Come on, sit down. Come on, and do your best,
To fright me with your sprites, you’re powerful at it.
Mam. There was a man—
Her. Nay, come sit down; then on.
Mam. Dwelt by a churchyard—I will tell it softly;
Yond crickets shall not hear it.
Her. Come on then,
And give’t in mine ear.
There is enough Keltic quality here, surely, to satisfy both Mr. Yeats and Mr. Shorter. In fine, this tiny episode out of A Winter’s Tale is quite as good, and quite as Keltic, as anything the Blake School, to give it its honest title, has managed hitherto to produce. What the average Irishman would think about it is another story. It is a pity to take from Ireland even a trifle over which she might, not improperly, plume herself. But Mr. Yeats in the figure of Irish poet reminds us of nothing so much as a peacock butterfly purchased in the chrysalis state out of France by the careful entomologist, hidden in a plant-pot at his parlor window, and slaughtered and labeled British so soon as it has had time to spread its wistful wings.