“ He has grace of touch and distinction of form beyond any of the younger poets of Great Britain, and there is throughout his work a haunting beauty, and a haunting sense of beauty everywhere perceived with joy and longing, that make its appeal irresistible for those who feel it at all. He is equally happy whether he deals with antique or with contemporary themes, and in almost every poem he has written there is that exquisite remoteness, that dream-like music, and that transporting charm which Matthew Arnold held to be one of the primary tests of poetry, and, in particular, of Celtic poetry. ”

“ A heron’s feather decks his brows,
And a spur on either heel;
His steed is blacker than a sloe,
And fleeter than the falling star;
Amid the surging ranks he’ll go
And shout for joy of war.
Twinkle, twinkle, pretty spindle, let the white wool drift and dwindle,
Oh! we weave a damask doublet for my love’s coat of steel.
Hark! the timid, turning treadle, crooning soft old-fashioned ditties
To the low, slow murmur of the brown, round wheel.
My love is pledged to Ireland’s fight;
My love would die for Ireland’s weal,
To win her back her ancient right,
And make her foemen reel. ”

“ More and more we may hope that the beautiful poetry of Ireland, ancient and modern, with its incommunicable charm and exquisite spontaneity; that the strange, elemental, sombre imagination of the West Highlander and of the Gael of the Isles; and that the vivid spell of the old Welsh bards, will, before long, become a still greater, a still more regenerating, and a lasting force and influence in our English literature. ”

“ The dry wind blows. Streams roar, and windows flap. Cold drops fall from the roof. I see the starry sky. But the shower gathers again. The west is gloomy and dark. Night is stormy and dismal; receive me, my friends, from night.
THIRD BARD.
The wind still sounds between the hills, and whistles through the grass of the rock. The firs fall from their place. The turfy hut is torn. The clouds, divided, fly over the sky, and show the burning stars. The meteor, token of death! flies sparkling through the gloom. It rests on the hill. I see the withered fern, the dark-browed rock, the fallen oak. ”

“ As bright-browed as the dawn, and as meek-eyed as the fawn,
And as graceful as the swan gliding on to sea.
Not for jewels nor for gold, nor for hoarded wealth untold,
Not for all that mortals hold most desired and dear,
Would I my share forego in the loving heart aglow,
That beats beneath the snow of her bosom fair.{108}
Soon Killiney will you weep—for I know not rest nor sleep,
Till swiftly o’er the deep I with white sails come,
To win the linnet sweet, and the two white twinkling feet,
And the heart with true love beating, to my far-off home. ”

“ OSSIAN Comala.
DERSAGRENA.
The chase is over. No noise on Ardven but the torrent’s roar! Daughter of Morni, come from Crona’s banks. Lay down the bow and take the harp. Let the night come on with songs, let our joy be great on Ardven.
MELILCOMA.
Night comes apace, thou blue-eyed maid! Grey night grows dim along the plain. I saw a deer at Crona’s stream; a mossy bank he seemed through the gloom, but soon he bounded away. A meteor played round his branching horns! The awful faces of other times looked from the clouds of Crona! ”

“ My very cloak grows old;
Grey its tint, its woof is frayed and thin;
I seem to feel grey hairs within its fold,
Or are they on my skin?
O happy Isle of Ocean,
Thy flood-tide leaps to meet eddying wave
Lifting it up and onward. Till the grave
The sea-wave comes not after ebb for me.
I find them not
Those sunny sands I knew so well of yore;
Only the surf’s sad roar sounds up to me,
My tide will turn no more.
{381} From a “Litany of Beauty.”
THOMAS MACDONAGH
O shapely Flower that must for aye endure! ”

“ For, of course, Mr George Meredith stands so far above all localisation of this kind that it would be out of place to rank him merely as the head of contemporary Wales. He is the foremost Anglo-Celtic voice of to-day; so emphatically foremost, by the distinguishing qualities of his genius, that if to-morrow he were proved to be come of a stock of long unmixed Saxon ancestry never dissociated from that southern country of which he is by birth a native, we should be justified in abiding by the far more significant and important lineage of the brain. ”

