There is, however, a very different manner in which these ea_Studies of Contemporary Poets

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 a rare 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 her _Triumph 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 hill

And 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 breast

Flashed 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 still

Against the sky, yet in my haunted mind

They bent and swayed before a magic storm:

A wave of darkness thundered through the sky,

And drowned the world....

In _Nera'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 these

The dreams of Spring, the golden fronds that wave

In 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.

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 of _Hero 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 very refreshing 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 love

hast thou tarried?

Tell us the count of thy prey of deer, and what cattleherds thou

hast harried."

.....

"I have hunted no deer since yester year, I have harried no

neighbour's cattle,

I have wooed no love, I have joined no game, save the kingly game of

battle;

The Danes were my prey by night and day, in their forts of hill and

hollow,

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 midnight

marching;

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 of

bowmen;

And some by hunger and some by thirst, and all are dead; but they

slaughtered first

Their 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 shining

treasure;

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 parapet

Of 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 fret

I 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 tree

A blackbird sings his song to me,

And far above my linèd book

I 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 pined

A prisoner, brazen-caged, without a gleam

Of 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 shed

Too 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 plough

May 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 Destiny

Till ancient thrones are shaking toward their fall;

Shout! for the Lord hath given to you the free

New 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 at _all_

the 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 of ulterior

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 called _The

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 stock

That 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:

I will go with my father a-ploughing

To the green field by the sea,

And the rooks and the crows and the seagulls

Will come flocking after me.

I will sing to the patient horses

With the lark in the white of the air,

And my father will sing the plough-song

That blesses the cleaving share.

One finds, too, a song of reaping, and one of winter, and one of night.

There is a love-song, pretty and tender, and fresh with the suggestion

of breezes and blue skies, which begins like this:

My little dark love is a wineberry,

As swarth and as sweet, I hold;

But as the dew on the wineberry

Her heart is a-cold.

There is a piece, in _Irishry_, which tells of the wonder of childhood,

and another in the same book which reverently touches the thought of

motherhood and old age:

As a white candle

In a holy place,

So is the beauty

Of an agèd face.

As the spent radiance

Of the winter sun,

So is a woman

When her travail done.

Her brood gone from her,

And her thoughts as still

As the waters

Under a ruined mill.

So we might turn from one to another of these old and ever-new themes:

not alone in this poet's work, but also in that of Mr Padraic Colum,

whom he resembles. We shall notice in their music a characteristic

harmony. It is a blending of three diverse elements: the individual, the

national, and the universal. One would expect a discord sometimes; but

the measure of the success of this verse is that it contrives to be, at

one and the same time, specifically lyrical (and therefore a reflection

of personality), definitely Irish, and completely human. Most of the

poems will illustrate this, but for an obvious example take this one by

Mr Campbell:

I met a walking-man;

His head was old and grey.

I gave him what I had

To crutch him on his way.

The man was Mary's Son, I'll swear;

A glory trembled in his hair!

And since that blessed day

I've never known the pinch:

I plough a broad townland,

And dig a river-inch;

And on my hearth the fire is bright

For all that walk by day or night.

If one found that on a bit of torn paper in the wilds of Africa, one

would know it for unquestionable Irish. There are half a dozen signs,

but the spirit of the last two lines is enough. The element of

personality is there, too; clearly visible in tone and choice of words

to those who know the poet's work a little. But stronger than all is

the human note, with all that it implies of man's need of religion, his

incorrigible habit of making God in his own image, and the half comical,

half pathetic materialism of his faith.

There are, of course, some occasions when the blending is unequal: when

one or other of the three elements, usually that of national feeling,

weighs down the balance. But, on the other hand, there are many pieces

in which it is very intimate and subtle. Then it follows that the poet

is at his best, for he has forgotten the immediacy of self and country

and the world of men and things in the joy of singing. Of such is this

"Cradle Song" by Mr Colum:

O, men from the fields!

Come softly within.

Tread softly, softly,

O! men coming in.

Mavourneen is going

From me and from you,

To Mary, the Mother,

Whose mantle is blue!

From reek of the smoke

And cold of the floor,

And the peering of things

Across the half-door.

O, men from the fields!

Soft, softly come thro'.

Mary puts round him

Her mantle of blue.

Such also is Mr Colum's "Ballad Maker," from which I quote the first and

last stanzas:

Once I loved a maiden fair,