POETRY AND IRELAND: ESSAYS BY
W. B. YEATS AND LIONEL JOHNSON

University of California • Berkeley

PAULINE FORE MOFFITT LIBRARY

POETRY AND IRELAND: ESSAYS BY
W. B. YEATS AND LIONEL JOHNSON.

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CUALA PRESS

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POETRY AND PATRIOTISM

I

When Mr. O'Leary died I could not bring myself
to go to his funeral, though I had been once his close
fellow-worker, for I shrank from seeing about his
grave so many whose Nationalism was different
from anything he had taught, or that I could share.
He belonged, as did his friend John F. Taylor,to the
romantic conception of Irish Nationality on which
Lionel Johnson and I myself founded, so far as it
was founded on anything but literature, our Art and
our Irish criticism. Perhaps his spirit, if it can care
for or can see old friends now, will accept this apol-
ogy for an absence that has troubled me. I learned
much from him and much from Taylor, who will al-
ways seem to me the greatest orator I have heard, &
that ideal Ireland, perhaps from this out an imagin-
ary Ireland, in whose service I labour, will always be
in many essentials their Ireland. They were the last
to speak an understanding of life and Nationality,
built up by the generation of Grattan, which read
Homer and Virgil, and by the generation of Davis,
which had been pierced through by the idealism of
Mazzini, * and of the European revolutionists of

* Rose Kavanagh, the poet, wrote to her religious adviser, from I
think Leitrim, where she lived, and asked him to get her the works of
Mazzini; he replied, you must mean Manzone.

the mid-century. O'Leary had joined the Fenian
movement with no hope of success as we know, but
because he believed such a movement good for the
moral character of the people, and had taken his
long imprisonment without complaining. Even to
the very end, while often speaking of his prison life,
he would have thought it took from his Roman
courage to describe its hardship. The worth of a
man's acts in the moral memory, a continual height
of mind in the doing of them, seemed more to him
than their immediate result, if indeed, the sight of
many failures had not taken away the thought of
success. A man was not to lie, or even to give up his
dignity on any patriotic plea, and I have heard him
say, 'I have but one religion, the old Persian : to bend
the bow and tell the truth,' and again, 'There are
things a man must not do to save a nation,' and
again, 'A man must not cry in public to save a na-
tion;' and that we might not forget justice in the
passion of controversy: 'There was never cause so
bad that it has not been defended by good men, for
what seemed to them good reasons.' His friend had
a burning and brooding imagination that divided
men not according to their achievement but by their
degrees of sincerity, and by their mastery over a
straight, and to my thought, too obviouslogic that
seemed to him essential to sincerity. Neither man

2

had an understanding of style or of literature in the
right sense of the word, though both were great
readers, but because their imagination could come
to rest no place short of greatness, they hoped, John
O'Leary especially, for an Irish literature of the
greatest kind. When Lionel Johnson and Katharine
Tynan, as she then was, and I myself began to re-
form Irish poetry we thought to keep unbroken the
thread running up to Grattan which John O'Leary
had put into our hands,though it might be our busi-
ness to explore new paths of the labyrinth. We
sought to make a more subtle rhythm, a more or-
ganic form than that of the older Irish poets who
wrote in English, but always to remember certain
ardent ideas and high attitudes of mind which were
to our imagination the nation itself, so far as a na-
tion can be summarised in the intellect. If you had
asked an ancient Spartan what made Sparta Sparta,
he would have answered, the Laws of Lycurgus,
and many Englishmen look back to Bunyan and to
Milton as we did to Grattan and to Mitchell. Lionel
Johnson was able to take up into his Art one portion
of this tradition that I could not, for he had a gift of
speaking political thought in fine verse that I have
always lacked. I, on the other hand, was more pre-
occupied with Ireland, for he had other interests, &
took from Allingham and Walsh their passion for

3

country spiritism, and from Ferguson his pleasure
in heroic legend, and while seeing all in the light of
European literature, found my symbols of expres-
sion in Ireland. One thought often possessed me
very strongly. New from the influence, mainly the
personal influence, of William Morris,I dreamed of
enlarging Irish hate, till we had come to hate with
a passion of patriotism what Morris and Ruskin
hated. Mitchell had all but poured some of that
hate drawn from Carlyle, who had it of an earlier
and as I think, cruder sort, into the blood of Ire-
land; and were we not a poor nation with ancient
courage, unblackened fields, and a barbarous gift of
self-sacrifice? Ruskin and Morris had spent them-
selves in vain because they had found no passion to
harness to their thought, but here was unwasted
passion, and precedents in the popular memory, for
every needed thought and action. Perhaps, too, it
would be possible to find in that new philosophy of
spiritism coming to a seeming climax in the work
of Ernest Myers, and in the investigations of un-
counted obscure persons, what could change the
country spiritism into a reasoned belief that would
put its might into all the rest. A new belief seemed
coming that would be so simple & demonstratable,
and above all so mixed into the common scenery of
the world, that it would set the whole man on fire

4

and liberate him from a thousand obediences and
complexities. We were to forge in Ireland a new
sword on our old traditional anvil for that great bat-
tle that must in the end re-establish the old con-
fident joyous world. But the while I worked with
this idea, founding societies that became quickly
or slowly everything I despise, one part of me look-
ed on, mischievous and mocking, and the other part
spoke words which were more and more unreal, as
the attitude of mind became more and more strain-
ed and difficult. Miss Maud Gonne could still draw
great crowds out of the slums by her beauty and
sincerity, and speak to them of 'Mother Ireland
with the crown of stars about her head.' But grad-
ually the political movement she was associated
with, finding it hard to build up any fine lasting
thing, became content to attack little persons and
little things. All movements are held together more
by what they hate than what they love, for love sep-
arates and individualises and quiets, but the nobler
movements, the only movements on which litera-
ture can found itself, hate great and lasting things.
All who have any old tradition, have something of
aristocracy, but we had opposing us from the first,
though not strongly from the first, a type of mind
which though it had lacked influence in the gener-
ation of Grattan, and almost lacked it in that of

5

Davis, has in ours made a new nation out of Ireland
that was once old and full of memories.
I remember when I was twenty years old, arguing
on my way home from a Young Ireland Society that
Ireland with its hieratic Church, its readiness to
accept leadership in intellectual things, and John
O'Leary spoke much of this readiness, * its Latin
hatred of middle paths and uncompleted arguments,
could never create a democratic poet of the type of
Burns, although it had tried to do so more than once,
but that its genius would in the long run be aristo-
cratic and lonely. Whenever I had known some old
countryman, I had heard stories and sayings that
arose out of an imagination, that would have under-
stood Homer better than 'The Cotter's Saturday
Night' or 'Highland Mary,' because it was an an-
cient imagination where the sediment had found the
time to settle, and I believed that the makers of de-
liberate literature could still take passion and theme,
though but little thought, from such as he. On some
such old and broken stem I thought, have all the
most beautiful roses been grafted.

* I have heard him say more than once, 'I will not say our people know
good from bad, but I will say, that they don't hate the good when it
is pointed out to them, as a great many people do in England.'

6

II

Him who trembles before the flame and the flood,
And the winds that blow through the starry ways;
Let the starry winds, and the flame and the flood
Cover over and hide, for he has no part
With the proud, majestical, multitude.