“ Broad and tall rise the cruachs in the golden morning’s glow
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
O’er her smooth grass for ever sweet cream and honey flow
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!{138}
O, I long, I am pining, again to behold
The land that belongs to the brave Gael of old;
Far dearer to my heart than a gift of gems or gold
Are the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
The dewdrops lie bright ’mid the grass and yellow corn
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
And the sweet-scented apples blush redly in the morn
On the fair Hills of Eiré, O!
The water-cress and sorrel fill the vales below ”

“ After having exercised all the godly and worldly chivalries, sought with Pérédur the Holy Graal and the Beautiful, dreamed with Saint Brandan of mystical Atlantides, who knows what the Celtic genius would produce in the domain of the intelligence if it should embolden itself to make its entrance into the world, and if it subjected its rich and profound nature to the conditions of modern thought? Few races have had a poetical infancy as complete as the Celtic—mythology, lyricism, epic, romanesque imagination, religious enthusiasm, nothing have they lacked. ”

“ Of how much Celtic poetry, modern as well as ancient, is not this, though variously expressed, the refrain: “Melodious is the crane, and O melodious is the crane, in the marshlands of Druim-dá-thrén! ’tis she that may not save her brood alive!” ”

“ But this very isolation of Wales, through her language, has, no doubt, interfered materially with the development of her Anglo-Celtic literature. Contrasted with that of Ireland or that of Scotland, how astonishingly meagre it is. All Ireland is aflame with song; Scotland is again becoming the land of old romance. Here and there are a few writers, a poet-romancist like Mr Ernest Rhys, a poet like the late Emily Davis, a few novelists who are Welsh by the accident of birth rather than by the nationality of the brain. ”

“ One does not enough reflect on how strange it is that an ancient race should continue down to our day, and almost under our eyes, in some islands and peninsulas of the West, its own life, more and more diverted from it, it is true, by the noise from without, but still faithful to its language, its memories, its ideals, and its genius. ”

“ Echo now, sleep, morn and even—
Lark alone enchant the heaven!
Ardan’s lips are scant of breath,
Neesa’s tongue is cold in death.
Stag, exult on glen and mountain—
Salmon, leap from loch to fountain—
Heron, in the free air warm ye—
Usnach’s sons no more will harm ye!
Erin’s stay no more you are,
Rulers of the ridge of war;
Never more ’twill be your fate
To keep the beam of battle straight!
Woe is me! by fraud and wrong,
Traitors false and tyrants strong,
Fell Clan Usnach, bought and sold,
For Barach’s feast and Conor’s gold! ”

“ In a word, the Celtic genius is broadly divisible, even at this day, into two great sections: the Goidelic and the Brythonic or Cymric—let us say, is represented by the Welsh Celt and the Gaelic Celt. Those readers or students who approach the literature of either, ancient or modern, but particularly the latter, and expect to find identity both of sentiment and in method of expression, will ultimately be as disappointed as one who should, with the same idea, approach Spanish and Portuguese, or Dutch and German, or Provençal and French. ”

“ While no one is more essentially Celtic, and none is more distinctively national, his poetry belongs to English literature. Mr Yeats himself would be the last man to nail his flag to the mast of parochialism in literature. He is one of the two or three absolutely poetic personalities in literature at the present moment; and in outlook, and, above all, in atmosphere, stands foremost in the younger generation. ”

“ Why should philosophic thought be lacking? Germany, which had begun by science and criticism, has finished with poetry; why should not the Celtic races, which began with poetry, not end with a new and vivid criticism of actual life as it now is? It is not so far from the one to the other as we are apt to suppose; the poetical races are the philosophical races, and philosophy is at bottom but a manner of poetry like any other. When one thinks that Germany fronted, less than a century ago, the revelation of its genius ”

“ The author of Fo’c’sle Yarns is by far the most noteworthy poetic representative of the Isle of Man. In range, depth of insight, dramatic vigour, keen sympathy, and narrative faculty, all transformed by the alchemy of his poetic vision, he is not only the foremost Manx poet, but one of the most notable of living writers in verse. It is probably because most of his poems deal almost wholly with Manx scenes and characters, and are for the most part written in the Manx dialect, that he is so little talked of by literary critics and so little known to the reading world at large. ”

