But W. B. was the boy for me—he of the dim, wan clothes;
And—don't let on I said it—not above a bit of pose;
And they call his writing literature, as everybody knows.
If you like a stir, or want a stage, or would admirèd be,
Prepare with care a naughty past, and then repent like me.
My past, alas! was blameless, but this the world won't see.
When Miss Mitchell's satire is engaged on personalities in this way, it has a piquancy which may obscure the subtler flavour of it. But the truth is that it is often literary in a double sense, both in subject and in treatment. So we may find a theme of considerable general interest in the world of literature, treated in the allusive literary manner which has so much charm for the booklover. And to that is added a racy and vigorous satirical touch. Thus, for instance, is the question of Synge's Playboy handled. Ridicule is thrown on the stupid rage with which it was received, and on the folly which generalized so hotly from the play to the nation, deducing wild nonsense against a whole people and its literature because the man who killed his father in the story is befriended by peasants. Here is a snatch of it:
I can't love Plato any more
Because a man called Sophocles,
Who lived in distant Attica,
Wrote a great drama Œdipus,
About a Greek who killed his da.
I know now Plato was a sham,
And Socrates I brush aside,
For Phidias I don't care a damn,
For every Greek's a parricide.
So, too, comes the burlesque touch in the "Ode to the British Empire":
God of the Irish Protestant,
Lord of our proud Ascendancy,
Soon there'll be none of us extant,
We want a few plain words with thee.
Thou know'st our hearts are always set
On what we get, on what we get.
The genial temper of this work pervades even the political pieces. Miss Mitchell is no respecter of persons or institutions: she finds food for derision in friend as well as foe. But her laughter is not bitter—unless, perhaps, a tinge comes in when she touches that old source of bitterness, the gulf between the Saxon and the Celt—
We are a pleasant people, the laugh upon our lip
Gives answer back to your laugh in gay good fellowship;
We dance unto your piping, we weep when you want tears;
Wear a clown's dress to please you, and to your friendly jeers
Turn up a broad fool's face and wave a flag of green—
But the naked heart of Ireland, who, who has ever seen?
There is, however, a more important strain of heredity in the new Irish poetry; and it comes directly through the renaissance of which we have already spoken. There are two lines of development which begin in that rebirth; but they proceed almost at right angles from each other. One, the clearer and more direct, is towards work of a specifically literary order. The other is tending to a simple and direct rendering of life. On the one hand we find poetry which is romantic in manner and heroic in theme. This is largely of narrative form, and seems to hold within it the promise of epic growth. On the other hand, there is a lyric form of less pretension and wilder grace; music so fresh and apparently artless as to mock the idea of derivation. Yet it, too, owes its vitality to the same impulse, and is, perhaps, its healthiest blossoming.