Three types of men have made all beautiful things.
Aristocracies have made beautiful manners, because
their place in the world puts them above the fear of
life, and the countrymen have made beautiful stories
and beliefs, because they have nothing to lose and so
do not fear, and the artists have made all the rest,
because Providence has filled them with reckless-
ness. All these look backward to a long tradition, for
being without fear, they have held to whatever
pleased them. The others being always anxious
have come to possess little that is good in itself, and
are always changing from thing to thing, for what-
ever they do or have, must be a means to something
else, and they have so little belief that anything can
be an end in itself,that they cannot understand you if
you say C A11 the most valuable things are useless.'
They prefer the stalk to the flower, and believe that
painting and poetry exist that there may be in-
struction, and love that there maybe children, and
theatres, that busy men may rest, and holidays that

7

busy men may go on being busy. At all times they
fear and even hate the things that have worth in
themselves, for that worth may suddenly, as it were
a fire, consume their book of Life, where the world
is represented by cyphers and symbols ;and before all
else, they fear irreverent joy and unserviceable sor-
row. It seems to them, that those who have been
freed by position,by poverty, or by the traditions of
Art, have something terrible about them, a light
that is unendurable to eyesight. They complain
much of that commandment that we can do almost
what we will, if we do it gaily, and think that free-
dom is but a trifling with the world.
If we would find a company of our own way of
thinking, we must go backward to turretted walls,
to courts, to high rocky places, to little walled
towns, to jesters like that jester of Charles the Fifth
who made mirth out of his own death ; to the Duke
Guidobaldo in his sickness,or Duke Frederick in his
strength, to all those who understood that life is not
lived at all, if not lived for contemplation or excite-
ment.

Certainly we could not delight in that so courtly
thing, the poetry of light love, if it were sad, for only
when we are gay over a thing, and can play with it,
do we show ourselves its master, and have minds
clear enough for strength. The raging fire and the

8

destructive sword are portions of eternity, too great
for the eye of man, wrote Blake, and it is only before
such things, before a love like that of Tristan and
Iseult, before noble or ennobled death, that the free
mind permits itself aught but brief sorrow. That we
may be free from all the rest, sullen anger, solemn
virtue, calculating anxiety, gloomy suspicion, pre-
varicating hope, we should be reborn in gaiety. Be-
cause there is submission in a pure sorrow,we should
sorrow alone over what is greater than ourselves,
nor too soon admit that greatness, but all that is less
than we are, should stir us to some joy. Pure joy
masters and impregnates; and so to world end,
strength shall laugh and wisdom mourn.

Ill

In life courtesy and self possession, and in the arts
style, are the sensible impressions of the free mind,
for both arise out of a deliberate shaping of all
things, and from never being swept away, whatever
the emotion, into confusion or dulness. The Japan-
ese as the fourth of their heroic virtues, have com-
mended courtesy at all times whatsoever, and
though a writer, who has to withdraw so much of
his thought out of his life that he may learn his
craft, may find many his betters in daily courtesy,
he should never be without style, which is but high

9 c

breeding in words and in argument. He is indeed
the creator of the standards of manners in their
subtlety, for he alone can know the ancient records
and be like some mystic courtier who, having stolen
the keys from the girdle of Time,can wander where
it please him amid the splendours of ancient courts.
Sometimes it may be, he is permittedthe license of
cap and bell, or even the madman's bunch of straws,
but he never forgets or leaves at home the seal and
the signature. He has at all times the freedom of the
well bred, and being bred to the tact of words can
take what theme he pleases, unlike the shopkeepers,
who are rightly compelled to be very strict in their
conversation. Who should be free if he were not?
for none other has a continual deliberate self-de-
lighting happiness — style, the only thing that is
immortal in literature as Sainte-Beuve has said, a
still unexpended energy, after all that the argument
or the story needs, a still unbroken pleasure after the
immediate end has been accomplished — and builds
this up into a most personal and wilful fire, trans-
figuring words and sounds and events. It is the play-
ing of strength when the day's work is done, a secret
between a craftsman and his craft, and is so insepar-
ate in his nature, that he has it most of all amid over-
whelming emotion, and in the face of death. Shake-
peare'spersonswhen the last darkness has gathered

10

about them, speak out of an ecstasy that is one half
the self surrender of sorrow, and one half the last
playing and mockery of the victorious sword, be-
fore the defeated world. The style is in the arrange-
ment of events as in the words, in that touch of ex-
travagance, of irony, of surprise, which is set there
after the desire of logic has been satisfied and all that
is merely necessary established, and leaves one, not
in the circling necessity, but caught up into the free-
dom of self-delight: it is as it were, the foam upon
the cup, the long pheasant's feather on the horse's
head, the spread peacock over the pasty. If it be very
conscious, very deliberate, as it may be in comedy,
for comedy is more personal than tragedy, we call
it fantasy, perhaps even mischievous fantasy, recog-
nising how disturbing it is to all that drag a ball at
the ankle. This joy because it must be always mak-
ing and mastering, remains in the hands and in the
tongue of the artist, but with his eyes he enters upon
a submissive, sorrowful contemplation of the great
irremediable things, and he is known from other
men by making all he handles like himself, and yet
by the unlikeness to himself, of all that comes before
him in a pure contemplation. It may have been his
enemy or his love, or his cause that set him dream-
ing, and certainly the phoenix can but open her
young wings in a flaming nest, but all hope and hate

1 1

vanishes in the dream, and if his mistress brag of the
song or his enemy fear it, it is not that either has its
praise or blame, but that the twigs of the holy nest
are not easily set afire. The verses may make his mis-
tress famous as Helen or give victory to his cause,
not because he has been either's servant, but because
men delight to honour and to remember all that have
servedcontemplation. It had been easier to fight, to
die even, for Charles's house with Marvel's poem in
the memory, but there is no zeal of service that had
not been an impurity in the pure soil where the mar-
vel grew. Timon of Athens contemplates his own
end, and orders his tomb by the beachy margent of
the flood, and Cleopatra sets the asp to her bosom,
and their words move us because their sorrow is not
their own at tomb or asp, but for all men's fate. That
shaping joy has kept the sorrow pure, as it had kept
it were the emotion love or hate, for the nobleness of
the Arts is in the mingling of contraries, the extrem-
ity of sorrow, the extremity of joy, perfection of
personality, the perfection of its surrender, over-
flowing turbulent energy, and marmorean stillness;
and its red rose opens at the meeting of the two
beams of the cross, and at the trysting place of mor-
tal and immortal, time and eternity. No new man
has ever plucked that rose, or found that trysting
place, for he could but come to the understanding

12

of himself, to the mastery of unlocking words after
long frequenting of the great Masters, hardly with-
out ancestral memory of the like. Even knowledge
is not enough, for the 'recklessness' Castiglione
thought necessary in good manners is necessary in
this likewise, & if a man has it not he will be gloomy,
and had better to his marketing again.

IV

When I saw John O'Leary first, every young Cath-
olic man who had intellectual ambition fed his im-
agination with the poetry of Young Ireland; and
the verses of even the least known of its poets were
expounded with a devout ardour at Young Ireland
Societies and the like,and their birthdays celebrated.
The School of writers I belonged to, tried to found
itself on much of the subject matter of this poetry,
and what was almost more in our thoughts, to begin
a more imaginative tradition in Irish literature, by a
criticism at once remorseless andenthusiastic.lt was
our criticism, I think, that set Clarence Mangan at
the head of the Young Ireland poets in the place of
Davis, and put Sir Samuel Ferguson, who had died
with but little fame as a poet,next in the succession.
Our attacks, mine especially, on verse which owed
its position to its moral or political worth, roused a

L 3

resentment which even I find it hard to imagine to-
day, and our verse was attacked in return, and not for
anything peculiar to ourselves, but for all that it had
in common with the accepted poetry of the world,
and most of all for its lack of rhetoric, its refusal to
preach a doctrine or to consider the seeming neces-
sities of a cause. Now, after so many years, I can see
how natural, how poetical even, an opposition was,
that showed what large numbers could not call up
certain high feelings, without the association of cer-
tain rhymes, or believe that we had not wronged the
feeling when we did but attack the rhyme. I have
just read in a newspaper that Sir Charles Gavan Duf-
fy recited before his death his favourite poem, one of
the worst of the patriotic poems of Young Ireland,
and it has brought all this to mind,for the opposition
to our School claimed him as its leader. When I was
at Siena, I noticed that the Byzantine style persisted
in faces of Madonnas for several generations after it
had given way to a more natural style in the less
loved faces of saints and martyrs. Passion had grown
accustomed to those limbs and narrow eyes, which
are almost Japanese, & to those gaunt hollow cheeks,
and would have thought it sacrilege to change.
We would not it is likely, have found listeners, if
John O'Leary, the irreproachable patriot, had not
supported us. It was as clear to him that a writer

H

must not write badly, or ignore the example of the
great masters in the fancied or real service of a
cause, as it was that he must not lie for it or grow
hysterical. I believed in those days that a new intel-
lectual life would begin, like that of Young Ireland,
but more profound and personal, and that could we
but get a few plain principles accepted, new poets
and writers of prose would make an immortal mu-
sic. I think I was more blind than Johnson, though I
judge this from his poems rather than anything I re-
member of his talk, for he never talked ideas, but as
was common with his generation in Oxford, facts,
and immediate impressions from life. With others
this renunciation was but a pose, a superficial react-
ion from the disordered abundance of the middle
century, but with him it was the radical life. He was
in all a traditionalist, gathering out of the past phra-
ses,moods, attitudes, and disliking ideaslessfor their
uncertainty than because they made the mind itself
changing and restless. He measured the Irish tradi-
tion by another greater than itself, and was quick to
feel any falling asunder of the two, yet at many mo-
ments they seemed but one in his imagination. Ire-
land, all through his poem of that name, speaks to
him with the voice of the great poets,and in 'Ireland
Dead' she is still mother of perfect heroism, but
there doubt comes too.

*5

Can it be they do repent
That they went, thy chivalry,
Those sad ways magnificent.

And 'in Ways of War' dedicated to John O'Leary,
he dismissed the belief in an heroic Ireland as but a
dream.

A dream! A dream! an ancient dream!
Yet, ere peace come to Innisfail,
Some weapons on some field must gleam,
Some burning glory, fire the Gael.

That field may lie beneath the sun,
Fair for the treading of an host:
That field in realms of thought be won,
And armed hands do their uttermost:

Some way, to faithful Innisfail,
Shall come the majesty and awe
Of martial truth, that must prevail
To lay on all the eternal law.

I do not think either of us saw that as belief in the
possibility of armed insurrection withered, the old
romantic nationalism would wither too, and that
the young would become less ready to find pleasure
in whatever they believed to be literature. Poetical

16

tragedy, and indeed all the more intense forms of lit-
erature, had lost their hold on the general mass of
men in other countries,as life grew safe and the sense
of comedy, which is the social bond in times of
peace as tragic feeling is in times of war, had become
the inspiration of popular art. I always knew this,
but I believed that the memory of danger, and the
reality of it seemed near enough sometimes, would
last longenough to give Irelandherimaginative op-
portunity. I could not foresee that a new class which
had begun to rise into power under the shadow of
Parnell, would change the nature of the Irish move-
ment, that, needing no longer great sacrifices, nor
bringing any great risk to individuals, could do with-
out exceptional men, and those activities of the
mind that are founded on the exceptional moment.
John O'Leary had spent much of his thought in an
unavailing war with the agrarian party, * believing
it the root of change, but the fox that crept into
the badger's hole did not come from there. Power

* A small political organizer told me once, that he and a certain friend
got together somewhere in Tipperary a great meeting of farmers, for
O'Leary on his coming out of prison, and O'Leary had said at it: 'The
landlords have given us some few leaders and I like them for that, and
the artisans have given us great numbers of good patriots, and so I
like them best: but you I do not like at all, for you have never given
us any one.' I have known but one that had his moral courage, and
that was a woman with beauty to give her courage and self-possession.

17 d

passed to small shopkeepers, to clerks, to that very
class, who had seemed to John O'Leary so ready to
bend to the power of others, to men who had risen
above the traditions of the countryman, without
learning those of cultivated life or even educating
themselves, and who, because of their poverty, their
ignorance, their superstitious piety, are much sub-
jecttoall kinds of fear. Immediate victory, immed-
iate utility became everything, and the conviction,
which is in all who have run great risks for a cause's
sake, in the O'Learys and Mazzinis as in all rich
natures, that life is greater than the cause, withered,
and we artists, who are the servants not of any cause
but of mere naked life, and above all of that life in
its nobler forms, where joy and sorrow are one, Arti-
ficers of the Great Moment, became as elsewhere
in Europe protesting individual voices. Ireland's
great moment had passed, and she had filled no
roomy vessels with strong sweet wine, where we
have filled our porcelain jars against the coming
winter.

W. B. Yeats. August 1907.

The following essay was delivered as a lecture, and
I have left out those unimportant opening words,
which a lecturer finds necessary, that his audience
may grow used to his voice and his appearance.
Lionel Johnson was small but delicately made, and
with great dignity of manner, and he spoke with so
much music that what had been in another monot-
ony, became nobility of style. His reading or speak-
ing of poetry befitted his own particularly, that had
from scholarship and from the loneliness and gravity
of his mind an air of high lineage, but even poor
verses were beautiful upon his lips. I think no man
ever saw him angry or petulant, or till his infirmity
had grown on him, shaken from his self possession,
and it often seemed as if he played at life, as if it
were an elaborate ritual that would soon be over. I
am certain he had prevision of his end, and that he
was himself that mystic and cavalier who sang:

Go from me: I am one of those, who fall.
What! hath no cold wind swept your heart at all,
In my sad company? before the end,
Go from me, dear my friend !

Yours are the victories of light: your feet

Rest from good toil, where rest is brave and sweet.

But after warfare in a mourning gloom,

I rest in clouds of doom.

Have you not read so, looking in these eyes,
Is it the common light of the pure skies,
Lights up their shadowy depths? the end is set:
Though the end be not yet.

POETRY AND PATRIOTISM

It appears to be the creed of some critics, that in the
Irish poetry of some sixty, fifty, andforty years ago,
in the poetry of the Nation and of 'Young Ireland,'
with their immediate predecessors and followers,
we have a fixed and unalterable standard, whereby
to judge all Irish poetry, past and present and to
come. In the poetry of that great generation lies
beauty, all beauty, and nothing but beauty. Against
any living Irish poet, who writes in any style un-
cultivated then, is brought the dreadful charge of
being artistic : and sometimes, if it be a very flagrant
case, the unspeakable accusation of being English.
Now, I heartily hate the cant of 'art for art's sake:'
I have spent years, in trying to understand, what is
meant by that imbecile phrase. Also, I have a heal-
thy hatred of the West Briton heresy. Further, no
Irishman living has a greater love, and a greater
admiration, for the splendid poetry of Davis, Man-
gan, and their fellows. But I dislike coercion in lit-
erature: and it seems to me an uncritical dictation
of the critics, when they tell a writer, that he or she
is no true Irish poet, because he or she does not write
rousing ballads, or half-humorous love songs, or
rhetorical laments, or a mixture of historical and
political verse; and because he or she takes exceed-
ing pains, with his or her workmanship and art.

