The glow again, and we may find
Beyond the Gateways of the Day
Dominion and ancestral sway.
While in few or none of these poems is mystic thought absent it is never present at the expense of poetry, and many of the poems find in nature both their occasion and their material. A. E.’s vision is preeminently for the evanescent aspect of things, especially for the colors of the changes that come over earth and firmament. The poem beginning
When the breath of twilight blows to flame the misty skies,
All its vaporous sapphire, violet glow and silver gleam,
With their magic flood me through the gateway of the eyes;
I am one with the twilight’s dream.
is typical of his response to the vision of the outer world.
The same sturdy sense of actual values that leads Mr. Russell to write prose works on co-operation and nationality, seeing in these matters no less than in religious ecstasy the ground for the free life of man, is evident in the poem On Behalf of Some Irishmen not Followers of Tradition. But lest sturdy commonsense be thought a grotesque piece of praise for a poem, let me add that it is a commonsense illuminated by the purest idealism. How close to earth this idealism moves is shown in the little sketch In Connemara describing the peasant girl: