strange tableau vivant that cast its painful stillness upon the mind instead of the body. He might have cried with Axel, 'As for living, our servants will do that for us.' As Axel chose to die, he has chosen to live among his books and between two memories-the religious tradition of the Church of Rome and the political tradition of Ireland. From these he gazes upon the future, and whether he write of Sertorius or of Lucretius, or of Parnell or of 'Ireland's dead,' or of '98, or of St. Columba or of Leo XIII., it is always with the same cold or scornful ecstasy. He has made a world full of altar lights and golden vestures, and murmured Latin and incense clouds, and autumn winds and dead leaves, where one wanders remembering martyrdoms and courtesies that the world has forgotten.

His ecstasy is the ecstasy of combat, not of submission to the Divine will; and even when he remembers that 'the old Saints prevail,' he sees the 'one ancient Priest' who alone offers the Sacrifice, and remembers the loneliness of the Saints. Had he not this ecstasy of combat, he would be the poet of those peaceful and unhappy souls, who, in the symbolism of a living Irish visionary, are compelled to inhabit when they die a shadowy island Paradise in the West, where the moon always shines, and a mist is always on the face of the moon, and a music of many sighs is always in the air, because they renounced the joy of the world without accepting the joy of God.

W. B. YEATS

Lionel Johnson was born about 1867, and comes of a Sligo family. He was educated at Winchester and Oxford, but was early attracted to Irish studies and ideas. He has published a volume of verse, POEMS, 1895, as well as a prose book on THE ART OF THOMAS HARDY.

WAYS OF WAR

A TERRIBLE and splendid trust

Heartens the host of Innisfail :
Their dream is of the swift sword-thrust,
A lightning glory of the Gael.

Croagh Patrick is the place of prayers,
And Tara the assembling-place:

But each sweet wind of Ireland bears
The trump of battle on its race.

From Dursey Isle to Donegal,

From Howth to Achill, the glad noise
Rings and the heirs of glory fall,

:

Or victory crowns their fighting joys.

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 minds 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.

TE MARTYRUM CANDIDATUS

AH, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ!
White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God!
They for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed

All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod !
These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night,
Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide :
They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the sight,
They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified.

Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go :

White Horsemen, who ride on white horses-oh, fair to see! They ride where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow,

White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain: for ever He!

THE DARK ANGEL

DARK Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!

Because of thee, no thought, no thing,

Abides for me undesecrate :

Dark Angel, ever on the wing,

Who never reachest me too late!

When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire ;
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering-place of fears;

Until tormented slumber seems

One vehemence of useless tears.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea,
Thou with thy troop of passionate powers
Beleaguerest, bewilderest me.

Within the breath of autumn woods,

Within the winter silences,

Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods,
O Master of impieties!

The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice;

Thou poisonest the fair design

Of Nature with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright;
Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
O banquet of a foul delight,

Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete !

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh ;
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

I fight thee, in the Holy Name!

Yet what thou dost is what God saith.
Tempter should I escape thy flame,

Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death

The second Death, that never dies,

That cannot die, when time is dead;
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust !
Of two defeats, of two despairs :
Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me :
Lonely unto the Lone I go;

Divine, to the Divinity.

THE CHURCH OF A DREAM

SADLY the dead leaves rustle in the whistling wind,

Around the weather-worn, grey church, low down the vale ; The Saints in golden vesture shake before the gale;

The glorious windows shake, where still they dwell enshrined; Old Saints, by long dead, shrivelled hands long since designed; There still, although the world autumnal be, and pale,

Still in their golden vesture the old saints prevail;

Alone with Christ, desolate else, left by mankind.

Only one ancient Priest offers the sacrifice,

Murmuring holy Latin immemorial;

Swaying with tremulous hands the old censer full of spice,

In grey, sweet, incense clouds; blue, sweet clouds mystical;
To him in place of men, for he is old, suffice
Melancholy remembrances and vesperal.

THE AGE OF A DREAM

IMAGERIES of dreams reveal a gracious age;

Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn.
The courtesy of Saints, their gentleness and scorn,
Lights on an earth more fair than shone from Plato's page;
The courtesy of knights, fair calm and sacred rage;
The courtesy of love, sorrow for love's sake borne.
Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn,
We hunger against hope for that lost heritage.

Gone now, the carven work! Ruined, the golden shrine !
No more the glorious organs pour their voice divine;

No more rich frankincense drifts through the Holy Place ;
Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls,
Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls!
Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace.

NORA HOPPER

MODERN poetry grows weary of using over and over again the personages and stories and metaphors that have come to us through Greece and Rome, or from Wales and Brittany through the Middle Ages, and has found new life in the Norse and German legends. The Irish legends, in popular tradition and in old Gaelic literature, are more numerous and as beautiful, and alone among great European legends have the beauty and wonder of altogether new things. May one not say, then, without saying anything improbable, that they will have a predominant influence in the coming century, and that their influence will pass through many countries?