21

An attention to form and style is apparently an Eng-
lish vice: well! certainly it is an English thing, just
as it was Greek and Romances ! and Irish also, once.
The intricacy and delicacy, the artfulness and ela-
boration, of Gaelic and Cymric verse, are unparal-
leled in Europeanliterature: so minute, so detailed,
so difficult was the attention paid to the technical
side of poetry, that Irish and Welsh scholars of un-
blemished patriotism have deplored it as fatal, to the
free poetical spirit. There is not a critic in Europe,
who has written upon Celtic literature, without
noting the singular charm, the curiosa felicitas> of
Celtic style: we all know the admiration of Renan
in France, of Arnold in England, for its grace and
beauty. Music and poetry were held by our fore-
fathers in an almost religious veneration: the poet
passed through a long discipline of the strictest se-
verity, before he reached the high dignities of his
profession. There is no modern cultivator of ard-
uous poetical forms, the ballade, rondeau, villanelle,
triolet, sonnet, who endures half the labour, that
was demanded by the ancient laws of Irish and
Welsh metre. An Irish poet of to-day may lack a
thousand Irish virtues: but if he give a devoted care
to the perfecting of his art, he will have at least one
Celtic note, one characteristic Irish virtue. While
he is intent upon the artful turns and cadences of his

22

music, and the delicate choice of his words, striving
to achieve the last graces and perfections possible to
his work, he is at one in spirit with the poets of old
Ireland. The old Irish forms are barely possible in
English: but their spirit is attainable. And if he
choose to take the more subtile and ingenious of
English forms, he may do so, without the crime of
borrowing from the enemy: for scarce one of them
is native to England. Considering, to what magnif-
icent uses Rome turned the forms and metres of
Greece, and England those of France and Italy,
without ceasing to be Roman and English ; we need
not fear, lest an Irish poet should cease to be Irish,
if he study, and borrow, and adapt, the best achieve-
ments of foreign art, to the service of thelrishMus-
es. But Irish poetry to-day, I may be told, should
be a national weapon: we want to reach and touch
the hearts of our listeners, to fan the sacred fire, to
be passionate and burning and impetuous. Why
trouble about minute proprieties or delicate graces
of art,so long as our verse go with a ring and a swing,
celebrating the glories of Ireland, or with a sigh
and a cry, lamenting her griefs? Is there not some-
thing cold-blooded and slow-pulsed, in writing
without vehemence and a rush of sentiment? Leave
metre-mongering to the young decadents and aes-
thetes of Paris & London : and let Irish verse sweep

2 3

unfettered as the Irish winds, and surge free as the
Irish seas, and satisfy the Irish people. Well! like
most stump oratory, that is very high and mighty
and impressive: but it is not argument. Passionate
impulse and patient painsarenot incompatible. On
the other side, there is sometimes an equally un-
reasoning depreciation of anything rhetorical, any-
thing spontaneous : and the whole battle, the whole
confusion, comes of ignoring thefact, thatthereare
many legitimate kinds of poetry, that each & every
kind has a right to live, and that we can only in-
sist upon a poem'sbeing good of its own kind. One
most legitimate kind of poetry is the political and
social poetry, that is directly practicalin its appeal;
propagandist poetry. At a time of national excite-
ment, verse may be a tremendous ally of the national
cause: verse that is a trumpet-call to action; verse
full of great memories and of great prophecies; verse
that denounces, inspirits, triumphs, wails, in mel-
odies memorable and moving. It may laugh, or
weep, or shout the war cry: use the keenest satire,
in the homeliest language,or thunder in the accents
of a Hebrew prophet: it will be thrown off at a
white heat, it must be ready at every turn, and never
flag. It passes from singing of a thousand years ago,
to singing of yesterday and to-morrow; from the
champions of romance, to the champions of to-day.

24

It must be vehement and clear,emphatic and direct :
it must employ all the resource of bold rhetoric,
large phrases and great words. It must fall irresistib-
ly into music, and be sung by the crowds in the
street: it must stir the blood, and thrill the pulses,
and set the heart on fire. Such verse was the best
verse of Young Ireland: and I do not know, in any
language, a body of political and social verse, at once
so large and so good. Much of it rises far above the
level of occasional verse, and is superb national po-
etry: some of it was written by men, who would
have been poets under any circumstances, by the
compulsion of nature, and the gift of fate. There is
no lack of reasons, for the immense influence of this
verse upon subsequent literature: for one thing, it
was the first great general outburst of Irish verse in
English; Moore had sung by himself, and not only
in English, but in England. Now, for the first time,
a mass of national literature came into existence,
written in English by politicians, scholars, men of
the learned professions, as well as by men of the peo-
ple, all living and working for Ireland and in Ire-
land. No such literary glory had accompanied the
rise of the United Irishmen, or any other national
movement: it showed the world, that if the ancient
speech of Ireland were doomed and dying, yet the
Irish genius could express the Irish spirit in the

2 5 e

language of their conquerors, with no loss of na-
tional enthusiasm and national passion. Headed, as
the movement was, by at least two or three men of
literary genius, and a score or so of exceptional lit-
erary talents, its writings,and especially its verse,be-
came, as it were, the sacred scriptures of the national
cause. And for Ireland, they are indeed kt^icitcl eq
asl, possessions for all time, justly venerated and
loved. But this very splendour of achievement blin-
ded, in some ways, the critical faculties: we have
been tempted to forget, that the work, done in the
rapture and heat of a great enterprise, must have the
defects of its qualities. In many cases, the penalty
paid for immediate success, won on an instant, was
a lack of perfection, the abiding marks of haste.
And much of the work, admirable alike in intention
and in execution, had no pretensions to being work
of the highest order: it belongs, definitely and de-
cidedly, to the class of popular political verse. Now,
whilst the peasant poetry, the folk songs, of most
countries, and Ireland is no exception, are beautiful,
and artistically excellent; the more purely political
verse, the verse expressing national sentiments of
hope or fear, defiance or doubt, are always inferior to
the folk songs,and are often abominable. If there be
a worse poem than God save the Queen, I do not know
it:

26

'Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks !'

I ask you, is that poetry ? Is it even decent verse?
Does it show any fine and beautiful use of language?
Or take the Marseillaise, and the Wacht am Rhein:
are they distinguished and superior examples of
French and German poetry ? Yet to hear a vast mul-
titude of French or Germans singing those songs,
swayed with one storm of emotion, brings all the
blood to one's heart, and the tearsto one's eyes: the
air seems charged with electricity. A regimental
march may be very far from good music: but the
first roll of the drums and shrilling of the fifes make
many a man burn to be a soldier. It is simply and
solely association, that has this magical effect: asso-
ciation can turn downright ugliness into a thing of
beauty, or at the least, into something loveable.
Think of some house, which you have known, all
your life : it may be ugly, uncomfortable, and all that
is distressing: but what a world of memories centre
there, and make it the dearest place on earth to you !
It is the same with everything: remember Scott in
Italy, blind to its beauty and its charm, hungering
for the heather and the wild hills of his home, and
murmuring old Jacobite songs in places golden with
classic memories: or the Brontes, sick at heart in

27

glittering Brussels, with longing for their lonely-
Yorkshire moors. Think with what regret we con-
sent to the necessary destruction of some church, or
public building,no longer serviceable, but thronged
with old recollections. I need not speak here of the
Irish exile's hunger for his old home in the old land,
however prosperous he be elsewhere, and however
hard may have been the old life. It isin this way that
things, in themselves undesirable, receive a conse-
cration from memory, and habit, and association.
The most magnificent lyric in the world could not
replace God save the Queen, in the heart of a loyal
Englishman. But associations do not alter facts: the
house, the landscape,the poem, endeared to us, have
no attraction for the stranger, the dispassionate cri-
tic, who do not feel their glamour. And so the verse
of Young Ireland, good, bad, and indifferent, has
been accepted altogether, as a memory to the older
men, as a tradition to the younger: not wholly to
the advantage of Irish literature, though much to
the credit of Irish nature.

