ACT I.

Produced by Jake Jaqua

IMAGINATIONS AND REVERIES

By AE [George William Russell]

PREFACE

The publishers of this book thought that a volume of articles and tales

written by me during the past twenty-five years would have interest

enough to justify publication, and asked me to make a selection. I have

not been able to make up a book with only one theme. My temperament

would only allow me to be happy when I was working at art. My conscience

would not let me have peace unless I worked with other Irishmen at the

reconstruction of Irish life. Birth in Ireland gave me a bias towards

Irish nationalism, while the spirit which inhabits my body told me the

politics of eternity ought to be my only concern, and that all other

races equally with my own were children of the Great King. To aid in

movements one must be orthodox. My desire to help prompted agreement,

while my intellect was always heretical. I had written out of every

mood, and could not retain any mood for long. If I advocated a

national ideal I felt immediately I could make an equal plea for more

cosmopolitan and universal ideas. I have observed my intuitions wherever

they drew me, for I felt that the Light within us knows better than any

other the need and the way. So I have no book on one theme, and the only

unity which connects what is here written is a common origin. The reader

must try a balance between the contraries which exist here as they

exist in us all, as they exist and are harmonized in that multitudinous

meditation which is the universe.--A.E.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

To this edition four essays have been added. Two of these, "Thoughts

for a Convention" and "The New Nation," made some little stir when they

first appeared. Ireland since then has passed away from the mood which

made it possible to consider the reconciliations suggested, and has

set its heart on more fundamental changes, and these essays have only

interest as marking a moment of transition in national life before it

took a new road leading to another destiny.

CONTENTS

NATIONALITY OR COSMOPOLITANISM

STANDISH O'GRADY

THE DRAMATIC TREATMENT OF LEGEND

THE CHARACTER OF HEROIC LITERATURE

A POET OF SHADOWS

THE BOYHOOD OF A POET

THE POETRY OF JAMES STEPHENS

A NOTE ON SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN

ART AND LITERATURE

AN ARTIST OF GARLIC IRELAND

TWO IRISH ARTISTS

"ULSTER"

IDEALS OF THE NEW RURAL SOCIETY

THOUGHTS FOR A CONVENTION

THE NEW NATION

THE SPIRITUAL CONFLICT

ON AN IRISH HILL

RELIGION AND LOVE

THE RENEWAL OF YOUTH

THE HERO IN MAN

THE MEDITATION OF ANANDA

THE MIDNIGHT BLOSSOM

THE CHILDHOOD OF APOLLO

THE MASK OF APOLLO

The CAVE OF LILITH

THE STORY OF A STAR

THE DREAM OF ANGUS OGE

DEIRDRE

NATIONALITY OR COSMOPOLITANISM

As one of those who believe that the literature of a country is for

ever creating a new soul among its people, I do not like to think that

literature with us must follow an inexorable law of sequence, and gain a

spiritual character only after the bodily passions have grown weary and

exhausted themselves. In the essay called The Autumn of the Body, Mr.

Yeats seems to indicate such a sequence. Yet, whether the art of any

of the writers of the decadence does really express spiritual things is

open to doubt. The mood in which their work is conceived, a distempered

emotion, through which no new joy quivers, seems too often to tell

rather of exhausted vitality than of the ecstasy of a new life. However

much, too, their art refines itself, choosing, ever rarer and more

exquisite forms of expression, underneath it all an intuition seems to

disclose only the old wolfish lust, hiding itself beneath the golden

fleece of the spirit. It is not the spirit breaking through corruption,

but the life of the senses longing to shine with the light which makes

saintly things beautiful: and it would put on the jeweled raiment of

seraphim, retaining still a heart of clay smitten through and through

with the unappeasable desire of the flesh: so Rossetti's women, who have

around them all the circumstance of poetry and romantic beauty, seem

through their sucked-in lips to express a thirst which could be allayed

in no spiritual paradise. Art in the decadence in our time might be

symbolized as a crimson figure undergoing a dark crucifixion: the hosts

of light are overcoming it, and it is dying filled with anguish and

despair at a beauty it cannot attain. All these strange emotions have a

profound psychological interest. I do not think because a spiritual

flaw can be urged against a certain phase of life that it should remain

unexpressed. The psychic maladies which attack all races when their

civilization grows old must needs be understood to be dealt with: and

they cannot be understood without being revealed in literature or art.

But in Ireland we are not yet sick with this sickness. As psychology

it concerns only the curious. Our intellectual life is in suspense. The

national spirit seems to be making a last effort to assert itself

in literature and to overcome cosmopolitan influences and the art

of writers who express a purely personal feeling. It is true that

nationality may express itself in many ways: it may not be at all

evident in the subject matter, but it may be very evident in the

sentiment. But a literature loosely held together by some emotional

characteristics common to the writers, however great it may be, does not

fulfill the purpose of a literature or art created by a number of men

who have a common aim in building up an overwhelming ideal--who create,

in a sense, a soul for their country, and who have a common pride in the

achievement of all. The world has not seen this since the great antique

civilizations of Egypt and Greece passed away. We cannot imagine an

Egyptian artist daring enough to set aside the majestic attainment of

many centuries. An Egyptian boy as he grew up must have been overawed by

the national tradition, and have felt that it was not to be set aside:

it was beyond his individual rivalry. The soul of Egypt incarnated in

him, and, using its immemorial language and its mysterious lines, the

efforts of the least workman who decorated a tomb seem to have been

directed by the same hand that carved the Sphinx. This adherence to a

traditional form is true of Greece, though to a less extent. Some

little Tanagra terra-cottas might have been fashioned by Phidias, and

in literature Ulysses and Agamemnon were not the heroes of one epic, but

appeared endlessly in epic and drama. Since the Greek civilization no

European nation has had an intellectual literature which was genuinely

national. In the present century, leaving aside a few things in outward

circumstance, there is little to distinguish the work of the

best English writers or artists from that of their Continental

contemporaries. Milliais, Leighton, Rossetti, Turner--how different from

each other, and yet they might have painted the same pictures as born

Frenchmen, and it would not have excited any great surprise as a marked

divergence from French art. The cosmopolitan spirit, whether for good or

for evil, is hastily obliterating all distinctions. What is distinctly

national in these countries is less valuable than the immense wealth of

universal ideas; and the writers who use this wealth appeal to no narrow

circle: the foremost writers, the Tolstois and Ibsens, are conscious of

addressing a European audience.

If nationality is to justify itself in the face of all this, it must be

because the country which preserves its individuality does so with the

profound conviction that its peculiar ideal is nobler than that which

the cosmopolitan spirit suggests--that this ideal is so precious to it

that its loss would be as the loss of the soul, and that it could not

be realized without an aloofness from, if not an actual indifference to,

the ideals which are spreading so rapidly over Europe. Is it possible

for any nationality to make such a defense of its isolation? If not,

let us read Goethe, Balzac, Tolstoi, men so much greater than any we

can show, try to absorb their universal wisdom, and no longer confine

ourselves to local traditions. But nationality was never so strong in

Ireland as at the present time. It is beginning to be felt, less as a

political movement than as a spiritual force. It seems to be gathering

itself together, joining men who were hostile before, in a new

intellectual fellowship: and if all these could unite on fundamentals,

it would be possible in a generation to create a national Ideal in

Ireland, or rather to let that spirit incarnate fully which began among

the ancient peoples, which has haunted the hearts and whispered a dim

revelation of itself through the lips of the bards and peasant story

tellers.

Every Irishman forms some vague ideal of his country, born from his

reading of history, or from contemporary politics, or from imaginative

intuition; and this Ireland in the mind it is, not the actual Ireland,

which kindles his enthusiasm. For this he works and makes sacrifices;

but because it has never had any philosophical definition or a supremely

beautiful statement in literature which gathered all aspirations about

it, the ideal remains vague. This passionate love cannot explain itself;

it cannot make another understand its devotion. To reveal Ireland in

clear and beautiful light, to create the Ireland in the heart, is the

province of a national literature. Other arts would add to this ideal

hereafter, and social life and politics must in the end be in harmony.

We are yet before our dawn, in a period comparable to Egypt before the

first of her solemn temples constrained its people to an equal mystery,

or to Greece before the first perfect statue had fixed an ideal of

beauty which mothers dreamed of to mould their yet unborn children. We

can see, however, as the ideal of Ireland grows from mind to mind, it

tends to assume the character of a sacred land. The Dark Rosaleen of

Mangan expresses an almost religious adoration, and to a later writer it

seems to be nigher to the spiritual beauty than other lands:

And still the thoughts of Ireland brood

Upon her holy quietude.

The faculty of abstracting from the land their eyes beheld another

Ireland through which they wandered in dream, has always been a

characteristic of the Celtic poets. This inner Ireland which the

visionary eye saw was the Tirnanoge, the Country of Immortal Youth, for

they peopled it only with the young and beautiful. It was the Land of

the Living Heart, a tender name which showed that it had become dearer

than the heart of woman, and overtopped all other dreams as the last

hope of the spirit, the bosom where it would rest after it had passed

from the fading shelter of the world. And sure a strange and beautiful

land this Ireland is, with a mystic beauty which closes the eyes of

the body as in sleep, and opens the eyes of the spirit as in dreams and

never a poet has lain on our hillsides but gentle, stately figures,

with hearts shining like the sun, move through his dreams, over radiant

grasses, in an enchanted world of their own: and it has become alive

through every haunted rath and wood and mountain and lake, so that we

can hardly think of it otherwise than as the shadow of the thought of

God. The last Irish poet who has appeared shows the spiritual qualities

of the first, when he writes of the gray rivers in their "enraptured"

wanderings, and when he sees in the jeweled bow which arches the

heavens--

The Lord's seven spirits that shine through the rain

This mystical view of nature, peculiar to but one English poet,

Wordsworth is a national characteristic; and much in the creation of the

Ireland in the mind is already done, and only needs retelling by the new

writers. More important, however, for the literature we are imagining

as an offset to the cosmopolitan ideal would be the creation of heroic

figures, types, whether legendary or taken from history, and enlarged

to epic proportions by our writers, who would use them in common, as

Cuculain, Fionn, Ossian, and Oscar were used by the generations of poets

who have left us the bardic history of Ireland, wherein one would write

of the battle fury of a hero, and another of a moment when his fire

would turn to gentleness, and another of his love for some beauty of his

time, and yet another tell how the rivalry of a spiritual beauty made

him tire of love; and so from iteration and persistent dwelling on a few

heroes, their imaginative images found echoes in life, and other heroes

arose, continuing their tradition of chivalry.

That such types are of the highest importance, and have the most

ennobling influence on a country, cannot be denied. It was this idea led

Whitman to exploit himself as the typical American. He felt that what

he termed a "stock personality" was needed to elevate and harmonize the

incongruous human elements in the States. English literature has always

been more sympathetic with actual beings than with ideal types, and

cannot help us much. A man who loves Dickens, for example, may grow

to have a great tolerance for the grotesque characters which are the

outcome of the social order in England, but he will not be assisted

in the conception of a higher humanity: and this is true of very many

English writers who lack a fundamental philosophy, and are content to

take man as he seems to be for the moment, rather than as the pilgrim of

eternity--as one who is flesh today but who may hereafter grow divine,

and who may shine at last like the stars of the morning, triumphant

among the sons of God.

Mr. Standish O'Grady, in his notable epic of Cuculain, was in our time

the first to treat the Celtic tradition worthily. He has contributed one

hero who awaits equal comrades, if indeed the tales of the Red Branch do

not absorb the thoughts of many imaginative writers, and Cuculain remain

the typical hero of the Gael, becoming to every boy who reads the story

a revelation of what his own spirit is.

I know John Eglinton, one of our most thoughtful writers, our first

cosmopolitan, thinks that "these ancient legends refuse to be taken out

of their old environment." But I believe that the tales which have been

preserved for a hundred generations in the heart of the people must have

had their power, because they had in them a core of eternal truth. Truth

is not a thing of today or tomorrow. Beauty, heroism, and spirituality

do not change like fashion, being the reflection of an unchanging

spirit. The face of faces which looks at us through so many shifting

shadows has never altered the form of its perfection since the face of

man, made after its image, first looked back on its original:

For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,

Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,

And Usna's children died.

These dreams, antiquities, traditions, once actual, living, and

historical, have passed from the world of sense into the world of memory

and thought: and time, it seems to me, has not taken away from their

power, nor made them more remote from sympathy, but has rather purified

them by removing them from earth to heaven: from things which the eye

can see and the ear can hear they have become what the heart ponders

over, and are so much nearer, more familiar, more suitable for literary

use than the day they were begotten. They have now the character of

symbol, and, as symbol, are more potent than history. They have crept

through veil after veil of the manifold nature of man; and now each

dream, heroism, or beauty has laid itself nigh the divine power it

represents, the suggestion of which made it first beloved: and they

are ready for the use of the spirit, a speech of which every word has

a significance beyond itself, and Deirdre is, like Helen, a symbol of

eternal beauty; and Cuculain represents as much as Prometheus the heroic

spirit, the redeemer in man.

In so far as these ancient traditions live in the memory of man, they

are contemporary to us as much as electrical science: for the images

which time brings now to our senses, before they can be used in

literature, have to enter into exactly the same world of human

imagination as the Celtic traditions live in. And their fitness for

literary use is not there determined by their freshness but by their

power of suggestion. Modern literature, where it is really literature

and not book-making, grows more subjective year after year, and the mind

has a wider range over time than the physical nature has. Many things

live in it--empires which have never crumbled, beauty which has never

perished, love whose fires have never waned: and, in this formidable

competition for use in the artist's mind, today stands only its chance

with a thousand days. To question the historical accuracy of the use of

such memories is not a matter which can be rightly raised. The question

is--do they express lofty things to the soul? If they do they have

justified themselves.

I have written at some length on the two paths which lie before us, for

we have arrived at a parting of ways. One path leads, and has already

led many Irishmen, to obliterate all nationality from their work. The

other path winds upward to a mountain-top of our own, which may be in

the future the Mecca to which many worshippers will turn. To remain

where we are as a people, indifferent to literature, to art, to ideas,

wasting the precious gift of public spirit we possess so abundantly in

the sordid political rivalries, without practical or ideal ends, is to

justify those who have chosen the other path, and followed another star

than ours. I do not wish any one to infer from this a contempt for those

who, for the last hundred years, have guided public opinion in Ireland.

If they failed in one respect, it was out of a passionate sympathy for

wrongs of which many are memories, thanks to them, and to them is due

the creation of a force which may be turned in other directions, not

without a memory of those pale sleepers to whom we may turn in thought,

placing--

A kiss of fire on the dim brow of failure,

A crown upon her uncrowned head.

1899

STANDISH O'GRADY

In this age we read so much that we lay too great a burden on the

imagination. It is unable to create images which are the spiritual

equivalent of the words on the printed page, and reading becomes for too

many an occupation of the eye rather than of the mind. How rarely, out

of the multitude of volumes a man reads in his lifetime, can he remember

where or when he read any particular book, or with any vividness recall

the mood it evoked in him. When I close my eyes, and brood in memory

over the books which most profoundly affected me, I find none excited my

imagination more than Standish O'Grady's epical narrative of Cuculain.

Whitman said of his Leaves of Grass: "Camerado, this is no book. Who

touches this touches a man," and O'Grady might have boasted of his

Bardic History of Ireland, written with his whole being, that there was

more than a man in it, there was the soul of a people, its noblest and

most exalted life symbolized in the story of one heroic character.

With reference to Ireland, I was at the time I read like many others who

were bereaved of the history of their race. I was as a man who, through

some accident, had lost memory of his past, Who could recall no more

than a few months of new life, and could not say to what songs his

cradle had been rocked, what mother had nursed him, who were the

playmates of childhood, or by what woods and streams he had wandered.

When I read O'Grady I was as such a man who suddenly feels ancient

memories rushing at him, and knows he was born in a royal house, that he

had mixed with the mighty of heaven and earth and had the very noblest

for his companions. It was the memory of race which rose up within me as

I read, and I felt exalted as one who learns he is among the children

of kings. That is what O'Grady did for me and for others who were my

contemporaries, and I welcome the reprints, of his tales in the hope

that he will go on magically recreating for generations yet unborn the

ancestral life of their race in Ireland. For many centuries the youth

of Ireland as it grew up was made aware of the life of bygone ages, and

there were always some who remade themselves in the heroic mould before

they passed on. The sentiment engendered by the Gaelic literature was an

arcane presence, though unconscious of itself, in those who for the

past hundred years had learned another speech. In O'Grady's writings the

submerged river of national culture rose up again, a shining torrent,

and I realized as I bathed in that stream, that the greatest spiritual

evil one nation could inflict on another was to cut off from it the

story of the national soul. For not all music can be played upon any

instrument, and human nature for most of us is like a harp on which can

be rendered the music written for the harp but nor that written for the

violin. The harp strings quiver for the harp-player alone, and he who

can utter his passion through the violin is silent before an unfamiliar

instrument. That is why the Irish have rarely been deeply stirred by

English literature, though it is one of the great literatures of the

world. Our history was different and the evolutionary product was a

peculiarity of character, and the strings of our being vibrate most in

ecstasy when the music evokes ancestral moods or embodies emotions akin

to these. I am not going to argue the comparative worth of the Gaelic

and English tradition. All that I can say is that the traditions of our

own country move us more than the traditions of any other. Even if there

was not essential greatness in them we would love them for the same

reasons which bring back so many exiles to revisit the haunts of

childhood. But there was essential greatness in that neglected bardic

literature which O'Grady was the first to reveal in a noble manner. He

had the spirit of an ancient epic poet. He is a comrade of Homer, his

birth delayed in time perhaps that he might renew for a sophisticated

people the elemental simplicity and hardihood men had when the world

was young and manhood was prized more than any of its parts, more than

thought or beauty or feeling. He has created for us, or rediscovered,

one figure which looms in the imagination as a high comrade of Hector,

Achilles, Ulysses, Rama or Yudisthira, as great in spirit as any. Who

could extol enough his Cuculain, that incarnation of Gaelic chivalry,

the fire and gentleness, the beauty and heroic ardour or the imaginative

splendor of the episodes in his retelling of the ancient story. There

are writers who bewitch you by a magical use of words whose lines

glitter like jewels, whose effects are gained by an elaborate art and

who deal with the subtlest emotions. Others again are simple as an

Egyptian image, and yet are more impressive, and you remember them

less for the sentence than for a grandiose effect. They are not so much

concerned with the art of words as with the creation of great images

informed with magnificence of spirit. They are not lesser artists but

greater, for there is a greater art in the simplification of form in the

statue of Memnon than there is in the intricate detail of a bronze by

Benvenuto Cellini. Standish O'Grady had in his best moments that epic

wholeness and simplicity, and the figure of Cuculain amid his companions

of the Red Branch which he discovered and refashioned for us is, I

think, the greatest spiritual gift any Irishman for centuries has given

to Ireland.

I know it will be said that this is a scientific age, the world is so

full of necessitous life that it is waste of time for young Ireland to

brood upon tales of legendary heroes, who fought with enchanters, who

harnessed wild fairy horses to magic chariots and who talked with

the ancient gods, and that it would be much better for youth to be

scientific and practical. Do not believe it, dear Irish boy, dear Irish

girl, I know as well as any the economic needs of our people. They must

not be overlooked, but keep still in your hearts some desires which

might enter Paradise. Keep in your souls some images of magnificence

so that hereafter the halls of heaven and the divine folk may not seem

altogether alien to the spirit. These legends have passed the test

of generations for century after century, and they were treasured

and passed on to those who followed, and that was because there was

something in them akin to the immortal spirit. Humanity cannot carry

with it through time the memory of all its deeds and imaginations, and

it burdens itself only in a new era with what was highest among the

imaginations of the ancestors. What is essentially noble is never out

of date. The figures carved by Pheidias for the Parthenon still shine by

the side of the greatest modern sculpture. There has been no evolution

of the human form to a greater beauty than the ancient Greek saw, and

the forms they carved are not strange to us, and if this is true of the

outward form it is true of the indwelling spirit. What is essentially

noble is contemporary with all that is splendid today, and until the

mass of men are equal in spirit the great figures of the past will

affect us less as memories than as prophecies of the Golden Age to which

youth is ever hurrying in its heart.

O'Grady in his stories of the Red Branch rescued from the past what was

contemporary to the best in us today, and he was equal in his gifts as

a writer to the greatest of his bardic predecessors in Ireland. His

sentences are charged with a heroic energy, and, when he is telling a

great tale, their rise and fall is like the flashing and falling of the

bright sword of some great battle, or like the onset and withdrawal of

Atlantic surges. He can at need be beautifully tender and quiet. Who

that has read his tale of the young Finn and the Seven Ancients will

forget the weeping of Finn over the kindness of the famine-stricken old

men, and their wonder at his weeping, and the self-forgetful pathos

of their meditation unconscious that it was their own sacrifice called

forth the tears of Finn. "Youth," they said, "has many sorrows that cold

age cannot comprehend."

There are critics repelled by the abounding energy in O'Grady's

sentences. It is easy to point to faults due to excess and abundance,

but how rare in literature is that heroic energy and power. There is

something arcane and elemental in it, a quality that the most careful

stylist cannot attain, however he uses the file, however subtle he is.

O'Grady has noticed this power in the ancient bards and we find it in

his own writing. It ran all through the Bardic History, the Critical

and Philosophical History, and through the political books, The Tory

Democracy and All Ireland. There is this imaginative energy in the tale

of Cuculain, in all its episodes, the slaying of the hound, the capture

of the Liath Macha, the hunting of the enchanted deer, the capture of

the Wild swans, the fight at the ford, and the awakening of the Red

Branch. In the later tale of Red Hugh which, he calls The Flight of

the Eagle there is the same quality of power joined with a shining

simplicity in the narrative which rises into a poetic ecstasy in that

wonderful chapter where Red Hugh, escaping from the Pale, rides through

the Mountain Gates of Ulster and sees high above him Sheve Gullion,

a mountain of the Gods, the birth-place of legend "more mythic than

Avernus"; and O'Grady evokes for us and his hero the legendary past and

the great hill seems to be like Mount Sinai, thronged with immortals,

and it lives and speaks to the fugitive boy, "the last great secular

champion of the Gael," and inspires him for the fulfillment of his

destiny. We might say of Red Hugh, and indeed of all O'Grady's heroes,

that they are the spiritual progeny of Cuculain. From Red Hugh down to

the boys who have such enchanting adventures in Lost on Du Corrig and

The Chain of Gold they have all a natural and hardy purity of mind, a

beautiful simplicity of character, and one can imagine them all in an

hour of need, being faithful to any trust like the darling of the Red

Branch. These shining lads never grew up amid books. They are as much

children of nature as the Lucy of Wordsworth's poetry. It might be said

of them as the poet of the Kalevala sang of himself: "Winds and waters

my instructors."

These were O'Grady's own earliest companions, and no man can find better

comrades than earth, water, air and sun. I imagine O'Grady's own

youth was not so very different from the youth of Red Hugh before his

captivity; that he lived on the wild and rocky western coast, that he

rowed in coracles, explored the caves, spoke much with hardy natural

people, fishermen and workers on the land, primitive folk, simple in

speech but with that fundamental depth men have who are much in nature

in companionship with the elements, the elder brothers of humanity. It

must have been out of such a boyhood and such intimacies with natural

and unsophisticated people that there came to him the understanding of

the heroes of the Red Branch. How pallid, beside the ruddy chivalry

who pass, huge and fleet and bright, through O'Grady's pages, appear

Tennyson's bloodless Knights of the Round Table, fabricated in the study

to be read in the drawing room, as anemic as Burne Jones' lifeless men

in armour. The heroes of ancient Irish legend reincarnated in the mind

of a man who could breathe into them the fire of life, caught from sun

and wind, their ancient deities, and send them forth to the world to do

greater deeds, to act through many men and speak through many voices.

What sorcery was in the Irish mind that it has taken so many years to

win but a little recognition for this splendid spirit; and that others

who came after him, who diluted the pure fiery wine of romance he gave

us with literary water, should be as well known or more widely read. For

my own, part I can only point back to him and say whatever is Irish

in me he kindled to life, and I am humble when I read his epic tale,

feeling how much greater a thing it is for the soul of a writer to

have been the habitation of a demi-god than to have had the subtlest

intellections.

We praise the man who rushes into a burning mansion and brings out its

greatest treasure. So ought we to praise this man who rescued from the

perishing Gaelic tradition its darling hero and restored him to us,

and I think now that Cuculain will not perish, and he will be invisibly

present at many a council of youth, and he will be the daring which

lifts the will beyond itself and fires it for great causes, and he will

be also the courtesy which shall overcome the enemy that nothing else

may overcome.

I am sure that Standish O'Grady would rather I should speak of his work

and its bearing on the spiritual life of Ireland, than about himself,

and, because I think so, in this reverie I have followed no set plan but

have let my thoughts run as they will. But I would not have any to think

that this man was only a writer, or that he could have had the heroes

of the past for spiritual companions, without himself being inspired to

fight dragons and wizardry. I have sometimes regretted that contemporary

politics drew O'Grady away from the work he began so greatly. I have

said to myself he might have given us an Oscar, a Diarmuid or a Caolte,

an equal comrade to Cuculain, but he could not, being lit up by the

spirit of his hero, he merely the bard and not the fighter, and no man

in Ireland intervened in the affairs of his country with a superior

nobility of aim. He was the last champion of the Irish aristocracy, and

still more the voice of conscience for them, and he spoke to them of

their duty to the nation as one might imagine some fearless prophet

speaking to a council of degenerate princes. When the aristocracy failed

Ireland he bade them farewell, and wrote the epitaph of their class in

words whose scorn we almost forget because of their sounding melody

and beauty. He turned his mind to the problems of democracy and more

especially of those workers who are trapped in the city, and he pointed

out for them the way of escape and how they might renew life in the

green fields close to Earth, their ancient mother and nurse. He used

too exalted a language for those to whom he spoke to understand, and it

might seem that all these vehement appeals had failed but that we know

that what is fine never really fails. When a man is in advance of his

age, a generation, unborn when he speaks, is born in due time and finds

in him its inspiration. O'Grady may have failed in his appeal to the

aristocracy of his own time but he may yet create an aristocracy of

character and intellect in Ireland. The political and economic writings

will remain to uplift and inspire and to remind us that the man who

wrote the stories of heroes had a bravery of his own and a wisdom of his

own. I owe so much to Standish O'Grady that I would like to leave it

on record that it was he made me conscious and proud of my country, and

recalled to my mind, that might have wandered otherwise over too wide

and vague a field of thought, to think of the earth under my feet and

the children of our common mother. There hangs in the Municipal Gallery

of Dublin the portrait of a man with melancholy eyes, and scrawled on

the canvas is the subject of his bitter brooding: "'The Lost Land."

I hope that O'Grady will find before he goes back to Tir na noge that

Ireland has found again through him what seemed lost for ever, the law

of its own being, and its memories which go back to the beginning of the

world.

THE DRAMATIC TREATMENT OF LEGEND

"The Red Branch ought not to be staged.... That

literature ought not to be produced for popular consumption

for the edification of the crowd.... I say to you drop

this thing at your peril.... You may succeed in

degrading Irish ideals, and banishing the soul of the land.

... Leave the heroic cycles alone, and don't bring them

down to the crowd..." (Standish O'Grady in All Ireland

Review).

Years ago, in the adventurous youth of his mind, Mr. O'Grady found the

Gaelic tradition like a neglected antique dun with the doors barred, and

there was little or no egress. Listening, he heard from within the hum

of an immense chivalry, and he opened the doors and the wild riders went

forth to work their will. Now he would recall them. But it is in vain.

The wild riders have gone forth, and their labors in the human mind are

only beginning. They will do their deeds over again, and now they

will act through many men and speak through many voices. The spirit of

Cuculain will stand at many a lonely place in the heart, and he will win

as of old against multitudes. The children of Turann will start afresh

still eager to take up and renew their cyclic labors, and they will

gain, not for themselves, the Apples of the Tree of Life, and the Spear

of the Will, and the Fleece which is the immortal body. All the heroes

and demigods returning will have a wider field than Erin for their

deeds, and they will not grow weary warning upon things that die but

will be fighters in the spirit against immortal powers, and, as before,

the acts will be sometimes noble and sometimes base. They cannot be

stayed from their deeds, for they are still in the strength of a youth

which is ever renewing itself. Not for all the wrong which may be done

should they be restrained. Mr. O'Grady would now have the tales kept

from the crowd to be the poetic luxury of a few. Yet would we, for all

the martyrs who perished in the fires of the Middle Ages, counsel the

placing of the Gospels on the list of books to be read only by a few

esoteric worshippers?

The literature which should be unpublished is that which holds the

secret of the magical powers. The legends of Ireland are not of this

kind. They have no special message to the aristocrat more than to the

man of the people. The men who made the literature of Ireland were by

no means nobly born, and it was the bards who placed the heroes, each

in his rank, and crowned them for after ages, and gave them their famous

names. They have placed on the brow of others a crown which belonged to

themselves, and all the heroic literature of the world was made by

the sacrifice of the nameless kings of men who have given a sceptre to

others they never wielded while living, and who bestowed the powers, of

beauty and pity on women who perhaps had never uplifted a heart in their

day, and who now sway us from the grave with a grace only imagined in

the dreaming soul of the poet. Mr. O'Grady has been the bardic champion

of the ancient Irish aristocracy. He has thrown on them the sunrise

colors of his own brilliant spirit, and now would restrain others from

the use of their names lest a new kingship should be established over

them, and another law than that of his own will, lest the poets of the

democracy looking back on the heroes of the past should overcome them

with the ideas of a later day, and the Atticottic nature find a loftier

spirit in those who felt the unendurable pride of the Fianna and rose

against it. Well, it is only natural he should try to protect the

children of his thought, but they need no later word from him. If

writers of a less noble mind than his deal with these things they will

not rob his heroes of a single power to uplift or inspire. In Greece,

after Eschylus and his stupendous deities, came Sophocles, who

restrained them with a calm wisdom, and Euripides, who made them human,

but still the mysterious Orphic deities remain and stir us when reading

the earlier page. Mr. O'Grady would not have the Red Branch cycle

cast in dramatic form or given to the people. They are too great to be

staged; and he quotes, mistaking the gigantic for the heroic, a story of

Cuculain reeling round Ireland on his fairy steed the Liath Macha. This

may be phantasy or extravagance, but it is not heroism. Cuculain is

often heroic, but it is a quality of the soul and not of the body; it

is shown by his tears over Ferdiad, in his gentleness to women. A more

grandiose and heroic figure than Cuculain was seen on the Athenian

stage; and no one will say that the Titan Prometheus, chained on the

rock in his age-long suffering for men, is not a nobler figure than

Cuculain in any aspect in which he appears to us in the tales.

Divine traditions, the like of which were listened to with awe by the

Athenians, should not be too lofty for our Christian people, whose

morals Mr. O'Grady, here hardly candid, professes to be anxious about.

What is great in literature is a greatness springing out of the human

heart. Though we fall short today of the bodily stature of the giants of

the prime, the spirit still remains and can express an equal greatness.

I can well understand how a man of our own day, by the enlargement of

his spirit, and the passion and sincerity of his speech, could express

the greatness of the past. The drama in its mystical beginning was the

vehicle through which divine ideas, which are beyond the sphere even of

heroic life and passion, were expressed; and if the later Irish writers

fail of such greatness, it is not for that reason that the soul of

Ireland will depart. I can hardly believe Mr. O'Grady to be serious when

he fears that many forbidden subjects will be themes for dramatic art,

that Maeve with her many husbands will walk the stage, and the lusts of

an earlier age be revived to please the lusts of today. The danger of

art is not in its subjects, but in the attitude of the artist's mind.

The nobler influences of art arise, not because heroes are the theme,

but because of noble treatment and the intuition which perceives the

inflexible working out of great moral laws.

The abysses of human nature may well be sounded if the plummet be

dropped by a spirit from the heights. The lust which leads on to death

may be a terrible thing to contemplate, but in the event there is

consolation; and the eye of faith can see even in the very exultation

of corruption how God the Regenerator is working His will, leading man

onward to his destiny of inevitable beauty. Mr. O'Grady in his youth

had the epic imagination, and I think few people realize how great and

heroic that inspiration was; but the net that is spread for Leviathan

will not capture all the creatures of the deep, and neither epic nor

romance will manifest fully the power of the mythical ancestors of

the modern Gael who now seek incarnation anew in the minds of their

children. Men too often forget, in this age of printed books, that

literature is, after all, only an ineffectual record of speech. The

literary man has gone into strange byways through long contemplation of

books, and he writes with elaboration what could never be spoken, and he

loses that power of the bards on whom tongues of fire had descended, who

were masters of the magic of utterance, whose thoughts were not meant

to be silently absorbed from the lifeless page. For there never can be,

while man lives in a body, a greater means of expression for him than

the voice of man affords, and no instrument of music will ever rival in

power the flowing of the music of the spheres through his lips. In all

its tones, from the chanting of the magi which compelled the elements,

to those gentle voices which guide the dying into peace, there is a

power which will never be stricken from tympan or harp, for in all

speech there is life, and with the greatest speech the deep tones of

another Voice may mingle. Has not the Lord spoken through His prophets?

And man, when he has returned to himself, and to the knowledge of

himself, may find a greater power in his voice than those which he has

painfully harnessed to perform his will, in steamship or railway. It is

through drama alone that the writer can summon, even if vicariously,

so great a power to his aid; and it is possible we yet may hear on the

stage, not merely the mimicry of human speech, but the old forgotten

music which was heard in the duns of great warriors to bow low their

faces in their hands. Dear O'Grady, if we do not succeed it is not for

you to blame us, for our aims are at least as high as your own.

1902

THE CHARACTER OF HEROIC LITERATURE

Lady Gregory, a fairy godmother, has given to Young Ireland the gift of

her Cuchulain of Muirthemne, which should be henceforward the book of

its dream. I do not doubt but there will be a great change in the

next generation, for the character of many children will have grown to

maturity brooding over the memories of heroes who were themselves half

children, half demigods. Though the hero tales will have their greatest

power over the young, no one mind could measure their depth. They seem

simple and primitive, yet they draw us strangely aside from life, and

the emotions they awaken are not simple but complex. Here are twenty

tales, and they are so alike in imaginative character that they seem all

to have poured from one mind; and to these twenty we could add a hundred

others, all endlessly fertile in difference of incident, but all seeming

to own the same imaginative creator. It was so for many centuries,

and then the maker of the song seems to have grown weary, and distinct

voices not overladen with the tradition of the ages were heard; and

today every one wanders in a path of his own, finding or losing the way,

the truth, and the life of art in the free play of his desires. There

was something more to cause this later period of diverse utterance than

the interruption of other races and the claims of the world upon us.

Surely the ancient Egyptian met in Memphis or Thebes as many strangers

as we did, but he wept on through many dynasties carving the same

face of mystery and rarely altering the peculiar forms which were his

inheritance from the craftsmen of a thousand years before. It was not

the introduction of something new, but the loss of something which

finally vexed the calm of the Sphinx and marred the Phidian beauty which

in Greece was a long dream for many generations. It was not because the

Dane or Norman came and dwelt among us that the signature of the Sidhe

was withdrawn from the Gaelic mind. I do not know how to express this

loss otherwise than by saying we appear to have fallen away from our

archetype. We find in all the early stories the presence of one being

who may be the genius of our land if that old idea of race divinities be

a true one. A strange similitude unites all the characters. We infer

an interior identity. The same spirit flashes out in hostile clans, and

then Cuculain kisses Ferdiad. They all confidently appeal to; it in

each other. Maeve flying after the great battle can ask a gift from her

conqueror and obtains it. Fand and Emer dispute who shall make the last

sacrifice of love and give the beloved to a rival. The conflicts seem

half in play or in dream, and we do not know when an awakening of love

will disarm the foes. In spite of the bloodshed the heroes seem like

children who fight steadily through a mock battle, but the night will

see these children at peace, and they will dream with arms around each

other in the same cot. No literature ever had a more beautiful heart of

childhood in it. The bards could hate no one consistently. If they took

away the heroic chivalry from Conchobar in one tale they restored it

to him in another. They have the confident trust--and expectation of

goodness that children have, who may have suffered punishment, but who

come later on and smile on the chastiser. It is this quality which gives

the tales their extraordinary charm. I know no other literature which

has it to the same degree. I do not like to speculate on the absence

of this spirit in our later literature, which was written under other

influences. It cannot be because there was a less spiritual life in

the apostles than in the bards. We cannot compare Cuculain, the most

complete ideal of Gaelic chivalry, with that supreme figure whose coming

to the world was the effacement of whole pantheons of divinities, and

yet it is true that since the thoughts of men were turned from the old

ideals our literature has been filled with a less noble life. I think

a due may be found in the withdrawal of thought from nature, the great

mother who, is the giver of all life, and without whose life ideals

become inoperative and listless dwellers in the heart. The eyes of the

ancient Gael were fixed in wonder on the rocks and hills, and the waste

places of the earth were piled with phantasmal palaces where the Sidhe

sat on their thrones. Everywhere there was life, and as they saw so

they felt. To conceive of nature in any way, as beautiful and living, as

friendly or hostile, is to receive from her in like measure out of

her fullness. With whatever face we approach the mirror a similar face

approaches ours. "Let him approach it, saying, 'This is the Mighty,'

he becomes mighty," says an ancient scripture, teaching us that as

our aspiration is so will be our inspiration and power. Out of this

comradeship with earth there came a commingling of natures, and we do

not know when we read who are the Sidhe and who are human. The great

energies are all in the heroes. They bound to themselves, like the

Talkend, the strength of the fire, the brightness of the sun, and the

swiftness of the wind. They seem truly the earth-born. The waves respond

to their deeds; the elemental creatures respond and there are clashing

echoes and allies innumerable, and armies in the air continuing their

battles illimitably beyond: a proud race, who felt with bursting heart

the heavens were watching them, who defied their gods and exiled them

to have free play for their own deeds. A very different humanity indeed

from those who have come to walk the earth with humility, who are afraid

of heaven and its rulers, and whose dread is the greatest of all sins,

for in it is a denial of their own divinity. Surely the sight heroes is

more welcome to the King, in whose heaven are sworded seraphim, than the

bowed knees and the spirits who make themselves as worms in His sight.

