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Chapter IV
THE REALISTIC IDEALISTS
THE poets mentioned in the foregoing section of this paper stand for the idealistic strain that is one of the most characteristic features of the Irish race ; yet, however they may reach out toward the, rarer and finer phases of human consciousness, they never quite let go their hold on common things. There is within the school another group which one may roughly call realist; but here we meet again the paradox of types, for while these other poets are on the surface realists, dealing chiefly with life as we find it, they cannot get away from the glimpse of spiritual vision that is the possession of their race. One such poet is Padraic Colum, whose poetical output has been small but distinguished. He is a son of the peasantry, and his work grew straight out of the tradition and circumstances of his parentage. One of his songs in his little book, w Wild Earth," called " A. Ballad-maker," is full of the romance and gaiety of rural Ireland, and expresses in a manner quite different from that of O'Sullivan's "Onlooker" the independence of the poet. I can only give a couple of stanzas to illustrate its quality and the poet's deft handling of an old refrain,, giving it a new setting each time it appears. Once I loved a maiden fair
Over the hills and far away Lands she had and lovers to spare Over the hills andifar away. And I was stooped, and troubled sore, And my face was pale, and the coat I wore Was thin as my supper the night before One day I passed in the autumn late, Over the hills and far away. Her bawn and byre and painted gate, Over the hills and far away, She was leaning there in the twilight space Sweet sorrow was on her fair young face, And her wistful eyes were away from the place— Over the hills and far away.
The unfortunate lover gets a smile, but only
a smile. To-morrow she is to marry a wealthy , farmer, following the will of local marriage custom, not of the heart. The rejected one passes on, and takes refuge in his art:
And I who have lost her—the dear, the rare— Well, I got me this ballad to sing at the fair, 'Twill bring enough money to drown my care Over the hills and far away.
Far different from that poem, yet equally characteristic of Irish life and genius, is his " Plougher ":
Sunset and silence ! A man : aronnd him earth savage, earth broken ; Beside him two horses—a plough I ... Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn-man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is, twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities ! The poet questions the plougher as to his thoughts, but gets no reply. Slowly the darkness falls, the broken lands blend with the savage ; The brute-tamer stands by the brutes, a head's breadth only above them. A bead's breadth ? Ay, but therein is bell's depth', and the height up to heaven, And the thrones of the gods and their balls, their chariots, purples and splendours.
There we have the sharp sight of realism, hut the sight, being that of a typically Irish poet, cannot remain mere eyesight, and must lift itself in the last lines to the level of imagination and vision.
Another poet of the realist group is Joseph Campbell, but his realism is not quite so spontaneous as that of Colum. He is, so to speak, a poetical journalist perpetually on the lookout for a song. He sings thus of his own purpose:
I am the mountainy singer— The voice of the peasant's dream, The cry of the wind on the wooded hill, The leap of the fish in the stream. ...
No other life I sing. For I am sprung from the stock That broke the hilly land for bread, And built the nest in the rock.
But the fact is that we have here a literary artist pegging out an area for himself. He is, truly, the voice of the " peasant's dream "; but Colum is the peasant's dream itself. They both spring from the tillage land of Ireland ; but Colum sings the hunger of the peasant for the land, while Campbell sings from a short distance away about the peasant's hunger. Tbe following lines are the poet's voicing of the acute problem of agriculture versus pasturage, a lament for the degrading change that came over the face of the land as farmers were squeezed out, and only herdsmen and cattle occupied the waste places that were once populous and prosperous :
The silence of unlaboured fields Lies like a judgment on the air. A human voice is never heard, The sighing grass is everywhere, The sighing grass, the clouded sky, The cattle crying wearily.
Where are the lowland people gone? Where are the sun dark faces now ? The love that kept the quiet hearth, The strength that held the speeding plough ? Grass-lands and lowing herds are good, But better human flesh and blood !