Perhaps, the most irritating mode of criticism is to
complain of the thing criticized,for not being some-
thing else. A poet writes a little book of light songs ;
and he is told that this is all very well in its way, but
why does he not try his hand at an epic? He writes,
let us say, dreams and all manner of imaginative

28

things, in plaintive, lovely cadences, about the faer-
ies, or about the mysteries of the world, birth and
life and death, writing out of the depths of his own
nature: and lo! instead of being grateful, we abuse
him for not writing historical ballads, valiant and
national, upon Patrick Sarsfleld or Owen Roe. But
what if hebe wholly incapableof writinghistorical
ballads? Shelley said of himself, that to go to him for
human nature, was like going to a ginshopfor a leg
of mutton. Notevery poet can be, or is bound to be,
a Tyrtaeus. I know no greater patriotic poems than
certain sonnetsof Milton and Wordsworth ; certain
passages of Shakespeare and Spenser, Virgil and
Dante ; certain plays of iEschylus, and odes of Pin-
dar: but not one of them could send the soldier on to
death or victory, with such an heroism, as many a
simple soldier's song could rouse: yet the simple
song is not therefore the greater poetry. Except,
may be,in some primitive societies, such as was pos-
sibly the Homeric,the greater poetry is not the most
popular. Perhaps it should be: but that is another
question. Andwhen, as in ourown country, there is
a native instinct, that prompts the mass of the peo-
ple to love music and poetry; and an ancient tradi-
tion of reverence towards them: wearenotunnatur-
ally disposed to estimate all music and poetry by
the popular standards, and not always by the best

29

popular standards. Surely, we say, poetry that
touches the heart of all, learned and unlearned, rich
and poor, is the true poetry: let us be simple, un-
sophisticated, natural in our tastes. Let others write
for cliques and coteries, and live upon academic
applause ormutualadmiration: we are content with
a poetry popular and patriotic. It sounds very manly
and independent, a refreshing contrast to the affec-
ted aestheticism of certain schools: but it cuts us off
for ever from the company of the great classics. It
is equally fatal, to be for ever clamouring for a great
classic, and demanding him of all the fates. It is use-
less, to be perpetually longing for a man, who shall
do for Ireland, what Scott did for Scotland : it is un-
generous and unjust, when a writer does his best in
his own way, to say, that this is not the immortal
work, which Ireland wants. We do not reproach a
buttercup for not being a rose. I aminclined to think,
that a nation does not produce its greatest art in
times of storm and stress, but at and after the period
of triumph: when the nation is exulting in its
strength and glory, with a sense of new youth and
health and joy. Melancholy, and sorrow, and the cry
of pain, it has been said by some, are more poetical
than serenity and ardour: for my own part, I do not
believe it. Rather, I believe that the Irish poetry of

3°

free and triumphant Ireland will have the wonder-
ful joyousness and happy splendour of the old her-
oic and romantic Ireland, chastened and tempered
by the seriousness inseparable from Christianity.
Meanwhile, let us accept and encourage all excel-
lence : there is room for all. Let us have our ringing
rhetoric, strong verse with the clash of swords in it;
our sorrowful dirges for the dear and dead of to-day,
and of long ages past ; our homely songs of laughter
and of tears: but let us welcome all, who write for
love of Ireland, even if they write in fashions less
familiar. It is absurd, and insulting to Ireland, to
think that Irish genius cannot make the Irish spirit
felt in any form, that is good and fine of itself. Think
of Farquhar and Steele, Goldsmith and Sheridan:
they spent nearly their whole lives in England, a-
mong Englishmen, under the strongest English in-
fluences, and they wrote in English forms for Eng-
lish readers: yet we feel the grace, the gentle hum-
our, the delicacy and charm, which stamp their
work as Irish. After all, who is to decide, what is,
absolutely and definitely, the Celtic and Irish note ?
Many a time,I have shown my English friends Irish
poems, which Irish critics have declared to be un-
Irish : and the English verdict has constantly been,
'How un-English ! how Celtic! what a strange, re-
mote, far-away beauty in the music and in the col-
our!' These poems, then, can find no resting place

3 1

in either country : are they to wait becalmed in mid-
channel? The most singular criticisms are some-
times made upon thesehapless poets. My friend Mr.
Yeats has been informed that he is a disciple of Ros-
setti and of Tennyson: now, no two poets could be
less like each other than Rossetti and Tennyson;
and no one could be less like either of them, than
Mr. Yeats. But he dares to write in his own style, up-
on his own themes : and because they are not the style
and the themes familiar to us from old associations,
we rush to the conclusion that he is treading in the
footsteps of some English poet, despising Irish art.
Another instance : I have heard it said, that the four
volumes of Mrs. Hinkson show a steady increase in
artistic power, but a noticeable decrease in the true
Irish spirit of poetry : an extremely doubtful com-
pliment to the true Irish spirit. Cardinal Newman
tells usof the villageschoolsinhisyouth, where the
charge for teaching good manners was an 'extra two-
pence.' Is artistic workmanship in our poetry worth
but an 'extra twopence?' What the critic meant
was, that in Mrs. Hinkson's earlier work, there were
a greater fluency and flow of sentiment,less restraint
and careful finish, more obvious rhetoric and impul-
siveness. The dainty delicacy of the later work, its
mastery of rhythm and curbing of haste, were lost
upon him : the idea that all art implies discipline and
austerity of taste, a constant progress towards an

32

ideal perfection, though his earliest ancestorsknow
it well, seemed strange to him. Perhaps the most
familiar of English poems is Gray's Elegy: the two
loveliest stanzas Gray ever wrote he deliberately
rejected from the poem,because they seemed to him
redundant, disproportionate, a dwelling too long
upon one thought. Dante speaks of his long labour
at his art, as the work which had made him lean and
gaunt and worn. This passion for perfection seems to
me as truly Celtic a thing, as the ready indulgence
of sentiment: our illuminations, our penmanship,
our work in stone and metal, all our arts of design,
show an infinite love of taking pains. The very here-
tics among the Celts, as Pelagius and Erigena, ex-
emplify the Celtic subtilty. But this Battle of the
Booksis not confined to the Celtsof Ireland :thesame
question, in very much the same form; rages in
Wales. Go to an Eisteddfod, or to any Welsh gather-
ing of literary patriots: you will probably hear dis-
cussions upon the true Welsh spirit, upon English
influence,upon the characteristics of the ancient lit-
erature & the new ; upon the possibility of a Welsh-
man's writing English, in a way patriotically and
unmistakeably Welsh. This patriotic anxiety for a
national literature is an unimpeachable virtue: but
it should be displayed with dignity and confidence.
Many of us, at present, are somewhat agitated and

33 f

nervous; we ask hasty and suspicious questions: 'Is
that quite Celtic? Is this book typically Irish? Yes!
they are certainly fine poems, but are they not Eng-
lish in quality, have they the genuine national note,
is it the work that a patriot should be doing?' All this
is put forward, with a certain querulousness and
captiousness: it seems to imply a certain distrust of
the Irish genius,and of one another. And the tumult
of our political passions is apt to disturb our judg-
ments. I would rather read a fine poem upon Sars-
field & the Defence of Limerick, than upon Walk-
er and the Defence of Derry: but if Colonel Saun-
derson,or Dr. Kane, were to give us a stirring poem
upon the courage and endurance of Walker and the
prentices of Derry, without ill-feeling and bad
blood, I should reckon it a gain to our literature.
Yet our Irish critic, who spoke his mind to that ef-
fect, might be thought a bit of an Orangeman at
heart. It would be a case of Timeo Dar.aos etdonafer-
entes: we should look with suspicion upon the poet-
ical gifts of our political opponents. And there
seems to be no place for a poet who, though he be in-
tensely national in temperament and sympathy,
may be unfitted by nature to write poetry with an
obvious and immediate bearing upon the national
cause. Imagine a poet, with no strong taste for his-
tory, no fierce rhetorical note in his music, no power