In the symbolic expression of our spiritual life the eagle has become

a dove brooding peace. Oh, that it might rebecome the eagle and take to

the upper airs!

A generosity and greatness of spirit are in the heroes of the Red

Branch, and out of their strength grows a bloom of beauty never fully

revealed until Lady Gregory compiled these tales. As we read our

eyes are dazzled by strange graces of color flowing over the pages:

everywhere there is mystery and magnificence. Procession's pass by in

Druid ritual, kings and queens, and harpers who look like kings. When

the wind passes over them and stirs their garments a sweetness comes

over the teller of the tale, who felt that delight in draperies blown

over shapely forms which is the inspiration of the Winged Victory and

many Greek marbles. The bards will not have the hands of those proud

people touch anything which is not beautiful. "It was a beautiful

chessboard they had, all of white bronze, and the chessmen of gold and

silver, and a candlestick of precious stones lighting it." The wasting

of time has spared us a few things to show that this rare and intricate

metal work was not a myth, and we are forced by an inexorable logic

to accept as mainly true the narration of the pride, the beauty, the

generosity, and the large lovable character of the ancient heroes. We

may come to realize that, losing their Druid vision of a more shining

world mingling with this, we have lost the vision of that life into the

likeness of which it is the true labor of the spirit to transform this

life. For the Tirnanoge is that Garden where, in the mind of the Lord,

the flowers and trees blossomed before they grew in the fields, where

man lived in the Golden Age before the outer darkness of the earth

was built and he was outcast from Paradise. There is no true art or

literature which has not some image of the Golden Life lurking within

it, and through the archaic rudeness of these legends the light shines

as sunlight through the hoary branches of ancient oaks. Lady Gregory

has done her work, as compiler with a judgment which could hardly be too

much praised, and she has translated the stories into an idiom which

is a reflection of the original Gaelic and is full of charm. We are

indebted to her for this labor as much as to any of those who sang to

sweeten Ireland's wrong.

1902

A POET OF SHADOWS

When I was asked to write "anything" about Yeats, our Irish poet, my

thoughts were like rambling flocks that have no shepherd, and without

guidance my rambling thoughts have run anywhere.

I confess I have feared to enter or linger too long in the many-colored

land of Druid twilights and tunes. A beauty not our own, more perfect

than we can ourselves conceive, is a danger to the imagination. I am

too often tempted to wander with Usheen in Timanoge and to forget my own

heart and its more rarely accorded vision of truth. I know I like my own

heart best, but I never look into the world of my friend without feeling

that my region lies in the temperate zone and is near the Arctic

circle; the flowers grow more rarely and are paler, and the struggle for

existence is keener. Southward and in the warm west are the Happy Isles

among the Shadowy Waters. The pearly phantoms are dancing there with

blown hair amid cloud tail daffodils. They have known nothing but

beauty, or at the most a beautiful unhappiness. Everything there moves

in procession or according to ritual, and the agony of grief, it is

felt, must be concealed. There are no faces blurred with tears there;

some traditional gesture signifying sorrow is all that is allowed. I

have looked with longing eyes into this world. It is Ildathach, the

Many-Colored Land, but not the Land of the Living Heart. That island

where the multitudinous beatings of many hearts became one is yet

unvisited; but the isle of our poet is the more beautiful of all the

isles the mystic voyagers have found during the thousands of years

literature has recorded in Ireland. What wonder that many wish to follow

him, and already other voices are singing amid its twilights.

They will make and unmake. They will discover new wonders; and will

perhaps make commonplace some beauty which but for repetition would have

seemed rare. I would that no one but the first discoverer should enter

Ildathach, or at least report of it. No voyage to the new world, however

memorable, will hold us like the voyage of Columbus. I sigh sometimes

thinking on the light dominion dreams have over the heart. We cannot

hold a dream for long, and that early joy of the poet in his new-found

world has passed. It has seemed to him too luxuriant. He seeks for

something more, and has tried to make its tropical tangle orthodox;

and the glimmering waters and winds are no longer beautiful natural

presences, but have become symbolic voices and preach obscurely some

doctrine of their power to quench the light in the soul or to fan it to

a brighter flame.

I like their old voiceless motion and their natural wandering best, and

would rather roam in the bee-loud glade than under the boughs of beryl

and chrysoberyl, where I am put to school to learn the significance

of every jewel. I like that natural infinity which a prodigal beauty

suggests more than that revealed in esoteric hieroglyphs, even though

the writing be in precious stones. Sometimes I wonder whether that

insatiable desire of the mind for something more than it has yet

attained, which blows the perfume from every flower, and plucks the

flower from every tree, and hews down every tree in the valley until it

goes forth gnawing itself in a last hunger, does not threaten all the

cloudy turrets of the Poet's soul. But whatever end or transformation,

or unveiling may happen, that which creates beauty must have beauty in

its essence, and the soul must cast off many vestures before it comes

to itself. We, all of us, poets, artists, and musicians, who work in

shadows, must sometime begin to work in substance, and why should we

grieve if one labor ends and another begins? I am interested more in

life than in the shadows of life, and as Ildathach grows fainter I await

eagerly the revelation of the real nature of one who has built so

many mansions in the heavens. The poet has concealed himself under the

embroidered cloths and has moved in secretness, and only at rare times,

as when he says, "A pity beyond all telling is hid in the heart of

love," do we find a love which is not the love of the Sidhe; and more

rarely still do recognizable human figures, like the Old Pensioner

or Moll Magee, meet us. All the rest are from another world and

are survivals of the proud and golden races who move with the old

stateliness and an added sorrow for the dark age which breaks in upon

their loveliness. They do not war upon the new age, but build up about

themselves in imagination the ancient beauty, and love with a love a

little colored by the passion of the darkness from which they could not

escape. They are the sole inheritors of many traditions, and have now

come to the end of the ways, and so are unhappy. We know why they are

unhappy, but not the cause of a strange merriment which sometimes

they feel, unless it be that beauty within itself has a joy in its own

rhythmic being. They are changing, too, as the winds and waters have

changed. They are not like Usheen, seekers and romantic wanderers, but

have each found some mood in themselves where all quest ceases; they

utter oracles, and even in the swaying of a hand or the dropping of hair

there is less suggestion of individual action than of a divinity living

within them, shaping an elaborate beauty in dream for his own delight,

and for no other end than the delight in his dream. Other poets have

written of Wisdom overshadowing man and speaking through his lips, or a

Will working within the human will, but I think in this poetry we find

for the first time the revelation of the Spirit as the weaver of beauty.

Hence it comes that little hitherto unnoticed motions are adored:

You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,

And bind up your long hair and sigh;

And all men's hearts must burn and beat.

This woman is less the beloved than the priestess of beauty who reveals

the divinity, not as the inspired prophetesses filled with the Holy

Breath did in the ancient mysteries, but in casual gestures and in a

waving of her white arms, in the stillness of her eyes, in her hair

which trembles like a faery flood of unloosed shadowy light over pale

breasts, and in many glimmering motions so beautiful that it is at once

seen whose footfall it is we hear, and that the place where she stands

is holy ground. This, it seems to me, is what is essential in this

poetry, what is peculiar and individual in it--the revelation of

great mysteries in unnoticed things; and as not a sparrow may fall

unconsidered by Him, so even in the swaying of a human hand His sceptre

may have dominion over the heart and His paradise be entered in the

lifting of an eyelid.

1902

THE BOYHOOD OF A POET

When I was a boy I knew another who has since become famous and who has

now written Reveries over Childhood and Youth. I searched the pages to

meet the boy I knew and could not find him. He has told us what he saw

and what he remembered of others, but from himself he seems to have

passed away and remembers himself not. The boy I knew was darkly

beautiful to look on, fiery yet playful and full of lovely and elfin

fancies. He was swift of response, indeed over-generous to the fancies

of others because a nature so charged with beauty could not but emit

beauty at every challenge. Even so water, however ugly the object we

cast upon it, can but break out in a foam of beauty and a bewilderment

of lovely curves.

Our fancies were in reality nothing to him but the affinities which by

the slightest similitude evoked out of the infinitely richer being

the prodigality of beautiful images with which it was endowed and made

itself conscious of itself. I have often thought how strange it is that

artist and poet have never yet revealed themselves to us except in verse

and painting, that there was among them no psychologist who could turn

back upon himself to search for the law of his own being, who could tell

us how his brain first became illuminated with images, and who tried

to track the inspiration to its secret fount and the images to their

ancestral beauty. Few of the psychologists who have written about

imagination were endowed with it themselves: and here is a poet, the

most imaginative of his generation, who has written about his youth and

has told us only about external circumstances and nothing about himself,

nothing about that flowering of strange beauty in poetry in him where

the Gaelic imagination that had sunk underground when the Gaelic speech

had died, rose up again transfiguring an alien language until that

new poetry became like the record of another mystic voyager to

the Heaven-world of our ancestors. But poet and artist are rarely

self-conscious of the processes of their own minds. They deliver their

message with exultation but they find nothing worth recording in the

descent upon them of the fiery tongues. So our poet has told us little

about himself but much about circumstance, and I recall in his pages the

Dublin of thirty years ago, and note how faithful the memory of eye and

ear are, and how forgetful the heart is of its own fancies. Is nature

behind this distaste for intimate self-analysis in the poet? Are our own

emanations poisonous to us if we do not rapidly clear ourselves of them?

Is it best to forget ourselves and hurry away once the deed is done or

the end is attained to some remoter valley in the Golden World and look

for a new beauty if we would continue to create beauty?

I know how readily our poet forgets his own songs. I once quoted to him

some early verses of his own as comment on something he had said. He

asked eagerly "Who wrote that?" and when I said "Do you not remember?"

he petulantly waved the poem aside for he had forsaken his past. Again

at a later period he told me his early verses sometimes aroused him to a

frenzy of dislike. Of the feelings which beset the young poet of genius

little or nothing is revealed in this Reverie. Yet what would we not

give for a book which would tell how beauty beset that youth in his

walks about Dublin and Sligo; how the sensitive response to color, form,

music and tradition began, how he came to recognize the moods which

incarnated in him as immortal moods. Perhaps it is too much to expect

from the creative imagination that it shall also be capable of exact and

subtle analysis. In this work I walk down the streets of Dublin I walked

with Yeats over thirty years ago. I mix with the people who then were

living in the city, O'Leary, Taylor, Dowden, Hughes and the rest; but

the poet himself does not walk with me. It is a new voice speaking of

the past of others, pointing out the doorways entered by dead youth. The

new voice has distinction and dignity of its own, and we are grateful

for this history, others more so than myself, because most of what

is written therein I knew already, and I wanted a secret which is not

revealed. I wanted to know more about the working of the imagination

which planted the little snow-white feet in the sally garden, and which

heard the kettle on the hob sing peace into the breast, and was intimate

with twilight and the creatures that move in the dusk and undergrowths,

with weasel, heron, rabbit, hare, mouse and coney; which plucked the

Flower of Immortality in the Island of Statues and wandered with Usheen

in Timanogue. I wanted to know what all that magic-making meant to the

magician, but he has kept his own secret, and I must be content and

grateful to one who has revealed more of beauty than any other in his

time.

1916

THE POETRY OF JAMES STEPHENS

For a generation the Irish bards have endeavored to live in a palace of

art, in chambers hung with the embroidered cloths and made dim with pale

lights and Druid twilights, and the melodies they most sought for were

half soundless. The art of an early age began softly, to end its songs

with a rhetorical blare of sound. The melodies of the new school began

close to the ear and died away in distances of the soul. Even as the

prophet of old was warned to take off his shoes because the place he

stood on was holy ground, so it seemed for a while in Ireland as if no

poet could be accepted unless he left outside the demesnes of poetry

that very useful animal, the body, and lost all concern about its

habits. He could not enter unless he moved with the light and dreamy

foot-fall of spirit. Mr. Yeats was the chief of this eclectic school,

and his poetry at its best is the most beautiful in Irish literature.

But there crowded after him a whole horde of verse-writers, who seized

the most obvious symbols he used and standardized them, and in their

writings one wandered about, gasping for fresh air land sunlight, for

the Celtic soul seemed bound for ever pale lights of fairyland on the

north and by the by the darkness of forbidden passion on the south, and

on the east by the shadowiness of all things human, and on the west by

everything that was infinite, without form, and void.

It was a great relief to me, personally, who had lived in the palace of

Irish art for a time, and had even contributed a little to its dimness,

to hear outside the walls a few years ago a sturdy voice blaspheming

against all the formula, and violating the tenuous atmosphere with its

"Insurrections." There are poets who cannot write with half their being,

and who must write with their whole being, and they bring their poor

relation, the body, with them wherever they go, and are not ashamed of

it. They are not at warfare with the spirit, but have a kind of instinct

that the clan of human powers ought to cling together as one family.

With the best poets of this school, like Shakespeare and Whitman,

one rarely can separate body and soul, for we feel the whole man is

speaking. With Keats, Shelley, Swinburne, and our own Yeats, one feels

that they have all sought shelter from disagreeable actualities in the

world of imagination. James Stephens, as he chanted his Insurrections,

sang with his whole being. Let no one say I am comparing him with

Shakespeare. One may say the blackbird has wings as well as the eagle,

without insisting that the bird in the hedgerows is peer of the winged

creature beyond the mountain-tops. But how refreshing it was to

find somebody who was a poet without a formula, who did not ransack

dictionaries for dead words, as Rossetti did to get living speech, whose

natural passions declared themselves without the least idea that they

ought to be ashamed of themselves, or be thrice refined in the crucible

by the careful alchemist before they could appear in the drawing-room.

Nature has an art of its own, and the natural emotions in their natural

and passionate expression have that kind of picturesque beauty which

Marcus Aurelius, tired, perhaps, of the severe orthodoxies of Greek and

Roman art, referred to when he spoke of the foam on the jaws of the wild

boar and the mane of the lion.

There were evidences of such an art in Insurrections, the first book of

James Stephens. In the poem called "Fossils," the girl who flies and the

boy who hunts her are followed in flight and pursuit with a swift energy

by the poet, and the lines pant and gasp, and the figures flare up and

down the pages. The energy created a new form in verse, not an orthodox

beauty, which the classic artists would have admitted, but such

picturesque beauty as Marcus Aurelius found in the foam on the jaws of

the wild boar.

I always want to find the fundamental emotion out of which a poet

writes. It is easy to do this with some, with writers like Shelley and

Wordsworth, for they talked much of abstract things, and a man never

reveals himself so fully as when he does this, when he tries to

interpret nature, when he has to fill darkness with light, and chaos

with meaning. A man may speak about his own heart and may deceive

himself and others, but ask him to fill empty space with significance,

and what he projects on that screen will be himself, and you can know

him even as hereafter he will be known. When a poet puts his ear to a

shell, I know if he listens long enough he will hear his own destiny. I

knew after reading "The Shell" that in James Stephens we were going to

have no singer of the abstract. There was no human quality or stir in

the blind elemental murmur, and the poet drops it with a sigh of relief:

O, it was sweet

To hear a cart go jolting down the street.

From the tradition of the world too he breaks away, from the great

murmuring shell which gives back to us our cries and questionings

and protests soothed into soft, easeful things and smooth orthodox

complacencies, for it was shaped by humanity to whisper back to it

what it wished to hear. From all soft, easeful beliefs and

silken complacencies the last Irish poet breaks away in a book of

insurrections. He is doubtful even of love, the greatest orthodoxy of

any, which so few have questioned, which has preceded all religions and

will survive them all. When he writes of love in "The Red-haired Man's

Wife" and "The Rebel" he is not sure that that old intoxication of

self-surrender is not a wrong to the soul and a disloyalty to the

highest in us. His "Dancer" revolts from the applauding crowd. The

wind cries out against the inference that the beauty of nature points

inevitably to an equal beauty of spirit within. His enemies revolt

against their hate; his old man against his own grumblings, and the poet

himself rebels against his own revolt in that quaint scrap of verse he

prefixes to the volume:

What's the use

Of my abuse?

The world will run

Around the sun

As it has done

Since time begun

When I have drifted to the deuce:

And what's the use

Of my abuse?

He does not revolt against the abstract like so many because he is

incapable of thinking. Indeed, he is one of the few Irish poets we have

who is always thinking as he goes along. He does not rebel against love

because he is not himself sweet at heart, for the best thing in the book

is its unfeigned humanity. So we have a personal puzzle to solve with

this perplexing writer which makes us all the more eager to hear him

again. A man might be difficult to understand and the problem of his

personality might not be worth solution, but it is not so with James

Stephens. From a man who can write with such power as he shows in these

two stanzas taken from "The Street behind Yours" we may expect high

things. It is a vision seen with distended imagination as if by some

child strayed from light:

And though 'tis silent, though no sound

Crawls from the darkness thickly spread,

Yet darkness brings

Grim noiseless things

That walk as they were dead,

They glide and peer and steal around

With stealthy silent tread.

You dare not walk; that awful crew

Might speak or laugh as you pass by.

Might touch or paw

With a formless claw

Or leer from a sodden eye,

Might whisper awful things they knew,

Or wring their hands and cry.

There is nothing more grim and powerful than that in The City of

Dreadful Night. It has all the vaporous horror of a Dore grotesque and

will bear examination better. But our poet does not as a rule write with

such unrelieved gloom. He keeps a stoical cheerfulness, and even when

he faces terrible things we feel encouraged to take his hand and go with

him, for he is master of his own soul, and you cannot get a whimper

out of him. He likes the storm of things, and is out for it. He has

a perfect craft in recording wild natural emotions. The verse in this

first book has occasional faults, but as a rule the lines move, driven

by that inner energy of emotion which will sometimes work more metrical

wonders than the most conscious art. The words hiss at you sometimes,

as in "The Dancer," and again will melt away with the delicacy of fairy

bells as in "The Watcher," or will run like deep river water, as in "The

Whisperer," which in some moods I think is the best poem in the book

until I read "Fossils" or "What Tomas an Buile said in a Pub." They are

too long to print, but I must give myself the pleasure of quoting the

beautiful "Slan Leat," with which he concludes the book, bidding us, not

farewell, but to accompany him on further adventure:

And now, dear heart, the night is closing in,

The lamps are not yet ready, and the gloom

Of this sad winter evening, and the din

The wind makes in the streets fills all the room.

You have listened to my stories--Seumas Beg

Has finished the adventures of his youth,

And no more hopes to find a buried keg

Stuffed to the lid with silver. He, in truth,

And all alas! grew up: but he has found

The path to truer romance, and with you

May easily seek wonders. We are bound

Out to the storm of things, and all is new.

Give me your hand, so, keeping close to me,

Shut tight your eyes, step forward... where are we?

Our new Irish poet declared he was bound "out to the storm of things,"

and we all waited with interest for his next utterance. Would he wear

the red cap as the poet of the social revolution, now long overdue in

these islands, or would he sing the Marsellaise of womanhood, emerging

in hordes from their underground kitchens to make a still greater

revolution? He did neither. He forgot all about the storm of things, and

delighted us with his story of Mary, the charwoman's daughter, a tale of

Dublin life, so, kindly, so humane, so vivid, so wise, so witty, and so

true, that it would not be exaggerating to say that natural humanity in

Ireland found its first worthy chronicler in this tale.

We have a second volume of poetry from James Stephens, The Hill of

Vision. He has climbed a hill, indeed, but has found cross roads there

leading in many directions, and seems to be a little perplexed whether

the storm of things was his destiny after all. When one is in a cave

there is only one road which leads out, but when one stands in the

sunlight there are endless roads. We enjoy his perplexity, for he has

seated himself by his cross-roads, and has tried many tunes on his lute,

obviously in doubt which sounds sweetest to his own ear. I am not at

all in doubt as to what is best, and I hope he will go on like Whitman,

carrying "the old delicious burdens, men and women," wherever he goes.

For his references to Deity, Plato undoubtedly would have expelled him

from his Republic; and justly so, for James Stephens treats his god very

much as the African savage treats his fetish. Now it is supplicated,

and the next minute the idol is buffeted for an unanswered prayer or a

neglected duty, and then a little later our Irish African is crooning

sweetly with his idol, arranging its domestic affairs and the marriage

of Heaven and Earth. Sometimes our poet essays the pastoral, and in

sheer gaiety: flies like any bird under the boughs, and up into the

sunlight. There are in his company imps and grotesques, and fauns and

satyrs, who come summoned by his piping. Sometimes, as in "Eve," the

poem of the mystery of womanhood, he is purely beautiful, but I find

myself going back to his men and women; and I hope he will not be angry

with me when I say I prefer his tinker drunken to his Deity sober. None

of our Irish poets has found God, at least a god any but themselves

would not be ashamed to acknowledge. But our poet does know his men

and his women. They are not the shadowy, Whistler-like decorative

suggestions of humanity made by our poetic dramatists. They have entered

like living creatures into his mind, and they break out there in an

instant's unforgettable passion or agony, and the wild words fly up

to the poet's brain to match their emotion. I do not know whether the

verses entitled "The Brute" are poetry, but they have an amazing energy

of expression.

But our poet can be beautiful when he wills, and sometimes, too, he has

largeness and grandeur of vision and expression. Look at this picture of

the earth, seen from mid-heaven:

And so he looked to where the earth, asleep,

Rocked with the moon. He saw the whirling sea

Swing round the world in surgent energy,

Tangling the moonlight in its netted foam,

And nearer saw the white and fretted dome

Of the ice-capped pole spin back a larded ray

To whistling stars, bright as a wizard's day,

But these he passed with eyes intently wide,

Till closer still the mountains he espied,

Squatting tremendous on the broad-backed earth,

Each nursing twenty rivers at a birth.

I would like to quote the verses entitled "Shame." Never have I read

anywhere such an anguished cowering before Conscience, a mighty creature

full of eyes within and without, and pointing fingers and asped tongues,

anticipating in secret the blazing condemnation of the world. And there

is "Bessie Bobtail," staggering down the streets with her reiterated,

inarticulate expression of grief, moving like one of those wretched whom

Blake described in a marvelous phrase as "drunken with woe forgotten";

and there is "Satan," where the reconcilement of light and darkness in

the twilights of time is perfectly and imaginatively expressed.

The Hill of Vision is a very unequal book. There are many verses full

of power, which move with the free easy motion of the literary athlete.

Others betray awkwardness, and stumble as if the writer had stepped too

suddenly into the sunlight of his power, and was dazed and bewildered.

There is some diffusion of his faculties in what I feel are byways of

his mind, but the main current of his energies will, I am convinced,

urge him on to his inevitable portrayal of humanity. With writers like

Synge and Stephens the Celtic imagination is leaving its Timanoges, its

Ildathachs, its Many Colored Lands and impersonal moods, and is coming

down to earth intent on vigorous life and individual humanity. I can see

that there are great tales to be told and great songs to be sung, and I

watch the doings of the new-comers with sympathy, all the while feeling

I am somewhat remote from their world, for I belong to an earlier day,

and listen to these robust songs somewhat as a ghost who hears the cock

crow, and knows his hours are over, and he and his tribe must disappear

into tradition.

1912

A NOTE ON SEUMAS O'SULLIVAN

As I grow older I get more songless. I am now exiled irrevocably from

the Country of the Young, but I hope I can listen without jealousy and

even with delight to those who still make music in the enchanted land. I

often searched in the "Poet's Corner" of the country papers with a

wild surmise that there, amid reports of Boards of Guardians and Rural

Councils, some poetic young kinsman may be taking council with the

stars, watching more closely the Plough in the furrows of the heavens

than the county instructor at his task of making farmers drive the

plough straight in the fields. I found many years ago in a country paper

a local poet making genuine music. I remember a line:

And hidden rivers were murmuring in the dark.

I went on in the strength of this poem through the desert

of country journalism for many years, hoping to find more hidden rivers

of song murmuring in the darkness. It was a patient life of unrequited

toil, and I have returned to civilization to search publishers' lists

for more easily procurable pleasure. A few years ago I mined out of the

still darker region of manuscripts some poetic crystals which I thought

were valuable, and edited New Songs. Nearly all my young singers have

since then taken flight on their own account. Some have volumes in the

booksellers and some in the hands of the printers. But there is one

shy singer of the group of writers in New Songs who might easily get

overlooked because his verse takes little or no thought of the past

or present or future of his country: yet the slim book in which is

collected Seumas O'Sullivan's verses reveals a true poet, and if he is

too shy to claim his country in his verses there is no reason why his

country should not claim him, for he is in his way as Irish as any of

our singers. He is, as Mr. W. B. Yeats was in his earlier days, the

literary successor of those old Gaelic poets who were fastidious in

their verse, who loved little in this world but some chance light in it

which reminded them of fairyland, or who, if they were in love, loved

their mistress less for her own sake than because some turn of her head,

or "a foam-pale breast," carried their impetuous imaginations past her

beauty into memories of Helen of Troy, Deirdre, or some other symbol

of that remote and perfect beauty which, however man desires, he shall

embrace only at the end of time. I think the wives or mistresses of

these old poets must have been very unhappy, for women wish to be loved

for what they know about themselves, and for the tenderness which is in

their hearts, and not because some colored twilight invests them with a

shadowy beauty not their own, and which they know they can never

carry into the light of day. These poets of the transient look and the

evanescent light do not help us to live our daily life, but they do

something which is as necessary. They educate and refine the spirit so

that it shall not come altogether without any understanding of delicate

loveliness into the Kingdom of Heaven, or gaze on Timanoge with the

crude blank misunderstanding of Cockney tourists staring up at the

stupendous dreams pictured on the roof of the Sistine Chapel. These

fastidious scorners of every day and its interests are always looking

through nature for "the herbs before they were in the field and every

flower before it grew," and through women for the Eve who was in the

imagination of the Lord before she was embodied, and we all need this

refining vision more than we know. It may be asked of us hereafter when

we would mount up into the towers of vision, "How can you desire the

beauty you have not seen, who have not sought or loved its shadow in

the world?" and the Gates of Ivory may not swing open at our knock. This

will never be said to Seumas O'Sullivan, who is always waiting on

the transient look and the evanescent light to build up out of their

remembered beauty the Kingdom of his Heaven:

Round you light tresses, delicate,

Wind blown, wander and climb

Immortal, transitory.

Earth has no steady beauty as the calm-eyed immortals have, but their

image glimmers on the waves of time, and out of what instantly vanishes

we can build up something within us which may yet grow into a calm-eyed

immortality of loveliness, we becoming gradually what we dream of. I

have heard people complain of the frailty of these verses of Seumas

O'Sullivan. They want war songs, plough songs, to nerve the soul to

fight or the hand to do its work. I will never make that complaint. I

will only complain if the strife or the work ever blunt my senses so

that I will pass by with an impatient disdain these delicate snatchings

at a beauty which is ever fleeting. But I would ask him to remember that

life never allures us twice with exactly the same enchantment. Never

again will that tress drift like a woven wind made visible out of

Paradise; never again will that lifted hand, foam-pale, seem like the

springing up of beauty in the world; never a second time will that white

brow remind him of the wonderful white towers of the city of the

gods. To seek a second inspiration is to receive only a second-rate

inspiration, and our poet is a little too fond of lingering in his verse

round a few things, a face, the swaying poplars, or sighing reeds which

had once piped an alluring music in his ears, and which he longs to hear

again. He lives not in too frail a world, but in too narrow a world, and

he should adventure out into new worlds in the old quest. He, has become

a master of delicate and musical rhythms. I remember reading Seumas

O'Sulivan's first manuscripts with mingled pleasure and horror, for his

lines often ran anyhow, and scansion seemed to him an unknown art, but I

feel humbly now that he can get a subtle quality into his music which I

could not hope to acquire. I would like him to catch some new and rare

birds with that subtle net of his, and to begin to invent more beauty

of his own and to seek for it less. I believe he has got it in him to

do well, to do better than he has done if he will now try to use his

invention more. The poems with a slight narrative in them, like "The

Portent" or the "Saint Anthony," seem to me the most perfect, and it is

in this direction, I think, he will succeed best. He wants a story to

keep him from beating musical and ineffective wings in the void. I have

not said half what I want to say about Seumas O'Sullivan's verses, but

I know the world will not listen long to the musings of one verse-writer

on another. I only hope this note may send some readers to their

bookseller for Seumas O'Sullivan's poems, and that it may help them to

study with more understanding a mind that I love.

1909

ART AND LITERATURE

A LECTURE ON THE ART OF G. F. WATTS

After the publication of The Gentle Art of Making Enemies the writer who

ventures to speak of art and literature in the same breath needs

some courage. Since the death of Whistler, his opinions about the

independence of art from the moral ideas with which literature is

preoccupied have been generally accepted in the studios. The artist

who is praised by a literary man would hardly be human if he was not

pleased; but he listens with impatience to any criticism or suggestion

about the substance of his art or the form it should take. I had a

friend, an artist of genius, and when we were both young we argued

together about art on equal terms. It had not then occurred to him that

any intelligence I might have displayed in writing verse did not entitle

me to an opinion about modeling; but one day I found him reading Mr.

Whistler's Ten O'clock. The revolt of art against literature had reached

Ireland. After that, while we were still good friends, he made me feel

that I was an outsider, and when I ventured to plead for a national

character in sculpture, his righteous anger--I might say his

ferocity--forced me to talk of something else.

I was not convinced he was right, but years after I began to use the

brush a little, and I remember painting a twilight from love of some

strange colors and harmonious lines, and when one of my literary friends

found that its interest depended on color and form, and that the idea

in it could not readily be translated into words, and that it left

him wishing that I would illustrate my poems or something that had a

meaning, I veered round at once and understood Whistler, and how foolish

I was to argue with John Hughes. I joined in the general insurrection

of art against the domination of literature. But being a writer and

much concerned with abstract ideas, I have never had the comfort and

happiness of those who embrace this opinion with their whole being, and

when I was asked to lecture, I thought that as I had no Irish Whistler

to fear, I might speak of art in relation to these universal ideas which

artists hold are for literature and not subject matter for art at all.

I must first say it was not my wish to speak. With a world of noble and

immortal forms all about us, it seemed to me as unfitting that words

without art or long labor in their making should be advertised as an

attraction; that any one should be expected to sit here for an hour to

listen to me or another upon a genius which speaks for itself. I was

overruled by Mr. Lane. But it is all wrong, this desire to hear and hold

opinions about art rather than to be moved by the art itself. I know

twenty charlatans who will talk about art, but never lift their eyes

to look at the pictures on the wall. I remember an Irish poet speaking

about art a whole evening in a room hung round with pictures by

Constable, Monet, and others, and he came into that room and went out

of it without looking at those pictures. His interest in art was in the

holding of opinions about it, and in hearing other opinions, which

he could again talk about. I hope I have made some of you feel

uncomfortable. This may, perhaps, seem malicious, but it is necessary to

release artists from the dogmas of critics who are not artists.

I would not venture to speak here tonight if I thought that anything

I said could be laid hold of and be turned into a formula, and used

afterwards to torment some unfortunate artist. An artist will take

with readiness advice or criticism from a fellow-artist, so far as

his natural vanity permits; but he writhes under opinions derived from

Ruskin or Tolstoi, the great theorists. You may ask indignantly, Can no

one, then, speak about paintings or statues except painters or

modelers? No; no one would condemn you to such painful silence and

self-suppression. Artists would wish you to talk unceasingly about

the emotions their pain of making pictures arouse in you; but, under

lifelong enemies, do not suggest to artists the theories under which

they should paint. That is hitting below the belt. The poor artist is as

God made him; and no one, not even a Tolstoi, is competent to undertake

his re-creation. His fellow-artists will pass on to him the tradition of

using the brush. He may use it well or ill; but when you ask him to use

his art to illustrate literary ideas, or ethical ideas, you are asking

him to become a literary man or a preacher. The other arts have their

obvious limitations. The literary man does not dare to demand of the

musician that he shall be scientific or moral. The latter is safe

in uttering every kind of profanity in sound so long as it is music.

Musicians have their art to themselves. But the artist is tormented, and

asked to reflect the thought of his time. Beauty is primarily what he

is concerned with; and the only moral ideas which he can impart in a

satisfactory way are the moral ideas naturally associated with beauty in

its higher or lower forms. But I think, some of you are confuting me in

your own minds at this moment. You say to yourselves: "But we have all

about us the works of great artists whose inspiration not one will deny.

He used his art to express great ethical ideas. He spoke again and again

about these ideas. He was proud that his art was dedicated to their

expression." I am sorry to say that he did say many things which would

have endeared him to Tolstoi and Ruskin, and for which I respect him

as a man, and which as an artist I deplore. I deplore his speaking of

ethical ideas as the inspiration of his art, because I think they were

only the inspiration of his life; and where he is weakest in his appeal

as an artist is where he summons consciously to his aid ethical ideas

which find their proper expression in religion or literature or life.

Watts wished to ennoble art by summoning to its aid the highest

conceptions of literature; but in doing so he seems to me to imply that

art needed such conceptions for its justification, that the pure artist

mind, careless of these ideas, and only careful to make for itself

a beautiful vision of things, was in a lower plane, and had a less

spiritual message. Now that I deny. I deny absolutely that art needs to

call to its aid, in order to justify or ennoble it, any abstract ideas

about love or justice or mercy.

It may express none of these ideas, and yet express truths of its own

as high and as essential to the being of man; and it is in spite of

himself, in spite of his theories, that the work of Watts will have

an enduring place in the history of art. You will ask then, "Can art

express no moral ideas? Is it unmoral?" In the definite and restricted

sense in which the words "ethical" and "moral" are generally used, art

is, and must by its nature be unmoral. I do not mean "immoral," and let

no one represent me as saying art must be immoral by its very nature.

There are dear newspaper men to whom it would be a delight to attribute

to me such a saying; and never to let me forget that I said it. When I

say that art is essentially unmoral, I mean that the first impulse to

paint comes from something seen, either beauty of color or form or tone.

It may be light which attracts the artist, or it may be some dimming of

natural forms, until they seem to have more of the loveliness of mind

than of nature. But it is the aesthetic, not the moral or ethical,

nature which is stirred. The picture may afterwards be called "Charity,"

or "Faith," or "Hope"--and any of these words may make an apt title. But

what looms up before the vision of the artist first of all is an image,

and that is accepted on account of its fitness for a picture; and an

image which was not pictorial would be rejected at once by any true

artist, whether it was an illustration of the noblest moral conception

or not. Whether a picture is moral or immoral will depend upon

the character of the artist, and not upon the subject. A man will

communicate his character in everything he touches. He cannot escape

communicating it. He must be content with that silent witness, and not

try to let the virtues shout out from his pictures. The fact is, art is

essentially a spiritual thing, and its vision is perpetually turned

to Ultimates. It is indefinable as spirit is. It perceives in life and

nature those indefinable relations of one thing to another which to the

religious thinker suggest a master mind in nature--a magician of

the beautiful at work from hour to hour, from moment to moment, in a

never-ceasing and solemn chariot motion in the heavens, in the perpetual

and marvelous breathing forth of winds, in the motion of waters, and in

the unending evolution of gay and delicate forms of leaf and wing.

The artist may be no philosopher, no mystic; he may be with or without a

moral sense, he may not believe in more than his eye can see; but in so

far as he can shape clay into beautiful and moving forms he is imitating

Deity; when his eye has caught with delight some subtle relation between

color and color there is mysticism in his vision. I am not concerned

here to prove that there is a spirit in nature or humanity; but for

those who ask from art a serious message, here, I say, is a way of

receiving from art an inspiration the most profound that man can

receive. When you ask from the artist that he should teach you,

be careful that you are not asking him to be obvious, to utter

platitudes--that you are not asking him to debase his art to make things

easy for you, who are too indolent to climb to the mountain, but want

it brought to your feet. There are people who pass by a nocturne by

Whistler, a misty twilight by Corot, and who whisper solemnly before a

Noel Paton as if they were in a Cathedral. Is God, then, only present

when His Name is uttered? When we call a figure Time or Death, does

it add dignity to it? What is the real inspiration we derive from that

noble design by Mr. Watts? Not the comprehension of Time, not the nature

of Death, but a revelation human form can express of the heroic dignity.

Is it not more to us to know that man or woman can look half-divine,

that they can wear an aspect such as we imagine belongs to the

immortals, and to feel that if man is made in the image of his Creator,

his Creator is the archetype of no ignoble thing? There were immortal

powers in Watts' mind when those figures surged up in it; but they were

neither Time nor Death. He was rather near to his own archetype, and in

that mood in which Emerson was when he said, "I the imperfect adore

my own perfect." Touch by touch, as the picture was built up, he was

becoming conscious of some interior majesty in his own nature, and

it was for himself more than for us he worked. "The oration is to the

orator," says Whitman, "and comes most back to him." The artist, too, as

he creates a beautiful form outside himself, creates within himself,

or admits to his being a nobler beauty than his eyes have seen. His

inspiration is spiritual in its origin, and there is always in it some

strange story of the glory of the King.