“ Moonbeams lift her soul! Around her, from their clouds, bend the awful faces of her fathers; Sarno of the gloomy brow! The red-rolling eyes of Fidallan! When shall thy white hand arise? When shall thy voice be heard on our rocks? The maids shall seek thee on the heath but they shall not find thee. Thou shalt come, at times, to their dreams, to settle peace in their soul. Thy voice shall remain in their ears, they shall think with joy on the dreams of their rest. Meteors gleam around the maid, and moon-beams lift her soul.{41}
OSSIAN The Death-Song of Ossian. ”

“ Leconte de Lisle strove after an ideal perfection of form. The spirit of that almost flawless work of his, is of intellectual emotion rather than of passion; but in colour, and splendour of imagery, no romanticist can surpass him. He is of the great minds who create, calm and serene. He is often classed with the two great master-spirits of modern German and French literature ”

“ It is earnestly to be hoped that some poet-scholar will give us before long, in English, an anthology of the best contemporary Welsh poetry.
Of living poets who write in Gaelic, there are more in Scotland than in Ireland. The Hebrides have been a nest of singers, since Mary Macleod down to the youngest of the Uist poets of to-day; and though there is not at present any Alexander Macdonald or Duncan Bàn Macintyre, there are many singers who have a sweet and fine note, and many writers whose poems have beauty, grace, and distinction. ”

“ Restricted by conquest to forgotten isles and peninsulas, the Celtic race has habitually striven to oppose an impassable barrier to all alien influences. It has ever trusted in itself, and in itself alone, and has drawn its mental and spiritual nurture from its own resources.
Hence that powerful individuality, that hatred of the stranger, which up to our day has formed the essential characteristic of the Celtic peoples. The civilisation of Rome hardly reached them, and left among them but few traces. The Germanic invasion flowed back on them, but it did not affect them at all. ”

“ But, alas, a stronger law than that which man can make or unmake, or nations can resolve, is slowly disintegrating the subsoil wherefrom the roots of the Celtic speech draw the sole nurture which can give it the beauty and fragrance of life.
Some idea of the vastness of the mass of the as yet untranslated Celtic literature may be had from the notes in books by Dr Douglas Hyde, J. F. Campbell, Alfred Nutt, and other specialists. ”

“ SCOTO-CELTIC
(Middle Period)
{186}
{187}
From the “Sean Dana.”
Prologue to Gaul.
LATER GAELIC
How mournful is the silence of Night
When she pours her dark clouds over the valleys!
Sleep has overcome the youth of the chase:
He slumbers on the heath, and his dog at his knee.
The children of the mountain he pursues
In his dream, while sleep forsakes him.
Slumber, ye children of fatigue;
Star after star is now ascending the height.
Slumber! thou swift dog and nimble,—
Ossian will arouse thee not from thy repose. ”

“ The true note of his strangely subtle and illusive muse is not that of either irony or audacity as commonly supposed, but rather a living belief in the passage of the contemporary mind and aspiration from the sureties of the ancient faith to the assurance of a still finer faith to come. Among his short poems perhaps the most indicative is that entitled “The Banners”—
Lordly banners, waving to the stars,
Flap upon the night-wind, heavy with the dew,
Trustful youth is wending to the wars,
Strong in ancient faith to battle with the new. ”

“ Of the three great modern Scots, it is still a debatable point if Burns was not more Celtic than “Lowland,” that is, by paternal as well as by maternal descent; and it surely is almost unquestionable that, in the geography of the soul, Burns’ natal spot must be sought in the Fortunate Isles of Celtdom. Byron, of course, though far more British than Scottish, and again more Scottish than Celtic, had a strong Celtic strain in his blood; and Scott, as it happens, was of the ancient stock, and not “the typical Lowlander” he is so often designated. ”

“ Much of the tragic gloom, of which “Ossian” is a true mirror, colours even contemporary Scoto-Celtic poetry; and though in Gaelic there is much humorous verse, and much poetry of a blithe, bright, and even joyous nature, the dominant characteristic is that of gloom, the gloom of unavailing regret, of mournful longing, a lament for what cannot be again. ”