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 : Croagh Patrick is the place of prayers, But each sweet wind of Ireland bears From Dursey Isle to Donegal, From Howth to Achill, the glad noise : Or victory crowns their fighting joys. A dream a dream! an ancient dream! That field may lie beneath the sun, Some way to faithful Innisfail Shall come the majesty and awe To lay on all the eternal law. TE MARTYRUM CANDIDATUS AH, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ! All, save the sweetness of treading where He first trod ! 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 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 Through thee, the gracious Muses turn Because of thee, the land of dreams Until tormented slumber seems One vehemence of useless tears. When sunlight glows upon the flowers, Within the breath of autumn woods, Within the winter silences, Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods, The ardour of red flame is thine, Thou poisonest the fair design Of Nature with unfair device. Apples of ashes, golden bright; Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete ! Thou art the whisper in the gloom, I fight thee, in the Holy Name! Yet what thou dost is what God saith. Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death The second Death, that never dies, That cannot die, when time is dead; Dark Angel, with thine aching lust ! Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so, 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; THE AGE OF A DREAM IMAGERIES of dreams reveal a gracious age; Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn. Gone now, the carven work! Ruined, the golden shrine ! No more rich frankincense drifts through the Holy Place ; 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? |