With man and his work we must take either a spiritual or a material

point of view. All half-way beliefs are temporary and illogical. I

prefer the spiritual with its admission of incalculable mystery and

romance in nature, where we find the infinite folded in the atom, and

feel how in the unconscious result and labor of man's hand the Eternal

is working Its will. You may say that this belongs more to psychology

than to art criticism, but I am trying to make clear to you and to

myself the relation which the mind which is in literature may rightly

bear to the vision which is art. Are literature and ethics to dictate

to Art its subjects? Is it right to demand that the artist's work shall

have an obviously intelligible message or meaning, which the intellect

can abstract from it and relate to the conduct of life? My belief is

that the most literature can do is to help to interpret art, and that

art offers to it, as nature does, a vision of beauty, but of undefined

significance.

No one asks or expects the clouds to shape themselves into ethical

forms, or the sun to shine only on the just and not on the unjust

also. It is vain to expect it, but there is something written about the

heavens declaring the beauty of the Creator and the firmament showing

His handiwork. If the artist can bring whatever of that vision has

touched him into his work we should ask no more, and must not expect him

to be more righteously minded than his Creator, or to add a finishing

tag of moral to justify it all, to show that Deity is solemnly minded

and no mere idle trifler with beauty like Whistler.

I have stated my belief that art is spiritual, that its genuine

inspirations come from a higher plane of our being than the ethical

or intellectual; and I think wherever literature or ethics have so

dominated the mind of the artist that they change the form of his

inspiration, his art loses its own peculiar power and gains nothing. We

have here a picture of "Love steering the bark of Humanity." I may put

it rather crudely when I say that pictures like this are supposed to

exert a power on the man who, for example, would beat his wife, so that

love will be his after inspiration. Anyhow, ethical pictures are painted

with some such intention belief. Now, art has great influence, but I do

not believe this or any other picture would stop a man beating his wife

if he wanted to. Art does not call sinners to repentance; that is not

one of its powers. It fulfils rather another saying: "Unto them that

have much shall be given," bringing delight to those that are already

sensitive to beauty. My own conviction is that ethical pictures are,

if anything, immoral in their influence, as everything must be that

forsakes the law of its own being, and that pictures like this only add

to the vanity of people so righteously minded as to be aware of their

own virtue. We will always have these concessions to passing phases of

thought. We have had requests for the scientific painter--the man who

will paint nature with geological accuracy, and man in accordance

with evolutionary dogmas. He will find his eloquent literary defenders

enchanted to find so much learning to point to in his work, but it will

all pass. The true artist will still be instinctively spiritual.

Now I have used the word "spiritual" so often in connection with art

that you may reasonably ask for some definition of my meaning. I am

afraid it is easier to define spirituality in literature than in art.

But a literary definition may help. Spirituality is the power certain

minds have of apprehending formless spiritual essences, of seeing the

eternal in the transitory, of relating the particular to the universal,

the type to the archetype.

While I give this definition, I hope no artist will ever be insane

enough to make it the guiding principle of his art. I shudder to

think of any conscious attempt in a picture to relate the type to the

archetype. It is a philosophical definition, solely intended for the

spectator. I wish the artist only to paint his vision, and whether

he paints this, or another world he imagines, if it is art it will be

spiritual. I have given a definition of spirituality in literature, but

how now relate it to art? How illustrate its presence? When Pater wrote

his famous description of the Mona Lisa, that intense and enigmatic face

had evoked a spiritual mood. When he saw in it the summed-up experience

of many generations of humanity, he felt in the picture that relation

of the particular to the universal I have spoken of. When we find human

forms suggesting a superhuman dignity, as in Watts' figures of Time and

Death, or in the Phidian marbles, the type is there melting into the

archetype. When Millet paints a peasant figure of today with some

gesture we imagine the first Sower must have used, it is the eternal

in it which makes the transitory impressive. But these are obvious

instances, you will say, chosen from artists whose pictures lend

themselves to this kind of exposition. What about the art of the

landscape painter? Undeniably a form of art, where is the spirituality?

I am afraid my intellect is not equal to talking up every picture that

might be suggested and using it to illustrate my meaning, though I do

not think I would despair of finally discovering the spiritual element

in any picture I felt was art. However, I will go further. We have all

felt some element of art lacking in the painter who goes to Killarney,

Italy, or Switzerland, and brings us back a faithful representation of

undeniably beautiful places. It is all there--the lofty mountains, the

lakes, the local color; but what enchanted us in nature does not touch

us in the picture. What we want is the spirit of the place evoked in us

rather than the place itself. Art is neither pictured botany or geology.

A great landscape is the expression of a mood of the human mind as

definitely as music or poetry is. The artist is communicating his own

emotions. There is some mystic significance in the color he employs; and

then the doorways are opened, and we pass from sense into soul. We

are looking into a soul when we are looking at a Turner, a Carot, or a

Whistler, as surely as when in dream we find ourselves moving in strange

countries which are yet within us, contained for all their seeming

infinitudes in the little hollow of the brain. All this, I think, is

undeniable; but perhaps not many of you will follow me, though you

may understand me, if I go further and say, that in this, art is

unconsciously also reaching out to archetypes, is lifting itself up to

walk in that garden of the divine mind where, as the first Scripture

says, it created "flowers before they were in the field and every herb

before it grew." A man may sit in an armchair and travel farther than

ever Columbus traveled; and no one can say how far Turner, in his search

after light, had not journeyed into the lost Eden, and he himself may

have been there most surely at the last when his pictures had become a

blaze of incoherent light.

You may say now that I have objected to literature dominating the arts,

and yet I have drawn from pictures a most complicated theory. I have

felt a little, indeed, as if I was marching through subtleties to

the dismemberment of my mind, but I do not think I have anywhere

contradicted myself or suggested that an artist should work on these

speculations. These may rightly arise in the mind of the onlooker who

will regard a work of art with his whole nature, not merely with the

aesthetic sense, and who will naturally pass from the first delight

of vision into a psychological analysis. A profound nature will always

awaken profound reflections. There are heads by Da Vinci as interesting

in their humanity as Hamlet. When we see eyes that tempt and allure with

lips virginal in their purity, we feel in the face a union of things

which the dual nature of man is eternally desiring. It is the marriage

of heaven and hell, the union of spirit and flesh, each with their

uncurbed desires; and what is impossible in life is in his art, and is

one of the secrets of its strange fascination. It may seem paradoxical

to say of Watts--a man of genius, who was always preaching through his

art--that it is very difficult to find what he really expresses. No

one is ever for a moment in doubt about what is expressed by Rossetti,

Turner, Millet, Corot, or many contemporary artists who never preached

at all, but whose mood or vision peculiar to themselves is easily

definable. With Watts the effort at analyses is confused: first by his

own statement about the ethical significance of his works, which I think

misleading, because while we may come away from his pictures with many

feelings of majesty or beauty or mystery, the ethical spirit is not

the predominant one. That rapturous winged spirit which he calls Love

Triumphant might just as easily be called Music or Song, and another

allegory be attached to it without our feeling any more special fitness

or unfitness in the explanation. I see a beautiful exultant figure, but

I do not feel love as the fundamental mood in the painter, as I feel the

religious mood is fundamental in the Angelus of Millet. I do not need to

look for a title to that or for the painting of The Shepherdess to feel

how earth and her children have become one in the vision of the painter;

that the shepherdess is not the subject, nor the sheep, nor the still

evening, but altogether are one mood, one being, in which all things

move in harmony and are guided by the Great Shepherd. Well, I do not

feel that Love; or Charity, or Hope are expressed in this way in Watts,

and that the ethical spirit is not fundamental with him as the religious

spirit is with Millet. He has an intellectual conception of his moral

idea, but is not emotionally obsessed by it, and the basis of a man's

art is not to be found in his intellectual conceptions, which are light

things, but in his character or rather in his temperament. We know, for

all the poetical circumstances of Rossetti's pictures, what desire it is

that shines out of those ardent faces, and how with Leighton "the form

alone is eloquent," and that Tumer's God was light as surely as with any

Persian worshipper of the sun. Here and there they may have been tempted

otherwise, but they never strayed far from their temperamental way of

expressing themselves in art. So that the first thing to be dismissed

in trying to understand Watts is Watts' own view of his art and its

inspiration. He is not the first distinguished man whose intellect has

not proved equal to explaining rightly its sources of power. Our next

difficulty in discovering the real Watts arises because he did not look

at nature or life directly. He was overcome by great traditions. He

almost persistently looks at nature through one or two veils. There is

a Phidian veil and a Venetian or rather an Italian veil, and almost

everything in life and nature which could not be expressed in terms of

these traditions he ignored. I might say that no artist of equal genius

ever painted pictures and brought so little fresh observation into his

art except, perhaps, Burne-Jones. Both these artists seem to have a

secret and refined sympathy with Fuseli's famous outburst, "Damn Nature,

she always puts me out!" Even when the sitter came, Watts seems to have

been uneasy unless he could turn him into a Venetian nobleman or person

of the Middle Ages, or could disguise in some way the fact that Artist

and Sitter belonged to the nineteenth century. He does not seem to be

aware that people must breathe even in pictures. His skies rest solidly

on the shoulders of his figures as if they were cut out to let the

figures be inserted. If he were not a man of genius there would have

been an end of him. But he was a man of genius, and we must try to

understand the meaning of his acceptance of tradition. If we understand

it in Watts we will understand a great deal of contemporary art and

literature which is called derivative, art issuing out of art, and

literature out of literature.

The fact is that this kind of art in which Watts and Burne-Jones were

pioneers is an art which has not yet come to its culmination or to any

perfect expression of itself. There is a genuinely individual impulse in

it, and it is not derivative merely, although almost every phase of

it can be related to earlier art. It has nothing in common with the

so-called grand school of painting which produced worthless imitations

of Michael Angelo and Raphael. It is feeling out for a new world, and it

is trying to use the older tradition as a bridge. The older art held up

a mirror to natural forms and brought them nearer to man. In the perfect

culmination of this new art one feels how a complete change might take

place and natural forms be used to express an internal nature or the

soul of the artist. Colors and forms, like words after the lapse of

centuries, enlarge their significance. The earliest art was probably

simple and literal--there may have been the outline of a figure filled

up with some flat color. Then as art became more complex, colors began

to have an emotional meaning quite apart from their original relation

to an object. The artist begins unconsciously to relate color more

intimately to his own temperament than to external nature. At last,

after the lapse of ages, some sensitive artist begins to imagine that

he has discovered a complete language capable of expressing any mood

of mind. The passing of centuries has enriched every color, and left

it related to some new phase of the soul. Phidian or Michael Angelesque

forms gather their own peculiar associations of divinity or power. In

fact, this new art uses the forms of the old as symbols or hieroglyphs

to express more complicated ideas than the older artists tried to

depict.

Watts never attempted, for all his admiration of these men, to

follow them in their efforts to realize perfectly the forms that they

conceived. They had done this once and for all, and repetition may have

seemed unnecessary. But the lofty temper awakened by those stupendous

creations could be aroused by a suggestion of their peculiar

characteristics. Association of ideas will in some subtle way bring us

back to the Phidian demigods when we look at forms and draperies

vaguely suggestive of the Parthenon. I do not say that Watt's did this

consciously, but instinctively he felt compelled, with the gradual

development of his own mind, to use the imaginative traditions created

by other artists as a language through which he might find expression

peculiar to himself. It is a highly intellectual art to which tradition

was a necessity, as much as it is to the poet, who when he speaks of

"beauty" draws upon a sentiment created by millions of long-dead lovers,

or who, when he thinks of the "spirit," is, in his use of the word, the

heir of countless generations who brooded upon the mysteries.

Just as in Millet, the painter of peasants, there was a religious spirit

shaping all things into austere and elemental simplicities, so in Watts

there was an intellectual spirit, seeking everywhere for the traces of

mind trying to express the bodiless and abstract. With Whitman he seems

to cry out, "The soul for ever and ever!" It is there in the astonishing

head of Swinburne, whom he reveals, if I may use a vulgar phrase, as a

poetic "bounder," but illuminated and etherealized by genius. It is in

the head of Mill, the very symbol of the moral reasoning--mind. It is in

the face of Tennyson, with its too self-conscious seership, and in

all those vague faces of the imaginative paintings, into which, to use

Pater's phrase, "the soul with all its maladies has passed." In his

pictures he draws on the effects of earlier art, and throws his sitters

back until they seem to belong to some nondescript mediaeval country,

like the Bohemia of the dramatists; and he darkens and shuts out the

light of day that this starlight of soul may be more clearly seen, and

destroys, as far as he can, all traces of the century they live in, for

the mind lives in all the ages, and he would show it as the pilgrim of

eternity. Because Watts' art was necessarily so brooding and meditative,

looking at life with half-closed eyes and then shutting them to be alone

with memory and the interpreter, his painting, so beautiful and full

of surety in early pictures like the Wounded Heron, grows to be often

labored and muddy, and his drawing uncertain. That he could draw and

paint with the greatest, he every now and then gave proof; but the

surety of beautiful craftsmanship deserts those who have not always

their eye fixed on an object of vision; and Watts was not, like Blake

or Shelley, one of the proud seers whose visions are of "forms more real

than living man." He seemed to feel what his effects should be rather

than to see them, or else his vision was fleeting and his art was a

laborious brooding to recapture the lost impression. In his color he

always seems to me to be second-hand, as if the bloom and freshness of

his paint had worn off through previous use by other artists. It

seemed to be a necessity of his curiously intellectual art that only

traditional colors and forms should be employed, and it is only rarely

we get the shock of a new creation, and absolutely original design, as

in Orpheus, where the passionate figure turns to hold what is already a

vanishing shadow.

Watts' art was an effort to invest his own age, an age of reason, with

the nobilities engendered in an age of faith. At the time Watts was

at his prime his contemporaries were everywhere losing belief in

the spiritual conceptions of earlier periods; they were analyzing

everything, and were deciding that what was really true in religion,

what gave it nobility, was its ethical teaching; retain that, and

religion might go, illustrating the truth of the Chinese philosopher

who said: "When the spirit is lost, men follow after charity and duty

to one's neighbors." The unity of belief was broken up into diverse

intellectual conceptions. Men talked about love and liberty, patriotism,

duty, charity, and a whole host of abstractions moral and intellectual,

which they had convinced themselves were the essence of religion and

the real cause of its power over man. Whether Watts lost faith like his

contemporaries I do not know, but their spirit infected his art. He set

himself to paint these abstractions; and because we cannot imagine these

abstractions with a form, we feel something fundamentally false in this

side of his art. He who paints a man, an angelic being, or a divine

being, paints something we feel may have life. But it is impossible

to imagine Time with a body as it is to imagine a painting embodying

Newton's law of gravitation. It is because such abstractions do not

readily take shape that Watts drew so much on the imaginative tradition

of his predecessors. Where these pictures are impressive is where the

artist slipped by his conscious aim, and laid hold of the nobility

peculiar to the men and women he used as symbols. It is not Time

or Death which awes us in Watts' picture, but majestical images of

humanity; and Watts is at his greatest as an inventor when humanity

itself most occupies him when he depicts human life only, and lets

it suggest its own natural infinity, as in those images of the lovers

drifting through the Inferno, with whom every passion is burnt out and

exhausted but the love through which they fell.

Life itself is more infinite, noble, and suggestive than thought. We

soon come to the end of the ingenious allegory. It tells only one story

but where there is a perfect image of life there is infinitude and

mystery. We do not tire considering the long ancestry of expression in

a face. It may lead us back through the ages; but we do tire of the art

which imprisons itself within formulae, and says to the spectator: "In

this way and in no other shall you regard what is before you." No man is

profound enough to explain the nature of his own inspiration. Socrates

says that the poet utters many things which are truer than he himself

understands. The same thing applies to many a great artist, who, when he

paints tree or field, or face, or form, finds that there comes on him a

mysterious quickening of his nature, and he paints he knows not what.

It is like and unlike what his eyes have seen. It may be the same field,

but we feel there the presence of the spirit. It may be the same figure,

but it is made transcendental, as when the Word had become flesh and

dwelt among us. His inspiration is akin to that of the prophets of old,

whose words rang but for an instant and were still, yet they created

nations whose only boundaries were the silences where their speech had

not been heard. His majestical figures are prophecies. His ecstatic

landscapes bring us nigh to the beauty which was in Eden. His art is a

divine adventure, in which he, like all of us who are traveling in so

many ways, seeks, consciously or unconsciously, to regain the lost unity

with nature and the knowledge of his own immortal being, and it is so

you will best understand it.

1906

AN ARTIST OF GAELIC IRELAND

The art of Hone and the elder Yeats, while in spirit filled with a

sentiment which was the persistence of ancient moods into modern times,

still has not the external characteristics of Gaeldom; but looking at

the pictures of the younger Yeats it seemed to me that for the first

time we had something which could be called altogether Gaelic. The

incompleteness of the sketches suggests the term "folk" as expressing

exactly the inspiration of this very genuine art. We have had abundance

of Irish folk-lore, but we knew nothing of folk-art until the figures of

Jack Yeats first romped into our imagination a few years ago. It was the

folk-feeling lit up by genius and interpreted by love. It was not, and

is now less than ever, the patronage bestowed by the intellectual artist

on the evidently picturesque forms of a life below his own.

I suspect Jack Yeats thinks the life of the Sligo fisherman is as good

a method of life as any, and that he could share it for a long time

without being in the least desirous of a return to the comfortable

life of convention. The name of Muglas Hyde suggests itself to me as a

literary parallel. These sketches have all the prodigality of invention,

the exuberance of gesture, and animation of "The Twisting of the Rope,"

and the poetry is of as high or higher an order. In the drawing called

"Midsummer Eve" there is a mystery which is not merely the mystery

of night and shadow. It is the mystery of the mingling of spirit with

spirit which is suggested by the solitary figure with face upturned

to the stars. We have all memories of such summer nights when into the

charmed heart falls the enchantment we call ancient, though the days

have no fellows, nor will ever have any, when the earth glows with the

dusky hues of rich pottery, and the stars, far withdrawn into faery

altitudes, dance with a gaiety which is more tremendous and solemn than

any repose. The night of this picture is steeped in such a dream, and I

know not whether it is communicated, or a feeling arising in myself; but

there seems everywhere in it the breathing of life, subtle, exultant,

penetrating. It is conceived in the mood of awe and prayer, which makes

Millet's pictures as religious as any whichever hung over the altar, for

surely the "Angelus" is one of the most spiritual of pictures, though

the peasants bow their heads and worship in a temple not built with

hands. I do not, of course, compare otherwise than in the mood the

"Midsummer Eve" to such a masterpiece; but there is a kinship between

the beauty revealed in great and in little things, and our thought turns

from the stars to the flowers with no feeling of descent into an

alien world. But this mood is rare in life as in art, and it is only

occasionally that the younger Yeats becomes the interpreter of the

spirituality of the peasant. He is more often the recorder of the

extravagant energies of the race-course and the market-place, where he

finds herded together all the grotesque humors of West Irish life.

We recognize his figures as distinctly Irish. Here the old rollicking

Lever and Lover type of Irishmen reappear, hunting like the very devil,

with faces set in the last ecstasy of rapid motion. There is an excess

of energy in these furious riders which almost gives them a symbolic

character. They seem to ride on some passionate business of the soul

rather than for any transitory excitement of the body. And besides these

wild horse-men there are quiet and lovely figures like "A Mother of

the Rosses," holding her child to her breast in an opalescent twilight,

through which the boat that carries her moves. There are always large

and noble outlines, which suggest that if Jack Yeats had more grandiose

ambitions he might have been the Millet of Irish rural life, but he is

too much the symbolist, hating all but essentials, to elaborate his art.

In writing of Jack Yeats mention must be made of his black and white

work, which at its best has a primitive intensity. The lines have a

kind of Gothic quality, reminding one of the rude glooms, the lights

and lines of some half-barbarian cathedral. They are very expressive and

never undecided. The artist always knows what he is going to do. There

is no doubt he has a clear image before him when he takes up pen or

brush. A strong will is always directing the strong lines, forcing them

to repeat an image present to the inner eye. In his early days Jack

Yeats loafed about the quays at Sligo, and we may be sure he was at all

the races, and paid his penny to go into the side-shows, and see the

freaks, the Fat Woman and the Skeleton Man. It was probably at this

period of his life he was captured by pirates of the Spanish Main. My

remembrance of Irish county towns at that time is that no literature

flourished except the Penny Dreadful and the local press. I may be

doing Jack Yeats an injustice when hailing him at the beginning of a

fascinating career I yet suspect a long background of Penny Dreadfuls

behind it. How else could he have drawn his pirates? They are the only

pirates in art who manifest the true pride, glory, beauty, and terror

of their calling as the romantic heart of childhood conceives of it. The

pirate has been lifted up to a strange kind of poetry in some of Jack

Yeats' pictures. I remember one called "Walking the Plank." The solemn

theatrical face, lifted up to the blue sky in a last farewell to the

wild world and its lawless freedom, haunted me for days. There was also

a pen-and-ink drawing I wish I could reproduce here. A young buccaneer,

splendid in evil bravery, leaned across a bar where a strange, beastly,

little, old, withered, rat-like figure was drawing the drink. The little

figure was like a devil with the soul all concentrated into malice,

and the whole picture affected one with terror like a descent into some

ferocious human hell.

In all these figures, pirates or peasants, there is an ever present

suggestion of poetry; it is in the skies, or in the distance, or in the

colors; and these people who laugh in the fairs will have after hours

as solemn as the quiet star-gazer in the "Midsummer Eve." This poetry

is evident in the oddest ways, and escapes analysis, so elusive and so

original is it, as in the "Street of Shows." Nothing at first thought

seems more hopelessly remote from poetry than the country circus, with

its lurid posters of the Giant Schoolgirl, the Petrified Man, and the

Mermaid, all in strong sunlight; but the heart carries with it its

own mood, and this flaring scene has undergone some indefinite

transformation by the alchemy of genius, and it assumes the character of

a fairy tale or Arabian Nights Entertainment imagined in the fantastic

dreams of childhood. The sleepy doorkeeper is a goblin or gnome. Perhaps

the charm of it all is that it is so evidently illusion, for when the

heart is strong in its own surety it can look out on the world, and

smile on things which would be unendurable if felt to be permanent,

knowing they are only dreams.

Many of these sketches have a largeness, almost a nobility, of

conception, which is, I think, a gift from father to son. "After the

Harvest's Saved" is something elemental. The "Post-car" suggests the

horses of the sun, or the stage coach in De Quincey's extraordinary

dream, when the opium had finally rioted in his brain, and transformed

his stage-coach into a chariot carrying news of some everlasting

victory. Blake has said "exuberance is genius," and there is an excess

of energy or passion, or a dilation of the forms, or a peace deeper than

mere quietude in the figures of Mr. Yeats' pictures, which gives them

that symbolic character which genius always impresses on its works.

The coloring grows better every year; it is more varied and purer. It

is sometimes sombre, as in the tragic and dramatic "Simon the Cyrenian,"

and sometimes rich and flowerlike, but always charged with sentiment,

and there is a curious fitness in it even when it is evidently unreal.

These blues and purples and pale greens--what crowd ever seemed clad

in such twilight colors? And yet we accept it as natural, for this

opalescence is always in the mist-laden air of the West; it enters into

the soul today as it did into the soul of the ancient Gael, who called

it Ildathach--the many-colored land; it becomes part of the atmosphere

of the mind; and I think Mr. Yeats means here to express, by one of the

inventions of genius, that this dim radiant coloring of his figures is

the fitting symbol of the fairyland which is in their hearts. I have not

felt so envious of any artist's gift for a long time; not envy of his

power of expression, but of his way of seeing things. We are all seeking

today for some glimpse of the fairyland our fathers knew; but all the

fairylands, the Silver Cloud World, the Tirnanoge, the Land of Heart's

Desire, rose like dreams out of the human soul, and in tracking them

there Mr. Yeats has been more fortunate than us all, for he has come to

the truth, perhaps hardly conscious of it himself.

1902

TWO IRISH ARTISTS

It is unjust to an artist to write on the spur of the moment of his

work--of the just seen picture which pleases or displeases. For what

instantly delights the eye may never win its way into the heart, and

what repels at first may steal later on into the understanding, and find

its interpretation in a deeper mood. The final test of a picture, or of

any work of art, is its power of enduring charm. There are many circles

in the Paradise of Beautiful Memories, and half unconsciously, but with

a justice, we at last place each in its hierarchy, remote or near to

the centre of our being; and I propose here rather to speak of the

impression left in my memory after seeing the work of Yeats and Hone

for many years, than to describe in detail the pictures--some new,

some familiar--which by a happy thought have been gathered together for

exhibition. To tell an artist that you remember his pictures with

love after many years is the highest praise you can give him; and to

distinguish the impression produced from others is a pleasure I am glad

to be here allowed.

An artist like Mr. Yeats, whose main work has been in portraiture, must

often find himself before sitters with whom he has little sympathy, and

we all expect to find portraits which do not interest us, because the

interpreter has been at fault, and has failed in his vision. With the

born craftsman, who always gives us beautiful brushwork, we do not

expect these inequalities, but with Mr. Yeats technical power is not the

most prominent characteristic. He broods or dreams over his sitters,

and his meditation always tends to the discovery of some spiritual

or intellectual life in them, or some hidden charm in the nature, or

something to love; and if he finds what he seeks, we are sure, not

always of a complete picture, but of a poetic illumination, a revelation

of character, a secret sweetness for which we forgive the weakness or

indecision manifest here and there, and which are relics of the hours

before the final surety was attained.

I do not know what Mr. Yeats' philosophy of life is, but in his work

he has been over-mastered by the spirit of his race, and he belongs to

those who from the earliest dawn of Ireland have sought for the Heart's

Desire, and who have refined away the world, until only fragments

remained to them. They have not accepted life as it is, and Mr. Yeats

could not paint like Reynolds or Romney the beauty of every day in its

best attire. He is like the Irish poets who have rarely left a complete

description of women, but who speak of some transitory motion or fragile

charm--"a thin palm like foam of the sea," "a white body," or in such

vague phrases, until it seems a spirit is praised and not flesh and

blood. I remember the faces of women and children in his pictures where

everything is blurred or obscured, save faces which have a nameless

charm. They look at you with long-remembered glances out of the brooding

hour of twilight, out of reverie and dream. It is the hidden heart which

looks out, and we love these women and children for this, for surely the

heart's desire is its own secret.

His portraits of men have kindred qualities, and the magnificent picture

of John O'Leary shows him at his best. It is itself a symbol of the

movement of which O'Leary was the last great representative. The stately

patriarchal head of the old chief is the head of the idealist, so sure

of his own truth that he must act, and, if needs be, become the

martyr for his ideal. But the delicate hands are not the hands of an

empire-breaker. This portrait will probably find its last resting-place

in the National Gallery, where, with a curious irony, the Government

places the portraits of the dead rebels who gave its statesmen many an

anxious day and many a nightmare; and so it will go on, perhaps, until

the contemplation of these pictures inspires some boy with an equal or

better head and a stronger hand, and then--.

But to return to Mr. Yeats. Some earlier pictures show him attempting to

paint directly the ideal world of romance and poetry; yet interesting

as these are, they do not convey the same impression of mystery as the

pictures of today. Indeed, the light seen behind or through a veil

is always more suggestive than the unveiled light. It may be that

the spirit is a formless breath which pervades form, and it is better

revealed as a light in the eyes, as a brooding expression, than by the

choice of ancient days and other-world subjects, where the shapes can be

molded to ideal forms by the artist's will. However it is, it is certain

that Millet, the realist, is more spiritual than Moreau or Burne-Jones

for all their archaic design; and Mr. Yeats, who, as his King Goll

shows, might have been a great romantic painter, has probably chosen

wisely, and has painted more memorable pictures than if he had gone back

to the fairyland of Celtic mythology.

To turn from Yeats to Hone is to turn from the lighted hearth to the

wilderness. Humanity is very far away, or is huddled up under immense

skies, where it seems of less importance than the rocks. The earth on

which men have lived, where the work of their hand is evident, with all

the sentiment of the presence of man, with smoke arising from numberless

homes, is foreign to Mr. Hone. The monsters of the primeval world might

sprawl on the rocks, for all the evidence of lapse of time since their

day, in many of his pictures. He, too, has refined away his world until

only fragments of the earth remain to him where he can dream in; and

these are waste places, where the salt of the sea is in the wind, and

the skies are gray and vapor-laden, or the loneliness of dim twilights

are over level sands. Whatever else he paints is devoid of its proper

interest, for he seems to impose on the cattle in the fields and on the

habitable places a sentiment alien to their nature. He has a mind with

but one impressive mood, and his spirit is never kindled, save in the

society where none intrude; but in his own domain he is a master, and is

always sure of himself and his effect. There is no tentative, undecisive

brushwork, such as we often see in the subtle search for the unrevealed,

which makes or mars Mr. Yeats' work. He is at home in his peculiar

world, while the other is always seeking for it.

"A Sunset on Malahide Sands" shows a greater intensity than is usual

even in Mr. Hone's work. There is something thrilling in this twilight

trembling over the deserted world. Philosophies may prove very well in

the lecture-room, says Whitman, and not prove at all under the sky and

stars. Pictures likewise may seem beautiful in a gallery, yet look thin

and unreal where, with a turn of the head, one could look out at the

pictures created hour after hour by the Master of the Beautiful; but

there is some magic in this vision made up of elemental light, darkness,

and loneliness, and we feel awed as if we knew the Spirit was hidden

in His works. But primitive as this peculiar world is, and remote from

humanity, it is just here we find a human revelation; for is not all

art a symbol of the creative mind, and if we were wise enough we would

understand that in art the light on every cloud, and the clear spaces

above the cloud, and the shadows of the earth beneath are made out of

the lights, infinitudes, and shadows of the soul, and are selected from

nature because of some correspondence, unconscious or half felt. But

these things belong more to the psychology of the artist mind than to

the appreciation of its work. I have said enough, I hope, to attract to

the work of these artists, in a mood of true understanding, those who

would like to believe in the existence in Ireland of a genuine art. For

ignored and uncared for as art is, we have some names to be proud of,

and of these Mr. Yeats and Mr. Hone are foremost.

1902

"ULSTER"

AN OPEN LETTER TO MR. RUDYARD KIPLING

I Speak to you, brother, because you have spoken to me, or rather you

have spoken for me. I am a native of Ulster. So far back as I can

trace the faith of my forefathers they held the faith for whose free

observance you are afraid.

I call you brother, for so far as I am known beyond the circle of my

personal friends it is as a poet. We are not a numerous tribe, but the

world has held us in honor, because on the whole in poetry is found

the highest and sincerest utterance of man's spirit. In this manner of

speaking if a man is not sincere his speech betrayeth him, for all

true poetry was written on the Mount of Transfiguration, and there is

revelation in it and the mingling of heaven and earth. I am jealous of

the honor of poetry, and I am jealous of the good name of my country,

and I am impelled by both emotions to speak to you.

You have blood of our race in you, and you may, perhaps, have some

knowledge of Irish sentiment. You have offended against one of our

noblest literary traditions in the manner in which you have published

your thoughts. You begin by quoting Scripture. You preface your verses

on Ulster by words from the mysterious oracles of humanity as if you had

been inflamed and inspired by the prophet of God; and you go on to sing

of faith in peril and patriotism betrayed and the danger of death and

oppression by those who do murder by night, which things, if one truly

feels, he speaks of without consideration of commerce or what it shall

profit him to speak. But you, brother, have withheld your fears for your

country and mine until they could yield you a profit in two continents.

After all this high speech about the Lord and the hour of national

darkness it shocks me to find this following your verses: "Copyrighted

in the United States of America by Rudyard Kipling." You are not in

want. You are the most successful man of letters of your time, and yet

you are not above making profit out of the perils of your country.

You ape the lordly speech of the prophets, and you conclude by warning

everybody not to reprint your words at their peril. In Ireland every

poet we honor has dedicated his genius to his country without gain, and

has given without stint, without any niggardly withholding of his gift

when his nation was dark and evil days. Not one of our writers, when

deeply moved about Ireland, has tried to sell the gift of the spirit.

You, brother, hurt me when you declare your principles, and declare a

dividend to yourself out of your patriotism openly and at the same time.

I would not reason with you, but that I know there is something truly

great and noble in you, and there have been hours when the immortal in

you secured your immortality in literature, when you ceased to see life

with that hard cinematograph eye of yours, and saw with the eyes of

the spirit, and power and tenderness and insight were mixed in magical

tales. But you were far from the innermost when you wrote of my

countrymen us you did.

I have lived all my life in Ireland, holding a different faith from that

held by the majority. I know Ireland as few Irishmen know it, county by

county, for I traveled all over Ireland for years, and, Ulster man as I

am, and proud of the Ulster people, I resent the crowning of Ulster

with all the virtues and the dismissal of other Irishmen as thieves and

robbers. I resent the cruelty with which you, a stranger, speak of the

lovable and kindly people I know.

You are not even accurate in your history when you speak of Ulster's

traditions and the blood our forefathers spilt. Over a century ago

Ulster was the strong and fast place of rebellion, and it was in Ulster

that the Volunteers stood beside their cannon and wrung the gift of

political freedom for the Irish Parliament. You are blundering in your

blame. You speak of Irish greed in I know not what connection, unless

you speak of the war waged over the land; and yet you ought to know that

both parties in England have by Act after Act confessed the absolute

justice and rightness of that agitation, Unionist no less than Liberal,

and both boast of their share in answering the Irish appeal. They are

both proud today of what they did. They made inquiry into wrong and

redressed it. But you, it seems, can only feel sore and angry that

intolerable conditions imposed by your laws were not borne in patience

and silence. For what party do you speak? What political ideal inspires

you? When an Irishman has a grievance you smite him. How differently

would you have written of Runnymede and the valiant men who rebelled

when oppressed. You would have made heroes out of them. Have you no soul

left, after admiring the rebels in your own history, to sympathize with

other rebels suffering deeper wrongs? Can you not see deeper into the

motives for rebellion than the hireling reporter who is sent to make

up a case for the paper of a party? The best men in Ulster, the best

Unionists in Ireland will not be grateful to you for libeling their

countrymen in your verse. For, let the truth be known, the mass of Irish

Unionists are much more in love with Ireland than with England. They

think Irish Nationalists are mistaken, and they fight with them and

use hard words, and all the time they believe Irishmen of any party are

better in the sight of God than Englishmen. They think Ireland is the

best country in the world to live in, and they hate to hear Irish people

spoken of as murderers and greedy scoundrels. Murderers! Why, there is

more murder done in any four English shires in a year than in the whole

of the four provinces of Ireland! Greedy! The nation never accepted a

bribe, or took it as an equivalent or payment for an ideal, and what

bribe would not have been offered to Ireland if it had been willing to

forswear its traditions.

I am a person whose whole being goes into a blaze at the thought

of oppression of faith, and yet I think my Catholic countrymen more

tolerant than those who hold the faith I was born in. I am a heretic

judged by their standards, a heretic who has written and made public his

heresies, and I have never suffered in friendship or found my heresies

an obstacle in life. I set my knowledge, the knowledge of a lifetime,

against your ignorance, and I say you have used your genius to do

Ireland and its people a wrong. You have intervened in a quarrel of

which you do not know the merits like any brawling bully, who passes,

and only takes sides to use his strength. If there was a high court of

poetry, and those in power jealous of the noble name of poet, and that

none should use it save those who were truly Knights of the Holy Ghost,

they would hack the golden spurs from your heels and turn you out of the

Court. You had the ear of the world and you poisoned it with prejudice

and ignorance. You had the power of song, and you have always used it

on behalf of the strong against the weak. You have smitten with all your

might at creatures who are frail on earth but mighty in the heavens,

at generosity, at truth, at justice, and heaven has withheld vision

and power and beauty from you, for this your verse is but a shallow

newspaper article made to rhyme. Truly ought the golden spurs to be

hacked from your heels and you be thrust out of the Court.

1912

IDEALS OF THE NEW RURAL SOCIETY

For a country where political agitations follow each other as rapidly

as plagues in an Eastern city, it is curious how little constructive

thought we can show on the ideals of a rural civilization. But economic

peace ought surely to have its victories to show as well as political

war. I would a thousand times rather dwell on what men and women working

together may do than on what may result from majorities at Westminster.

The beauty of great civilizations has been built up far more by the

people working together than by any corporate action of the State. In

these socialistic days we grow pessimistic about our own efforts and

optimistic about the working of the legislature. I think we do right to

expect great things from the State, but we ought to expect still greater

things from ourselves. We ought to know full well that, if the State did

twice as much as it does, we shall never rise out of mediocrity among

the nations unless we have unlimited faith in the power of our personal

efforts to raise and transform Ireland, and unless we translate the

faith into works. The State can give a man an economic holding, but

only the man himself can make it into Earthly Paradise, and it is a dull

business, unworthy of a being made in the image of God, to grind away

at work without some noble end to be served, some glowing ideal to be

attained.

Ireland is a horribly melancholy and cynical country. Our literary men

and poets, who ought to give us courage, have taken to writing about

the Irish as people who "went forth to battle, but always fell,"

sentimentalizing over incompetence instead of invigorating us and

liberating us and directing our energies. We have developed a new and

clever school of Irish dramatists who say they are holding up the mirror

to Irish peasant nature, but they reflect nothing but decadence. They

delight in the broken lights of insanity, the ruffian who beats his

wife, the weakling who is unfortunate in love and who goes and drinks

himself to death, while the little decaying country towns are seized on

with avidity and exhibited on the stage in every kind of decay and human

futility and meanness. Well, it is good to be chastened in spirit,

but it is a thousand times better to be invigorated in spirit. To be

positive is always better than to be negative. These writers understand

and sympathize with Ireland more through their lower nature than their

higher nature. Judging by the things people write in Ireland, and by

what they go to see performed on the stage, it is more pleasing to them

to see enacted characters they know are meaner than themselves than to

see characters which they know are nobler than themselves.

