To have a clock with weights and chains
And pendulum swinging up and down!
A dresser filled with shining delft,
Speckled and white and blue and brown!
I could be busy all the day
Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor,
And fixing on their shelf again
My white and blue and speckled store!
Lord Dunsany brought to public attention a new poet, Francis Ledwidge, whose one volume, Songs of the Fields, is full of promise. In October, 1914, he enlisted in Kitchener's first army, and was killed on the thirty-first of August, 1917. Ledwidge's poetry is more conventional than that of most of his Irish contemporaries, and he is at his best in describing natural objects. Such poems as A Rainy Day in April, and A Twilight in Middle March are most characteristic. But occasionally he arrests the ear with a deeper note. The first four lines of the following passage, taken from An Old Pain, might fittingly apply to a personality like that of Synge:
I hold the mind is the imprisoned soul,
And all our aspirations are its own
Struggles and strivings for a golden goal,
That wear us out like snow men at the thaw.
And we shall make our Heaven where we have sown
Our purple longings. Oh! can the loved dead draw
Anear us when we moan, or watching wait
Our coming in the woods where first we met,
The dead leaves falling in their wild hair wet,
Their hands upon the fastenings of the gate?
A direct result of the spiritual influence of A. E. is seen in the poetry of Susan Mitchell. She is not an imitator of his manner, but she reflects the mystical faith. Her little volume, The Living Chalice, is full of the beauty that rises from suffering. It is not the spirit of acquiescence or of resignation, but rather dauntless triumphant affirmation. Her poems of the Christ-child have something of the exaltation of Christina Rossetti; for to her mind the road to victory lies through the gate of Humility. Here is a typical illustration:
THE HEART'S LOW DOOR
O Earth, I will have none of thee.
Alien to me the lonely plain,
And the rough passion of the sea
Storms my unheeding heart in vain.
The petulance of rain and wind,
The haughty mountains' superb scorn,
Are but slight things I've flung behind,
Old garments that I have out-worn.
Bare of the grudging grass, and bare
Of the tall forest's careless shade,
Deserter from thee, Earth, I dare
See all thy phantom brightness fade.
And, darkening to the sun, I go
To enter by the heart's low door,
And find where Love's red embers glow
A home, who ne'er had home before.