34

of stirring a popular enthusiasm; yet, from the
crown of his head to the sole of his foot, Irish, and
nothing but Irish. Upon occasions of great emotion,
a leader's death, a national victory, what you will,
odes and songs may be forthcoming by the score
from others: he will feel as deep a sorrow, or as wild
a joy, but his Muse will be silent. He will talk of
these things as much as others ; or write as much a-
bout them in prose: but in poetry he has not the
necessary gift. He is not proud of lacking it : he may
be sorry that he has not that string to his lyre: but,
at any rate, he has not got it, and so he cannot play
upon it. And forthwith we have our doubts : we be-
gin to think that such a poet is of no service to the
cause. Or,perhaps, we ask him for an historicalnovel
upon Ireland in Tudor or Stuart times ;or for an epic
of the Red Branch Knights,or the Irish Saints; or for
a tragedy upon Emmet or Lord Edward: whilst his
whole faculty and disposition may be lyrical, and
meditative, and personal. Or, perhaps, we fall foul of
his lyrics for not having certain simplicities and
beauties, dear to us in the folk songs of our country :
but who said that they had, or tried to have, them?
There may be charms in the new verse,notless Irish,
than the old. A wider, deeper, higher vision would
recognise that Irish nationality and Irish patriotism
can make themselves powerful, in a thousand forms,

35

and themes, of literature. Consider the many Eng-
lish echoes, or reproductions, or imitations, of
Greek forms and themes: from Milton's Samson Ag-
onistes, up to Mr. Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon;
they are intensely English, not really Greek. A liv-
ing literature cannot help being national: it may
feed upon the literature of the past, and of other na-
tions; but if it be good literature, it must bear the
sign and seal of its own nationality, and of its own
age. Indeed, nationality lives in literature and art,
when it is almost dead in other things: they are the
expressions of the soul of a country, they are racy of
the soil, they refuse to serve their country's conquer-
ors. Onthecontrary,they taketheircaptorscaptive,
as history has told us a hundred times. A cosmopol-
itan artist, a citizen of the world, with no local pat-
riotism in his heart, has never yet done anything
memorable in poetry, or in anything else. Could all
his wild philosophy, his vast pondering upon uni-
versal problems, his devotion to the poets and think-
ers of Germany, make Carlyle anything but a
Scotch Calvinist, a son of John Knox, a child of the
Covenanters? Or could the wild romance, the bril-
liant levity, the mocking gaiety and cynicism, of
his Parisian life, make the German and Jewish
Heine anything but a son of the German Father-
land, and a child of the house of Israel? It is among

36

the strongest of earthly instincts, this clinging to our
nationality and race : this, far more than diplomacy,
has changed the face of Europe in our century, and
may change it still more. Poetry and patriotism are
each other's guardian angels, and therefore insep-
arable. Virgil's master was Homer, Dante's master
was Virgil, Milton's masters were Dante, Virgil, &
Homer :yet could four poems be less like each other,
could four poems be more intensely national, than
the Iliad, the Mneid, the Divine Comedy ,and Paradise
Lost? Unquestionably, we would rather have our
poets choose Irish themes, and sing of Tara sooner
than of Troy, of Ossian sooner than of Orpheus:but
if they went to China, or to Peru, for their inspir-
ation,the result would be neither Chinese nor Peru-
vian, but 'kindly Irish of the Irish' still. Our race is
not lost by spreading itself over the world: and our
literature would not loose its Irish accent by exped-
itions into all lands and times. Let Irish literature be
de- Anglicized, by all means: away with all feeble
copies of the fashionable stuff, that happens to am-
use London society for a season ; and even with mere
copies of distinctly good English work. It is neither
national, nor patriotic, to wait eagerly and humbly
upon the tastes and the verdicts of the English pub-
lic, and of the English press. But if we are to foster,
encourage, and develop Irish literature, and not

37

least of all, Irish poetry, it must be with a wise gen-
erosity : in a finely national, not in a pettily provin-
cial, spirit. Take the revival of German literature,
and its emancipation from French influence: that
great movement,which the Germans call the Aufk-
larung, and the French, the eclairecissement, of Ger-
many. Beginning, practically, with Lessing and
Winckelmann and Herder; continued by Goethe
and Schiller, and later by Heine; it created the first
splendid period of national German literature. It
perpetrated endless absurdities: but it succeeded,
and that, because of its free and liberal spirit. The
pioneers and chiefs of the movement pressed every-
thing into its service: Greek art and literature, all
the arts of Italy, the Elizabethan drama, Macpher-
son's Ossian, the folk songs and ancient lays of many
lands, the romance of the Middle Ages; all that an
ardent curiosity, or a profound scholarship, could
reach, was sought out and studied, and brought to
bear upon the revival of German literature. And the
result was magnificently German: there was no
vague, cosmopolitan, unnational spirit in the results
of that immense enthusiasm. One cannot read the
memoirs, biographies, histories of that time, still
less the poetry, without feeling oneself in the pres-
ence of an irresistible patriotism. And everything
helped, every study and pursuit: if German prose,

38

of all ugly things,came to be written with the lucid-
ity of Plato's Greek; if German poetry rose from
the dead, and sang a thousand melodies upon a thou-
sand instruments; it was because a deep desire for
knowledge, a passionate ambition for true culture,
taught the German poets the way to be German in-
deed; showed them how to preserve the ancient
German virtues, whilst creating a new literature,
which should be the glory of Germany. True, the
socialstate of Germany, then, had little in common
with the social state of Ireland now: yet the essen-
tial spirit of their movement is ours also. If we con-
sidered the causes and conditions of all that is great-
est, in the Italian Renaissance, or in the Elizabethan
outburst of literary glory, we should find similiar
facts: the re-discovery of the ancient classic world;
there-discovery of the New World; the thirst for
knowledge and experience; a sudden thrill of pride
and hope in men's hearts, at the thought that Italy,
England, their own countries, were rivalling, in
their own national ways, the great records of the
past; all this went to the creation of those great arts
and literatures. France, too, in her romantic revival
of 1830, turned to her own national uses, to uses
completely French, whatever in Italy, Germany,
England, Spain, she could lay her hands upon. Is
Ireland to be the only nation which influences from

39

without are bound to ruin and unnationalize: the
only nation incapable of assimilating to herself, of
nationalizing and naturalizing, the heritage of art
and learning, left by other nations? It was not so
once: not in the early ages of Irish Christianity. If
Saint Sedulius, of whom Dr. Sigerson has told us,
were alive to-day, he would certainly find critics to
call him unpatriotic, for taking a foreign metre, and
ingrafting upon it Irish graces. As I have pleaded,
let us have no coercion in Irish literature: I would
add, let us have no protection. Like the Norsemen
and the Normans, let all that is good in literature
and learning enter Ireland, and become more Irish
than the Irish. Even if, like the Norsemen and the
Normans, it enters forcibly and against opposition,
I am sure that the result will be the same: the Irish
genius will captivate the foreign, and grow itself
the stronger and more brilliant. You see, I have faith
in the Irish genius: I do not believe that anything
can so take possession of it, and pervert it, as to drive
the nationality out of it. But perhaps, some of my
distinguished audienceare thinking that lam mak-
ing much ado about nothing, all this time. Well ! of
course, no one here to-night distrusts the power and
indomitable vigour of the Irish genius. But for some
time, both in reading Irish papers from all parts of
the world, and in discussing Irish matters with