All this is helping on our national pessimism and self-mistrust. It

helps to fix these features permanently in our national character,

which were excusable enough as temporary moods after defeat. The

younger generation should hear nothing about failures. It should not be

hypnotized into self-contempt. Our energies in Ireland are sapped by a

cynical self-mistrust which is spread everywhere through society. It

is natural enough that the elder generation, who were promised so many

millenniums, but who actually saw four million people deducted from the

population, should be cynical. But it is not right they should give only

to the younger generation the heritage of their disappointments without

any heritage of hope. From early childhood parents and friends are

hypnotizing the child into beliefs and unbeliefs, and too often they are

exiling all nobility out of life, all confidence, all trust, all hope;

they are insinuating a mean self-seeking, a self-mistrust, a vulgar

spirit which laughs at every high ideal, until at last the hypnotized

child is blinded to the presence of any beauty or nobility in life. No

country can ever hope to rise beyond a vulgar mediocrity where there is

not unbounded confidence in what its humanity can do. The self-confident

American will make a great civilization yet, because he believes with

all his heart and soul in the future of his country and in the powers of

the American people. What Whitman called their "barbaric yawp" may yet

turn into the lordliest speech and thought, but without self-confidence

a race will go no whither. If Irish people do not believe they can equal

or surpass the stature of any humanity which has been upon the globe,

then they had better all emigrate and become servants to some superior

race, and leave Ireland to new settlers who may come here with the same

high hopes as the Pilgrim Fathers had when they went to America.

We must go on imagining better than the best we know. Even in their

ruins now, Greece and Italy seem noble and beautiful with broken pillars

and temples made in their day of glory. But before ever there was a

white marble temple shining on a hill it shone with a more brilliant

beauty in the mind of some artist who designed it. Do many people know

how that marvelous Greek civilization spread along the shores of the

Mediterranean? Little nations owning hardly more land than would make up

an Irish barony sent out colony after colony. The seed of beautiful

life they sowed grew and blossomed out into great cities and half-divine

civilizations. Italy had a later blossoming of beauty in the Middle

Ages, and travelers today go into little Italian towns and find them

filled with masterpieces of painting and architecture and sculpture,

witnesses of a time when nations no larger than an Irish county rolled

their thoughts up to Heaven and miked their imagination with the angels.

Can we be contented in Ireland with the mean streets of our country

towns and the sordid heaps of our villages dominated in their economics

by the vendors of alcohol, and inspired as to their ideals by the

vendors of political animosities?

I would not mind people fighting in a passion to get rid of all that

barred some lordly scheme of life, but quarrels over political bones

from which there is little or nothing wholesome to be picked only

disgust. People tell me that the countryside must always be stupid and

backward, and I get angry, as if it were said that only townspeople had

immortal souls, and it was only in the city that the flame of divinity

breathed into the first men had any unobscured glow. The countryside in

Ireland could blossom into as much beauty as the hillsides in mediaeval

Italy if we could but get rid of our self-mistrust. We have all that

any race ever had to inspire them, the heavens overhead, the earth

underneath, and the breath of life in our nostrils. I would like to

exile the man who would set limits to what we can do, who would take the

crown and sceptre from the human will and say, marking out some petty

enterprise as the limit--"Thus far can we go and no farther, and

here shall our life be stayed." Therefore I hate to hear of stagnant

societies who think because they have made butter well that they have

crowned their parochial generation with a halo of glory, and can rest

content with the fame of it all, listening to the whirr of the steam

separators and pouching in peace of mind the extra penny a gallon for

their milk. And I dislike the little groups who meet a couple of times

a year and call themselves co-operators because they have got their

fertilizers more cheaply, and have done nothing else. Why, the village

gombeen man has done more than that! He has at least brought most of

the necessaries of life there by his activities; and I say if we

co-operators do not aim at doing more than the Irish Scribes and

Pharisees we shall have little to be proud of. A poet, interpreting the

words of Christ to His followers, who had scorned the followers of the

old order, made Him say:

Scorn ye their hopes, their tears, their inward prayers?

I say unto you, see that your souls live

A deeper life than theirs.

The co-operative movement is delivering over the shaping of the rural

life of Ireland, and the building up of its rural civilization, into

the hands of Irish farmers. The old order of things has left Ireland

unlovely. But if we do not passionately strive to build it better,

better for the men, for the women, for the children, of what worth are

we? We continually come across the phrase "the dull Saxon" in our Irish

papers, it crops up in the speeches of our public orators, but it was an

English poet who said:

I will not cease from mental fight,

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

Till we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land.

And it was the last great, poet England has produced, who had so much

hope for humanity in his country that in his latest song he could mix

earth with heaven, and say that to human eyes:

Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder

Hung betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.

Shall we think more meanly of the future of Ireland than these "dull

Saxons" think of the future of their island? Shall we be content with

humble crumbs fallen from the table of life, and sit like beggars

waiting only for what the commonwealth can do for us, leaving all high

hopes and aims to our rulers, whether they be English or Irish? Every

people get the kind of Government they deserve. A nation can exhibit no

greater political wisdom in the mass than it generates in its units.

It is the pregnant idealism of the multitude which gives power to the

makers of great nations, otherwise the prophets of civilization are

helpless as preachers in the desert and solitary places. So I have

always preached self-help above all other kinds of help, knowing that if

we strove passionately after this righteousness all other kinds of help

would be at our service. So, too, I would brush aside the officious

interferer in co-operative affairs, who would offer on behalf of the

State to do for us what we should, and could, do far better ourselves.

We can build up a rural civilization in Ireland, shaping it to our

hearts' desires, warming it with life, but our rulers and officials

can never be warmer than a stepfather, and have no "large, divine, and

comfortable words" for us; they tinker at the body when it is the soul

which requires to be healed and made whole. The soul of Ireland has to

be kindled, and it can be kindled only by the thought of great deeds and

not by the hope of petty parsimonies or petty gains.

Now, great deeds are never done vicariously. They are done directly and

personally. No country has grown to greatness mainly by the acts of

some great ruler, but by the aggregate activities of all its people.

Therefore, every Irish community should make its own ideals and

should work for them. As great work can be done in a parish as in the

legislative assemblies with a nation at gaze. Do people say: "It is

easier to work well with a nation at gaze?" I answer that true greatness

becomes the North Pole of humanity, and when it appears all the needles

of Being point to it. You of the young generation, who have not yet lost

the generous ardour of youth, believe it is as possible to do great work

and make noble sacrifices, and to roll the acceptable smoke of offering

to Heaven by your work in an Irish parish, as in any city in the world.

Like the Greek architects--who saw in their dreams hills crowned with

white marble pillared palaces and images of beauty, until these rose up

in actuality--so should you, not forgetting national ideals, still most

of all set before yourselves the ideal of your own neighborhood. How can

you speak of working for all Ireland, which you have not seen, if you do

not labor and dream for the Ireland before your eyes, which you see as

you look out of your own door in the morning, and on which you walk up

and down through the day?

"What dream shall we dream or what labor shall we undertake?" you may

ask, and it is right that those who exhort should be asked in what

manner and how precisely they would have the listener act or think. I

answer: the first thing to do is to create and realize the feeling for

the community, and break up the evil and petty isolation of man from

man. This can be done by every kind of co-operative effort where

combined action is better than individual action. The parish cannot take

care of the child as well as the parents, but you will find in most

of the labors of life combined action is more fruitful than individual

action. Some of you have found this out in many branches of agriculture,

of which your dairying, agricultural, credit, poultry, and flax

societies are witness. Some of you have combined to manufacture; some

to buy in common, some to sell in common. Some of you have the common

ownership of thousands of pounds' worth of expensive machinery. Some of

you have carried the idea of co-operation for economic ends farther, and

have used the power which combination gives you to erect village halls

and to have libraries of books, the windows through which the life

and wonder and power of humanity can be seen. Some of you have

light-heartedly, in the growing sympathy of unity, revived the dances

and songs and sports which are the right relaxation of labor. Some

Irishwomen here and there have heard beyond the four walls in which so

much of their lives are spent the music of a new day, and have started

out to help and inspire the men and be good comrades to them; and

calling themselves United Irish-women, they have joined, as men have

joined, to help their sisters who are in economic servitude, or who

suffer from the ignorance and indifference to their special needs in

life which pervade the administration of local government. We cannot

build up a rural civilization in Ireland without the aid of Irish women.

It will help life little if we have methods of the twentieth century in

the fields, and those of the fifth century in the home. A great writer

said: "Woman is the last thing man will civilize." If a woman had

written on that subject she would have said: "Woman is the last thing

a man thinks about when he is building up his empires." It is true that

the consciousness of woman has been always centered too close to the

dark and obscure roots of the Tree of Life, while men have branched

out more to the sun an wind, and today the starved soul of womanhood is

crying out over the world for an intellectual life and for more chance

of earning a living. If Ireland will not listen to this cry, its

daughters will go on slipping silently away to other countries, as they

have been doing--all the best of them, all the bravest, all those most

mentally alive, all those who would have made the best wives and the

best mothers--and they will leave at home the timid, the stupid and

the dull to help in the deterioration of the race and to breed sons as

sluggish as themselves. In the New World women have taken an important

part in the work of the National Grange, the greatest agency in

bettering the economic and social conditions of the agricultural

population in the States. In Ireland the women must be welcomed into

the work of building up a rural civilization, and be aided by men in the

promotion of those industries with which women have been immemorially

associated. We should not want to see women separated from the

activities and ideals and inspirations of men. We should want to see

them working together and in harmony. If the women carry on their work

in connection with the associations by which men earn their living they

will have a greater certainty of permanence. I have seen too many little

industries and little associations of women workers spring up and perish

in Ireland, which depended on the efforts of some one person who had not

drunk of the elixir of immortal youth, and could not always continue

the work she started; and I have come to the conclusion that the women's

organizations must be connected with the men's organizations, must use

their premises, village halls, and rooms for women's meetings. I do not

believe women's work can be promoted so well in any other way. Men and

women have been companions in the world from the dawn of time. I do not

know where they are journeying to, but I believe they will never get to

the Delectable City if they journey apart from each other, and do not

share each other's burdens.

Working so, we create the conditions in which the spirit of the

community grows strong. We create the true communal idea, which

the Socialists miss in their dream of a vast amalgamation of whole

nationalities in one great commercial undertaking. The true idea of the

clan or commune or tribe is to have in it as many people as will give

it strength and importance, and so few people that a personal tie may

be established between them. Humanity has always grouped itself

instinctively in this way. It did so in the ancient clans and rural

communes, and it does so in the parishes and co-operative associations.

If they were larger they would lose the sense of unity. If they were

smaller they would be too feeble for effectual work, and could not take

over the affairs of their district. A rural commune or co-operative

community ought to have, to a large extent, the character of a nation.

It should manufacture for its members all things which it profitably can

manufacture for them, employing its own workmen, carpenters, bootmakers,

makers and menders of farming equipment, saddlery, harness, etc. It

should aim at feeding its members and their families cheaply and well,

as far as possible, out of the meat and grain produced in the district.

It should have a mill to grind their grain, a creamery to manufacture

their butter; or where certain enterprises like a bacon factory are too

great for it, it should unite with other co-operative communities to

furnish out such an enterprise. It should sell for the members their

produce, and buy for them their requirements, and hold for them

labor-saving machinery. It should put aside a certain portion of its

profits every year for the creation of halls, libraries, places for

recreation and games, and it should pursue this plan steadily with the

purpose of giving its members every social and educational advantage

which the civilization of their time affords. It should have its

councils or village parliaments, where improvements and new ventures

could be discussed. Such a community would soon generate a passionate

devotion to its own ideals and interests among the members, who would

feel how their fortunes rose with the fortunes of the associations of

which they were all members. It would kindle and quicken the intellect

of every person in the community. It would create the atmosphere in

which national genius would emerge and find opportunities for its

activity. The clan ought to be the antechamber of the nation and the

training ground for its statesmen. What opportunity leadership in the

councils of such a rural community would give to the best minds! The man

of social genius at present finds an unorganized community, and he does

not know how to affect his fellow-citizens. A man might easily despair

of affecting the destinies of a nation of forty million people, but yet

start with eagerness to build up a kingdom of the size of Sligo, and

shape it nearer to the heart's desire. The organization of the rural

population of Ireland in co-operative associations will provide the

instrument ready to the hand of the social reformer.

Some associations will be more dowered with ability than others, but

one will learn from another, and a vast network of living, progressive

organizations will cover rural Ireland, democratic in constitution and

governed by the aristocracy of intellect and character.

Such associations would have great economic advantages in that they

would be self-reliant and self-contained, and would be less subject to

fluctuation in their prosperity brought about by national disasters and

commercial crises than the present unorganized rural communities are.

They would have all their business under local control; and, aiming at

feeding, clothing, and manufacturing locally from local resources as far

as possible, the slumps in foreign trade, the shortage in supplies, the

dislocations of commerce would affect them but little. They would make

the community wealthier. Every step towards this organization already

taken in Ireland has brought with it increased prosperity, and the

towns benefit by increased purchasing power on the part of these rural

associations. New arts and industries would spring up under the aegis of

the local associations. Here we should find the weaving of rugs,

there the manufacture of toys, elsewhere the women would be engaged

in embroidery or lace-making, and, perhaps, everywhere we might get a

revival of the old local industry of weaving homespuns. We are dreaming

of nothing impossible, nothing which has not been done somewhere

already, nothing which we could not do here in Ireland. True, it cannot

be done all at once, but if we get the idea clearly in our minds of the

building up of a rural civilization in Ireland, we can labor at it with

the grand persistence of medieval burghers in their little towns, where

one generation laid down the foundations of a great cathedral, and saw

only in hope and faith the gorgeous glooms over altar and sanctuary,

and the blaze and flame of stained glass, where apostles, prophets, and

angelic presences were pictured in fire: and the next generation raised

high the walls, and only the third generation saw the realization of

what their grandsires had dreamed. We in Ireland should not live only

from day to day, for the day only, like the beasts in the field, but

should think of where all this long cavalcade of the Gael is tending,

and how and in what manner their tents will be pitched in the evening

of their generation. A national purpose is the most unconquerable and

victorious of all things on earth. It can raise up Babylons from the

sands of the desert, and make imperial civilizations spring from out a

score of huts, and after it has wrought its will it can leave monuments

that seem as everlasting a portion of nature as the rocks. The Pyramids

and the Sphinx in the sands of Egypt have seemed to humanity for

centuries as much a portion of nature as Erigal, or Benbulben, or Slieve

Gullion have seemed a portion of nature to our eyes in Ireland.

We must have some purpose or plan in building up an Irish civilization.

No artist takes up his paints and brushes and begins to work on his

canvas without a clear idea burning in his brain of what he has to do,

else were his work all smudges. Does anyone think that out of all these

little cabins and farmhouses dotting the green of Ireland there will

come harmonious effort to a common end without organization and set

purpose? The idea and plan of a great rural civilization must shine like

a burning lamp in the imagination of the youth of Ireland, or we shall

only be at cross-purposes and end in little fatuities. We are very fond

in Ireland of talking of Ireland a nation. The word "nation" has a kind

of satisfying sound, but I am afraid it is an empty word with no rich

significance to most who use it. The word "laboratory" has as fine a

sound, but only the practical scientist has a true conception of what

may take place there, what roar of strange forces, what mingling of

subtle elements, what mystery and magnificence in atomic life. The word

without the idea is like the purse without the coin, the skull without

the soul, or any other sham or empty deceit. Nations are not built up by

the repetition of words, but by the organizing of intellectual forces.

If any of my readers would like to know what kind of thought goes to

the building up of a great nation, let him read the life of Alexander

Hamilton by Oliver. To that extraordinary man the United States owe

their constitution, almost their existence. To him, far more than to

Washington, the idea, plan, shape of all that marvelous dominion owes

its origin and character. He seemed to hold in his brain, while America

was yet a group of half-barbaric settlements, the idea of what it might

become. He laid down the plans, the constitution, the foreign policy,

the trade policy, the relation of State to State, and it is only within

the last few years almost, that America has realized that she had

in Hamilton a supreme political and social intelligence, the true

fountain-head of what she has since become.

We have not half a continent to deal with, but size matters nothing. The

Russian Empire, which covers half Europe, and stretches over the Ural

Mountains to the Pacific, would weigh light as a feather in the balance

if we compare its services to humanity with those of the little State of

Attica, which was no larger than Tipperary. Every State which has come

to command the admiration of the world has had clearly conceived ideals

which it realized before it went the way which all empires, even the

greatest, must go; becoming finally a legend, a fable, or a symbol. We

have to lay down the foundations of a new social order in Ireland, and,

if the possibilities of it are realized, our thousand years of sorrow

and darkness may be followed by as long a cycle of happy effort and

ever-growing prosperity. We shall want all these plans whether we

are ruled from Westminster or College Green. Without an imaginative

conception of what kind of civilization we wish to create, the best

government from either quarter will never avail to lift us beyond

national mediocrity. I write for those who have joined the ranks of the

co-operators without perhaps realizing all that the movement meant, or

all that it tended to. Because we hold in our hearts and keep holy there

the vision of a great future, I have fought passionately for the entire

freedom of our movement from external control, lest the meddling of

politicians or official persons without any inspiration should deflect,

for some petty purpose or official gratification, the strength of that

current which was flowing and gathering strength unto the realization

of great ideals. Every country has its proportion of little souls which

could find ample room on a threepenny bit, and be majestically housed in

a thimble, who follow out some little minute practice in an ecstasy of

self-satisfaction, seeking some little job which is the El Dorado of

their desires as if there were naught else, as if humanity were not

going from the Great Deep to the Great Deep of Deity, with wind and

water, fire and earth, stars and sun, lordly companions for it on its

path to a divine destiny. We have our share of these in Ireland in high

and low places, but I do not write for them. This essay is for those

who are working at laying deep the foundations of a new social order, to

hearten them with some thought of what their labor may bring to Ireland.

I welcome to this work the United Irishwomen. As one of their poetesses

has said in a beautiful song, the services of women to Ireland in the

past have been the services of mourners to the stricken. But for today

and tomorrow we need hope and courage and gaiety, and I repeat for them

the last passionate words of her verse:

Rise to your feet, O daughters, rise,

Our mother still is young and fair.

Let the world look into your eyes

And see her beauty shining there.

Grant of that beauty but one ray,

Heroes shall leap from every hill;

Today shall be as yesterday,

The red blood burns in Ireland still.

THOUGHTS FOR A CONVENTION

1. There are moments in history when by the urgency of circumstance

everyone in a country is drawn from normal pursuits to consider the

affairs of the nation. The merchant is turned from his warehouse, the

bookman from his books, the farmer from his fields, because they realize

that the very foundations of the society, under whose shelter they were

able to carry on their avocation, are being shaken, and they can no

longer be voiceless, or leave it to deputies, unadvised by them,

to arrange national destinies. We are all accustomed to endure the

annoyances and irritations caused by legislation which is not agreeable

to us, and solace ourselves by remembering that the things which

really matter are not affected. But when the destiny of a nation, the

principles by which life is to be guided are at stake, all are on a

level, are equally affected and are bound to give expression to their

opinions. Ireland is in one of these moments of history. Circumstances

with which we are all familiar and the fever in which the world exists

have infected it, and it is like molten metal the skilled political

artificer might pour into a desirable mould. But if it is not handled

rightly, if any factor is ignored, there may be an explosion which would

bring on us a fate as tragic as anything in our past history. Irishmen

can no longer afford to remain aloof from each other, or to address each

other distantly and defiantly from press or platform, but must strive

to understand each other truly, and to give due weight to each other's

opinions, and, if possible, arrive at a compromise, a balancing of

their diversities, which may save our country from anarchy and chaos for

generations to come.

2. An agreement about Irish Government must be an agreement, not between

two but three Irish parties first of all, and afterwards with Great

Britain. The Premier of a Coalition Cabinet has declared that there is

no measure of self government which Great Britain would not assent to

being set up in Ireland, if Irishmen themselves could but come to an

agreement. Before such a compromise between Irish parties is possible

there must be a clear understanding of the ideals of these parties,

as they are understood by themselves, and not as they are presented

in party controversy by special pleaders whose object too often is to

pervert or discredit the principles and actions of opponents, a

thing which is easy to do because all parties, even the noblest, have

followers who do them disservice by ignorant advocacy or excited action.

If we are to unite Ireland we can only do so by recognizing what truly

are the principles each party stands for, and will not forsake, and for

which, if necessary they will risk life. True understanding is to see

ideas as they are held by men between themselves and Heaven; and in this

mood I will try, first of all, to understand the position of Unionists,

Sinn Feiners and Constitutional Nationalists as they have been explained

to me by the best minds among them, those who have induced others of

their countrymen to accept those ideals. When this is done we will see

if compromise, a balancing of diversities be not possible in an

Irish State where all that is essential in these varied ideals may be

harmonized and retained.

3. I will take first of all the position of Unionists. They are, many

of them, the descendants of settlers who by their entrance into Ireland

broke up the Gaelic uniformity and introduced the speech, the thoughts,

characteristic of another race. While they have grown to love their

country as much as any of Gaelic origin, and their peculiarities have

been modified by centuries of life in Ireland and by intermarriage,

so that they are much more akin to their fellow-countrymen in mind and

manner than they are to any other people, they still retain habits,

beliefs and traditions from which they will not part. They form a class

economically powerful. They have openness and energy of character, great

organizing power and a mastery over materials, all qualities invaluable

in an Irish State. In North-East Ulster, where they are most homogeneous

they conduct the affairs of their cities with great efficiency, carrying

on an international trade not only with Great Britain but with the rest

of the world. They have made these industries famous. They believe that

their prosperity is in large measure due to their acceptance of the

Union, that it would be lessened if they threw in their lot with the

other Ireland and accepted its ideals, that business which now goes to

their shipyards and factories would cease if they were absorbed in

a self-governing Ireland whose spokesmen had an unfortunate habit of

nagging their neighbors and of conveying the impression that they are

inspired by race hatred. They believe that an Irish legislature would be

controlled by a majority, representatives mainly of small farmers, men

who had no knowledge of affairs, or of the peculiar needs of Ulster

industry, or the intricacy of the problems involved in carrying on an

international trade; that the religious ideas of the majority would be

so favored in education and government that the favoritism would amount

to religious oppression. They are also convinced that no small country

in the present state of the world can really be independent, that

such only exist by sufferance of their mighty neighbors, and must be

subservient in trade policy and military policy to retain even a nominal

freedom; and that an independent Ireland would by its position be a

focus for the intrigues of powers hostile to Great Britain, and if it

achieved independence Great Britain in self protection would be forced

to conquer it again. They consider that security for industry and

freedom for the individual can best be preserved in Ireland by the

maintenance of the Union, and that the world spirit is with the great

empires.

4. The second political group may be described as the spiritual

inheritors of the more ancient race in Ireland. They regard the

preservation of their nationality as a sacred charge, themselves as a

conquered people owing no allegiance to the dominant race. They cannot

be called traitors to it because neither they nor their predecessors

have ever admitted the right of another people to govern them against

their will. They are inspired by an ancient history, a literature

stretching beyond the Christian era, a national culture and distinct

national ideals which they desire to manifest in a civilization which

shall not be an echo or imitation of any other. While they do not

depreciate the worth of English culture or its political system they are

as angry at its being imposed on them as a young man with a passion for

art would be if his guardian insisted on his adopting another profession

and denied him any chance of manifesting his own genius. Few hatreds

equal those caused by the denial or obstruction of national aptitudes.

Many of those who fought in the last Irish insurrection were fighters

not merely for a political change but were rather desperate and

despairing champions of a culture which they held was being stifled from

infancy in Irish children in the schools of the nation. They believe

that the national genius cannot manifest itself in a civilization and

is not allowed to manifest itself while the Union persists. They wish

Ireland to be as much itself as Japan, and as free to make its own

choice of political principles, its culture and social order, and

to develop its industries unfettered by the trade policy of their

neighbors. Their mood is unconquerable, and while often overcome it

has emerged again and again in Irish history, and it has perhaps more

adherents today than at any period since the Act of Union, and this

has been helped on by the incarnation of the Gaelic spirit in the modern

Anglo-Irish literature, and a host of brilliant poets, dramatists and

prose writers who have won international recognition, and have increased

the dignity of spirit and the self-respect of the followers of this

tradition. They assert that the Union kills the soul of the people; that

empires do not permit the intensive cultivation of human life: that

they destroy the richness and variety of existence by the extinction of

peculiar and unique gifts, and the substitution therefor of a culture

which has its value mainly for the people who created it, but is as

alien to our race as the mood of the scientist is to the artist or poet.

5. The third group occupies a middle position between those who desire

the perfecting of the Union and those whose claim is for complete

independence: and because they occupy a middle position, and have taken

coloring from the extremes between which they exist they have been

exposed to the charge of insincerity, which is unjust so far as the best

minds among them are concerned. They have aimed at a middle course, not

going far enough on one side or another to secure the confidence of the

extremists. They have sought to maintain the connection with the empire,

and at the same time to acquire an Irish control over administration

and legislation. They have been more practical than ideal, and to their

credit must be placed the organizing of the movements which secured most

of the reforms in Ireland since the Union, such as religious equality,

the acts securing to farmers fair rents and fixity of tenure, the wise

and salutary measures making possible the transfer of land from landlord

to tenant, facilities for education at popular universities, the

laborers' acts and many others. They are a practical party taking what

they could get, and because they could show ostensible results they have

had a greater following in Ireland than any other party. This is natural

because the average man in all countries is a realist. But this reliance

on material results to secure support meant that they must always show

results, or the minds of their countrymen veered to those ultimates

and fundamentals which await settlement here as they do in all

civilizations. As in the race with Atalanta the golden apples had to be

thrown in order to win the race. The intellect of Ireland is now fixed

on fundamentals, and the compromise this middle party is able to offer

does not make provision for the ideals of either of the extremists, and

indeed meets little favor anywhere in a country excited by recent

events in world history, where revolutionary changes are expected and a

settlement far more in accord with fundamental principles.

6. It is possible that many of the rank and file of these parties will

not at first agree with the portraits painted of their opponents, and

that is because the special pleaders of the press, who in Ireland are,

as a rule, allowed little freedom to state private convictions, have

come to regard themselves as barristers paid to conduct a case, and have

acquired the habit of isolating particular events, the hasty speech or

violent action of individuals in localities, and of exhibiting these as

indicating the whole character of the party attacked. They misrepresent

Irishmen to each other. The Ulster advocates of the Union, for example,

are accustomed to hear from their advisers that the favorite employment

of Irish farmers in the three southern provinces is cattle driving, if

not worse. They are told that Protestants in these provinces live in

fear of their lives, whereas anybody who has knowledge of the true

conditions knows that, so far from being riotous and unbusinesslike,

the farmers in these provinces have developed a net-work of rural

associations, dairies, bacon factories, agricultural and poultry

societies, etc., doing their business efficiently, applying the

teachings of science in their factories, competing in quality of output

with the very best of the same class of society in Ulster and obtaining

as good prices in the same market. As a matter of fact this method of

organization now largely adopted by Ulster farmers was initiated in the

South. With regard to the charge of intolerance I do not believe it.

Here, as in all other countries, there are unfortunate souls obsessed by

dark powers, whose human malignity takes the form of religious hatreds,

but I believe, and the thousands of Irish Protestants in the Southern

Counties will affirm it as true that they have nothing to complain of in

this respect. I am sure that in this matter of religious tolerance these

provinces can stand favorable comparison with any country in the world

where there are varieties of religions, even with Great Britain. I would

plead with my Ulster compatriots not to gaze too long or too credulously

into that distorting mirror held up to them, nor be tempted to take

individual action as representative of the mass. How would they like

to have the depth or quality of spiritual life in their great city

represented by the scrawlings and revilings about the head of the

Catholic Church to be found occasionally on the blank walls of Belfast.

If the same method of distortion by selection of facts was carried out

there is not a single city or nation which could not be made to appear

baser than Sodom or Gomorrah and as deserving of their fate.

7. The Ulster character is better appreciated by Southern Ireland, and

there is little reason to vindicate it against any charges except the

slander that Ulster Unionists do not regard themselves as Irishmen, and

that they have no love for their own country. Their position is that

they are Unionists, not merely because it is for the good of Great

Britain, but because they hold it to be for the good of Ireland, and it

is the Irish argument weighs with them, and if they were convinced it

would be better for Ireland to be self-governed they would throw in

their lot with the rest of Ireland, which would accept them gladly and

greet them as a prodigal son who had returned, having made, unlike most

prodigal sons, a fortune, and well able to be the wisest adviser in

family affairs. It is necessary to preface what I have to say by way of

argument or remonstrance to Irish parties by words making it clear that

I write without prejudice against any party, and that I do not in the

least underestimate their good qualities or the weight to be attached

to their opinions and ideals. It is the traditional Irish way, which

we have too often forgotten, to notice the good in the opponent before

battling with what is evil. So Maeve, the ancient Queen of Connacht,

looking over the walls of her city of Cruachan at the Ulster foemen,

said of them, "Noble and regal is their appearance," and her own

followers said, "Noble and regal are those of whom you speak." When we

lost the old Irish culture we lost the tradition of courtesy to each

other which lessens the difficulties of life and makes it possible to

conduct controversy without creating bitter memories.

8. I desire first to argue with Irish Unionists whether it is accurate

to say of them, as it would appear to be from their spokesmen, that the

principle of nationality cannot be recognized by them or allowed to take

root in the commonwealth of dominions which form the Empire. Must one

culture only exist? Must all citizens have their minds poured into

the same mould, and varieties of gifts and cultural traditions be

extinguished? What would India with its myriad races say to that theory?

What would Canada enclosing in its dominion and cherishing a French

Canadian nation say? Unionists have by every means in their power

discouraged the study of the national literature of Ireland though it

is one of the most ancient in Europe, though the scholars of France and

Germany have founded journals for its study, and its beauty is being

recognized by all who have read it. It contains the race memory of

Ireland, its imaginations and thoughts for two thousand years. Must that

be obliterated? Must national character be sterilized of all taint of

its peculiar beauty? Must Ireland have no character of its own but be

servilely imitative of its neighbor in all things and be nothing of

itself? It is objected that the study of Irish history, Irish literature

and the national culture generates hostility to the Empire. Is that a

true psychological analysis? Is it not true in all human happenings

that if people are denied what is right and natural they will instantly

assume an attitude of hostility to the power which denies? The hostility

is not inherent in the subject but is evoked by the denial. I put it

to my Unionist compatriots that the ideal is to aim at a diversity of

culture, and the greatest freedom, richness and variety of thought. The

more this richness and variety prevail in a nation the less likelihood

is there of the tyranny of one culture over the rest. We should aim in

Ireland at that freedom of the ancient Athenians, who, as Pericles said,

listened gladly to the opinions of others and did not turn sour faces

on those who disagreed with them. A culture which is allowed essential

freedom to develop will soon perish if it does not in itself contain the

elements of human worth which make for immortality. The world has to its

sorrow many instances of freak religions which were persecuted and by

natural opposition were perpetuated and hardened in belief. We should

allow the greatest freedom in respect of cultural developments in

Ireland so that the best may triumph by reason of superior beauty and

not because the police are relied upon to maintain one culture in a

dominant position.

9. I have also an argument to address to the extremists whose claim,

uttered lately with more openness and vehemence, is for the complete

independence of the whole of Ireland, who cry out against partition, who

will not have a square mile of Irish soil subject to foreign rule.

That implies they desire the inclusion of Ulster and the inhabitants

of Ulster in their Irish State. I tell them frankly that if they expect

Ulster to throw its lot in with a self-governing Ireland they must

remain within the commonwealth of dominions which constitute the Empire,

be prepared loyally, once Ireland has complete control over its internal

affairs, to accept the status of a dominion and the responsibilities of

that wider union. If they will not accept that status as the Boers did,

they will never draw that important and powerful Irish party into an

Irish State except by force, and do they think there is any possibility

of that? It is extremely doubtful whether if the world stood aloof, and

allowed Irishmen to fight out their own quarrels among themselves, that

the fighters for complete independence could conquer a community so

numerous, so determined, so wealthy, so much more capable of providing

for themselves the plentiful munitions by which alone one army can hope

to conquer another. In South Africa men who had fiercer traditional

hostilities than Irishmen of different parties here have had, who

belonged to different races, who had a few years before been engaged in

a racial war, were great enough to rise above these past antagonisms,

to make an agreement and abide faithfully by it. Is the same magnanimity

not possible in Ireland? I say to my countrymen who cry out for the

complete separation of Ireland from the Empire, that they will not in

this generation bring with them the most powerful and wealthy, if not

the most numerous, party in their country. Complete control of Irish

affairs is a possibility, and I suggest to the extremists that the

status of a self-governing dominion inside a federation of dominions

is a proposal which, if other safeguards for minority interests are

incorporated, would attract Unionist attention. But if these men who

depend so much in their economic enterprises upon a friendly relation

with their largest customers are to be allured into self-governing

Ireland there must be acceptance of the Empire as an essential

condition. The Boers found it not impossible to accept this status for

the sake of a United South Africa. Are our Irish Boers not prepared

to make a compromise and abide by it loyally for the sake of a United

Ireland?

10. A remonstrance must also be addressed to the middle party in that

it has made no real effort to understand and conciliate the feelings of

Irish Unionists. They have indeed made promises, no doubt sincerely, but

they have undone the effect of all they said by encouraging of recent

years the growth of sectarian organizations with political aims and have

relied on these as on a party machine. It may be said that in Ulster

a similar organization, sectarian with political objects, has long

existed, and that this justified a counter organization. Both in

my opinion are unjustifiable and evil, but the backing of such an

organization was specially foolish in the case of the majority, whose

main object ought to be to allure the minority into the same political

fold. The baser elements in society, the intriguers, the job seekers,

and all who would acquire by influence what they cannot attain by merit,

flock into such bodies, and create a sinister impression as to their

objects and deliberations. If we are to have national concord among

Irishmen religion must be left to the Churches whose duty it is to

promote it, and be dissevered from party politics, and it should

be regarded as contrary to national idealism to organize men of one

religion into secret societies with political or economic aims. So shall

be left to Caesar the realm which is Caesar's, and it shall not appear

part of the politics of eternity that Michael's sister's son obtains a

particular post beginning at thirty shillings a week. I am not certain

that it should not be an essential condition of any Irish settlement

that all such sectarian organizations should be disbanded in so far as

their objects are political, and remain solely as friendly societies. It

is useless assuring a minority already suspicious, of the tolerance it

may expect from the majority, if the party machine of the majority is

sectarian and semi-secret, if no one of the religion of the minority can

join it. I believe in spite of the recent growth of sectarian societies

that it has affected but little the general tolerant spirit in Ireland,

and where the evils have appeared they have speedily resulted in the

break up of the organization in the locality. Irishmen individually as

a rule are much nobler in spirit than the political organizations they

belong to.

11. It is necessary to speak with the utmost frankness and not to slur

over any real difficulty in the way of a settlement. Irish parties must

rise above themselves if they are to bring about an Irish unity. They

appear on the surface irreconcilable, but that, in my opinion, is

because the spokesmen of parties are under the illusion that they should

never indicate in public that they might possibly abate one jot of the

claims of their party. A crowd or organization is often more extreme

than its individual members. I have spoken to Unionists and Sinn Feiners

and find them as reasonable in private as they are unreasonable in

public. I am convinced that an immense relief would be felt by all

Irishmen if a real settlement of the Irish question could be arrived at,

a compromise which would reconcile them to living under one government,

and would at the same time enable us to live at peace with our

neighbors. The suggestions which follow were the result of discussions

between a group of Unionists, Nationalists and Sinn Feiners, and as they

found it possible to agree upon a compromise it is hoped that the policy

which harmonized their diversities may help to bring about a similar

result in Ireland.

12. I may now turn to consider the Anglo-Irish problem and to make

specific suggestions for its solution and the character of the

government to be established in Ireland. The factors are triple.

There is first the desire many centuries old of Irish nationalists for

self-government and the political unity of the people: secondly, there

is the problem of the Unionists who require that the self-governing

Ireland they enter shall be friendly to the imperial connection, and

that their religious and economic interests shall be safeguarded by real

and not merely by verbal guarantees; and, thirdly, there is the

position of Great Britain which requires, reasonably enough, that any

self-governing dominion set up alongside it shall be friendly to

the Empire. In this matter Great Britain has priority of claim to

consideration, for it has first proposed a solution, the Home Rule Act

which is on the Statute Book, though later variants of that have been

outlined because of the attitude of Unionists in North-East Ulster,

variants which suggest the partition of Ireland, the elimination of six

counties from the area controlled by the Irish government. This Act, or

the variants of it offered to Ireland, is the British contribution to

the settlement of the Anglo-Irish problem.

13. If it is believed that this scheme, or any diminutive of it, will

settle the Anglo-Irish problem, British statesmen and people who trust

them are only preparing for themselves bitter disappointment. I believe

that nothing less than complete self-government has ever been the object

of Irish Nationalism. However ready certain sections have been to accept

installments, no Irish political leader had authority to pledge his

countrymen to ever accept a half measure as a final settlement of the

Irish claim. The Home Rule Act, if put into operation tomorrow, even if

Ulster were cajoled or coerced into accepting it, would not be regarded

by Irish Nationalists as a final settlement, no matter what may be

said at Westminster. Nowhere in Ireland has it been accepted as final.

