One may not make too precise a claim here for affiliation with the literary revival; but observing the movement broadly, it would appear that this is its more popular manifestation, springing out of the devotion to the old language of the country, its folklore and the life of its people. That current of the stream would touch actual existence much more closely than æsthetic or academic study; and while one might regard Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats as the pioneers of the movement on the specifically literary side, on the other hand there are Dr Hyde, A. E., and others, whose influence must have counted largely in these new lyrics of life.
There are about half a dozen poets who are making these sweet, fresh songs. They have not published very much, but that follows from the nature of the medium in which they are working. Lyrical rapture is brief, and the form of its expression correspondingly small. Very seldom can it be sustained so long and so keenly as, for example, in Mr Stephens' "Prelude and a Song," for the wise poet accepts the natural limits of inspiration and technique. But this little group does not, of course, include all the Irish lyrists. The poets whom we may describe as literary—who have, at any rate, the more obvious connexion with the revival—have made beautiful lyrics too. But they are sharply contrasted in subject or style, or both, with those others. Thus we may take a "Spring Rondel" by Mr Cousins, which is supposed to be sung by a starling:
I clink my castanet,
And beat my little drum;
For spring at last has come,
And on my parapet
Of chestnut, gummy-wet,
Where bees begin to hum,
I clink my castanet,
And beat my little drum.
"Spring goes," you say, "suns set."
So be it! Why be glum?
Enough, the spring has come;
And without fear or fret
I clink my castanet,
And beat my little drum.
The lyrical virtues of that need no emphasis: the quick, true reflection of a mood: the lightness of touch and grace of expression. It is, however, mainly by qualities of form that one is delighted here—the art's the thing. To make a rondel at all seems an achievement; and to make it so daintily, with playful fancy and feeling caught to the nicest shade, almost compels wonder. But that is characteristic of the kind of verse of which I am speaking, another aspect of which may be seen in a captivating fragment which has been translated by this poet from the Irish of some period before the tenth century. It is called "The Student"; and to find the like of it, with its combined love of nature and of learning, one must seek a certain 'Clerk of Oxenford' and endow him with the spirit of his own springtime poet—
High on my hedge of bush and tree
A blackbird sings his song to me,
And far above my linèd book
I hear the voice of wren and rook.
From the bush-top, in garb of grey,
The cuckoo calls the hours of day.
Right well do I—God send me good!—
Set down my thoughts within the wood.
It is not often that these poets are occupied with "Modern Movements," wherein they differ from their English contemporaries. For that reason, it is the more significant that one public question has moved them deeply. Thus we find Miss Mitchell writing of womanhood:
Oh, what to us your little slights and scorns,
You who dethrone us with a careless breath.
God made us awful queens of birth and death,
And set upon our brows His crown of thorns.
And Miss Gore-Booth, thinking of the sheltered ignorance of many women who oppose the suffrage for their sex, makes a little parable:
The princess in her world-old tower pined
A prisoner, brazen-caged, without a gleam
Of sunlight, or a windowful of wind;
She lived but in a long lamp-lighted dream.
They brought her forth at last when she was old;
The sunlight on her blanchèd hair was shed
Too late to turn its silver into gold.
"Ah, shield me from this brazen glare!" she said.