40

Irishmen in England, I have undoubtedly found a
certain amiable narrowness, now and then, here and
there: a conservatism, rather obstinate than strong,
less resolute than stubborn. Ask these conservatives
to admit some good Irish qualities in this poem or
in that novel, written within the last twenty years:
the answer is, 'It's not what I call Irish: give me
Mangan, give me Carleton.' Now, it is extremely
easy to be less great than Mangan and Carleton; it
is not impossible to be greater; but to ^Mangan, to
be Carleton, is a clear impossibility. It is only pos-
sible to aim at it by imitating them. Imitation may
be the sincerest flattery, but it usually produces the
worst literature. In Mangan's day, perhaps less fer-
vent nationalists wished that Mangan would write
like Moore: and perhaps they exhorted Carleton to
study the graces of Miss Edgeworth, and the viva-
cities of Lady Morgan. The really great and imper-
ishable poets, who adorned the middle of this cen-
tury, had no such narrowness: we cannot imagine
Mangan, jealously and anxiously discouraging new
ventures of the Irish Muses: we cannot think of
Davis, laying down absolute laws, upon what is and
is not, verily Celtic and truly Irish. Again it is not
the living scholars, most busy in preserving, eluci-
dating, translating, and transmitting to posterity,
the Gaelic literature of every age and kind, who

4* g

impose these fetters upon our modern literature. But
I have heard some of my countrymen, who have no
more Gaelic than I, and I have none, airily and easily
blaming a veteran Irish poet, still among us, Mr. de
Vere, for having no real Gaelic tone, no insight into
the genuine ancient spirit. I should never be surpri-
sed to hear Canon O'Hanlon reproached for cele-
brating the Land of Leix in the Spenserian stanza:
one of the few great English forms invented in Eng-
land, and invented, too, by a very thorough-going
enemy of the Irish cause. Again : in projecting some
Irish publication, it is surely an open question,whet-
her it should be solely and strictly confined to Irish
themes; or whether, remembering that

'One in name and in fame
Are the sea-divided Gaels,'

it should sometimes include matters of collateral in-
terest; contrasts and comparisons, in social and lit-
erary concerns, with our kinsmen in Wales and
Brittany and Scotland. That, surely, is not opening
the floodgates, and admitting cosmopolitan culture
to overwhelm Ireland : yet such proposals have been
denounced as unpatriotic. They may be inexped-
ient: but they can hardly be called criminal. It is
this kind of exclusiveness, that has emboldened me

42

to protest: it seems to me a fatal interpretation of
patriotism. That true son and servant of Ireland,
Berkeley, used to make an execrable pun, and to
say that he distinguished between patriotism and
pat-riotism: it is the latter quality which produces
this feverish alarm, lest Irishmen should forget Ire-
land, if they try to serve her, in ways savouring at all
or seeming to savour, of novelty. It is the truer pat-
riotism, which refuses to be panic-stricken, though
it is willing to be prudent: a militant faith is one
thing, and an irritable fussiness another.
I hope there is not an Irishmananywhere; certainly
there can be none in the literary societies of Dublin
and London; who does not agree with every word
of Dr. Douglas Hyde's eloquent appeal, upon 'the
Necessity for de- Anglicizing Ireland.' But I do not
see, why Irishmen should not make raids upon oth-
er countries, and bring home the spoils, and tri-
umphantly Celticize them, and lay them down at
the feet of Ireland. It is pleasant to think of Gold-
smith, dedicating his first famous poem, not to his
great English friends, not to Reynolds or to John-
son, but to his poor Irish brother in his poor Irish
home : pleasant to think of him, all through his sor-
rows and his triumphs, still remembering the old
days in Ireland, and hoping to die in the old coun-
try.

43

'And as a hare, whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place, from whence at first she flew:
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return, and die at home at last.'

Horace was right, and his old proverbial wisdom
has a good sense, as well as a bad : patriae quis exu/, se
quoquefugit: caelum,non animum mutant :we may leave
Ireland, but we could not, if we would, help being
Irish. It is so with our poetry, and with all ourfine
literature: there is an Irish foundation, an Irish or-
igin, for it all. Patriotism, said Dr. Johnson, is the
last refuge of a scoundrel: and certainly there are
many ways of being patriotic, as we have bitter
cause to know. But our poetry has been, and is still,
patriotic in the best of senses: it has been inspired
by our country, in a magnificent variety of ways. It
is not now under the discipline of ancient Ireland,
the supremacy of Bardic colleges: it were a pity,
were it to fall under the authority, and to be checked
by the iron rod, of an unsympathetic criticism, and
by the narrow spirit of a limited outlook. It may
be that Irish poetry is in a state of change; losing,
perhaps, some virtues, but gaining others; display-
ing in fresh forms, under new aspects, the glory and
the beauty, the deeds and the dreams, the legend

44

and the history, of our country. Consider the for-
tunes of that marvellous cycle of epic and romance,
which belongs to Wales, Scotland, Cornwall, Brit-
tany, and Ireland ; the story of King Arthur and his
Knights. Malory in England first cast it into a com-
paratively modern English form,in hissuperb prose :
Milton and Dryden both intended to write epics
upon it, and unhappily did not: Sir Richard Black-
more, worst of English poets, unhappily did: Eng-
lish poetry abounds in references to it: in our own
day, five English poets, three of them partly Celtic,
Tennyson, Arnold, Hawker of Morwenstow, Mr.
Swinburne, and Mr. William Morris, have treated
it in manifold ways, with an extraordinary diversity
of styles: but they have not modernised and spoilt
it out of all recognition. Each in his way, with a
different ethical and artistic aim, has paid homage
to the enduring beauty, the enduring grandeur, of
the ancient Celtic story. They have been utterly un-
able, by any Saxon perversity, to de-Celticize it:
nor can the magnificent stories of our own country
be robbed of their inherent Irish character, by any
variety of treatment at the hands of Irish poets. But
there is always a spirit of protest against literary
change: 'This will never do !' cried the leading cri-
tic of the day, upon reading Wordsworth: Keats,
Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Arnold, had plenty
of scorn and discouragement to face. And the cry is

45

always: 'You are affected, you are effeminate, you
are obscure, you are not like the good old poets of
our childhood, you are running after false models,
you are rejecting the traditions of our literature.'
The wheel goes slowly round : and the despised and
ridiculed young innovatorsbecomeclassics,and find
burial in Westminster Abbey. It need not be other-
wise in Ireland: where we clearly recognise excel-
lence, it is rash to remonstrate with it for not being
precisely our kind of excellence. Any clear and de-
finite rejection of Irish aims and interests speaks for
itself. Any poet, who sees no greatness and no beauty
in Irish legend and history, from the beginning of
the world up to to-day, could we imagine so blind
a fool, condemns himself, and may write Anglo-
Saxon epics for the English : but from the beginning
of the world, and that is the only safe patriotic date
for the beginning of Irish history, up to to-day, is a
vast period, within which there is room for an infin-
ite variety of themes, and moods, and manners. We
are almost past the age in which Irishmen could dis-
dain the Irish language, laugh at the Irish legends,
and devote themselves entirely to English literature :
if there be any vitality at all in the Irish literary en-
deavours of to-day, it lies in their freedom from that
spirit of ignorant contempt, and in their determin-
ation to cherish our rich inheritance.