Received without enthusiasm at first, every year which has passed

since the Bill was introduced has seen the system of self-government

formulated there subjected to more acute and hostile criticism: and I

believe it would be perfectly accurate to say that its passing tomorrow

would only be the preliminary for another agitation, made fiercer by the

unrest of the world, where revolutions and the upsetting of dynasties

are in the air, and where the claims of nationalities no more ancient

than the Irish, like the Poles, the Finns, and the Arabs, to political

freedom are admitted by the spokesmen of the great powers, Great Britain

included, or are already conceded. If any partition of Ireland is

contemplated this will intensify the bitterness now existing. I believe

it is to the interest of Great Britain to settle the Anglo-Irish

dispute. It has been countered in many of its policies in America and

the Colonies by the vengeful feelings of Irish exiles. There may yet

come a time when the refusal of the Irish mouse to gnaw at a net spread

about the lion may bring about the downfall of the Empire. It cannot be

to the interest of Great Britain to have on its flank some millions of

people who, whenever Great Britain is engaged in a war which threatens

its existence, feel a thrill running through them, as prisoners do

hearing the guns sounding closer of an army which comes, as they think,

to liberate them. Nations denied essential freedom ever feel like that

when the power which dominates them is itself in peril. Who can doubt

but for the creation of Dominion Government in South Africa that the

present war would have found the Boers thirsty for revenge, and the

Home Government incapable of dealing with a distant people who taxed its

resources but a few years previously. I have no doubt that if Ireland

was granted the essential freedom and wholeness in its political life

it desires, its mood also would be turned. I have no feelings of race

hatred, no exultation in thought of the downfall of any race; but as a

close observer of the mood of millions in Ireland, I feel certain that

if their claim is not met they will brood and scheme and Wait to strike

a blow, though the dream may be handed on from them to their children

and their children's children, yet they will hope, sometime, to give the

last vengeful thrust of enmity at the stricken heart of the Empire.

14. Any measure which is not a settlement which leaves Ireland still

actively discontented is a waste of effort, and the sooner English

statesmen realize the futility of half measures the better. A man who

claims a debt he believes is due to him, who is offered half of it in

payment, is not going to be conciliated or to be one iota more friendly,

if he knows that the other is able to pay the full amount and it could

be yielded without detriment to the donor. Ireland will never be content

with a system of self-government which lessens its representation in the

Imperial Parliament, and still retains for that Parliament control over

all-important matters like taxation and trade policy. Whoever controls

these controls the character of an Irish civilization, and the demand

of Ireland is not merely for administrative powers, but the power to

fashion its own national policy, and to build up a civilization of

its own with an economic character in keeping by self-devised and

self-checked efforts. To misunderstand this is to suppose there is

no such thing as national idealism, and that a people will accept

substitutes for the principle of nationality, whereas the past history

of the world and present circumstance in Europe are evidence that

nothing is more unconquerable and immortal than national feeling, and

that it emerges from centuries of alien government, and is ready at any

time to flare out in insurrection. At no period in Irish history was

that sentiment more self-conscious than it is today.

15. Nationalist Ireland requires that the Home Rule Act should be

radically changed to give Ireland unfettered control over taxation,

customs, excise and trade policy. These powers are at present denied,

and if the Act were in operation, Irish people instead of trying to make

the best of it, would begin at once to use whatever powers they had as

a lever to gain the desired control, and this would lead to fresh

antagonism and a prolonged struggle between the two countries, and

in this last effort Irish Nationalists would have the support of that

wealthy class now Unionist in the three southern provinces, and also

in Ulster if it were included, for they would then desire as much as

Nationalists that, while they live in a self-governing Ireland, the

powers of the Irish government should be such as would enable it to

build up Irish industries by an Irish trade policy, and to impose

taxation in a way to suit Irish conditions. As the object of British

consent to Irish self-government is to dispose of Irish antagonism

nothing is to be gained by passing measures which will not dispose of

it. The practically unanimous claim of Nationalists as exhibited in

the press in Ireland is for the status and power of economic control

possessed by the self-governing dominions. By this alone will the causes

of friction between the two nations be removed, and a real solidarity of

interest based on a federal union for joint defense of the freedom and

well-being of the federated communities be possible and I have no doubt

it would take place. I do not believe that hatreds remain for long among

people when the causes which created them are removed. We have seen in

Europe and in the dominions the continual reversals of feeling which

have taken place when a sore has been removed. Antagonisms are replaced

by alliances. It is mercifully true of human nature that it prefers to

exercise goodwill to hatred when it can, and the common sense of the

best in Ireland would operate once there was no longer interference

in our internal affairs, to allay and keep in order these turbulent

elements which exist in every country, but which only become a danger to

society when real grievances based on the violation of true principles

of government are present.

16. The Union has failed absolutely to conciliate Ireland. Every

generation there have been rebellions and shootings and agitations of

a vehement and exhausting character carried continually to the point

of lawlessness before Irish grievances could be redressed. A form of

government which requires a succession of rebellions to secure

reforms afterwards admitted to be reasonable cannot be a good form of

government. These agitations have inflicted grave material and

moral injury on Ireland. The instability of the political system has

prejudiced natural economic development. Capital will not be invested

in industries where no one is certain about the future. And because

the will of the people was so passionately set on political freedom an

atmosphere of suspicion gathered around public movements which in other

countries would have been allowed to carry on their beneficent work

unhindered by any party. Here they were continually being forced to

declare themselves either for or against self-government. The long

attack on the movement for the organization of Irish agriculture was

an instance. Men are elected on public bodies not because they are

efficient administrators, but because they can be trusted to pass

resolutions favoring one party or another. This has led to corruption.

Every conceivable rascality in Ireland has hid itself behind the great

names of nation or empire. The least and the most harmless actions of

men engaged in philanthropic or educational work or social reform are

scrutinized and criticized so as to obstruct good work. If a phrase even

suggests the possibility of a political partiality, or a tendency to

anything which might be construed by the most suspicious scrutineer to

indicate a remote desire to use the work done as an argument either

for or against self-government the man or movement is never allowed to

forget it. Public service becomes intolerable and often impossible

under such conditions, and while the struggle continues this also will

continue to the moral detriment of the people. There are only two forms

of government possible. A people may either be governed by force or may

govern themselves. The dual government of Ireland by two Parliaments,

one sitting in Dublin and one in London, contemplated in the Home Rule

Act, would be impossible and irritating. Whatever may be said for two

bodies each with their spheres of influence clearly defined, there

is nothing to be said for two legislatures with concurrent powers of

legislation and taxation, and with members from Ireland retained at

Westminster to provide some kind of democratic excuse for the exercise

of powers of Irish legislation and taxation by the Parliament at

Westminster. The Irish demand is that Great Britain shall throw upon our

shoulders the full weight of responsibility for the management of our

own affairs, so that we can only blame ourselves and our political

guides and not Great Britain if we err in our policies.

17. I have stated what I believe to be sound reasons for the recognition

of the justice of the Irish demand by Great Britain and I now turn to

Ulster, and ask it whether the unstable condition of things in Ireland

does not affect it even more than Great Britain. If it persists in its

present attitude, if it remains out of a self-governing Ireland, it will

not thereby exempt itself from political, social and economic trouble.

Ireland will regard the six Ulster counties as the French have regarded

Alsace-Lorraine, whose hopes of reconquest turned Europe into an armed

camp, with the endless suspicions, secret treaties, military and naval

developments, the expense of maintaining huge armies, and finally the

inevitable war. So sure as Ulster remains out, so surely will it become

a focus for nationalist designs. I say nothing of the injury to the

great wholesale business carried on from its capital city throughout the

rest of Ireland where the inevitable and logical answer of merchants

in the rest of Ireland to requests for orders will be: "You would die

rather than live in the same political house with us. We will die rather

than trade with you." There will be lamentably and inevitably a fiercer

tone between North and South. Everything that happens in one quarter

will be distorted in the other. Each will lie about the other. The

materials will exist more than before for civil commotion, and this

will be aided by the powerful minority of Nationalists in the excluded

counties working in conjunction with their allies across the border.

Nothing was ever gained in life by hatred; nothing good ever came of

it or could come of it; and the first and most important of all the

commandments of the spirit that there should be brotherhood between

men will be deliberately broken to the ruin of the spiritual life of

Ireland.

18. So far from Irish Nationalists wishing to oppress Ulster, I believe

that there is hardly any demand which could be made, even involving

democratic injustice to themselves, which would not willingly be granted

if their Ulster compatriots would fling their lot in with the rest of

Ireland and heal the eternal sore. I ask Ulster what is there that they

could not do as efficiently in an Ireland with the status and economic

power of a self-governing dominion as they do at present. Could they not

build their ships and sell them, manufacture and export their linens?

What do they mean when they say Ulster industries would be taxed? I

cannot imagine any Irish taxation which their wildest dreams imagined

so heavy as the taxation which they will endure as part of the United

Kingdom in future. They will be implicated in all the revolutionary

legislation made inevitable in Great Britain by the recoil on society

of the munition workers and disbanded conscripts. Ireland, which luckily

for itself, has the majority of its population economically independent

as workers on the land, and which, in the development of agriculture now

made necessary as a result of changes in naval warfare, will be able to

absorb without much trouble its returning workers. Ireland will be much

quieter, less revolutionary and less expensive to govern. I ask what

reason is there to suppose that taxation in a self-governing Ireland

would be greater than in Great Britain after the war, or in what way

Ulster industries could be singled out, or for what evil purpose by an

Irish Parliament? It would be only too anxious rather to develop still

further the one great industrial centre in Ireland; and would, it is

my firm conviction, allow the representatives of Ulster practically to

dictate the industrial policy of Ireland. Has there ever at any time

been the slightest opposition by any Irish Nationalist to proposals made

by Ulster industrialists which would lend color to such a suspicion?

Personally, I think that Ulster without safeguards of any kind might

trust its fellow-countrymen; the weight, the intelligence, the vigor

of character of Ulster people in any case would enable them to dominate

Ireland economically. But I do not for a moment say that Ulster is not

justified in demanding safeguards. Its leader, speaking at Westminster

during one of the debates on the Home Rule Bill, said scornfully, "We

do not fear oppressive legislation. We know in fact there would be none.

What we do fear is oppressive administration." That I translate to mean

that Ulster feels that the policy of the spoils to the victors would be

adopted, and that jobbery in Nationalist and Catholic interests would be

rampant. There are as many honest Nationalists and Catholics who would

object to this as there are Protestant Unionists, and they would readily

accept as part of any settlement the proposal that all posts which can

rightly be filled by competitive examination shall only be filled after

examination by Irish Civil Service Commissioners, and that this should

include all posts paid for out of public funds whether directly

under the Irish Government or under County Councils, Urban Councils,

Corporations, or Boards of Guardians. Further, they would allow

the Ulster Counties through their members a veto on any important

administrative position where the area of the official's operation was

largely confined to North-East Ulster, if such posts were of a character

which could not rightly be filled after examination and-must needs be a

government appointment. I have heard the suspicion expressed that Gaelic

might be made a subject compulsory on all candidates, and that this

would prejudice the chances of Ulster candidates desirous of entering

the Civil Service. Nationalist opinion would readily agree that, if

marks were given for Gaelic, an alternative language, such as French or

German, should be allowed the candidate as a matter of choice and the

marks given be of equal value. By such concession jobbery would be made

impossible. The corruption and bribery now prevalent in local government

would be a thing of the past. Nationalists and Unionists alike would

be assured of honest administration and that merit and efficiency, not

membership of some sectarian or political association, would lead to

public service.

20. If that would not be regarded as adequate protection Nationalists

are ready to consider with friendly minds any other safeguards proposed

either by Ulster or Southern Unionists, though in my opinion the less

there are formal and legal acknowledgments of differences the better,

for it is desirable that Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and

Nationalist should meet and redivide along other lines than those of

religion or past party politics, and it is obvious that the raising of

artificial barriers might perpetuate the present lines of division.

A real settlement is impossible without the inclusion of the whole

province in the Irish State, and apart from the passionate sentiment

existing in Nationalist Ireland for the unity of the whole country

there are strong economic bonds between Ulster and the three provinces.

Further, the exclusion of all or a large part of Ulster would make the

excluded part too predominantly industrial and the rest of Ireland too

exclusively agricultural, tending to prevent that right balance between

rural and urban industry which all nations should aim at and which

makes for a varied intellectual life, social and political wisdom and

a healthy national being. Though for the sake of obliteration of past

differences I would prefer as little building by legislation of fences

isolating one section of the community from another, still I am certain

that if Ulster, as the price of coming into a self-governing Ireland,

demanded some application of the Swiss Cantonal system to itself which

would give it control over local administration it could have it; or,

again, it could be conceded the powers of local control vested in the

provincial governments in Canada, where the provincial assemblies have

exclusive power to legislate for themselves in respect of local works,

municipal institutions, licenses, and administration of justice in

the province. Further, subject to certain provisions protecting the

interests of different religious bodies, the provincial assemblies have

the exclusive power to make laws upon education. Would not this give

Ulster all the guarantees for civil and religious liberty it requires?

What arguments of theirs, what fears have they expressed which would not

be met by such control over local administration? I would prefer that

the mind of Ulster should argue its points with the whole of Ireland and

press its ideals upon it without reservation of its wisdom for itself.

But doubtless if Ulster accepted this proposal it would benefit the rest

of Ireland by the model it would set of efficient administration: and

it would, I have no doubt, insert in its provincial constitution all the

safeguards for minorities there which they would ask should be

inserted in any Irish constitution to protect the interest of their

co-religionists in that part of Ireland where they are in a minority.

21. I can deal only with fundamentals in this memorandum, because it

is upon fundamentals there are differences of thinking. Once these are

settled it would be comparatively easy to devise the necessary clauses

in an Irish constitution, giving safeguards to England for the due

payment of the advances under the Land Acts, and the principles upon

which an Irish contribution should be made to the empire for naval

and military purposes. It was suggested by Mr. Lionel Curtis in his

"Problems of the Commonwealth," that assessors might be appointed by the

dominions to fix the fair taxable capacity of each for this purpose. It

will be observed that while I have claimed for Ireland the status of a

dominion, I have referred solely hitherto to the powers of control over

trade policy, customs, excise, taxation and legislation possessed by the

dominions, and have not claimed for Ireland the right to have an army

or a navy of its own. I recognize that the proximity of the two islands

makes it desirable to consolidate the naval power under the control of

the Admiralty. The regular army should remain in the same way under

the War Office which would have the power of recruiting in Ireland. The

Irish Parliament would, I have no doubt, be willing to raise at its own

expense under an Irish Territorial Council a Territorial Force similar

to that of England but not removable from Ireland. Military conscription

could never be permitted except by Act of the Irish Parliament. It

would be a denial of the first principle of nationality if the power

of conscripting the citizens of the country lay not in the hands of the

National Parliament but was exercised by another nation.

22. While a self-governing Ireland would contribute money to the defense

of the federated empire, it would not be content that that money

should be spent on dockyards, arsenals, camps, harbors, naval stations,

ship-building and supplies in Great Britain to the almost complete

neglect of Ireland as at present. A large contribution for such purposes

spent outside Ireland would be an economic drain if not balanced by

counter expenditure here. This might be effected by the training of a

portion of the navy and army and the Irish regiments of the regular

army in Ireland, and their equipment, clothing, supplies, munitions

and rations being obtained through an Irish department. Naval dockyards

should be constructed here and a proportion of ships built in them. Just

as surely as there must be a balance between the imports and exports of

a country, so must there be a balance between the revenue raised in

a nation and the public expenditure on that nation. Irish economic

depression after the Act of Union was due in large measure to absentee

landlordism and the expenditure of Irish revenue outside Ireland with

no proportionate return. This must not be expected to continue against

Irish interests. Ireland, granted the freedom it desires, would be

willing to defend its freedom and the freedom of other dominions in the

commonwealth of nations it belonged to, but it is not willing to allow

millions to be raised in Ireland and spent outside Ireland. If three or

five millions are raised in Ireland for imperial purposes and spent

in Great Britain it simply means that the vast employment of labor

necessitated takes place outside Ireland: whereas if spent here it

would mean the employment of many thousands of men, the support of their

families, and in the economic chain would follow the support of those

who cater for them in food, clothing, housing, etc. Even with the best

will in the world, to do its share towards its defense of the freedom

it had attained, Ireland could not permit such an economic drain on its

resources. No country could approve of a policy which in its application

means the emigration of thousands of its people every year while it

continued.

23. I believe even if there were no historical basis for Irish

nationalism that such claims as I have stated would have become

inevitable, because the tendency of humanity as it develops

intellectually and spiritually is to desire more and more freedom, and

to substitute more and more an internal law for the external law or

government, and that the solidarity of empires or nations will depend

not so much upon the close texture of their political organization or

the uniformity of mind so engendered as upon the freedom allowed and the

delight people feel in that freedom. The more educated a man is the more

it is hateful to him to be constrained and the more impossible does it

become for central governments to provide by regulation for the infinite

variety of desires and cultural developments which spring up everywhere

and are in themselves laudable, and in no way endanger the State. A

recognition of this has already led to much decentralization in Great

Britain itself. And if the claim for more power in the administration of

local affairs was so strongly felt in a homogeneous country like Great

Britain that, through its county council system, people in districts

like Kent or Essex have been permitted control over education and the

purchase of land, and the distribution of it to small holders, how much

more passionately must this desire for self-control be felt in Ireland

where people have a different national character which has survived all

the educational experiments to change them into the likeness of their

neighbors. The battle which is going on in the world has been stated to

be a spiritual conflict between those who desire greater freedom for the

individual and think that the State exists to preserve that freedom,

and those who believe in the predominance of the state and the complete

subjection of the individual to it and the molding of the individual

mind in its image. This has been stated, and if the first view is a

declaration of ideals sincerely held by Great Britain it would mean the

granting to Ireland, a country which has expressed its wishes by vaster

majorities than were ever polled in any other country for political

changes, the satisfaction of its desires.

24. The acceptance of the proposals here made would mean sacrifices for

the two extremes in Ireland, and neither party has as yet made any real

sacrifice to meet the other, but each has gone on its own way. I urge

upon them that if the suggestions made here were accepted both would

obtain substantially what they desire, the Ulster Unionists that

safety for their interests and provision for Ireland's unity with the

commonwealth of dominions inside the empire; the Nationalists that

power they desire to create an Irish civilization by self-devised and

self-checked efforts. The brotherhood of domimons of which they would

form one would be inspired as much by the fresh life and wide democratic

outlook of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, as by the

hoarier political wisdom of Great Britain; and military, naval, foreign

and colonial policy must in the future be devised by the representatives

of those dominions sitting in council together with the representatives

of Great Britain. Does not that indicate a different form of imperialism

from that they hold in no friendly memory? It would not be imperialism

in the ancient sense but a federal union of independent nations to

protect national liberties, which might draw into its union other

peoples hitherto unconnected with it, and so beget a league of nations

to make a common international law prevail. The allegiance would be

to common principles which mankind desire and would not permit the

domination of any one race. We have not only to be good Irishmen but

good citizens of the world, and one is as important as the other, for

earth is more and more forcing on its children a recognition of their

fundamental unity, and that all rise and fall and suffer together, and

that none can escape the infection from their common humanity. If these

ideas emerge from the world conflict and are accepted as world morality

it will be some compensation for the anguish of learning the lesson. We

in Ireland like the rest of the world must rise above ourselves and our

differences if we are to manifest the genius which is in us, and play a

noble part in world history.

THE NEW NATION

In that cycle of history which closed in 1914, but which seems now to

the imagination as far sunken behind time as Babylon or Samarcand, it

was customary at the festival of the Incarnation to forego our enmities

for a little and allow freer play to the spiritual in our being. Since

1914 all things in the world and with us, too, in Ireland have existed

in a welter of hate, but the rhythm of ancient habit cannot altogether

have passed away, and now if at any time, it should be possible to blow

the bugles of Heaven and recall men to that old allegiance. I do not

think it would help now if I, or another, put forward arguments drawn

from Irish history or economics to convince any party that they were

wrong and their opponents right. I think absolute truth might be stated

in respect of these things, and yet it would affect nothing in our

present mood. It would not be recognized any more than Heaven, when It

walked on earth in the guise of a Carpenter, was hailed by men whose

minds were filled by other imaginations of that coming.

I will not argue about the past, but would ask Irishmen to consider how

in future they may live together. Do they contemplate the continuance of

these bitter hatreds in our own household? The war must have a finale.

Many thousands of Irishmen will return to their country who have faced

death for other ideals than those which inspire many more thousands

now in Ireland and make them also fearless of death. How are these to

co-exist in the same island if there is no change of heart? Each will

receive passionate support from relatives, friends, and parties who

uphold their action. This will be a most unhappy country if we cannot

arrive at some moral agreement, as necessary as a political agreement.

Partition is no settlement, because there is no geographical limitation

of these passions. There is scarce a locality in Ireland where

antagonisms do not gather about the thought of Ireland as in the

caduceus of Mercury the twin serpents writhe about the sceptre of the

god. I ask our national extremists in what mood do they propose to meet

those who return, men of temper as stern as their own? Will these endure

being termed traitors to Ireland? Will their friends endure it? Will

those who mourn their dead endure to hear scornful speech of those they

loved? That way is for us a path to Hell. The unimaginative who see only

a majority in their own locality, or, perhaps, in the nation, do not

realize what a powerful factor in national life are those who differ

from them, and how they are upheld by a neighboring nation which, for

all its present travail, is more powerful by far than Ireland even if

its people were united in purpose as the fingers of one hand. Nor can

those who hold to, and are upheld by, the Empire hope to coerce to a

uniformity of feeling with themselves the millions clinging to Irish

nationality. Seven centuries of repression have left that spirit

unshaken, nor can it be destroyed save by the destruction of the Irish

people, because it springs from biological necessity. As well might a

foolish gardener trust that his apple-tree would bring forth grapes as

to dream that there could be uniformity of character and civilization

between Irishmen and Englishmen. It would be a crime against life if it

could be brought about and diversities of culture and civilization made

impossible. We may live at peace with our neighbors when it is agreed

that we must be different, and no peace is possible in the world between

nations except on this understanding. But I am not now thinking of that,

but of the more urgent problem how we are to live at peace with each

other. I am convinced Irish enmities are perpetuated because we live by

memory more than by hope, and that even now on the facts of character

there is no justification for these enmities.

We have been told that there are two nations in Ireland. That may have

been so in the past, but it is not true today. The union of Norman and

Dane and Saxon and Celt which has been going on through the centuries is

now completed, and there is but one powerful Irish character--not Celtic

or Norman-Saxon, but a new race. We should recognize our moral identity.

It was apparent before the war in the methods by which Ulstermen and

Nationalists alike strove to defend or win their political objects.

There is scarce an Ulsterman, whether he regards his ancestors as

settlers or not, who is not allied through marriage by his forbears

to the ancient race. There is in his veins the blood of the people who

existed before Patrick, and he can look backward through time to the

legends of the Red Branch, the Fianna and the gods as the legends of

his people. It would be as difficult to find even on the Western Coast a

family which has not lost in the same way its Celtic purity of race. The

character of all is fed from many streams which have mingled in them and

have given them a new distinctiveness. The invasions of Ireland and the

Plantations, however morally unjustifiable, however cruel in method, are

justified by biology. The invasion of one race by another was nature's

ancient way of reinvigorating a people.

Mr. Flinders Petrie, in his "Revolutions of Civilization," has

demonstrated that civilization comes in waves, that races rise to a

pinnacle of power and culture, and decline from that, and fall into

decadence, from which they do not emerge until there has been a crossing

of races, a fresh intermingling of cultures. He showed in ancient Egypt

eight such periods, and after every decline into decadence there was an

invasion, the necessary precedent to a fresh ascent with reinvigorated

energies. I prefer to dwell upon the final human results of this

commingling of races than upon the tyrannies and conflicts which made it

possible. The mixture of races has added to the elemental force of

the Celtic character a more complex mentality, and has saved us from

becoming, as in our island isolation we might easily have become, thin

and weedy, like herds where there has been too much in-breeding. The

modern Irish are a race built up from many races who have to prove

themselves for the future. Their animosities, based on past history,

have little justification in racial diversity today, for they are a new

people with only superficial cultural and political differences, but

with the same fundamental characteristics. It is hopeless, the dream

held by some that the ancient Celtic character could absorb the new

elements, become dominant once more, and be itself unchanged. It is

equally hopeless to dream the Celtic element could be eliminated. We are

a new people, and not the past, but the future, is to justify this new

nationality.

I believe it was this powerful Irish character which stirred in Ulster

before the war, leading it to adopt methods unlike the Anglo-Saxon

tradition in politics. I believe that new character, far more than the

spirit of the ancient race, was the ferment in the blood of those who

brought about the astonishing enterprise of Easter Week. Pearse himself,

for all his Gaelic culture, was sired by one of the race he fought

against. He might stand in that respect as a symbol of the new race

which is springing up. We are slowly realizing the vigor of the modern

Irish character just becoming self-conscious of itself. I had met many

men who were in the enterprise of Easter Week and listened to their

spirit their speech, but they had to prove to myself and others by more

than words. I listened with that half-cynical feeling which is customary

with us when men advocate a cause with which we are temperamentally

sympathetic, but about whose realization we are hopeless. I could not

gauge the strength of the new spirit, for words do not by themselves

convey the quality of power in men; and even when the reverberations

from Easter Week were echoing everywhere in Ireland, for a time I,

and many others, thought and felt about those who died as some pagan

concourse in ancient Italy might have felt looking down upon an arena,

seeing below a foam of glorious faces turned to them, the noble,

undismayed, inflexible faces of martyrs, and, without understanding,

have realized that this spirit was stronger than death. I believe that

capacity for sacrifice, that devotion to ideals exists equally among the

opponents of these men. It would have been proved in Ireland, in Ulster,

if the need had arisen. It has been proved on many a battlefield of

Europe. Whatever views we may hold about the relative value of national

or Imperial ideals, we may recognize that there is moral equality where

the sacrifice is equal. No one has more to give than life, and, when

that is given, neither Nationalist nor Imperialist in Ireland can claim

moral superiority for the dead champions of their causes.

And here I come to the purpose of my letter, which is to deprecate the

scornful repudiation by Irishmen of other Irishmen, which is so common

at present, and which helps to perpetuate our feuds. We are all one

people. We are closer to each other in character than we are to any

other race. The necessary preliminary to political adjustment is moral

adjustment, forgiveness, and mutual understanding. I have been in

council with others of my countrymen for several months, and I noticed

what an obstacle it was to agreement how few, how very few, there were

who had been on terms of friendly intimacy with men of all parties.

There was hardly one who could have given an impartial account of the

ideals and principles of his opponents. Our political differences have

brought about social isolations, and there can be no understanding where

there is no eagerness to meet those who differ from us, and hear the

best they have to say for themselves. This letter is an appeal to

Irishmen to seek out and understand their political opponents. If they

come to know each other, they will come to trust each other, and will

realize their kinship, and will set their faces to the future together,

to build up a civilization which will justify their nationality.

I myself am Anglo-Irish, with the blood of both races in me, and when

the rising of Easter Week took place all that was Irish in me was

profoundly stirred, and out of that mood I wrote commemorating the dead.

And then later there rose in memory the faces of others I knew who

loved their country, but had died in other battles. They fought in those

because they believed they would serve Ireland, and I felt these were

no less my people. I could hold them also in my heart and pay tribute

to them. Because it was possible for me to do so, I think it is possible

for others; and in the hope that the deeds of all may in the future be

a matter of pride to the new nation I append here these verses I have

written:--

To the Memory of Some I knew Who are Dead and Who Loved Ireland.

Their dream had left me numb and cold,

But yet my spirit rose in pride,

Refashioning in burnished gold

The images of those who died,

Or were shut in the penal cell.

Here's to you, Pearse, your dream not mine,

But yet the thought, for this you fell,

Has turned life's water into wine.

You who have died on Eastern hills

Or fields of France as undismayed,

Who lit with interlinked wills

The long heroic barricade,

You, too, in all the dreams you had,

Thought of some thing for Ireland done.

Was it not so, Oh, shining lad,

What lured you, Alan Anderson?

I listened to high talk from you,

Thomas McDonagh, and it seemed

The words were idle, but they grew

To nobleness by death redeemed.

Life cannot utter words more great

Than life may meet by sacrifice,

High words were equaled by high fate,

You paid the price. You paid the price.

You who have fought on fields afar,

That other Ireland did you wrong

Who said you shadowed Ireland's star,

Nor gave you laurel wreath nor song.

You proved by death as true as they,

In mightier conflicts played your part,

Equal your sacrifice may weigh,

Dear Kettle, of the generous heart.

The hope lives on age after age,

Earth with its beauty might be won

For labor as a heritage,

For this has Ireland lost a son.

This hope unto a flame to fan

Men have put life by with a smile,

Here's to you Connolly, my man,

Who cast the last torch on the pile.

You too, had Ireland in your care,

Who watched o'er pits of blood and mire,

From iron roots leap up in air

Wild forests, magical, of fire;

Yet while the Nuts of Death were shed

Your memory would ever stray

To your own isle. Oh, gallant dead--

This wreath, Will Redmond, on your clay.

Here's to you, men I never met,

Yet hope to meet behind the veil,

Thronged on some starry parapet,

That looks down upon Innisfail,

And sees the confluence of dreams

That clashed together in our night,

One river, born from many streams,

Roll in one blaze of blinding light.

December 1917

THE SPIRITUAL CONFLICT

Prophetic

I am told when a gun is fired it recoils with almost as much force as

urges forward the projectile. It is the triumph of the military engineer

that he anticipates and provides for this recoil when designing the

weapon. Nations prepare for war, but do not, as the military engineer in

his sphere does, provide for the recoil on society. It is difficult

to foresee clearly what will happen. Possible changes in territory,

economic results, the effect on a social order receive consideration

while war is being waged. But how war may affect our intellectual and

spiritual life is not always apparent. Material victories are often

spiritual defeats. History has record of nationalities which were

destroyed and causes whose followers were overborne, yet they left their

ideas behind them as a glory in the air, and these incarnated anew

in the minds of the conquerors. Ideas are things which can only be

conquered by a greater beauty or intellectual power, and they are never

more powerful than when they do not come threatening us in alliance

with physical forces. I have no doubt there are many today who watch the

cloud over Europe as we may imagine some Israelite of old gazing on

that awful cloudy pillar wherein was the Lord, in hope or fear for some

revelation of the spirit hidden in cloud and fire. What idea is hidden

in the fiery pillar which moves over Europe? What form will it assume

in its manifestation? How will it exercise dominion over the spirit?

Whatever idea is most powerful in the world must draw to it the

intellect and spirit of humanity, and it will be monarch over their

minds either by reason of their love or hate for it. It is more true

to say we must think of the most powerful than to say we must love the

highest, because even the blind can feel power, while it is rare to have

vision of high things.

A little over a century ago all the needles of being pointed to France.

A peculiar manifestation of the democratic idea had become the most

powerful thing in the world of moral forces. It went on multiplying

images of itself in men's minds through after generations; and, because

thought, like matter, is subject to the laws of action and reaction,

which indeed is the only safe basis for prophecy, this idea inevitably

found itself opposed by a contrary idea in the world. Today all the

needles of being point to Germany, where the apparition of the organized

State is manifest with every factor, force, and entity co-ordinated, so

that the State might move myriads and yet have the swift freedom of the

athletic individual. The idea that the State exists for the people is

countered by the idea that the individual exists for the State. France

in a violent reaction found itself dominated by a Caesar. Germany may

find itself without a Caesar, but with a social democracy.

But, if it does, will the idea Europe is fighting be conquered? Was the

French idea conquered either by the European confederation without or by

Napoleon within? It invaded men's minds everywhere; and in few countries

did the democratic ideas operate more powerfully than in these islands,

where the State was a most determined antagonist of their material

manifestations in France. The German idea has sufficient power to unite

the free minds of half the world against it. But is it not already

invading, and Will it not still more invade, the minds of rulers? All

Governments are august kinsmen of each other, and discreetly imitate

each other in policy where it may conduce to power or efficiency.

The efficiency of the highly organized State as a vehicle for the

manifestation of power must today be sinking into the minds of those who

guide the destinies of races. The State in these islands, before a

year of war has passed, has already assumed control over myriads of

industrial enterprises. The back-wash of great wars, their reaction

within the national being after prolonged effort, is social disturbance;

and it seems that the State will be unable easily, after this war,

to relax its autocratic power. There may come a time when it would be

possible for it to do so; but the habit of overlordship will have grown,

there will be many who will wish it to grow still more, and a thousand

reasons can be found why the mastery over national organizations should

be relaxed but little. The recoil on society after the war will be

almost as powerful as the energy expended in conflict; and our political

engineers will have to provide for the recoil. By the analogy of the

French Revolution, by what we see taking place today, it seems safe to

prophesy that the State will become more dominant over the lives of men

than ever before.

In a quarter of a century there will hardly be anybody so obscure, so

isolated in his employment, that he will not, by the development of the

organized State, be turned round to face it and to recognize it as the

most potent factor in his life. From that it follows of necessity that

literature will be concerned more and more with the shaping of the

character of this Great Being. In free democracies, where the State

interferes little with the lives of men, the mood in literature tends

to become personal and subjective; the poets sing a solitary song about

nature, love, twilight, and the stars; the novelists deal with the

lives of private persons, enlarging individual liberties of action and

thought. Few concern themselves with the character of the State. But

when it strides in, an omnipresent overlord, organizing and directing

life and industry, then the individual imagination must be directed to

that collective life and power. For one writer today concerned with high

politics we may expect to find hundreds engaged in a passionate attempt

to create the new god in their own image.

This may seem a far-fetched speculation, but not to those who see how

through the centuries humanity has oscillated like a pendulum betwixt

opposing ideals. The greatest reactions have been from solidarity to

liberty and from liberty to solidarity. The religious solidarity of

Europe in the Middle Ages was broken by a passionate desire in the heart

of millions for liberty of thought. A reaction rarely, if ever, brings

people back to a pole deserted centuries before. The coming solidarity

is the domination of the State; and to speculate whether that again will

be broken up by a new religious movement would be to speculate without

utility. What we ought to realize is that these reactions take place

within one being, humanity, and indicate eternal desires of the soul.

They seem to urge on us the idea that there is a pleroma, or human

fullness, in which the opposites may be reconciled, and that the divine

event to which we are moving is a State in which there will be essential

freedom combined with an organic unity. At the last analysis are not

all empires, nationalities, and movements spiritual in their origin,

beginning with desires of the soul and externalizing themselves in

immense manifestations of energy in which the original will is often

submerged and lost sight of? If in their inception national ideals are

spiritual, their final object must also be spiritual, perhaps to make

man a yet freer agent, but acting out of a continual consciousness of

his unity with humanity. The discipline which the highly organized

State imposes on its subjects connects them continuously in thought to

something greater than themselves, and so ennobles the average man. The

freedom which the policy of other nations permits quickens intelligence

and will. Each policy has its own defects; with one a loss in individual

initiative, with the other self-absorption and a lower standard of

citizenship or interest in national affairs. The oscillations in society

provide the corrective.

We are going to have our free individualism tempered by a more

autocratic action by the State. There are signs that with our enemy the

moral power which attracts the free to the source of their liberty

is being appreciated, and the policy which retained for Britain its

Colonies and secured their support in an hour of peril is contrasted

with the policy of the iron hand in Poland. Neither Germany nor Britain

can escape being impressed by the characteristics of the other in the

shock of conflict. It may seem a paradoxical outcome of the spiritual

conflict Mr. Asquith announced. But history is quick with such ironies.

What we condemned in others is the measure which is meted out to us.

Indeed it might almost be said that all war results in an exchange of

characteristics, and if the element of hatred is strong in the conflict

it will certainly bring a nation to every baseness of the foe it fights.

Love and hate are alike in this, that they change us into the image we

contemplate. We grow nobly like what we adore through love and ignobly

like what we contemplate through hate. It will be well for us if

we remember that all our political ideals are symbols of spiritual

destinies. These clashings of solidarity and freedom will enrich

our spiritual life if we understand of the first that our thirst for

greatness, for the majesty of empire, is a symbol of our final unity

with a greater majesty, and if we remember of the second that, as an old

scripture said, "The universe exists for the purposes of soul."

1915

ON AN IRISH HILL

It has been my dream for many years that I might at some time dwell in a

cabin on the hillside in this dear and living land of ours, and there

I would lay my head in the lap of a serene nature, and be on friendly

terms with the winds and mountains who hold enough of unexplored mystery

and infinitude to engage me at present. I would not dwell too far from

men, for above an enchanted valley, only a morning's walk from the

city, is the mountain of my dream. Here, between heaven and earth and my

brothers, there might come on me some foretaste of the destiny which the

great powers are shaping for us in this isle, the mingling of God and

nature and man in a being, one, yet infinite in number. Old tradition

has it that there was in our mysterious past such a union, a sympathy

between man and the elements so complete, that at every great deed of

hero or king the three swelling waves of Fohla responded: the wave

of Toth, the wave of Rury, and the long, slow, white, foaming wave of

Cleena. O mysterious kinsmen, would that today some deed great enough

could call forth the thunder of your response once again! But perhaps

he is now rocked in his cradle who will hereafter rock you into joyous

foam.

