William Kirkpatrick Magee

“ When Irish literature, in Miltonic language, "reassembles its afflicted powers," it will find a good many gaps in its ranks: not so much that our poets, in any considerable number, have been executed, assassinated, or banished, as that a fell disillusionment has seized upon many Irishmen with respect to the realization of long-cherished ideals, and in particular the ideal of a Gaelic-speaking Ireland. ”

“ Ireland being no longer a country in which it is permitted to dream dreams, but one in which it is pre-eminently necessary to circumvent British trade-competition by hard work, the Gaelic idealists, who really flourished best under provincial conditions, are looking for a way of escape, and some of them, if they are allowed to emigrate, may even nurse the old ideals in other lands. ”

“ They are attracted back to Ireland, partly by patriotism, partly by a belief prevalent amongst them that Ireland is socially a conservative community.
We await a portent—the transformation of Irish literature. In 1913 Mr Yeats wrote a poem with the burden "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone," in which he was generally understood to take leave of Irish nationalism; but in 1916 Romantic Ireland had reasserted itself with a vengeance, and Mr Yeats published a kind of palinode with the refrain, "A terrible beauty is born!" ”

“ What the future held for a literature so circumstanced it would now be idle to speculate. History presents one illustrous instance of a sacred symbolism founded on the historical fact of expatriation and oppression. ”

“ Nevertheless, Mr Yeats, A. E., Mr James Stephens, Mr Colum, even Mr Joyce, and some others, if their countenances be closely scrutinized, betray a certain proud consciousness of belonging to a secret order, with incommunicable beliefs and traditions. ”