay."
"The cause I have forgot," said Mac,
"All I remember is the crack."
.....
"And some men said the Government
Were 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 forget
A 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 of literature, 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's _Playboy_ handled. 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 more
Because a man called Sophocles,
Who lived in distant Attica,
Wrote a great drama _Oedipus_,
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 set
On 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 lip
Gives 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 jeers
Turn 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 of epic 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 father of 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 wreck
And splendid remnant of the flaming feast
Wherewith 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 desire
In waiting hearts; so in that throbbing pause
Came Niav, daughter of the King whose name
May not be named till First and Last are one.
... And He who stood
Unseen, apart, marked how about Her form,
Clothed white as foam, Her sea-green girdle hung
Like mermaid weed, and how within her wake
There 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 the
poetic 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 name
May 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 crowd
Shone with the light that kindles when the boon
Of speech has eased the heart; as when a cloud
Falls 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 place
Where Beauty sits all day beside her knee
And 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 wise
Pales 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 that his messengers have told him of. He comes
upon her unaware--
There by the sea, Etain his destined bride
Sat unabashed, unwitting of the sight
Of 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 teeth
On luscious herbage; and with strident hum
The 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 grass
Where gossamers, for day's triumphal march,
Hang out from blade to blade their diamond arch.