The mountain which I praise has not hitherto been considered one of the

sacred places in Eire, no glittering tradition hangs about it as a lure

and indeed I would not have it considered as one in any special sense

apart from its companions, but I take it here as a type of what any high

place in nature may become for us if well loved; a haunt of deep peace,

a spot where the Mother lays aside veil after veil, until at last the

great Spirit seems in brooding gentleness to be in the boundless fields

alone. I am not inspired by that brotherhood which does not overflow

with love into the being of the elements, not hail in them the same

spirit as that which calls us with so many pathetic and loving voices

from the lives of men. So I build my dream cabin in hope of its wider

intimacy:

A cabin on the mountain side hid in a grassy nook,

With door and windows open wide, where friendly stars may look;

The rabbit shy can patter in; the winds may enter free

Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy.

And when the sun sets dimmed in eve and purple fills the air,

I think the sacred Hazel Tree is dropping berries there

From starry fruitage waved aloft where Connla's well o'er-flows:

For sure the immortal waters pour through every wind that blows.

I think when night towers up aloft and shakes the trembling dew,

How every high and lonely thought that thrills my being through

Is but a shining berry dropped down through the purple air,

And from the magic tree of life the fruit falls everywhere.

The Sacred Hazel was the Celtic branch of the Tree of Life; its scarlet

nuts gave wisdom and inspiration; and fed on this ethereal fruit, the

ancient Gael grew to greatness. Though today none eat of the fruit or

drink the purple flood welling from Connla's fountain, I think that the

fire which still kindles the Celtic races was flashed into their blood

in that magical time, and is our heritage from the Druidic past. It is

still here, the magic and mystery: it lingers in the heart of a people

to whom their neighbors of another world are frequent visitors in the

spirit and over-shadowers of reverie and imagination.

The earth here remembers her past, and to bring about its renewal she

whispers with honeyed entreaty and lures with bewitching glamour. At

this mountain I speak of it was that our greatest poet, the last and

most beautiful voice of Eire, first found freedom in song, so he tells

me: and it was the pleading for a return to herself that this mysterious

nature first fluted through his lips:

Come away, O human child,

To the Woods and waters wild

With a faery hand in hand:

For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away! yes, yes; to wander on and on under star-rich skies, ever getting

deeper into the net, the love that will not let us rest, the peace above

the desire of love. The village lights in heaven and earth, each with

their own peculiar hint of home, draw us hither and thither, where it

matters not, so the voice calls and the heart-light burns.

Some it leads to the crowded ways; some it draws apart: and the Light

knows, and not any other, the need and the way.

If you ask me what has the mountain to do with these inspirations, and

whether the singer would not anywhere out of his own soul have made an

equal song, I answer to the latter, I think not. In these lofty places

the barrier between the sphere of light and the sphere of darkness are

fragile, and the continual ecstasy of the high air communicates itself,

and I have also heard from others many tales of things seen and heard

here which show that the races of the Sidhe are often present. Some have

seen below the mountain a blazing heart of light, others have heard the

Musical beating of a heart, of faery bells, or aerial clashings, and the

heart-beings have also spoken; so it has gathered around itself its own

traditions of spiritual romance and adventures of the soul.

Let no one call us dreamers when the mind is awake. If we grew forgetful

and felt no more the bitter human struggle--yes. But if we bring to it

the hope and courage of those who are assured of the nearby presence and

encircling love of the great powers? I would bring to my mountain the

weary spirits who are obscured in the fetid city where life decays into

rottenness; and call thither those who are in doubt, the pitiful and

trembling hearts who are skeptic of any hope, and place them where the

dusky vapors of their thought might dissolve in the inner light, and

their doubts vanish on the mountain top where the earthbreath streams

away to the vast, when the night glows like a seraph, and the spirit is

beset by the evidence of a million of suns to the grandeur of the nature

wherein it lives and whose destiny must be its also.

After all, is not this longing but a search for ourselves, and where

shall we find ourselves at last? Not in this land nor wrapped in these

garments of an hour, but wearing the robes of space whither these voices

out of the illimitable allure us, now with love, and anon with beauty

or power. In our past the mighty ones came glittering across the foam of

the mystic waters and brought their warriors away.

Perhaps, and this also is my hope, they may again return; Manannan,

on his ocean-sweeping boat, a living creature, diamond-winged, or Lu,

bright as the dawn, on his fiery steed, manned with tumultuous flame, or

some hitherto unknown divinity may stand suddenly by me on the hill, and

hold out the Silver Branch with white blossoms from the Land of Youth,

and stay me ere I depart with the sung call as of old:

Tarry thou yet, late lingerer in the twilight's glory

Gay are the hills with song: earth's faery children leave

More dim abodes to roam the primrose-hearted eve,

Opening their glimmering lips to breathe some wondrous story.

Hush, not a whisper! Let your heart alone go dreaming.

Dream unto dream may pass: deep in the heart alone

Murmurs the Mighty One his solemn undertone.

Canst thou not see adown the silver cloudland streaming

Rivers of faery light, dewdrop on dewdrop falling,

Starfire of silver flames, lighting the dark beneath?

And what enraptured hosts burn on the dusky heath!

Come thou away with them for Heaven to Earth is calling.

These are Earth's voice--her answer--spirits thronging.

Come to the Land of Youth: the trees grown heavy there

Drop on the purple wave the starry fruit they bear.

Drink! the immortal waters quench the spirit's longing.

Art thou not now, bright one, all sorrow past, in elation,

Filled with wild joy, grown brother-hearted with the vast,

Whither thy spirit wending flits the dim stars past

Unto the Light of Lights in burning adoration.

1896

RELIGION AND LOVE

I have often wondered whether there is not something wrong in our

religious systems in that the same ritual, the same doctrines, the

same aspirations are held to be sufficient both for men and women. The

tendency everywhere is to obliterate distinctions, and if a woman

be herself she is looked upon unkindly. She rarely understands our

metaphysics, and she gazes on the expounder of the mystery of the Logos

with enigmatic eyes which reveal the enchantment of another divinity.

The ancients were wiser than we in this, for they had Aphrodite and Hera

and many another form of the Mighty Mother who bestowed on women their

peculiar graces and powers. Surely no girl in ancient Greece ever sent

up to all-pervading Zeus a prayer that her natural longings might be

fulfilled; but we may be sure that to Aphrodite came many such prayers.

The deities we worship today are too austere for women to approach with

their peculiar desires, and indeed in Ireland the largest number of

our people do not see any necessity for love-making at all, or what

connection spiritual powers have with the affections. A girl, without

repining, will follow her four-legged dowry to the house of a man she

may never have spoken twenty words to before her marriage. We praise our

women for their virtue, but the general acceptance of the marriage as

arranged shows so unemotional, so undesirable a temperament, that it is

not to be wondered at. One wonders was there temptation.

What the loss to the race may be it is impossible to say, but it is true

that beautiful civilizations are built up by the desire of man to give

his beloved all her desires. Where there is no beloved, but only a

housekeeper, there are no beautiful fancies to create the beautiful

arts, no spiritual protest against the mean dwelling, no hunger build

the world anew for her sake. Aphrodite is outcast and with her many

of the other immortals have also departed. The home life in Ireland is

probably more squalid than with any other people equally prosperous

in Europe. The children begotten without love fill more and more the

teeming asylums. We are without art; literature is despised; we have few

of those industries which spring up in other countries in response to

the desire of woman to make gracious influences pervade the home of her

partner, a desire to which man readily yields, and toils to satisfy if

he loves truly. The desire for beauty has come almost to be regarded as

dangerous, if not sinful; and the woman who is still the natural child

of the Great Mother and priestess of the mysteries, if she betray the

desire to exercise her divinely-given powers, if there be enchantment

in her eyes and her laugh, and if she bewilder too many men, is in our

latest code of morals distinctly an evil influence. The spirit, melted

and tortured with love, which does not achieve its earthly desire, is

held to have wasted its strength, and the judgment which declares the

life to be wrecked is equally severe on that which caused this wild

conflagration in the heart. But the end of life is not comfort but

divine being. We do not regard the life which closed in the martyr's

fire as ended ignobly. The spiritual philosophy which separates

human emotions and ideas, and declares some to be secular and others

spiritual, is to blame. There is no meditation which if prolonged will

not bring us to the same world where religion would carry us, and if a

flower in the wall will lead us to all knowledge, so the understanding

of the peculiar nature of one half of humanity will bring us far on our

journey to the sacred deep. I believe it was this wise understanding

which in the ancient world declared the embodied spirit in man to be

influenced more by the Divine Mind and in woman by the Mighty Mother, by

which nature in its spiritual aspect was understood. In this philosophy,

Boundless Being, when manifested, revealed itself in two forms of life,

spirit and substance; and the endless evolution of its divided rays had

as its root impulse the desire to return to that boundless being. By

many ways blindly or half consciously the individual life strives to

regain its old fullness. The spirit seeks union with nature to pass

from the life of vision into Pure being; and nature, conscious that its

grosser forms are impermanent, is for ever dissolving and leading

its votary to a more distant shrine. "Nature is timid like a woman,"

declares an Indian scripture. "She reveals herself shyly and withdraws

again." All this metaphysic will not appear out of place if we regard

women as influenced beyond herself and her conscious life for spiritual

ends. I do not enter a defense of the loveless coquette, but the woman

who has a natural delight in awakening love in men is priestess of

a divinity than which there is none mightier among the rulers of the

heavens. Through her eyes, her laugh, in all her motions, there is

expressed more than she is conscious of herself. The Mighty Mother

through the woman is kindling a symbol of herself in the spirit, and

through that symbol she breathes her secret life into the heart, so that

it is fed from within and is drawn to herself. We remember that with

Dante, the image of a woman became at last the purified vesture of his

spirit through which the mysteries were revealed. We are for ever making

our souls with effort and pain, and shaping them into images which

reveal or are voiceless according to their degree; and the man whose

spirit has been obsessed by a beauty so long brooded upon that he has

almost become that which he contemplated, owes much to the woman who may

never be his; and if he or the world understood aright, he has no cause

of complaint. It is the essentially irreligious spirit of Ireland which

has come to regard love as an unnecessary emotion and the mingling of

the sexes as dangerous. For it is a curious thing that while we commonly

regard ourselves as the most religious people in Europe, the reverse is

probably true. The country which has never produced spiritual thinkers

or religious teachers of whom men have heard if we except Berkeley and

perhaps the remote Johannes Scotus Erigena, cannot pride itself on its

spiritual achievement; and it might seem even more paradoxical, but I

think it would be almost equally true, to say that the first spiritual

note in our literature was struck when a poet generally regarded as

pagan wrote it as the aim of his art to reveal--

In all poor foolish things that live a day

Eternal beauty wandering on her way.

The heavens do not declare the glory of God any more than do shining

eyes, nor the firmament show His handiwork more than the woven wind

of hair, for these were wrought with no lesser love than set the young

stars swimming in seas of joyous and primeval air. If we drink in the

beauty of the night or the mountains, it is deemed to be praise of the

Maker, but if we show an equal adoration of the beauty of man or woman,

it is dangerous, it is almost wicked. Of course it is dangerous; and

without danger there is no passage to eternal things. There is the

valley of the shadow beside the pathway of light, and it always will be

there, and the heavens will never be entered by those who shrink

from it. Spirituality is the power of apprehending formless spiritual

essences, of seeing the eternal in the transitory, and in the things

which are seen the unseen things of which they are the shadow. I call

Mr. Yeats' poetry spiritual when it declares, as in the lines I quoted,

that there is no beauty so trivial that it is not the shadow of the

Eternal Beauty. A country is religious where it is common belief that

all things are instinct with divinity, and where the love between man

and woman is seen as a symbol, the highest we have, of the union of

spirit and nature, and their final blending in the boundless being. For

this reason the lightest desires even, the lightest graces of women have

a philosophical value for what suggestions they bring us of the divinity

behind them.

As men and women feel themselves more and more to be sharers of

universal aims, they will contemplate in each other and in themselves

that aspect of the boundless being under whose influence they are cast,

and will appeal to it for understanding and power. Time, which is for

ever bringing back the old and renewing it, may yet bring back to us

some counterpart of Aphrodite or Hera as they were understood by the

most profound thinkers of the ancient world; and women may again have

her temples and her mysteries, and renew again her radiant life at its

fountain, and feel that in seeking for beauty she is growing more into

her own ancestral being, and that in its shining forth she is giving to

man, as he may give to her, something of that completeness of spirit of

which it is written, "neither is the man without the woman nor the woman

without the man in the Highest."

It may seem strange that what is so clear should require statement, but

it is only with a kind of despair the man or woman of religious mind

can contemplate the materialism of our thought about life. It is not

our natural heritage from the past, for the bardic poetry shows that

a heaven lay about us in the mystical childhood of our race, and a

supernatural original was often divined for the great hero, or the

beautiful woman. All this perception has withered away, for religion has

become observance of rule and adherence to doctrine. The first steps

to the goal have been made sufficient in themselves; but religion is

useless unless it has a transforming power, unless it is able "to turn

fishermen into divines," and make the blind see and the deaf hear.

They are no true teachers who cannot rise beyond the world of sense and

darkness and awaken the links within us from earth to heaven, who cannot

see within the heart what are its needs, and who have not the power to

open the poor blind eyes and touch the ears that have heard no sound of

the heavenly harmonies. Our clergymen do their best to deliver us from

what they think is evil, but do not lead us into the Kingdom. They

forget that the faculties cannot be spiritualized by restraint but in

use, and that the greatest evil of all is not to be able to see

the divine everywhere, in life and love no less than in the solemn

architecture of the spheres. In the free play of the beautiful and

natural human relations lie the greatest possibilities of spiritual

development, for heaven is not prayer nor praise but the fullness of

life, which is only divined through the richness and variety of life

on earth. There is a certain infinitude in the emotions of love,

tenderness, pity, joy, and all that is begotten in love, and this

limitless character of the emotions has never received the philosophical

consideration which is due to it, for even laughter may be considered

solemnly, and gaiety and joy in us are the shadowy echoes of that joy

spoken of the radiant Morning Stars, and there is not an emotion in man

or woman which has not, however perverted and muddied in its coming,

in some way flowed from the first fountain. We are no more divided from

supernature than we are from our own bodies, and where the life of

man or woman is naturally most intense it most naturally overflows and

mingles with the subtler and more lovely world within. If religion has

no word to say upon this it is incomplete, and we wander in the narrow

circle of prayers and praise, wondering all the while what is it we are

praising God for, because we feel so melancholy and lifeless. Dante had

a place in his Inferno for the joyless souls, and if his conception

be true the population of that circle will be largely modern Irish.

A reaction against this conventional restraint is setting in, and the

needs of life will perhaps in the future no longer be violated as they

are today; and since it is the pent-up flood of the joy which ought to

be in life which is causing this reaction, and since there is a divine

root in it, it is difficult to say where it might not carry us; I hope

into some renewal of ancient conceptions of the fundamental purpose of

womanhood and its relations to Divine Nature, and that from the temples

where woman may be instructed she will come forth, with strength in

her to resist all pleading until the lover worship in her a divine

womanhood, and that through their love the divided portions of the

immortal nature may come together and be one as before the beginning of

worlds.

1904

THE RENEWAL OF YOUTH

I am a part of all that I have met;

Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'

Gleams that untravel'd world.....

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

--Ulysses

I.

Humanity is no longer the child it was at the beginning of the world.

The spirit which prompted by some divine intent, flung itself long ago

into a vague, nebulous, drifting nature, though it has endured

through many periods of youth, maturity, and age, has yet had its own

transformations. Its gay, wonderful childhood gave way, as cycle after

cycle coiled itself into slumber, to more definite purposes, and now it

is old and burdened with experiences. It is not an age that quenches its

fire, but it will not renew again the activities which gave it wisdom.

And so it comes that men pause with a feeling which they translate into

weariness of life before the accustomed joys and purposes of their race.

They wonder at the spell which induced their fathers to plot and execute

deeds which seem to them to have no more meaning than a whirl of dust.

But their fathers had this weariness also and concealed it from each

other in fear, for it meant the laying aside of the sceptre, the

toppling over of empires, the chilling of the household warmth, and all

for a voice whose inner significance revealed itself but to one or two

among myriads.

The spirit has hardly emerged from the childhood with which nature

clothes it afresh at every new birth, when the disparity between the

garment and the wearer becomes manifest: the little tissue of joys

and dreams woven about it is found inadequate for shelter: it trembles

exposed to the winds blowing out of the unknown. We linger at twilight

with some companion, still glad, contented, and in tune with the nature

which fills the orchards with blossom and sprays the hedges with dewy

blooms. The laughing lips give utterance to wishes--ours until

that moment. Then the spirit, without warning, suddenly falls into

immeasurable age: a sphinx-like face looks at us: our lips answer, but

far from the region of elemental being we inhabit, they syllable in

shadowy sound, out of old usage, the response, speaking of a love and a

hope which we know have vanished from us for evermore. So hour by hour

the scourge of the infinite drives us out of every nook and corner of

life we find pleasant. And this always takes place when all is fashioned

to our liking: then into our dream strides the wielder of the lightning:

we get glimpses of a world beyond us thronged with mighty, exultant

beings: our own deeds become infinitesimal to us: the colors of our

imagination, once so shining, grow pale as the living lights of God glow

upon them. We find a little honey in the heart which we make sweeter for

some one, and then another Lover, whose forms are legion, sighs to us

out of its multitudinous being: we know that the old love is gone. There

is a sweetness in song or in the cunning re-imaging of the beauty we

see; but the Magician of the Beautiful whispers to us of his art, how we

were with him when he laid the foundations of the world, and the song is

unfinished, the fingers grow listless. As we receive these intimations

of age our very sins become negative: we are still pleased if a voice

praises us, but we grow lethargic in enterprises where the spur to

activity is fame or the acclamation of men. At some point in the past we

may have struggled mightily for the sweet incense which men offer to a

towering personality; but the infinite is for ever within man: we sighed

for other worlds and found that to be saluted as victor by men did not

mean acceptance by the gods.

But the placing of an invisible finger upon our lips when we would

speak, the heart-throb of warning where we would love, that we grow

contemptuous of the prizes of life, does not mean that the spirit has

ceased from its labors, that the high-built beauty of the spheres is to

topple mistily into chaos, as a mighty temple in the desert sinks into

the sand, watched only by a few barbarians too feeble to renew its

ancient pomp and the ritual of its once shining congregations. Before

we, who were the bright children of the dawn, may return as the twilight

race into the silence, our purpose must be achieved, we have to assume

mastery over that nature which now overwhelms us, driving into the

Fire-fold the flocks of stars and wandering fires. Does it seem very

vast and far away? Do you sigh at the long, long time? Or does it appear

hopeless to you who perhaps return with trembling feet evening after

evening from a little labor? But it is behind all these things that

the renewal takes place, when love and grief are dead; when they loosen

their hold on the spirit and it sinks back into itself, looking out on

the pitiful plight of those who, like it, are the weary inheritors of so

great destinies: then a tenderness which is the most profound quality of

its being springs up like the outraying of the dawn, and if in that mood

it would plan or execute it knows no weariness, for it is nourished from

the First Fountain. As for these feeble children of the once glorious

spirits of the dawn, only a vast hope can arouse them from so vast a

despair, for the fire will not invigorate them for the repetition of

petty deeds but only for the eternal enterprise, the war in heaven,

that conflict between Titan and Zeus which is part of the never-ending

struggle of the human spirit to assert its supremacy over nature. We,

who he crushed by this mountain nature piled above us, must arise again,

unite to storm the heavens and sit on the seats of the mighty.

II.

We speak out of too petty a spirit to each other; the true poems, said

Whitman:

Bring none to his or to her terminus or to be content and full,

Whom they take they take into space to behold the birth of stars,

to learn one of the meanings,

To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the ceaseless

rings and never be quiet again.

Here is inspiration--the voice of the soul. Every word which really

inspires is spoken as if the Golden Age had never passed. The great

teachers ignore the personal identity and speak to the eternal pilgrim.

Too often the form or surface far removed from beauty makes us falter,

and we speak to that form and the soul is not stirred. But an equal

temper arouses it. To whoever hails in it the lover, the hero, the

magician, it will respond, but not to him who accosts it in the name and

style of its outer self. How often do we not long to break through the

veils which divide us from some one, but custom, convention, or a fear

of being misunderstood prevent us, and so the moment passes whose heat

might have burned through every barrier. Out with it--out with it, the

hidden heart, the love that is voiceless, the secret tender germ of an

infinite forgiveness. That speaks to the heart. That pierces through

many a vesture of the Soul. Our companion struggles in some labyrinth of

passion. We help him, we, think, with ethic and moralities.

Ah, very well they are; well to know and to keep, but wherefore? For

their own sake? No, but that the King may arise in his beauty. We write

that in letters, in books, but to the face of the fallen who brings back

remembrance? Who calls him by his secret name? Let a man but feel for

what high cause is his battle, for what is his cyclic labor, and a

warrior who is invincible fights for him and he draws upon divine

powers. Our attitude to man and to nature, expressed or not, has

something of the effect of ritual, of evocation. As our aspiration so

is our inspiration. We believe in life universal, in a brotherhood

which links the elements to man, and makes the glow-worm feel far off

something of the rapture of the seraph hosts. Then we go out into the

living world, and what influences pour through us! We are "at league

with the stones of the field." The winds of the world blow radiantly

upon us as in the early time. We feel wrapt about with love, with an

infinite tenderness that caresses us. Alone in our rooms as we ponder,

what sudden abysses of light open within us! The Gods are so much nearer

than we dreamed. We rise up intoxicated with the thought, and reel out

seeking an equal companionship under the great night and the stars.

Let us get near to realities. We read too much. We think of that which

is "the goal, the Comforter, the Lord, the Witness, the resting-place,

the asylum, and the Friend." Is it by any of these dear and familiar

names? The soul of the modern mystic is becoming a mere hoarding-place

for uncomely theories. He creates an uncouth symbolism, and blinds his

soul within with names drawn from the Kabala or ancient Sanskrit, and

makes alien to himself the intimate powers of his spirit, things which

in truth are more his than the beatings of his heart. Could we not speak

of them in our own tongue, and the language of today will be as sacred

as any of the past. From the Golden One, the child of the divine, comes

a voice to its shadow. It is stranger to our world, aloof from our

ambitions, with a destiny not here to be fulfilled. It says: "You are of

dust while I am robed in opalescent airs. You dwell in houses of clay,

I in a temple not made by hands. I will not go with thee, but thou must

come with me." And not alone is the form of the divine aloof but the

spirit behind the form. It is called the Goal truly, but it has no

ending. It is the Comforter, but it waves away our joys and hopes like

the angel with the flaming sword. Though it is the Resting-place, it

stirs to all heroic strife, to outgoing, to conquest. It is the Friend

indeed, but it will not yield to our desires. Is it this strange,

unfathomable self we think to know, and awaken to, by what is written,

or by study of it as so many planes of consciousness? But in vain we

store the upper chambers of the mind with such quaint furniture of

thought. No archangel makes his abode therein. They abide only in the

shining. No wonder that the Gods do not incarnate. We cannot say we do

pay reverence to these awful powers. We repulse the living truth by

our doubts and reasonings. We would compel the Gods to fall in with

our petty philosophy rather than trust in the heavenly guidance. Ah, to

think of it, those dread deities, the divine Fires, to be so enslaved!

We have not comprehended the meaning of the voice which cried "Prepare

ye the way of the Lord," or this, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates. Be ye

lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in."

Nothing that we read is useful unless it calls up living things in the

soul. To read a mystic book truly is to invoke the powers. If they do

not rise up plumed and radiant, the apparitions of spiritual things,

then is our labor barren. We only encumber the mind with useless

symbols. They knew better ways long ago. "Master of the Green-waving

Planisphere,... Lord of the Azure Expanse,... it is thus we invoke,"

cried the magicians of old.

And us, let us invoke them with joy, let us call upon them with love,

the Light we hail, or the Divine Darkness we worship with silent breath.

That silence cries aloud to the Gods. Then they will approach us. Then

we may learn that speech of many colors, for they will not speak in our

mortal tongue; they will not answer to the names of men. Their names are

rainbow glories. Yet these are mysteries, and they cannot be reasoned

out or argued over. We cannot speak truly of them from report, or

description, or from what another has written. A relation to the thing

in itself alone is our warrant, and this means we must set aside our

intellectual self-sufficiency and await guidance. It will surely come

to those who wait in trust, a glow, a heat in the heart announcing the

awakening of the Fire. And, as it blows with its mystic breath into the

brain, there is a hurtling of visions, a brilliance of lights, a sound

as of great waters vibrant and musical in their flowing, and murmurs

from a single yet multitudinous being. In such a mood, when the far

becomes near, the strange familiar, and the infinite possible, he wrote

from whose words we get the inspiration:

To launch off with absolute faith, to sweep through the

ceaseless rings

and never be quiet again.

Such a faith and such an unrest be ours: faith which is mistrust of the

visible; unrest which is full of a hidden surety and reliance. We, when

we fall into pleasant places, rest and dream our strength away. Before

every enterprise and adventure of the soul we calculate in fear our

power to do. But remember, "Oh, disciple, in thy work for thy brother

thou hast many allies; in the winds, in the air, in all the voices of

the silent shore." These are the far-wandered powers of our own

nature, and they turn again home at our need. We came out of the Great

Mother-Life for the purposes of soul. Are her darlings forgotten where

they darkly wander and strive? Never. Are not the lives of all her

heroes proof? Though they seem to stand alone the eternal Mother keeps

watch on them, and voices far away and unknown to them before arise in

passionate defense, and hearts beat warm to help them. Aye, if we

could look within we would see vast nature stirred on their behalf, and

institutions shaken, until the truth they fight for triumphs, and they

pass, and a wake of glory ever widening behind them trails down the

ocean of the years.

Thus the warrior within us works, or, if we choose to phrase it so, it

is the action of the spiritual will. Shall we not, then, trust in it and

face the unknown, defiant and fearless of its dangers. Though we seem to

go alone to the high, the lonely, the pure, we need not despair. Let no

one bring to this task the mood of the martyr or of one who thinks he

sacrifices something. Yet let all who will come. Let them enter the

path, facing all things in life and death with a mood at once gay and

reverent, as beseems those who are immortal--who are children today, but

whose hands tomorrow may grasp the sceptre, sitting down with the Gods

as equals and companions. "What a man thinks, that he is: that is the

old secret." In this self-conception lies the secret of life, the way of

escape and return. We have imagined ourselves into littleness, darkness,

and feebleness. We must imagine ourselves into greatness. "If thou wilt

not equal thyself to God thou canst not understand God. The like is only

intelligible by the like." In some moment of more complete imagination

the thought-born may go forth and look on the ancient Beauty. So it was

in the mysteries long ago, and may well be today. The poor dead shadow

was laid to sleep, forgotten in its darkness, as the fiery power,

mounting from heart to head, went forth in radiance. Not then did it

rest, nor ought we. The dim worlds dropped behind it, the lights of

earth disappeared as it neared the heights of the immortals. There was

One seated on a throne, One dark and bright with ethereal glory. It

arose in greeting. The radiant figure laid its head against the breast

which grew suddenly golden, and Father and Son vanished in that which

has no place or name.

III.

Who are exiles? as for me

Where beneath the diamond dome

Lies the light on hills or tree

There my palace is and home.

We are outcasts from Deity, therefore we defame the place of our exile.

But who is there may set apart his destiny from the earth which bore

him? I am one of those who would bring back the old reverence for the

Mother, the magic, the love. I think, metaphysician, you have gone

astray. You would seek within yourself for the fountain of life. Yes,

there is the true, the only light. But do not dream it will lead you

farther away from the earth, but rather deeper into its' heart. By it

you are nourished with those living waters you would drink. You are

yet in the womb and unborn, and the Mother breathes for you the diviner

airs. Dart out your farthest ray of thought to the original, and yet you

have not found a new path of your own. Your ray is still enclosed in

the parent ray, and only on the sidereal streams are you borne to the

freedom of the deep, to the sacred stars whose distance maddens, and to

the lonely Light of Lights.

Let us, therefore, accept the conditions and address ourselves with

wonder, with awe, with love, as we well may, to that being in whom we

move. I abate no jot of those vaster hopes, yet I would pursue that

ardent aspiration, content as to here and today. I do not believe in a

nature red with tooth and claw. If indeed she appears so terrible to any

it is because they themselves have armed her. Again, behind the anger

of the Gods there is a love. Are the rocks barren? Lay your brow against

them and learn what memories they keep. Is the brown earth unbeautiful?

Yet lie on the breast of the Mother and you shall be aureoled with the

dews of faery. The earth is the entrance to the Halls of Twilight. What

emanations are those that make radiant the dark woods of pine! Round

every leaf and tree and over all the mountains wave the fiery tresses of

that hidden sun which is the soul of the earth and parent of your

soul. But we think of these things no longer. Like the prodigal we have

wandered far from our home, but no more return. We idly pass or wait as

strangers in the halls our spirit built.

Sad or fain no more to live?

I have pressed the lips of pain

With the kisses lovers give

Ransomed ancient powers again.

I would raise this shrinking soul to a universal acceptance. What! does

it aspire to the All, and yet deny by its revolt and inner test the

justice of Law? From sorrow we take no less and no more than from

our joys. If the one reveals to the soul the mode by which the power

overflows and fills it here, the other indicates to it the unalterable

will which checks excess and leads it on to true proportion and its

own ancestral ideal. Yet men seem for ever to fly from their destiny

of inevitable beauty; because of delay the power invites and lures no

longer but goes out into the highways with a hand of iron. We look back

cheerfully enough upon those old trials out of which we have passed; but

we have gleaned only an aftermath of wisdom, and missed the full harvest

if the will has not risen royally at the moment in unison with the

will of the Immortal, even though it comes rolled round with terror and

suffering and strikes at the heart of clay.

Through all these things, in doubt, despair, poverty, sick, feeble,

or baffled, we have yet to learn reliance. "I will not leave thee or

forsake thee" are the words of the most ancient spirit to the spark

wandering in the immensity of its own being. This high courage brings

with it a vision. It sees the true intent in all circumstance out of

which its own emerges to meet it. Before it the blackness melts into

forms of beauty, and back of all illusions is seen the old enchanter

tenderly smiling, the dark, hidden Father enveloping his children.

All things have their compensations. For what is absent here there is

always, if we seek, a nobler presence about us.

Captive, see what stars give light

In the hidden heart of clay:

At their radiance dark and bright

Fades the dreamy King of Day.

We complain of conditions, but this very imperfection it is which

urges us to arise and seek for the Isles of the Immortals. What we lack

recalls the fullness. The soul has seen a brighter day than this and a

sun which never sets. Hence the retrospect: "Thou hast been in Eden

the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius,

topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire,

emerald.... Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up

and down in the midst of the stones of fire." We would point out these

radiant avenues of return; but sometimes we feel in our hearts that

we sound but cockney voices as guides amid the ancient temples, the

cyclopean crypts sanctified by the mysteries. To be intelligible we

replace the opalescent shining by the terms of the scientist, and we

prate of occult physiology in the same breath with the Most High. Yet

when the soul has the divine vision it knows not it has a body. Let it

remember, and the breath of glory kindles it no more; it is once again

a captive. After all it does not make the mysteries clearer to speak in

physical terms and do violence to our intuitions. If we ever use these

centres, as fires we shall see them, or they shall well up within us

as fountains of potent sound. We may satisfy people's mind with a

sense correspondence, and their souls may yet hold aloof. We shall only

inspire by the magic of a superior beauty. Yet this too has its dangers.

"Thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness," continues

the seer. If we follow too much the elusive beauty of form we will miss

the spirit. The last secrets are for those who translate vision into

being. Does the glory fade away before you? Say truly in your heart,

"I care not. I will wear the robes I am endowed with today." You are

already become beautiful, being beyond desire and free.

Night and day no more eclipse

Friendly eyes that on us shine,

Speech from old familiar lips.

Playmates of a youth divine.

To childhood once again. We must regain the lost state. But it is to

the giant and spiritual childhood of the young immortals we must return,

when into their dear and translucent souls first fell the rays of

the father-beings. The men of old were intimates of wind and wave and

playmates of many a brightness long since forgotten. The rapture of

the fire was their rest; their out-going was still consciously through

universal being. By darkened images we may figure something vaguely

akin, as when in rare moments under the stars the big dreamy heart

of childhood is pervaded with quiet and brimmed full with love. Dear

children of the world, so tired today--so weary seeking after the light.

Would you recover strength and immortal vigor? Not one star alone, your

star, shall shed its happy light upon you, but the All you must adore.

Something intimate, secret, unspeakable, akin to thee, will emerge

silently, insensibly, and ally itself with thee as thou gatherest

thyself from the four quarters of the earth. We shall go back to the

world of the dawn, but to a brighter light than that which opened

up this wondrous story of the cycles. The forms of elder years will

reappear in our vision, the father-beings once again. So we shall grow

at home amid these grandeurs, and with that All-Presence about us may

cry in our hearts, "At last is our meeting, Immortal. O starry one, now

is our rest!"

Come away, oh, come away;

We will quench the heart's desire

Past the gateways of the day

In the rapture of the fire.

1896

THE HERO IN MAN

I.

There sometimes comes on us a mood of strange reverence for people and

things which in less contemplative hours we hold to be unworthy; and in

such moments we may set side by side the head of the Christ and the head

of an outcast, and there is an equal radiance around each, which makes

of the darker face a shadow and is itself a shadow around the head of

light. We feel a fundamental unity of purpose in their presence here,

and would as willingly pay homage to the one who has fallen as to him

who has become a master of life. I know that immemorial order decrees

that the laurel crown be given only to the victor, but in these moments

I speak of a profound intuition changes the decree and sets the aureole

on both alike.

We feel such deep pity for the fallen that there must needs be a justice

in it, for these diviner feelings are wiser in themselves and do not

vaguely arise. They are lights from the Father. A justice lies in

uttermost pity and forgiveness, even when we seem to ourselves to be

most deeply wronged, or why is it that the awakening of resentment or

hate brings such swift contrition? We are ever self-condemned, and the

dark thought which went forth in us brooding revenge, when suddenly

smitten by the light, withdraws and hides within itself in awful

penitence. In asking myself why is it that the meanest are safe from our

condemnation when we sit on the true seat of judgment in the heart,

it seemed to me that their shield was the sense we have of a nobility

hidden in them under the cover of ignoble things; that their present

darkness was the result of some too weighty heroic labor undertaken long

ago by the human spirit, that it was the consecration of past purpose

which played with such a tender light about their ruined lives, and it

was more pathetic because this nobleness was all unknown to the

fallen, and the heroic cause of so much pain was forgotten in life's

prison-house.

While feeling the service to us of the great ethical ideal which have

been formulated by men I think that the idea of justice intellectually

conceived tends to beget a certain hardness of heart. It is true that

men have done wrong--hence their pain; but back of all this there is

something infinitely soothing, a light that does not wound, which says

no harsh thing, even although the darkest of the spirits turns to it in

its agony, for the darkest of human spirits has still around him this

first glory which shines from a deeper being within, whose history may

be told as the legend of the Hero in Man.

Among the many immortals with whom ancient myth peopled the spiritual

spheres of humanity are some figures which draw to themselves a more

profound tenderness than the rest. Not Aphrodite rising in beauty from

the faery foam of the first seas, not Apollo with sweetest singing,

laughter, and youth, not the wielder of the lightning could exact the

reverence accorded to the lonely Titan chained on the mountain, or to

that bowed figure heavy with the burden of the sins of the world;

for the brighter divinities had no part in the labor of man, no such

intimate relation with the wherefore of his own existence so full of

struggle. The more radiant figures are prophecies to him of his destiny,

but the Titan and the Christ are a revelation of his more immediate

state; their giant sorrows companion his own, and in contemplating them

he awakens what is noblest in his own nature; or, in other words, in

understanding their divine heroism he understands himself. For this in

truth it seems to me to mean: all knowledge is a revelation of the self

to the self, and our deepest comprehension of the seemingly apart divine

is also our farthest inroad to self-knowledge; Prometheus, Christ, are

in every heart; the story of one is the story of all; the Titan and the

Crucified are humanity.

If, then, we consider them as representing the human spirit and

disentangle from the myths their meaning, we shall find that whatever

reverence is due to that heroic love, which descended from heaven for

the redeeming of a lower nature, must be paid to every human being.

Christ is incarnate in all humanity. Prometheus is bound for ever within

us. They are the same. They are a host, and the divine incarnation

was not spoken of one, but of all those who, descending into the lower

world, tried to change it into the divine image, and to wrest out of

chaos a kingdom for the empire of light. The angels saw below them in

chaos a senseless rout blind with elemental passion, for ever warring

with discordant cries which broke in upon the world of divine beauty;

and that the pain might depart, they grew rebellious in the Master's

peace, and descending to earth the angelic lights were crucified in men.

They left so radiant worlds, such a light of beauty, for earth's gray

twilight filled with tears, that through this elemental life might

breathe the starry music brought from Him. If the "Fore-seer" be a true

name for the Titan, it follows that in the host which he represents

was a light which well foreknew all the dark paths of its journey;

foreseeing the bitter struggle with a hostile nature, but foreseeing

perhaps a gain, a distant glory o'er the hills of sorrow, and that

chaos, divine and transformed, with only gentle breathing, lit up by

the Christ-soul of the universe. There is a transforming power in the

thought itself: we can no longer condemn the fallen, they who laid aside

their thrones of ancient power, their spirit ecstasy and beauty on

such a mission. Perhaps those who sank lowest did so to raise a

greater burden, and of these most fallen it may in the hour of their

resurrection be said, "The last shall be first."