Campbell too feels the touch of mystic union with the inner worlds. He paints a simple-country picture—and then soars beyond the-picture. A thousand feet up : twilight. "Westwards, a clump of fir trees silhouetted against a bank of blue cumulous cloud ; The June afterglow like a sea behind, The mountain trail, white and clear where human feet have worn it, zigzagging higher and higher till it loses itself in the southern skyline. A patch of young corn to my right hand, swaying and swaying continuously, though hardly an air stirs. A falcon wheeling overhead. The moon rising. The damp smell of the night in ray nostrils. O hills, O hills, To you I lift mine eyes ! 1 kneel down and kiss the grass under my feet The sense of the mystery and infinity of things overwhelms me, and annihilates me almost. I lie down and silently worship.
There is greater deftness in the work of Campbell than in that of Colum. Occasionally one comes on what appear at first sight to be halting and awkward lines, but on closer examination they are found to be perfectly fitting to the theme. But mainly he achieves-sheer music as in the lines,
Go, ploughman, plough The mearing lands, The meadow lands, The mountain lands: All life is bare Beneath your share, All love is in your lusty hands.
UP, horses, now ! And straight and true Let every broken furrow run : The strength you sweat Will blossom yet In golden glory to the sun.
It was a ploughman, Robert Burns, who sang the equality of humanity—
The rank is hut the guinea stamp, The man's the gold for all that.
Our Irish singer of the peasant's dream utters the same truth, and there is just the same difference between the utterance of the two poets as there is between the character of the two branches of the Celtic race to which they belong; both democratic, both visionary, but the Irish sensitive, the Scottish stern: there is just the difference of Catholicism and Protestantism between them. This is Campbell's song of human equality :
I see all love in lowly things No less than in the lusts of kings: All beauty, shape and comeliness, All valour, strength and gentleness, All genius, wit and holiness.
Out of corruption comes the flower, The corn is kindred with the clay ; The plough-hand is a hand of power, Nobler than gold, bTightar than day.
Then let the leper lift his head, The cripple dance, the captive sing, The beggar reap and eat his bread— He is no baser than a king.
That is the fundamental attitude of every unspoilt Celt; it belongs to the race temperament and tradition. It is the simple explanation of the present day fact that the demand for Irish Home Rule is out of date, and that Ireland, that once had a king for each province with a High-King over them, is now demanding a Republic.
There is too in Campbell a more conscious Irishness than in Colum. I do not mean that this is a matter for greater commendation. Artistically, perhaps, it is not, for it indicates a not perfectly complete absorption of the poet into his subject. Still there is need for that conscious expression of race ; and when a true poet lifts nationality to the level of art, it becomes a far more potent force than it is at the level of prose. Here is a piece of lyrical -enchantment lilting the genius of Ireland :
THE NINEPENNY FIDDLE
My father and mother were Irish, And I am Irish too. I bought a wee fiddle for ninepence, And it is Irish too. I'm up in the morning early To meet the dawn of day, And to the lint white's piping It's many's the tune I play. One pleasant eve in June time I met a lochrie-man : His face and hands were weazen, His height was not a span. He boored me for my fiddle— " You know," says be, " like you, My father and mother were Irish, And I am Irish too." ......He gave me back my fiddle. My fiddlestick also, And stepping like a mayboy, He jumped the Largy Knowe. I never saw him after, Nor met his gentle kind ; But whiles I think I hear him
A-wheeling in the wind. But sometimes there is a more sombre and threatening note of racial consciousness heard through the poet's music. One could expand into seven hundred years of Irish history the following poem:
I gather three ears of corn, And the Black Earl from over the sea Sails across in his silver ships, And takes two out of the three. I might build a bouse on the hill, And a barn of the speckly stone, And tell my little stocking of gold, If the Earl would let me alone. ...There is a God in heaven, And angels score on score, Who will not see my hearthstone cold Because I'm crazed and poor. My childer have my blood, And when they get their beards They will not be content to run As herdsmen to their herds. The day will come, may be, When we can have our own. And the Black Earl will come to us Begging the poor man's bone. |