4 6

But at this point, let me illustrate part of what I
mean, in saying that a certain change may be in
course of progress in our poetry : for example, in one
small point of rhythmical and metrical matters. In
reading much Irish poetry of this century, we note
the great amount of it that is written in swinging
measures, anapaests and dactyls; verse that gallops
and leaps along : measures adapted or copied, in some
cases, from the Gaelic. Now, since Gaelic and Eng-
lish are not the same language, the same or similiar
metres have a different effect in each language : as in
a most familiar case, that of the Greek and the Latin
hexameter. Being, to my shame and sorrow, ignor-
ant of Gaelic, I can only judge, by hearing them
read, the effect of certain Gaelic metres; and that, of
course, imperfectly : but the effect seems very differ-
ent in the Gaelic, and in the English. It may well
be that the metre is now statelier, now softer, in the
Gaelic, than in the English: not to mention the ab-
sence in the English of much artful and elaborate
assonance,alliteration, and kindred delicacies. Irish-
men can partly reproduce Irish turns of expression
in English, and give to the English language a cer-
tain Irish charm: but they cannot change its inher-
ent character. Now, it is unquestionable that the
loveliest English verse, the most stately, musical,

47

and sweet, has not been written in these rapid mea-
sures : from Chaucer to Tennyson, it has been mainly
written in iambic and trochaic metres. Even the
metrical accomplishments of Shelley, or of Cole-
ridge, or of Mr. Swinburne, have not been able to
give to the rapid swinging measures the dignity or
charm of the others. Nor can Irish writers convey to
them a dignity or charm, which in English they are
incapable of receiving. But in some cases, it may be
through Gaelic associations; in other cases, because
these measures are excellent for popular purposes;
our writers have been fond of them, & from Moore
onwards, have often turned them to admirable ac-
count. But compare them with the grander meas-
ures: take the first lines of Mangan's Lament for the
Knight of Kerry.

'There was lifted up one voice of woe,
One lament of more than mortal grief,
Through the wide South to and fro,
For a fallen chief.'

Now take the first lines from his Dream of John Mac
Donne//:

'I lay in unrest — old thoughts of pain,
That I struggled in vain to smother,

4 8

Like midnight spectres haunted my brain —
Dark fantasies chased each other.'

As mere sound, it is incomparably inferior. Or take
the first lines from a poem by D'Arcy McGee:

'Long, long ago, beyond the misty space
Of twice a thousand years,
In Erin old there dwelt a mighty race,
Taller than Roman spears;'

Now take the first lines from a poem by Florence
MacCarthy:

'Come, Liberty, come! we are ripe for thy coming;
Come, freshen the hearts where thy rival has trod;
Come, richest and rarest ! come, fiercest and fairest !
Come, daughter of science! come, gift of the god!'

One could dance to it, and it would be splendid to
sing : but it cannot compare in beauty with the other
rhythm. One would be exhilarating on a cracked fid-
dle or a banjo: the other has the majesty of a cathe-
dral organ. Two more examples from Mangan : first,
from the Lament for the Princes.

49

*0 woman of the Piercing Wail,
Who mournest o'er yon mound of clay,
With sigh and groan,
Would God thou wert among the Gael !
Thou wouldst not then from day to day
Weep thus alone.'

Now some lines from Rury and Dervorgilla.

'Know ye the tale of the Prince of Oriel,

Of Rury, last of his line of kings?

I pen it here as a sad memorial

Of how much woe reckless folly brings.'

Again, the difference in dignity and charm is very
great, but the swinging measures, in a vast variety,
have been endeared and consecrated by a thousand
associations with songs, and dances, and spirited bal-
lads: and very delightful they can be. But if a living
poet choose to leave them alone: and to concentrate
his mind and ear upon the less rhetorical, and more
delicate or stately rhythms; and in all his metrical
work, to aim at conveying into English verse some-
thing of a Celtic effect; by paying to the capacities
of English verse such attention, as the old Gaelic
poets might have paid, were they living and writing
in English now: why! he may promptly be asked,

where is his Irish spirit, and whether he thinks him-
self superior to the good old Irish rhythms. But alas!
we have lost our own language, and English is not
at all the same thing: we can, and we do, Irishize it
to a great extent, as by the use of Gaelic turns of
speech; and a most beautiful thing that Irish Eng-
lish often is, from the tongues and pens of our orators
and of our writers. But there are limits to our possi-
bilities in this direction: there are scarce any limits
to our possibilities, in the direction of introducing
beauties and graces into English verse, which in
spirit and effect shall be truly Irish. To mention no
living writers, Walshand Callanan, Sir Samuel Fer-
guson and Allingham have done so with wonderful
felicity : and the greatest Young Ireland poets, what-
ever certain of their admirers may think, were of
course admirable artists, in spite of that passionate
sincerity and ardent purpose, which some critics
hold incompatible with a deliberate attention to art.
It would be a characteristically Celtic achievement,
were Irish poets to bring English verse to a perfect-
ion of music, finer of its kind in some ways, than any-
thing yet achieved in England: as Mangan himself
has done in his poem of unspeakable beauty, The Ode
to the Maguire.

There is room for all: that is the sum and substance
of what I have tried to say : that, and let us bear with

5 1

all, encourage all, and do our best to believe in all.
But I never heard, that a difference of literary opin-
ion was a mortal sin, on one side or the other. It
would be pleasant, if we could persuade ourselves
that a man may write, read, say, and do, all manner
of things uncongenial to us; yet have quite as much
patriotism, and as much Irish spirit, and as many
Celtic notes, as ourselves. One would think, to hear
some querulous criticism, that, as a rule, the ancient
Irish, our ancestors, were a desperately monotonous
race, all precisely similiar : and when we read of their
conflicts, we are tempted to wonder, whether this
champion fought that champion for lacking the
Celtic note, and for not being exactly like himself.
They were Celtic, they were the Gael; but they
must have had, like every nourishing race under the
sun, endless diversities of character, though but one
spirit. It would be a dreary world, if we were all fac-
similes of each other. But when we differ, let us, if
it be possible, agree to differ, and not see treason and
heresy against true patriotism, in every deviation
from our own tastes. Our ancestors, in some parts,
used to leave the right arms of their sons unchristen-
ed ; or rather, since that is theologically meaningless,
they thought they could leave them unchristened;
to the intent, as the English martyr, Father Camp-
ion, puts it, that they 'might give a more ungracious

52

and deadly blow.' But the right arm armed with the
pen can be dangerous: and from its ungracious and
deadly blows, now and then, it would seem that the
parents of some of our critics had successfully prac-
tised the old superstition. Righteous anger and pat-
riotic indignation should be kept for proper occas-
ions : there are quite enough of them without inven-
ting more. Let our poets take their own way, and
choose their own music : more than one melody can
be played upon the Irish harp, and the more, the bet-
ter. We have but the right to ask of them, that what-
ever they do, they do it with all their might; with
all the patience, all the passion, that the thought of
serving Ireland through song can give them. They
are preparing the way for the triumph song, that the
poets of a day to come will chaunt, with every splen-
dour, every richness, every loveliness and grace, that
Irish music has ever known. Remember, how Saint
Patrick preached before the high king Leaghaire,
and his court at Tara. There sat the great king, his
court and his warriors round him, with anger in
their eyes. But, as Saint Patrick spoke, a wonder
happened: the tide ceased to ebb, the white deer for-
got to drink by the river, the eagles hung poised in
the air, the green leaves left off rustling, and a my-
stical, sacred silence fell upon Ireland. We want a
silence to fall upon Ireland, a silence from lamen-
tation and from conflict: and then, in that happy

53

dawn, the only voices will be voices of the Irish
Muses, reigning in their old home ; and the voices of
the Irish people, speaking peace and goodwill,
through all our loved and holy Ireland.

Here ends Poetry and Ireland: Essays by
W. B. Yeats and Lionel Johnson. Prin-
ted and published by Elizabeth C.
Yeats, at The Cuala Press,
Churchtown, Dundrum, in
the County of Dublin,
Ireland, finished on
the eighth day of
October, in the
year 1908.

p