So, placing side by side the head of the outcast with the head of

Christ, it has this equal beauty--with as bright a glory it sped from

the Father in ages past on its redeeming labor. Of his present darkness

what shall we say? "He is altogether dead in sin?" Nay, rather with

tenderness forbear, and think the foreseeing spirit has taken its own

dread path to mastery; that that which foresaw the sorrow foresaw also

beyond it a greater joy and a mightier existence, when it would rise

again in a new robe, woven out of the treasure hidden in the deep of its

submergence, and shine at last like the stars of the morning, and live

among the Sons of God.

II.

Our deepest life is when we are alone. We think most truly, love best,

when isolated from the outer world in that mystic abyss we call soul.

Nothing external can equal the fullness of these moments. We may sit in

the blue twilight with a friend, or bend together by the hearth, half

whispering or in a silence populous with loving thoughts mutually

understood; then we may feel happy and at peace, but it is only because

we are lulled by a semblance to deeper intimacies. When we think of a

friend and the loved one draws nigh, we sometimes feel half-pained, for

we touched something in our solitude which the living presence shut out;

we seem more apart, and would fain wave them away and cry, "Call me not

forth from this; I am no more a spirit if I leave my throne." But these

moods, though lit up by intuitions of the true, are too partial, they

belong too much to the twilight of the heart, they have too dreamy a

temper to serve us well in life. We would wish rather for our thoughts

a directness such as belongs to the messengers of the gods, swift,

beautiful, flashing presences bent on purposes well understood.

What we need is that this interior tenderness shall be elevated into

seership, that what in most is only yearning or blind love shall see

clearly its way and hope. To this end we have to observe more intently

the nature of the interior life. We find, indeed, that it is not a

solitude at all, but dense with multitudinous being: instead of being

alone we are in the thronged highways of existence. For our guidance

when entering here many words of warning have been uttered, laws have

been outlined, and beings full of wonder, terror, and beauty described.

Yet there is a spirit in us deeper than our intellectual being which I

think of as the Hero in man, who feels the nobility of its place in the

midst of all this, and who would fain equal the greatness of perception

with deeds as great. The weariness and sense of futility which often

falls upon the mystic after much thought is due to this, that he has

not recognized that he must be worker as well as seer, that here he has

duties demanding a more sustained endurance, just as the inner life is

so much vaster and more intense than the life he has left behind.

Now the duties which can be taken up by the soul are exactly those which

it feels most inadequate to perform when acting as an embodied being.

What shall be done to quiet the heart-cry of the world: how answer the

dumb appeal for help we so often divine below eyes that laugh? It is the

saddest of all sorrows to think that pity with no hands to heal, that

love without a voice to speak should helplessly heap their pain upon

pain while earth shall endure. But there is a truth about sorrow which I

think may make it seem not so hopeless. There are fewer barriers than we

think: there is, in truth, an inner alliance between the soul who would

fain give and the soul who is in need. Nature has well provided that not

one golden ray of all our thoughts is sped ineffective through the

dark; not one drop of the magical elixirs love distils is wasted. Let us

consider how this may be. There is a habit we nearly all have indulged

in. We weave little stories in our minds, expending love and pity upon

the imaginary beings we have created, and I have been led to think that

many of these are not imaginary, that somewhere in the world beings are

living just in that way, and we merely reform and live over again in

our life the story of another life. Sometimes these far-away intimates

assume so vivid a shape, they come so near with their appeal for

sympathy that the pictures are unforgettable; and the more I ponder over

them the more it seems to me that they often convey the actual need of

some soul whose cry for comfort has gone out into the vast, perhaps

to meet with an answer, perhaps to hear only silence. I will supply an

instance. I see a child, a curious, delicate little thing, seated on the

doorstep of a house. It is an alley in some great city, and there is a

gloom of evening and vapor over the sky. I see the child is bending over

the path; he is picking cinders and arranging them, and as I ponder

I become aware that he is laying down in gritty lines the walls of a

house, the mansion of his dream. Here spread along the pavement are

large rooms, these for his friends, and a tiny room in the centre, that

is his own. So his thought plays. Just then I catch a glimpse of the

corduroy trousers of a passing workman, and a heavy boot crushes through

the cinders. I feel the pain in the child's heart as he shrinks back,

his little lovelit house of dreams all rudely shattered. Ah, poor child,

building the City Beautiful out of a few cinders, yet nigher, truer in

intent than many a stately, gold-rich palace reared by princes, thou

wert not forgotten by that mighty spirit who lives through the falling

of empires, whose home has been in many a ruined heart. Surely it was

to bring comfort to hearts like thine that that most noble of all

meditations was ordained by the Buddha. "He lets his mind pervade one

quarter of the world with thoughts of Love, and so the second, and so

the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above,

below, around, and everywhere does he continue to pervade with heart of

Love far-reaching, grown great and beyond measure."

That love, though the very faery breath of life, should by itself, and

so imparted have a sustaining power some may question, not those who

have felt the sunlight fall from distant friends who think of them; but,

to make clearer how it seems to me to act, I say that love, Eros, is a

being. It is more than a power of the soul, though it is that also; it

has a universal life of its own, and just as the dark heaving waters do

not know what jewel lights they reflect with blinding radiance, so the

soul, partially absorbing and feeling the ray of Eros within it, does

not know that often a part of its nature nearer to the sun of love

shines with a brilliant light to other eyes than its own. Many people

move unconscious of their own charm, unknowing of the beauty and power

they seem to others to impart. It is some past attainment of the soul,

a jewel won in some old battle which it may have forgotten, but none

the less this gleams on its tiara, and the star-flame inspires others to

hope and victory.

If it is true here that many exert a spiritual influence they are

unconscious of, it is still truer of the spheres within. Once the soul

has attained to any possession like love, or persistent will, or faith,

or a power of thought, it comes into spiritual contact with others who

are struggling for these very powers. The attainment of any of these

means that the soul is able to absorb and radiate some of the diviner

elements of being. The soul may or may nor be aware of the position it

is placed in or its new duties, but yet that Living Light, having found

a way into the being of any one person, does not rest there, but sends

its rays and extends its influence on and on to illume the darkness of

another nature. So it comes that there are ties which bind us to people

other than those whom we meet in our everyday life. I think they are

most real ties, most important to understand, for if we let our lamp

go out some far away who had reached out in the dark and felt a steady

will, a persistent hope, a compassionate love, may reach out once again

in an hour of need, and finding no support may give way and fold the

hands in despair. Often we allow gloom to overcome us and so hinder the

bright rays in their passage; but would we do it so often if we thought

that perhaps a sadness which besets us, we do not know why, was caused

by some one drawing nigh to us for comfort, whom our lethargy might

make feel still more his helplessnes, while our courage, our faith might

cause "our light to shine in some other heart which as yet has no light

of its own"?

III.

The night was wet, and as I was moving down the streets my mind was also

journeying on a way of its own, and the things which were bodily present

before me were no less with me in my unseen traveling. Every now and

then a transfer would take place, and some of the moving shadows in

the street would begin walking about in the clear interior light. The

children of the city, crouched in the doorways or racing through the

hurrying multitude and flashing lights, began their elfin play again in

my heart; and that was because I had heard these tiny outcasts shouting

with glee. I wondered if the glitter and shadow of such sordid things

were thronged with magnificence and mystery for those who were unaware

of a greater light and deeper shade which made up the romance and

fascination of my own life. In imagination I narrowed myself to their

ignorance, littleness, and youth, and seemed for a moment to flit amid

great uncomprehended beings and a dim wonderful city of palaces.

Then another transfer took place, and I was pondering anew, for a face

I had seen flickering through the warm wet mist haunted me; it entered

into the realm of the interpreter, and I was made aware by the pale

cheeks and by the close-shut lips of pain, and by some inward knowledge,

that there the Tree of Life was beginning to grow, and I wondered why it

is that it always springs up through a heart in ashes; I wondered

also if that which springs up, which in itself is an immortal joy, has

knowledge that its shoots are piercing through such anguish; or, again,

if it was the piercing of the shoots which caused the pain, and if

every throb of the beautiful flame darting upward to blossom meant

the perishing of some more earthly growth which had kept the heart in

shadow.

Seeing, too, how many thoughts spring up from such a simple thing, I

questioned whether that which started the impulse had any share in the

outcome, and if these musings of mine in any way affected their subject.

I then began thinking about those secret ties on which I have speculated

before, and in the darkness my heart grew suddenly warm and glowing,

for I had chanced upon one of these shining imaginations which are the

wealth of those who travel upon the hidden ways. In describing that

which comes to us all at once, there is a difficulty in choosing between

what is first and what is last to say; but, interpreting as best I

can, I seemed to behold the onward movement of a Light, one among many

lights, all living, throbbing, now dim with perturbations and now again

clear, and all subtly woven together, outwardly in some more shadowy

shining, and inwardly in a greater fire, which, though it was invisible,

I knew to be the Lamp of the World. This Light which I beheld I felt

to be a human soul, and these perturbations which dimmed it were its

struggles and passionate longings for something, and that was for a more

brilliant shining of the light within itself. It was in love with its

own beauty, enraptured by its own lucidity; and I saw that as these

things were more beloved they grew paler, for this light is the light

which the Mighty Mother has in her heart for her children, and she means

that it shall go through each one unto all, and whoever restrains it in

himself is himself shut out; not that the great heart has ceased in its

love for that soul, but that the soul has shut itself off from influx,

for every imagination of man is the opening or the closing of a door

to the divine world; now he is solitary, cut off, and, seemingly to

himself, on the desert and distant verge of things; and then his thought

throws open the shut portals, he hears the chant of the seraphs in his

heart, and he is made luminous by the lighting of a sudden aureole. This

soul which I watched seemed to have learned at last the secret love;

for, in the anguish begotten by its loss, it followed the departing

glory in penitence to the inmost shrine, where it ceased altogether;

and because it seemed utterly lost and hopeless of attainment and

capriciously denied to the seeker, a profound pity arose in the soul for

those who, like it, were seeking, but still in hope, for they had not

come to the vain end of their endeavors. I understood that such pity

is the last of the precious essences which make up the elixir of

immortality, and when it is poured into the cup it is ready for

drinking. And so it was with this soul which grew brilliant with the

passage of the eternal light through its new purity of self-oblivion,

and joyful in the comprehension of the mystery of the secret love,

which, though it has been declared many times by the greatest of

teachers among men, is yet never known truly unless the Mighty Mother

has herself breathed it in the heart.

And now that the soul has divined this secret, the shadowy shining

which was woven in bonds of union between it and its fellow lights

grew clearer; and a multitude of these strands were, so it seemed,

strengthened and placed in its keeping: along these it was to send the

message of the wisdom and the love which were the secret sweetness of

its own being. Then a spiritual tragedy began, infinitely more pathetic

than the old desolation, because it was brought about by the very

nobility of the spirit. This soul, shedding its love like rays of glory,

seemed itself the centre of a ring of wounding spears: it sent forth

love, and the arrowy response came hate-impelled: it whispered peace,

and was answered by the clash of rebellion: and to all this for defense

it could only bare more openly its heart that a profounder love from the

Mother Nature might pass through upon the rest. I knew this was what a

teacher, who wrote long ago, meant when he said: "Put on the whole armor

of God," which is love and endurance, for the truly divine children

of the Flame are not armed otherwise: and of those protests set up in

ignorance or rebellion against the whisper of the wisdom, I saw that

some melted in the fierce and tender heat of the heart, and there came

in their stead a golden response, which made closer the ties, and drew

these souls upward to an understanding and to share in the overshadowing

nature. And this is part of the plan of the Great Alchemist, whereby the

red ruby of the heart is transmuted into the tender light of the opal;

for the beholding of love made bare acts like the flame of the furnace:

and the dissolving passions, through an anguish of remorse, the

lightnings of pain, and through an adoring pity are changed into the

image they contemplate, and melt in the ecstasy of self-forgetful love,

the spirit which lit the thorn-crowned brows which perceived only in

its last agony the retribution due to its tormentors, and cried out,

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Now, although the love of the few may alleviate the hurt due to the

ignorance of the mass, it is not in the power of any one to withstand

for ever this warfare; for by the perpetual wounding of the inner nature

it is so wearied that the spirit must withdraw from a tabernacle grown

too frail to support the increase of light within and the jarring of the

demoniac nature without; and at length comes the call which means, for a

while, release and a deep rest in regions beyond the paradise of lesser

souls. So, withdrawn into the divine darkness, vanished the light of my

dream. And now it seemed as if this wonderful weft of souls intertwining

as one being must come to naught; and all those who through the gloom

had nourished a longing for the light would stretch out hands in vain

for guidance; but that I did not understand the love of the Mother, and

that, although few, there is no decaying of her heroic brood; for, as

the seer of old caught at the mantle of him who went up in the fiery

chariot, so another took up the burden and gathered the shining strands

together: and of this sequence of spiritual guides there is no ending.

Here I may say that the love of the Mother, which, acting through

the burnished will of the hero, is wrought to its highest uses, is

in reality everywhere, and pervades with profoundest tenderness the

homeliest circumstance of daily life, and there is not lacking, even

among the humblest, an understanding of the spiritual tragedy which

follows upon every effort of the divine nature, bowing itself down in

pity to our shadowy sphere, an understanding where the nature of the

love is gauged through the extent of the sacrifice and the pain which is

overcome. I recall the instance of an old Irish peasant, who, as he lay

in hospital wakeful from a grinding pain in the leg, forgot himself in

making drawings, rude, yet reverently done, of incidents in the life of

the Galilean Teacher. One of these which he showed me was a crucifixion,

where, amidst much grotesque symbolism, were some tracings which

indicated a purely beautiful intuition; the heart of this crucified

figure, no less than the brow, was wreathed about with thorns and

radiant with light: "For that," said he, "was where he really suffered."

When I think of this old man, bringing forgetfulness of his own bodily

pain through contemplation of the spiritual suffering of his Master, my

memory of him shines with something of the transcendent light he himself

perceived, for I feel that some suffering of his own, nobly undergone,

had given him understanding, and he had laid his heart in love against

the Heart of Many Sorrows, seeing it wounded by unnumbered spears, yet

burning with undying love.

Though much may be learned by observance of the superficial life

and actions of a spiritual teacher, it is only in the deeper life of

meditation and imagination that it can be truly realized; for the soul

is a midnight blossom which opens its leaves in dream, and its perfect

bloom is unfolded only where another sun shines in another heaven; there

it feels what celestial dews descend on it and what influences draw it

up to its divine archetype. Here in the shadow of earth root intercoils

with root, and the finer distinctions of the blossom are not perceived.

If we knew also who they really are, who sometimes in silence and

sometimes with the eyes of the world at gaze take upon them the mantle

of teacher, an unutterable awe would prevail, for underneath a bodily

presence not in any sense beautiful may burn the glory of some ancient

divinity, some hero who has laid aside his sceptre in the enchanted

land, to rescue old-time comrades fallen into oblivion; or, again, if

we had the insight of the simple old peasant into the nature of his

enduring love, out of the exquisite and poignant emotions kindled would

arise the flame of a passionate love, which would endure long aeons of

anguish that it might shield, though but for a little, the kingly hearts

who may not shield themselves.

But I, too, who write, have launched the rebellious spear, or in

lethargy have oft times gone down the great drift numbering myself among

those who, not being with must needs be against. Therefore I make no

appeal: they only may call who stand upon the lofty mountains; but I

reveal the thought which arose like a star in my soul with such bright

and pathetic meaning, leaving it to you who read to approve and apply

it.

1897

THE MEDITATION OF ANANDA

Ananda rose from his seat under the banyan tree. He passed his hand

unsteadily over his brow. Throughout the day the young ascetic had been

plunged in profound meditation; and now, returning from heaven to earth,

he was bewildered like one who awakens in darkness and knows not where

he is. All day long before his inner eye burned the light of the Lokas,

until he was wearied and exhausted with their splendors; space glowed

like a diamond with intolerable lustre, and there was no end to the

dazzling procession of figures. He had seen the fiery dreams of the

dead in heaven. He had been tormented by the music of celestial singers,

whose choral song reflected in its ripples the rhythmic pulse of being.

He saw how these orbs were held within luminous orbs of wider circuit;

and vaste and vaster grew the vistas, until at last, a mere speck of

life, he bore the burden of innumerable worlds. Seeking for Brahma, he

found only the great illusion as infinite as Brahma's being.

If these things were shadows, the earth and the forests he returned to,

viewed at evening, seemed still more unreal, the mere dusky flutter of

a moth's wings in space, so filmy and evanescent that if he had sunk

as through transparent aether into the void, it would not have been

wonderful.

Ananda, still half entranced, turned homeward. As he threaded the dim

alleys he noticed not the flaming eyes which regarded him from the

gloom; the serpents rustling amid the undergrowth; the lizards,

fireflies, insects, and the innumerable lives of which the Indian forest

was rumorous; they also were but shadows. He paused near the village

hearing the sound of human voices, of children at play. He felt a pity

for these tiny beings, who struggled and shouted, rolling over each

other in ecstasies of joy. The great illusion had indeed devoured them,

before whose spirits the Devas themselves once were worshippers. Then,

close beside him, he heard a voice, whose low tone of reverence soothed

him; it was akin to his own nature, and it awakened him fully. A little

crowd of five or six people were listening silently to an old man who

read from a palm-leaf manuscript. Ananda knew, by the orange-colored

robes of the old man that here was a brother of the new faith, and he

paused with the others. What was his illusion? The old man lifted his

head for a moment as the ascetic came closer, and then continued as

before. He was reading "The Legend of the Great King of Glory," and

Ananda listened while the story was told of the Wonderful Wheel, the

Elephant Treasure, the Lake and Palace of Righteousness, and of the

meditation, how the Great King of Glory entered the golden chamber, and

set himself down on the silver couch, and he let his mind pervade one

quarter of the world with thoughts of love; and so the second quarter,

and so the third, and so the fourth. And thus the whole wide world,

above, below, around, and everywhere, did he continue to pervade with

heart of Love, far reaching, grown great, and beyond measure.

When the old man had ended Ananda went back into the forest. He had

found the secret of the true, how the Vision could be left behind and

the Being entered. Another legend rose in his mind, a faery legend of

righteousness expanding and filling the universe, a vision beautiful

and full of old enchantment, and his heart sang within him. He seated

himself again under the banyan tree. He rose up in soul. He saw before

him images long forgotten of those who suffer in the sorrowful earth.

He saw the desolation and loneliness of old age, the insults of the

captive, the misery of the leper and outcast, the chill horror and

darkness of life in a dungeon. He drank in all their sorrow. From his

heart he went out to them. Love, a fierce and tender flame, arose; pity,

a breath from the vast; sympathy, born of unity. This triple fire sent

forth its rays; they surrounded those dark souls; they pervaded them;

they beat down oppression.

*****

While Ananda, with spiritual magic, sent forth the healing powers

through the four quarters of the world, far away at that moment a king

sat enthroned in his hall. A captive was bound before him--bound, but

proud, defiant, unconquerable of soul. There was silence in the hall

until the king spake the doom and torture for this ancient enemy.

The king spake: "I had thought to do some fierce thing to thee and

so end thy days, my enemy. But I remember now, with sorrow, the great

wrongs we have done to each other, and the hearts made sore by our

hatred. I shall do no more wrong to thee; thou art free to depart. Do

what thou wilt. I will make restitution to thee as far as may be for thy

ruined state."

Then the soul which no might could conquer was conquered utterly--the

knees of the captive were bowed and his pride was overcome. "My

brother," he said, and could say no more.

*****

To watch for years a little narrow slit high up in a dark cell, so high

that he could not reach up and look out, and there to see daily the

change from blue to dark in the sky, had withered a prisoner's soul.

The bitter tears came no more, hardly even sorrow, only a dull, dead

feeling. But that day a great groan burst from him. He heard outside the

laugh of a child who was playing and gathering flowers under the high,

gray walls. Then it all came over him--the divine things missed, the

light, the glory, and the beauty that the earth puts forth for her

children. The arrow slit was darkened, and half of a little bronze face

appeared.

"Who are you down there in the darkness who sigh so? Are you all alone

there? For so many years! Ah, poor man! I would come down to you if I

could, but I will sit here and talk to you for a while. Here are flowers

for you," and a little arm showered them in by handfuls until the room

was full of the intoxicating fragrance of summer. Day after day the

child came, and the dull heart entered once more into the great human

love.

*****

At twilight, by a deep and wide river, an old woman sat alone, dreamy

and full of memories. The lights of the swift passing boats and the

light of the stars were just as in childhood and the old love-time. Old,

feeble, it was time for her to hurry away from the place which changed

not with her sorrow.

"Do you see our old neighbor there?" said Ayesha to her lover. "They

say she was once as beautiful as you would make me think I now am. How

lonely she must be! Let us come near and speak to her," and the lover

went gladly. Though they spoke to each other rather than to her, yet

something of the past, which never dies when love, the immortal, has

pervaded it, rose up again as she heard their voices. She smiled,

thinking of years of burning beauty.

*****

A teacher, accompanied by his disciples, was passing by the wayside

where a leper sat.

The teacher said: "Here is our brother, whom we may not touch, but he

need not be shut out from truth. We may sit down where he can listen."

He sat on the wayside near the leper, and his disciples stood around

him. He spoke words full of love, kindliness, and pity--the eternal

truths which make the soul grow full of sweetness and youth. A small,

old spot began to glow in the heart of the leper, and the tears ran down

his blighted face.

*****

All these were the deeds of Ananda the ascetic, and the Watcher who was

over him from all eternity made a great stride towards that soul.

1893

THE MIDNIGHT BLOSSOM

"Arhans are born at midnight hour, together with the holy

flower that opes and blossoms in darkness."

--From an Eastern Scripture.

We stood together at the door of our hut. We could see through the

gathering gloom where our sheep and goats were cropping the sweet grass

on the side of the hill. We were full of drowsy content as they were.

We had naught to mar our happiness, neither memory nor unrest for the

future. We lingered on while the vast twilight encircled us; we were one

with its dewy stillness. The lustre of the early stars first broke in

upon our dreaming: we looked up and around. The yellow constellations

began to sing their choral hymn together. As the night deepened they

came out swiftly from their hiding-places in depths of still and

unfathomable blue--they hung in burning clusters, they advanced in

multitudes that dazzled. The shadowy shining of night was strewn all

over with nebulous dust of silver, with long mists of gold, with jewels

of glittering green. We felt how fit a place the earth was to live on

with these nightly glories over us, with silence and coolness upon our

lawns and lakes after the consuming day. Valmika, Kedar, Ananda, and

I watched together. Through the rich gloom we could see far distant

forests and lights, the lights of village and city in King Suddhodana's

realm.

"Brothers," said Valmika, "how good it is to be here and not yonder in

the city, where they know not peace, even in sleep."

"Yonder and yonder," said Kedar, "I saw the inner air full of a red glow

where they were busy in toiling and strife. It seemed to reach up to me.

I could not breathe. I climbed the hill at dawn to laugh where the snows

were, and the sun is as white as they are white."

"But, brothers, if we went down among them and told them how happy we

were, and how the flower's grow on the hillside, they would surely come

up and leave all sorrow. They cannot know or they would come." Ananda

was a mere child, though so tall for his years.

"They would not come," said Kedar; "all their joy is to haggle and

hoard. When Siva blows upon them with angry breath they will lament, or

when the demons in fierce hunger devour them."

"It is good to be here," repeated Valmika, drowsily, "to mind the flocks

and be at rest, and to hear the wise Varunna speak when he comes among

us."

I was silent. I knew better than they that busy city which glowed beyond

the dark forests. I had lived there until, grown sick and weary, I

had gone back to my brothers on the hillside. I wondered, would life,

indeed, go on ceaselessly until it ended in the pain of the world. I

said within myself: "O mighty Brahma, on the outermost verges of thy

dream are our lives. Thou old invisible, how faintly through our hearts

comes the sound of thy song, the light of thy glory!" Full of yearning

to rise and return, I strove to hear in my heart the music Anahata,

spoken of in our sacred scrolls. There was silence and then I thought

I heard sounds, not glad, a myriad murmur. As I listened they

deepened--they grew into passionate prayer and appeal and tears, as if

the cry of the long-forgotten souls of men went echoing through empty

chambers. My eyes filled with tears, for it seemed world-wide and to

sigh from out many ages, long agone, to be and yet to be.

"Ananda! Ananda! Where is the boy running to?" cried Valmika. Ananda had

vanished in the gloom. We heard his glad laugh below, and then another

voice speaking. The tall figure of Varunna loomed up presently. Ananda

held his hand, and danced beside him. We knew the Yogi, and bowed

reverently before him. We could see by the starlight his simple robe of

white. I could trace clearly every feature of the grave and beautiful

face and radiant eyes. I saw not by the starlight, but by a silvery

radiance which rayed a little way into the blackness around the dark

hair and face. Valmika, as elder, first spoke:

"Holy sir, be welcome. Will you come in and rest?"

"I cannot stay now. I must pass over the mountains ere dawn; but you may

come a little way with me--such of you as will."

We assented gladly, Kedar and I, Valmika remained. Then Ananda prayed

to go. We bade him stay, fearing for him the labor of climbing and the

chill of the snows. But Varunna said: "Let the child come. He is hardy,

and will not tire if he holds my hand."

So we set out together, and faced the highlands that rose and rose

above us. We knew the way well, even at night. We waited in silence for

Varunna to speak; but for nigh an hour we mounted without words, save

for Ananda's shouts of delight and wonder at the heavens spread above

valleys that lay behind us. Then I grew hungry for an answer to my

thoughts, and I spake:

"Master, Valmika was saying, ere you came, how good it was to be here

rather than in the city, where they are full of strife. And Kedar

thought their lives would flow on into fiery pain, and no speech would

avail. Ananda, speaking as a child, indeed, said if one went down among

they would listen to his story of the happy life. But, Master, do not

many speak and interpret the sacred writings, and how few are they who

lay to heart the words of the gods! They seem, indeed, to go on through

desire into pain, and even here upon the hills we are not free, for

Kedar felt the hot glow of their passion, and I heard in my heart their

sobs of despair. Master, it was terrible, for they seemed to come from

the wide earth over, and out of ages far away.

"In the child's words is the truth," said Varunna, "for it is

better to aid even in sorrow than to withdraw from pain to a happy

solitude. Yet only the knowers of Brahma can interpret the sacred

writings truly, and it is well to be free ere we speak of freedom. Then

we have power and many hearken."

"But who would leave joy for sorrow? And who, being one with Brahma,

would return to give counsel?"

"Brother," said Varunna, "here is the hope of the world. Though many

seek only for the eternal joy, yet the cry you heard has been heard by

great ones who have turned backwards, called by these beseeching voices.

The small old path stretching far away leads through many wonderful

beings to the place of Brahma. There is the first fountain, the world of

beautiful silence, the light which has been undimmed since the beginning

of time. But turning backwards from the gate the small old path winds

away into the world of men, and it enters every sorrowful heart. This

is the way the great ones go. They turn with the path from the door

of Brahma. They move along its myriad ways, and overcome pain with

compassion. After many conquered worlds, after many races of purified

and uplifted men, they go to a greater than Brahma. In these, though

few, is the hope of the world. These are the heroes for whose returning

the earth puts forth her signal fires, and the Devas sing their hymns of

welcome."

We paused where the plateau widened out. There was scarce a ripple in

the chill air. In quietness the snows glistened, a light reflected from

the crores of stars that swung with glittering motion above us. We

could hear the immense heart-beat of the world in the stillness. We had

thoughts that went ranging through the heavens, not sad, but full of

solemn hope.

"Brothers! Master! look! The wonderful thing! And another, and yet

another!" we heard Ananda calling. We looked and saw the holy blossom,

the midnight flower. Oh, may the earth again put forth such beauty.

It grew up from the snows with leaves of delicate crystal. A nimbus

encircled each radiant bloom, a halo pale yet lustrous. I bowed over it

in awe; and I heard Varunna say, "The earth indeed puts forth her signal

fires, and the Devas sing their hymn. Listen!" We heard a music as of

beautiful thoughts moving along the high places of the earth, full of

infinite love and hope and yearning.

"Be glad now, for one is born who has chosen the greater way. Kedar,

Narayan, Ananda, farewell! Nay, no farther. It is a long way to return,

and the child will tire."

He went on and passed from our sight. But we did not return. We remained

long, long in silence, looking at the sacred flower.-------------

Vow, taken long ago, be strong in our hearts today. Here, where the pain

is fiercer, to rest is more sweet. Here, where beauty dies away, it is

more joy to be lulled in dream. Here, the good, the true, our hope seem

but a madness born of ancient pain. Out of rest, dream, or despair may

we arise, and go the way the great ones go.

1894

THE CHILDHOOD OF APOLLO

It was long ago, so long that only the spirit of earth remembers truly.

The old shepherd Admetus sat before the door of his hut waiting for his

grandson to return. He watched with drowsy eyes the eve gather, and

the woods and mountains grow dark over the isles--the isles of ancient

Greece. It was Greece before its day of beauty, and day was never

lovelier. The cloudy blossoms of smoke, curling upward from the valley,

sparkled a while high up in the sunlit air, a vague memorial of the

world of men below. From that, too, the color vanished, and those other

lights began to shine which to some are the only lights of day. The

skies dropped close upon the mountains and the silver seas like a vast

face brooding with intentness. There was enchantment, mystery, and

a living motion in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus

enfolding his starry children with the dark radiance of aether.

"Ah!" murmured the old man, looking upward, "once it was living; once it

spoke to me. It speaks not now; but it speaks to others I know--to the

child who looks and longs and trembles in the dewy night. Why does he

linger now? He is beyond his hour. Ah, there now are his footsteps!"

A boy came up the valley driving the gray flocks which tumbled before

him in the darkness. He lifted his young face for the shepherd to kiss.

It was alight with ecstasy. Admetus looked at him with wonder. A golden

and silvery light rayed all about the child, so that his delicate

ethereal beauty seemed set in a star which followed his dancing

footsteps.

"How bright your eyes!" the old man said, faltering with sudden awe.

"Why do your limbs shine with moonfire light?"

"Oh, father," said the boy Apollo, "I am glad, for everything is living

tonight. The evening is all a voice and many voices. While the flocks

were browsing night gathered about me. I saw within it and it was

everywhere living.

"The wind with dim-blown tresses, odor, incense, and secret falling dew,

mingled in one warm breath. They whispered to me and called me 'Child of

the Stars,' 'Dew Heart,' and 'Soul of Light.' Oh, father, as I came up

the valley the voices followed me with song. Everything murmured love.

Even the daffodils, nodding in the olive gloom, grew golden at my feet,

and a flower within my heart knew of the still sweet secret of the

flowers. Listen, listen!"

There were voices in the night, voices as of star-rays descending.

Now the roof-tree of the midnight spreading

Buds in citron, green, and blue:

From afar its mystic odors shedding,

Child, on you.

Then other sweet speakers from beneath the earth, and from the distant

waters and air, followed in benediction, and a last voice like a murmur

from universal nature:

Now the buried stars beneath the mountains

And the vales their life renew,

Jetting rainbow blooms from tiny fountains,

Child, for you.

As within our quiet waters passing

Sun and moon and stars we view,

So the loveliness of life is glassing,

Child, in you.

In the diamond air the sun-star glowing

Up its feathered radiance threw;

All the jewel glory there was flowing,

Child, for you.

And the fire divine in all things burning

Yearns for home and rest anew,

From its wanderings far again returning,

Child, to you.

"Oh, voices, voices," cried the child, "what you say I know not, but I

give back love for love. Father, what is it they tell me? They enfold me

in light, and I am far away even though I hold your hand."

"The gods are about us. Heaven mingles with the earth," said Admetus,

trembling. "Let us go to Diotima. She has grown wise brooding for many

a year where the great caves lead to the underworld. She sees the bright

ones as they pass by, though she sits with shut eyes, her drowsy lips

murmuring as nature's self."

That night the island seemed no more earth set in sea, but a music

encircled by the silence. The trees, long rooted in antique slumber,

were throbbing with rich life; through glimmering bark and drooping leaf

a light fell on the old man and boy as they passed, and vague figures

nodded at them. These were the hamadryad souls of the wood. They were

bathed in tender colors and shimmering lights draping them from root

to leaf. A murmur came from the heart of every one, a low enchantment

breathing joy and peace. It grew and swelled until at last it seemed as

if through a myriad pipes Pan the earth spirit was fluting his magical

creative song.

They found the cave of Diotima covered by vines and tangled trailers

at the end of the island where the dark-green woodland rose up from the

waters. Admetus paused, for he dreaded this mystic prophetess; but a

voice from within called them:

"Come, child of light: come in, old shepherd, I know why you seek me!"

They entered, Admetus trembling with more fear than before. A fire was

blazing in a recess of the cavern, and by it sat a majestic figure

robed in purple. She was bent forward, her hand supporting her face, her

burning eyes turned on the intruders.

"Come hither, child," she said, taking the boy by the hands and gazing

into his face. "So this pale form is to be the home of the god. The gods

Choose wisely. They take no wild warrior, no mighty hero to be their

messenger, but crown this gentle head. Tell me, have you ever seen a

light from the sun falling on you in your slumber? No, but look now.

Look upward."

As she spoke she waved her hands over him, and the cavern with its dusky

roof seemed to melt away, and beyond the heavens the heaven of heavens

lay dark in pure tranquility, in a quiet which was the very hush of

being. In an instant it vanished, and over the zenith broke a wonderful

light.

"See now," cried Diotima, "the Ancient Beauty! Look how its petals

expand, and what comes forth from its heart!" A vast and glowing breath,

mutable and opalescent, spread itself between heaven and earth, and

out of it slowly descended a radiant form like a god's. It drew nigh,

radiating lights, pure, beautiful, and star-like. It stood for a moment

by the child and placed its hand on his head, and then it was gone. The

old shepherd fell upon his face in awe, while the boy stood breathless

and entranced.

"Go now," said the Sybil, "I can teach thee naught. Nature herself will

adore you, and sing through you her loveliest song. But, ah, the light

you hail in joy you shall impart in tears. So from age to age the

eternal Beauty bows itself down amid sorrows, that the children of

men may not forget it, that their anguish may be transformed, smitten

through by its fire."

THE MASK OF APOLLO

A tradition rises within me of quiet, unarmored years, ages before the

demigods and heroes toiled at the making of Greece, long ages before the

building of the temples and sparkling palaces of her day of glory. The

land was pastoral, and over all the woods hung a stillness as of dawn

and of unawakened beauty deep breathing in rest. Here and there little

villages sent up their smoke and a dreamy people moved about. They grew

up, toiled a little at their fields, followed their sheep and goats,

wedded, and gray age overtook them, but they never ceased to be

children. They worshipped the gods in little wooden temples, with

ancient rites forgotten in later years.

Near one of these shrines lived a priest--an old man--who was held in

reverence by all for his simple and kindly nature. To him, sitting one

summer evening before his hut, came a stranger whom he invited to share

his meal. The stranger seated himself and began to tell the priest many

wonderful things--stories of the magic of the sun and of the bright

beings who move at the gateways of the day. The old man grew drowsy in

the warm sunlight and fell asleep. Then the stranger, who was Apollo,

arose, and in the guise of the priest entered the little temple, and the

people came in unto him one after the other.

First came Agathon, the husbandman, who said: "Father, as I bend over

the fields or fasten up the vines I sometimes remember that you said the

gods can be worshipped by doing these things as by sacrifice. How is

it, father, that the pouring of cold water over roots or training up the

vines can nourish Zeus? How can the sacrifice appear before his throne

when it is not carried up in the fire and vapor?"

To him Apollo, in the guise of the old man, replied: "Agathon, the

father omnipotent does not live only in the aether. He runs invisibly

within the sun and stars, and as they whirl round and round they break

out into streams and woods and flowers, and the clouds are shaken away

from them as the leaves from off the roses. Great, strange, and bright,

he busies himself within, and at the end of time his light shall shine,

through, and men shall see it moving in a world of flame. Think then, as

you bend over your fields, of what you nourish and what rises up within

them. Know that every flower as it droops in the quiet of the woodland

feels within and far away the approach of an unutterable life and is

glad. They reflect that life as the little pools the light of the stars.

Agathon, Agathon, Zeus is no greater in the aether than he is in the

leaf of grass, and the hymns of men are no sweeter to him than a little

water poured over one of his flowers."

Agathon, the husbandman, went away, and he bent tenderly in dreams over

his fruit and his vines, and he loved them more than before, and he grew

wise as he watched them and was happy working for the gods.

Then spake Damon, the shepherd Father, "while the flocks are browsing

dreams rise up within me. They make the heart sick with longing. The

forests vanish, and I hear no more the lambs' bleat or the rustling of

the fleeces. Voices from a thousand depths call me; they whisper, they

beseech me. Shadows more lovely than earth's children utter music, not

for me though I faint while I listen. Father, why do I hear the things

others hear not--voices calling to unknown hunters of wide fields, or to

herdsmen, shepherds of the starry flocks?"

Apollo answered the shepherd: "Damon, a song stole from the silence

while the gods were not yet, and a thousand ages passed ere they came,

called forth by the music; and a thousand ages they listened, and then

joined in the song. Then began the worlds to glimmer shadowy about them,

and bright beings to bow before them. These, their children, began in

their turn to sing the song that calls forth and awakens life. He is

master of all things who has learned their music. Damon, heed not the

shadows, but the voices. The voices have a message to thee from beyond

the gods. Learn their song and sing it over again to the people until

their hearts, too, grow sick with longing, and they can hear the song

within themselves. Oh, my son, I see far off how the nations shall join

in it as in a chorus, and, hearing it, the rushing planets shall cease

from their speed and be steadfast. Men shall hold starry sway."

The face of the god shone through the face of the old man, and it was

so full of secretness that, filled with awe, Damon, the herdsman, passed

from the presence, and a strange fire was kindled in his heart. The

songs that he sang thereafter caused childhood and peace to pass from

the dwellers in the woods.

Then the two lovers, Dion and Nemra, came in and stood before Apollo,

and Dion spake: "Father, you who are so wise can tell us what love is,

so that we shall never miss it. Old Tithonus nods his gray head at us as

we pass. He says only with the changeless gods has love endurance, and

for men the loving time is short, and its sweetness is soon over."

Neaera added: "But it is not true, father, for his drowsy eyes light

when he remembers the old days, when he was happy and proud in love as

we are."

Apollo answered: "My children, I will tell you the legend how love came

into the world, and how it may endure. On high Olympus the gods held

council at the making of man, and each had brought a gift, and each

gave to man something of their own nature. Aphrodite, the loveliest and

sweetest, paused, and was about to add a new grace to his person; but

Eros cried: 'Let them not be so lovely without; let them be lovelier

within. Put your own soul in, O mother.' The mighty mother smiled, and

so it was. And now, whenever love is like hers, which asks not return,

but shines on all because it must, within that love Aphrodite dwells,

and it becomes immortal by her presence."

Then Dion and Neaera went out, and as they walked home through the

forest, purple and vaporous in the evening light, they drew closer

together. Dion, looking into the eyes of Neaera, saw there a new gleam,

violet, magical, shining--there was the presence of Aphrodite; there was

her shrine.

After came in unto Apollo the two grand-children of old Tithonus, and

they cried: "See the flowers we have brought you! We gathered them for

you in the valley where they grow best!" Apollo said: "What wisdom

shall we give to children that they may remember? Our most beautiful for

them!" And as he stood and looked at them the mask of age and secretness

vanished. He appeared radiant in light. They laughed in joy at his

beauty. Bending down he kissed each upon the forehead, then faded away

into the light which is his home.

As the sun sank down amid the blue hills, the old priest awoke with

a sigh, and cried out: "Oh, that we could talk wisely as we do in our

dreams!"

1893

THE CAVE OF LILITH

Out of her cave came the ancient Lilith; Lilith the wise; Lilith the

enchantress. There ran a little path outside her dwelling; it wound away

among the mountains and glittering peaks, and before the door one of the

Wise Ones walked to and fro. Out of her cave came Lilith, scornful of

his solitude, exultant in her wisdom, flaunting her shining and magical

beauty.

"Still alone, star gazer! Is thy wisdom of no avail? Thou hast yet to

learn that I am more powerful, knowing the ways of error, than you who

know the ways of truth."

The Wise One heeded her not, but walked to and fro. His eyes were turned

to the distant peaks, the abode of his brothers. The starlight fell

about him; a sweet air came down the mountain path, fluttering his white

robe; he did not cease from his steady musing. Lilith wavered in her

cave like a mist rising between rocks. Her raiment was violet, with

silvery gleams. Her face was dim, and over her head rayed a shadowy

diadem, like that which a man imagines over the head of his beloved: and

one looking closer at her face would have seen that this was the crown

he reached out to; that the eyes burnt with his own longing; that the

lips were parted to yield to the secret wishes of his heart.

"Tell me, for I would know, why do you wait so long? I, here in my cave

between the valley and the height, blind the eyes of all who would pass.

Those who by chance go forth to you, come back to me again, and but one

in ten thousand passes on. My illusions are sweeter to them than truth.

I offer every soul its own shadow. I pay them their own price. I have

grown rich, though the simple shepards of old gave me birth. Men have

made me; the mortals have made me immortal. I rose up like a vapor from

their first dreams, and every sigh since then and every laugh remains

with me. I am made up of hopes and fears. The subtle princes lay out

their plans of conquest in my cave, and there the hero dreams, and there

the lovers of all time write in flame their history. I am wise, holding

all experience, to tempt, to blind, to terrify. None shall pass by. Why,

therefore, dost thou wait?"

The Wise One looked at her, and she shrank back a little, and a little

her silver and violet faded, but out of her cave her voice still

sounded:

"The stars and the starry crown are not yours alone to offer, and

every promise you make I make also. I offer the good and the bad

indifferently. The lover, the poet, the mystic, and all who would drink

of the first fountain, I delude with my mirage. I was the Beatrice who

led Dante upwards: the gloom was in me, and the glory was mine also,

and he went not out of my cave. The stars and the shining of heaven were

illusions of the infinite I wove about him. I captured his soul with the

shadow of space; a nutshell would have contained the film. I smote on

the dim heart-chords the manifold music of being. God is sweeter in the

human than the human in God. Therefore he rested in me."

She paused a little, and then went on: "There is that fantastic fellow

who slipped by me. Could your wisdom not retain him? He returned to me

full of anguish, and I wound my arms round him like a fair melancholy;

and now his sadness is as sweet to him as hope was before his fall.

Listen to his song!" She paused again. A voice came up from the depths

chanting a sad knowledge:

What of all the will to do?

It has vanished long ago,

For a dream-shaft pierced it through

From the Unknown Archer's bow.

What of all the soul to think?

Some one offered it a cup

Filled with a diviner drink,

And the flame has burned it up.

What of all the hope to climb?

Only in the self we grope

To the misty end of time,

Truth has put an end to hope.

What of all the heart to love?

Sadder than for will or soul,

No light lured it on above:

Love has found itself the whole.

"Is it not pitiful? I pity only those who pity themselves. Yet he is

mine more surely than ever. This is the end of human wisdom. How shall

he now escape? What shall draw him up?"

"His will shall awaken," said the Wise One. "I do not sorrow over him,

for long is the darkness before the spirit is born. He learns in your

caves not to see, not to hear, not to think, for very anguish flying

your illusions."

"Sorrow is a great bond," Lilith said.

"It is a bond to the object of sorrow. He weeps what thou canst never

give him, a life never breathed in thee. He shall come forth, and thou

shalt not see him at the time of passing. When desire dies the swift and

invisible will awakens. He shall go forth; and one by one the dwellers

in your caves will awaken and pass onward. This small old path will be

trodden by generation after generation. Thou, too, O shining Lilith,

shalt follow, not as mistress, but as handmaiden."

"I will weave spells," Lilith cried. "They shall never pass me. I will

drug them with the sweetest poison. They shall rest drowsily and content

as of old. Were they not giants long ago, mighty men and heroes? I

overcame them with young enchantment. Shall they pass by feeble and

longing for bygone joys, for the sins of their exultant youth, while I

have grown into a myriad wisdom?"

The Wise One walked to and fro as before, and there was silence: and I

saw that with steady will he pierced the tumultuous gloom of the cave,

and a spirit awoke here and there from its dream. And I though I saw

that Sad Singer become filled with a new longing for true being, and

that the illusions of good and evil fell from him, and that he came at

last to the knees of the Wise One to learn the supreme truth. In

the misty midnight I hear these three voices--the Sad Singer, the

Enchantress Lilith, and the Wise One. From the Sad Singer I learned

that thought of itself leads nowhere, but blows the perfume from every

flower, and cuts the flower from every tree, and hews down every tree

from the valley, and in the end goes to and fro in waste places--gnawing

itself in a last hunger. I learned from Lilith that we weave our own

enchantment, and bind ourselves with out own imagination. To think of

the true as beyond us or to love the symbol of being is to darken the

path to wisdom, and to debar us from eternal beauty. From the Wise One

I learned that the truest wisdom is to wait, to work, and to will in

secret. Those who are voiceless today, tomorrow shall be eloquent, and

the earth shall hear them and her children salute them. Of these three

truths the hardest to learn is the silent will. Let us seek for the

highest truth.

1894

THE STORY OF A STAR

The emotions that haunted me in that little cathedral town would be most

difficult to describe. After the hurry, rattle, and fever of the city,

the rare weeks spent here were infinitely peaceful. They were full of

a quaint sense of childhood, with sometimes a deeper chord touched--the

giant and spiritual things childhood has dreams of. The little room I

slept in had opposite its window the great gray cathedral wall; it was

only in the evening that the sunlight crept round it and appeared in

the room strained through the faded green blind. It must have been this

silvery quietness of color which in some subtle way affected me with the

feeling of a continual Sabbath; and this was strengthened by the bells

chiming hour after hour. The pathos, penitence, and hope expressed by

the flying notes colored the intervals with faint and delicate memories.

They haunted my dreams, and I heard with unutterable longing the dreamy

chimes pealing from some dim and vast cathedral of the cosmic memory,

until the peace they tolled became almost a nightmare, and I longed for

utter oblivion or forgetfulness of their reverberations.

More remarkable were the strange lapses into other worlds and times.

Almost as frequent as the changing of the bells were the changes from

state to state. I realized what is meant by the Indian philosophy of

Maya. Truly my days were full of Mayas, and my work-a-day city life was

no more real to me than one of those bright, brief glimpses of things

long past. I talk of the past, and yet these moments taught me how false

our ideas of time are. In the Ever-living yesterday, today, and tomorrow

are words of no meaning. I know I fell into what we call the past and

the things I counted as dead for ever were the things I had yet to

endure. Out of the old age of earth I stepped into its childhood, and

received once more the primal blessing of youth, ecstasy, and beauty.

But these things are too vast and vague to speak of, the words we use

today cannot tell their story. Nearer to our time is the legend that

follows.

I was, I thought, one of the Magi of old Persia, inheritor of its

unforgotten lore, and using some of its powers. I tried to pierce

through the great veil of nature, and feel the life that quickened it

within. I tried to comprehend the birth and growth of planets, and to

do this I rose spiritually and passed beyond earth's confines into that

seeming void which is the Matrix where they germinate. On one of these

journeys I was struck by the phantasm, so it seemed, of a planet I had

not observed before. I could not then observe closer, and coming again

on another occasion it had disappeared. After the lapse of many months

I saw it once more, brilliant with fiery beauty. Its motion was slow,

revolving around some invisible centre. I pondered over it, and seemed

to know that the invisible centre was its primordial spiritual state,

from which it emerged a little while and into which it then withdrew.

Short was its day; its shining faded into a glimmer, and then into

darkness in a few months. I learned its time and cycles; I made

preparations and determined to await its coming.

The Birth of a Planet

At first silence and then an inner music, and then the sounds of song

throughout the vastness of its orbit grew as many in number as there

were stars at gaze. Avenues and vistas of sound! They reeled to and fro.

They poured from a universal stillness quick with unheard things. They

rushed forth and broke into a myriad voices gay with childhood. From age

and the eternal they rushed forth into youth. They filled the void with

reveling and exultation. In rebellion they then returned and entered

the dreadful Fountain. Again they came forth, and the sounds faded into

whispers; they rejoiced once again, and again died into silence.

And now all around glowed a vast twilight; it filled the cradle of the

planet with colorless fire. I felt a rippling motion which impelled me

away from the centre to the circumference. At that began to curdle,

a milky and nebulous substance rocked to and fro. At every motion the

pulsation of its rhythm carried it farther and farther away from the

centre; it grew darker, and a great purple shadow covered it so that I

could see it no longer. I was now on the outer verge, where the twilight

still continued to encircle the planet with zones of clear transparent

light.

As night after night I rose up to visit it they grew many-colored and

brighter. I saw the imagination of nature visibly at work. I wandered

through shadowy immaterial forests, a titanic vegetation built up

of light and color; I saw it growing denser, hung with festoons and

trailers of fire, and spotted with the light of myriad flowers such as

earth never knew. Coincident with the appearance of these things I felt

within myself, as if in harmonious movement, a sense of joyousness, an

increase of self-consciousness: I felt full of gladness, youth, and the

mystery of the new. I felt that greater powers were about to appear,

those who had thrown outwards this world and erected it as a place in

space.

I could not tell half the wonder of this strange race. I could not

myself comprehend more than a little of the mystery of their being. They

recognized my presence there, and communicated with me in such a way

that I can only describe it by saying that they seemed to enter into my

soul, breathing a fiery life; yet I knew that the highest I could reach

to was but the outer verge of their spiritual nature, and to tell you

but a little I have many times to translate it; for in the first unity

with their thought I touched on an almost universal sphere of life,

I peered into the ancient heart that beats throughout time; and this

knowledge became change in me, first into a vast and nebulous symbology,

and so down through many degrees of human thought into words which hold

not at all the pristine and magical beauty.

I stood before one of this race, and I thought, "What is the meaning

and end of life here?" Within me I felt the answering ecstasy that

illuminated with vistas of dawn and rest: It seemed to say:

"Our spring and our summer are unfolding into light and form, and our

autumn and winter are a fading into the infinite soul."

I questioned in my heart, "To what end is this life poured forth and

withdrawn?"

He came nearer and touched me; once more I felt the thrill of being that

changed itself into vision.

"The end is creation, and creation is joy. The One awakens out of

quiescence as we come forth, and knows itself in us; as we return we

enter it in gladness, knowing ourselves. After long cycles the world you

live in will become like ours; it will be poured forth and withdrawn; a

mystic breath, a mirror to glass your being."

He disappeared while I wondered what cyclic changes would transmute our

ball of mud into the subtle substance of thought.

In that world I dared not stay during its period of withdrawal; having

entered a little into its life, I became subject to its laws; the Powers

on its return would have dissolved my being utterly. I felt with a wild

terror its clutch upon me, and I withdrew from the departing glory, from

the greatness that was my destiny--but not yet.

From such dreams I would be aroused, perhaps, by a gentle knock at my

door, and my little cousin Margaret's quaint face would peep in with a

"Cousin Robert, are you not coming down to supper?"

Of these visions in the light of after thought I would speak a

little. All this was but symbol, requiring to be thrice sublimed in

interpretation ere its true meaning can be grasped. I do not know

whether worlds are heralded by such glad songs, or whether any have such

a fleeting existence, for the mind that reflects truth is deluded with

strange phantasies of time and place in which seconds are rolled out

into centuries and long cycles are reflected in an instant of time.

There is within us a little space through which all the threads of the

universe are drawn; and, surrounding that incomprehensible centre, the

mind of man sometimes catches glimpses of things which are true only in

those glimpses; when we record them the true has vanished, and a shadowy

story--such as this--alone remains. Yet, perhaps, the time is not

altogether wasted in considering legends like these, for they reveal,

though but in phantasy and symbol, a greatness we are heirs to, a

destiny which is ours though it be yet far away.

1894

A DREAM OF ANGUS OGE

The day had been wet and wild, and the woods looked dim and drenched

from the window where Con sat. All the day long his ever restless feet

were running to the door in a vain hope of sunshine. His sister, Norah,

to quiet him had told him over and over again the tales which delighted

him, the delight of hearing which was second only to the delight of

living them over himself, when as Cuculain he kept the ford which led to

Ulla, his sole hero heart matching the hosts of Meave; or as Fergus he

wielded the sword of light the Druids made and gave to the champion,

which in its sweep shore away the crests of the mountains; or as

Brian, the ill-fated child of Turann, he went with his brothers in the

ocean-sweeping boat farther than ever Columbus traveled, winning one by

one in dire conflict with kings and enchanters the treasures which would

appease the implacable heart of Lu.

He had just died in a corner of the room from his many wounds when

Norah came in declaring that all these famous heroes must go to bed.

He protested in vain, but indeed he was sleepy, and before he had

been carried half-way to the room the little soft face drooped with

half-closed eyes, while he drowsily rubbed his nose upon her shoulder

in an effort to keep awake. For a while she flitted about him, looking,

with her dark, shadowy hair flickering in the dim, silver light like

one of the beautiful heroines of Gaelic romance, or one of the twilight,

race of the Sidhe. Before going she sat by his bed and sang to him some

verses of a song, set to an old Celtic air whose low intonations were

full of a half-soundless mystery:

Over the hill-tops the gay lights are peeping;

Down in the vale where the dim fleeces stray

Ceases the smoke from the hamlet upcreeping:

Come, thou, my shepherd, and lead me away.

"Who's the shepherd?" said the boy, suddenly sitting up.

"Hush, alannah, I will tell you another time." She continued still more

softly:

Lord of the Wand, draw forth from the darkness,

Warp of the silver, and woof of the gold:

Leave the poor shade there bereft in its starkness:

Wrapped in the fleece we will enter the Fold.

There from the many-orbed heart where the Mother

Breathes forth the love on her darlings who roam,

We will send dreams to their land of another

Land of the Shining, their birthplace and home.

He would have asked a hundred questions, but she bent over him,

enveloping him with a sudden nightfall of hair, to give him his

good-night kiss, and departed. Immediately the boy sat up again; all his

sleepiness gone. The pure, gay, delicate spirit of childhood was darting

at ideas dimly perceived in the delicious moonlight of romance which

silvered his brain, where may airy and beautiful figures were moving:

The Fianna with floating locks chasing the flying deer; shapes more

solemn, vast, and misty, guarding the avenues to unspeakable secrets;

but he steadily pursued his idea.

"I guess he's one of the people who take you away to faeryland. Wonder

if he'd come to me? Think it's easy going away," with an intuitive

perception of the frailty of the link binding childhood to earth in its

dreams. (As a man Con will strive with passionate intensity to regain

that free, gay motion in the upper airs.) "Think I'll try if he'll

come," and he sang, with as near an approach as he could make to the

glimmering cadences of his sister's voice:

Come, thou, my shepherd, and lead me away.

He then lay back quite still and waited. He could not say whether hours

or minutes had passed, or whether he had slept or not, until he was

aware of a tall golden-bearded man standing by his bed. Wonderfully

light was this figure, as if the sunlight ran through his limbs; a

spiritual beauty was on the face, and those strange eyes of bronze and

gold with their subtle intense gaze made Con aware for the first time of

the difference between inner and out in himself.

"Come, Con, come away!" the child seemed to hear uttered silently.

"You're the Shepherd!" said Con, "I'll go." Then suddenly, "I won't come

back and be old when they're all dead?" a vivid remembrance of Ossian's

fate flashing upon him.

A most beautiful laughter, which again to Con seemed half soundless,

came in reply. His fears vanished; the golden-bearded man stretched a

hand over him for a moment, and he found himself out in the night, now

clear and starlit. Together they moved on as if borne by the wind, past

many woods and silver-gleaming lakes, and mountains which shone like a

range of opals below the purple skies. The Shepherd stood still for a

moment by one of these hills, and there flew out, riverlike, a melody

mingled with a tinkling as of innumerable elfin hammers, and there, was

a sound of many gay voices where an unseen people were holding festival,

or enraptured hosts who were let loose for the awakening, the new day

which was to dawn, for the delighted child felt that faeryland was come

over again with its heroes and battles.

"Our brothers rejoice," said the Shepherd to Con.

"Who are they?" asked the boy.

"They are the thoughts of our Father."

"May we go in?" Con asked, for he was fascinated by the melody, mystery,

and flashing lights.

"Not now. We are going to my home where I lived in the days past when

there came to me many kings and queens of ancient Eire, many heroes and

beautiful women, who longed for the Druid wisdom we taught."

"And did you fight like Finn, and carry spears as tall as trees, and

chase the deer through the Woods, and have feastings and singing?"

"No, we, the Dananns, did none of those things--but those who were weary

of battle, and to whom feast and song brought no pleasure, came to us

and passed hence to a more wonderful land, a more immortal land than

this."

As he spoke he paused before a great mound, grown over with trees, and

around it silver clear in the moonlight were immense stones piled,

the remains of an original circle, and there was a dark, low, narrow

entrance leading within. He took Con by the hand, and in an instant

they were standing in a lofty, cross-shaped cave, built roughly of huge

stones.

"This was my palace. In days past many a one plucked here the purple

flower of magic and the fruit of the tree of life."

"It is very dark," said the child disconsolately. He had expected

something different.

"Nay, but look: you will see it is the palace of a god." And even as he

spoke a light began to glow and to pervade the cave and to obliterate

the stone walls and the antique hieroglyphs engraved thereon, and to

melt the earthen floor into itself like a fiery sun suddenly uprisen

within the world, and there was everywhere a wandering ecstasy of

sound: light and sound were one; light had a voice, and the music hung

glittering in the air.

"Look, how the sun is dawning for us, ever dawning; in the earth, in

our hearts, with ever youthful and triumphant voices. Your sun is but a

smoky shadow, ours the ruddy and eternal glow; yours is far way, ours is

heart and hearth and home; yours is a light without, ours a fire within,

in rock, in river, in plain, everywhere living, everywhere dawning,

whence also it cometh that the mountains emit their wondrous rays."

As he spoke he seemed to breathe the brilliance of that mystical

sunlight and to dilate and tower, so that the child looked up to a giant

pillar of light, having in his heart a sun of ruddy gold which shed its

blinding rays about him, and over his head there was a waving of fiery

plumage and on his face an ecstasy of beauty and immortal youth.

"I am Angus," Con heard; "men call me the Young. I am the sunlight in

the heart, the moonlight in the mind; I am the light at the end of every

dream, the voice for ever calling to come away; I am the desire beyond

you or tears. Come with me, come with me, I will make you immortal;

for my palace opens into the Gardens of the Sun, and there are the

fire-fountains which quench the heart's desire in rapture." And in

the child's dream he was in a palace high as the stars, with dazzling

pillars jeweled like the dawn, and all fashioned out of living and

trembling opal. And upon their thrones sat the Danann gods with their

sceptres and diadems of rainbow light, and upon their faces infinite

wisdom and imperishable youth. In the turmoil and growing chaos of his

dream he heard a voice crying out, "You remember, Con, Con, Conaire Mor,

you remember!" and in an instant he was torn from himself and had grown

vaster, and was with the Immortals, seated upon their thrones, they

looking upon him as a brother, and he was flying away with them into the

heart of the gold when he awoke, the spirit of childhood dazzled with

the vision which is too lofty for princes.

1897

DEIRDRE

A LEGEND IN THREE ACTS

Dramatis Personae:

CONCOBAR............... Ardrie of Ulla.

NAISI

AINLE, ARDAN............ Brothers of Naisi.

FERGUS

BUINNE, ILANN.......... Sons of Fergus

CATHVAH................. A Druid

DEIRDRE

LAVARCAN................ A Druidess

Herdsman,

Messenger

ACT I.

SCENE.--The dun of DEIRDRE'S captivity. LAVARCAM, a Druidess, sits

before the door in the open air. DEIRDRE comes out of the dun.

DEIRDRE--Dear fostermother, how the spring is beginning! The music of

the Father's harp is awakening the flowers. Now the winter's sleep is

over, and the spring flows from the lips of the harp. Do you not feel

the thrill in the wind--a joy answering the trembling strings? Dear

fostermother, the spring and the music are in my heart!

LAVARCAM--The harp has but three notes; and, after sleep and laughter,

the last sound is of weeping.

DEIRDRE--Why should there be any sorrow while I am with you? I am happy

here. Last night in a dream I saw the blessed Sidhe upon the mountains,

and they looked on me with eyes of love.

(An old HERDSMAN enters, who bows before LAVARCAM.)

HERDSMAN--Lady, the High King is coming through the woods.

LAVARCAM--Deirdre, go to the grianan for a little. You shall tell me

your dream again, my child.

DEIRDRE--Why am I always hidden from the King's sight.

LAVARCAM--It is the King's will you should see no one except these aged

servants.

DEIRDRE--Am I indeed fearful to look upon, foster-mother? I do not think

so, or you would not love me.

LAVARCAM--It is the King's will.

DEIRDRE--Yet why must it be so, fostermother? Why must I hide away? Why

must I never leave the valley?

LAVARCAM--It is the king's will.

While she is speaking CONCOBAR enters. He stands still and looks on

DEIRDRE. DEIRDRE gazes on the KING for a moment, and then covering her

face with her hands, she hurries into the dun. The HERDSMAN goes out.

LAVARCAM sees and bows before the KING.

CONCOBAR--Lady, is all well with you and your charge?

LAVARCAM--All is well.

CONCOBAR--Is there peace in Deirdre's heart?

LAVARCAM--She is happy, not knowing a greater happiness than to roam the

woods or to dream of the immortal ones can bring her.

CONCOBAR--Fate has not found her yet hidden in this valley.

LAVARCAM--Her happiness is to be here. But she asks why must she never

leave the glen. Her heart quickens within her. Like a bird she listens

to the spring, and soon the valley will be narrow as a cage.

CONCOBAR--I cannot open the cage. Less ominous the Red Swineherd at a

feast than this beautiful child in Ulla. You know the word of the Druids

at her birth.

LAVARCAM--Aye, through her would come the destruction of the Red Branch.

But sad is my heart, thinking of her lonely youth.

CONCOBAR--The gods did not guide us how the ruin might be averted. The

Druids would have slain her, but I set myself against the wise ones,

thinking in my heart that the chivalry of the Red Branch would be

already gone if this child were slain. If we are to perish it shall be

nobly, and without any departure from the laws of our order. So I have

hidden her away from men, hoping to stay the coming of fate.

LAVARCAM--King, your mercy will return to you, and if any of the Red

Branch fall, you will not fall.

CONCOBAR--If her thoughts turned only to the Sidhe her heart would grow

cold to the light love that warriors give. The birds of Angus cannot

breathe or sing their maddening song in the chill air that enfolds the

wise. For this, Druidess, I made thee her fosterer. Has she learned to

know the beauty of the ever-living ones, after which the earth fades and

no voice can call us back?

LAVARCAM--The immortals have appeared to her in vision and looked on her

with eyes of love.

CONCOBAR--Her beauty is so great it would madden whole hosts, and turn

them from remembrance of their duty. We must guard well the safety of

the Red Branch. Druidess, you have seen with subtle eyes the shining

life beyond this. But through the ancient traditions of Ulla, which the

bards have kept and woven into song, I have seen the shining law enter

men's minds, and subdue the lawless into love of justice. A great

tradition is shaping a heroic race; and the gods who fought at Moytura

are descending and dwelling in the heart of the Red Branch. Deeds will

be done in our time as mighty as those wrought by the giants who battled

at the dawn; and through the memory of our days and deeds the gods will

build themselves an eternal empire in the mind of the Gael. Wise woman,

guard well this beauty which fills my heart with terror. I go now, and

will doubly warn the spearmen at the passes, but will come hither again

and speak with thee of these things, and with Deirdre I would speak

also.

LAVARCAM--King of Ulla, be at peace. It is not I who will break through

the design of the gods. (CONCOBAR goes through the woods, after looking

for a time at the door of the dun.) But Deirdre is also one of the

immortals. What the gods desire will utter itself through her heart. I

will seek counsel from the gods.

[DEIRDRE comes slowly through the door.]

DEIRDRE--Is he gone? I fear this stony king with his implacable eyes.

LAVARVAM--He is implacable only in his desire for justice.

DEIRDRE--No! No! There is a hunger in his eyes for I know not what.

LAVARCAM--He is the wisest king who ever sat on the chair of Macha.

DEIRDRE--He has placed a burden on my heart. Oh! fostermother, the harp

of life is already trembling into sorrow!

LAVARCAM--Do not think of him. Tell me your dream, my child.

[DEIRDRE comes from the door of the dun and sits on a deerskin at

LAVARCAM's feet.]

DEIRDRE--Tell me, do happy dreams bring happiness, and do our dreams of

the Sidhe ever grow real to us as you are real to me? Do their eyes draw

nigh to ours, and can the heart we dream of ever be a refuge for our

hearts.

LAVARCAM--Tell me your dream.

DEIRDRE--Nay; but answer first of all, dear fostermother--you who are

wise, and who have talked with the Sidhe.

LAVARCAM--Would it make you happy to have your dream real, my darling?

DEIRDRE--Oh, it would make me happy!

[She hides her face on LAVARCAM's knees.]

LAVARCAM--If I can make your dream real, I will, my beautiful fawn.

DEIRDRE--Dear fostermother, I think my dream is coming near to me. It is

coming to me now.

LAVARCAM--Deirdre, tell me what hope has entered your heart?

DEIRDRE--In the night I saw in a dream the top of the mountain yonder,

beyond the woods, and three hunters stood there in the dawn. The sun

sent its breath upon their faces, but there was a light about them never

kindled at the sun. They were surely hunters from some heavenly field,

or the three gods whom Lu condemned to wander in mortal form, and they

are come again to the world to seek some greater treasure.

LAVARCAM--Describe to me these immortal hunters. In Eire we know no gods

who take such shape appearing unto men.

DEIRDRE--I cannot now make clear to thee my remembrance of two of the

hunters, but the tallest of the three--oh, he stood like a flame against

the flameless sky, and the whole sapphire of the heavens seemed to live

in his fearless eyes! His hair was darker than the raven's wing, his

face dazzling in its fairness. He pointed with his great flame-bright

spear to the valley. His companions seemed in doubt, and pointed east

and west. Then in my dream I came nigh him and whispered in his ear, and

pointed the way through the valley to our dun. I looked into his

eyes, and he started like one who sees a vision; and I know, dear

fostermother, he will come here, and he will love me. Oh, I would die if

he did not love me!

LAVARCAM--Make haste, my child, and tell me was there aught else

memorable about this hero and his companions?

DEIRDRE--Yes, I remember each had the likeness of a torch shedding rays

of gold embroidered on the breast.

LAVARCAM--Deirdre, Deirdre, these are no phantoms, but living heroes!

O wise king, the eyes of the spirit thou wouldst open have seen farther

than the eyes of the body thou wouldst blind! The Druid vision has only

revealed to this child her destiny.

DEIRDRE--Why do you talk so strangely, fostermother?

LAVARCAM--Concobar, I will not fight against the will of the immortals.

I am not thy servant, but theirs. Let the Red Branch fall! If the gods

scatter it they have chosen to guide the people of Ulla in another I

path.

DEIRDRE--What has disturbed your mind, dear foster-mother? What have

I to do with the Red Branch? And why should the people of Ulla fall

because of me?

LAVARCAM--O Deirdre, there were no warriors created could overcome the

Red Branch. The gods have but smiled on this proud chivalry through

thine eyes, and they are already melted. The waving of thy hand is

more powerful to subdue than the silver rod of the king to sustain. Thy

golden hair shall be the flame to burn up Ulla.

DEIDRE--Oh, what do you mean by these fateful prophecies? You fill me

with terror. Why should a dream so gentle and sweet portend sorrow?

LAVARCAM--Dear golden head, cast sorrow aside for a time. The Father has

not yet struck the last chords on the harp of life. The chords of joy

have but begun for thee.

DEIRDRE--You confuse my mind, dear fostermother, with your speech of joy

and sorrow. It is not your wont. Indeed, I think my dream portends joy.

LAVARCAM--It is love, Deirdre, which is coming to thee. Love, which thou

hast never known.

DEIRDRE--But I love thee, dearest and kindest of guardians.

LAVARCAM--Oh, in this love heaven and earth will be forgotten, and your

own self unremembered, or dim and far off as a home the spirit fives in

no longer.

DEIRDRE--Tell me, will the hunter from the hills come to us? I think I

could forget all for him.

LAVARCAM--He is not one of the Sidhe, but the proudest and bravest of

the Red Branch, Naisi, son of Usna. Three lights of valor among the

Ultonians are Naisi and his brothers.

DEIRDRE--Will he love me, fostermother, as you love me, and will he live

with us here?

LAVARCAM--Nay, where he goes you must go, and he must fly afar to live

with you. But I will leave you now for a little, child, I would divine

the future.

[LAVARCAM kisses DEIRDRE and goes within the dun. DEIRDRE walks to and

fro before the door. NAISI enters. He sees DEIRDRE, who turns and looks

at him, pressing her hands to her breast. Naisi bows before DEIRDRE.]

NAISI--Goddess, or enchantress, thy face shone on me at dawn on the

mountain. Thy lips called me hither, and I have come.

DEIRDRE--I called thee, dear Naisi.

NAISI--Oh, knowing my name, never before having spoken to me, thou must

know my heart also.

DEIRDRE--Nay, I know not. Tell me what is in thy heart.

NAISI--O enchantress, thou art there. The image of thine eyes is there

and thy smiling lips, and the beating of my heart is muffled in a cloud

of thy golden tresses.

DEIRDRE--Say on, dear Naisi.

NAISI--I have told thee all. Thou only art in my heart.

DEIRDRE--But I have never ere this spoken to any man. Tell me more.

NAISI--If thou hast never before spoken to any man, then indeed art thou

one of the immortals, and my hope is vain. Hast thou only called me to

thy world to extinguish my life hereafter in memories of thee?

DEIRDRE--What wouldst thou with me, dear Naisi?

NAISI--I would carry thee to my dun by the sea of Moyle, O beautiful

woman, and set thee there on an ivory throne. The winter would not chill

thee there, nor the summer burn thee, for I would enfold thee with my

love, enchantress, if thou camest--to my world. Many warriors are there

of the clan Usna, and two brothers I have who are strong above any

hosts, and they would all die with me for thy sake.

DEIRDRE (taking the hands of NAISI)--I will go with thee where thou

goest. (Leaning her head on NAISI's shoulder.) Oh, fostermother, too

truly hast thou spoken! I know myself not. My spirit has gone from me to

this other heart for ever.

NAISI--Dost thou forego thy shining world for me?

LAVARCAM--(coming out of the dun). Naisi, this is the Deirdre of the

prophecies.

NAISI--Deirdre! Deirdre! I remember in some old tale of my childhood

that name. (Fiercely.) It was a lying prophecy. What has this girl to do

with the downfall of Ulla?

LAVARCAM--Thou art the light of the Ultonian's, Naisi, but thou art

not the star of knowledge. The Druids spake truly. Through her, but not

through her sin, will come the destruction of the Red Branch.

NAISI--I have counted death as nothing battling for the Red Branch; and

I would not, even for Deirdre, war upon my comrades. But Deirdre I will

not leave nor forget for a thousand prophecies made by the Druids

in their dotage. If the Red Branch must fall, it will fall through

treachery; but Deirdre I will love, and in my love is no dishonor, nor

any broken pledge.

LAVARCAM--Remember, Naisi, the law of the king. It is death to thee to

be here. Concobar is even now in the woods, and will come hither again.

DEIRDRE--Is it death to thee to love me, Naisi? Oh, fly quickly, and

forget me. But first, before thou goest, bend down thy head--low--rest

it on my bosom. Listen to the beating of my heart. That passionate

tumult is for thee! There, I have kissed thee. I have sweet memories for

ever-lasting. Go now, my beloved, quickly. I fear--I fear for thee this

stony king.

NAISI--I do not fear the king, nor will I fly hence. It is due to the

chief of the Red Branch that I should stay and face him, having set my

mill against his.

LAVARCAM--You cannot remain now.

NAISI--It is due to the king.

LAVARCAM--You must go; both must go. Do not cloud your heart with dreams

of a false honor. It is not your death only, but Deirdre's which will

follow. Do you think the Red Branch would spare her, after your death,

to extinguish another light of valor, and another who may wander here?

NAISI--I will go with Deirdre to Alba.

DEIRDRE--Through life or to death I will go with thee, Naisi.

[Voices of AINLE and ARDAN are heard in the wood.]

ARDAN--I think Naisi went this way.

AINLE--He has been wrapt in a dream since the dawn. See! This is his

footstep in the clay!

ARDAN--I heard voices.

AINLE--(entering with ARDAN) Here is our dream-led brother.

NAISI--Ainle and Ardan, this is Deirdre, your sister. I have broken

through the command of the king, and fly with her to Alba to avoid

warfare with the Red Branch.

ARDAN--Our love to thee, beautiful sister.

AINLE--Dear maiden, thou art already in my heart with Naisi.

LAVARCAM--You cannot linger here. With Concobar the deed follows swiftly

the counsel; tonight his spearmen will be on your track.

NAISI--Listen, Ainle and Ardan. Go you to Emain Macha. It may be the Red

Branch will make peace between the king and myself. You are guiltless in

this flight.

AINLE--Having seen Deirdre, my heart is with you, brother, and I also am

guilty.

ARDAN--I think, being here, we, too, have broken the command of the

king. We will go with thee to Alba, dear brother and sister.

LAVARCAM--Oh, tarry not, tarry not! Make haste while there is yet time.

The thoughts of the king are circling around Deirdre as wolves around

the fold. Try not the passes of the valley, but over the hills. The

passes are all filled with the spearmen of the king.

NAISI--We will carry thee over the mountains, Deirdre, and tomorrow will

see us nigh to the isles of Alba.

DEIRDRE--Farewell, dear fostermother. I have passed the faery sea since

dawn, and have found the Island of Joy. Oh, see! what bright birds are

around us, with dazzling wings! Can you not hear their singing? Oh,

bright birds, make music for ever around my love and me!

LAVARCAM--They are the birds of Angus. Their singing brings love--and

death.

DEIRDRE--Nay, death has come before love, dear fostermother, and all I

was has vanished like a dewdrop in the sun. Oh, beloved, let us go. We

are leaving death behind us in the valley.

[DEIRDRE and the brothers go through the wood. LAVARCAM watches, and

when they are out of sight sits by the door of the dun with her head

bowed to her knees. After a little CONCOBAR enters.]

CONCOBAR--Where is Deirdre?

LAVARCAM--(not lifting her head). Deirdre has left death behind her, and

has entered into the Kingdom of her Youth.

CONCOBAR--Do not speak to me in portents. Lift up your head, Druidess.

Where is Deirdre?

LAVARCAM--(looking up). Deirdre is gone!

CONCOBAR--By the high gods, tell me whither, and who has dared to take

her hence?

LAVARCAM--She has fled with Naisi, son of Usna, and is beyond your

vengeance, king.

CONCOBAR--Woman, I swear by Balor, Tethra, and all the brood of demons,

I will have such a vengeance a thousand years hereafter shall be

frightened at the tale. If the Red Branch is to fall, it will sink at

least in the seas of the blood of the clan Usna.

LAVARCAM--O king, the doom of the Red Branch had already gone forth when

you suffered love for Deirdre to enter your heart.

[Scene closes.]