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SOME POETS OF THE IRISH RENAISSANCE
1. The Idealistic Realists
THE Irish literary and dramatic revival, which has taken its place in literary history as one of the prophecies of the true spiritual mission of the twentieth century (when it shakes itself free from the influences of the last barbarous relic of the nineteenth, the Great War) began fully with the opening of the present century, and centred around two personalities whose work is as sure of immortality as that of Shelley and Keats.
The two poets are AE and W. B. Yeats.* During the nineties of the last century there was a good deal of poetical activity in England. A number of new writers came into prominence, and in the low literary state of the times, after the death of Tennyson and during the decay of Swinburne, somewhat extravagant
* For other studies of these poets see " New Way& in English Literature." hopes were entertained of the new singers. Few of them fulfilled those hopes : but it was while their fame was at its loudest, and a few friends along with myself, in the then unliterary atmosphere of the commerical city of Belfast, used to pore over the latest poems of the new writers as they appeared in magazines or books, that a thin volume came from a Dublin Press, and, after a preliminary -shock of un-familiarity, and some resentment of its quiet challenge of our favourities, sank its way to some deeper region than the mind and emotions, and ultimately made most of the alleged poetry of its contemporaries sound as literary rowdyism. The book was called " Homeward Songs by the Way," and its author was a mystery hidden behind the letters AE. Its first word was a direct contradiction to all that we had been accustomed to look for in Watson and in Francis Thompson whose first volume was then just a year old. It said :—
Oh ! be not led away, Lured by the colours of the sunlit day. The gay romance of song
Unto the Spirit's life doth not belong. Thus in a few simple compelling words the boast of the poet's office was laid in the dust by a poet who was so convinced that poetry should stand or fall as poetry, and not by virtue of the personality through which it comes, that until this day, when his work is accepted as among the highest products of lyrical genius, George Russell, the man, refuses to allow himself to be confused with AE the poet.
I did not know then that the truth enunciated in the lines which I have quoted was one with the eastern renunciation of surface splendour in the quest of spiritual realisation. Realisation : that is the sum and substance of AE's poetry, and it was that element of conviction that ultimately placed the little book far above the guessings and arguings, the struggle and passion of doubts, of its contemporaries.
Twenty years have passed, and the poetry of AE has been collected in a single volume, but little pieces of verse out of his first precious books remain in the memory as guarantee that now, when he is engaged in the struggle that a small nationality is making for freedom, his energy is no fleeting passion, but is guided and controlled by the same genius as sang the songs of spiritual vision and joy. It is impossible here to do more than refer to or quote very shortly from the authors under consideration in this paper. So far as AE's work is concerned, I can think of no poem in the English language that comes so near performing the miracle of incarnating the soul of the East in the body of the West as his poem entitled "Krishna". I do not think that Vaishnavite literature has much to transcend it as an esoteric commentary on the much misunderstood dual nature of the Lord of Gaiety and Compassion.
I paused beside the cabin door and saw the King of Kings at play. Tumbled upon the grass I spied the little heavenly runaway. The mother laughed upon the child made gay by its ecstatic morn, And yet the sages spake of It as of the Ancient and Unborn. I heard the passion breathed amid the honeysuckle scented glade, And saw the King pass lightly from the beauty that be bad betrayed. I saw him pass from love to love ; and yet the pure allow His claim To be the purest of the pure, thrice holy; stainless, without blame... I saw the King of Kings again, a thing to shudder at and fear, A form so darkened and so marred that children fled if it drew near. And yet He is the Light of Lights whose blossoming is Paradise, The Beauty of the King which dawns upon the seer's enraptured eyes... I saw the King of Kings descend the narrow doorway to the dust With all his fires of morning still, the beauty, bravery and lust. And yet He is the life within the Ever-living Living Ones, The ancient with eternal youth, the cradle of the infant suns, The fiery fountain of the stars, and He the golden urn where all The glittering spray of planets in their myriad beauty fail.
Several readings of the poem result in a curious transference of its subject from ancient myth to an everlasting reality in the life of humanity.
The poem, however, is not typical of AE's work. It is built up ; it is about something ; while the greater part of his song is not about things or ideas, but is the expression of an inner realisation deeper than feeling, deeper than thinking. Something of this characteristic is expressed in " Creation".
As one by one the veils took flight, The day withdrew, the stars came up. The Spirit issued pale and bright Filling thy beauty like a cup.
Sacred thy laughter on the air, Holy thy lightest word that fell, Proud the innumerable hair That waved at the enchanter's spell.
O Master of the beautiful, Creating us from hour to hour, Give me this vision to the full To see in lightest things thy power.
This vision give, no heaven afar, No throne, and yet I will rejoice Knowing beneath my feet a star, Thy word in every wandering voice.
When we turn to the poetry of Yeats, we are in an atmosphere that is at once curiously similar and curiously different. There is the same delicacy of touch, the same purity of imagination, the same sense of a spiritual presence in the background of emotion and thought. But the attitude of each poet to his art is fundamentally different. With AE the personality of the poet matters very little. With Yeats it matters a very great deal. Some poets, as AE sings, seek the Spirit of Poetry in order to get a song to which they may attach their own name; this is very much the attitude of Yeats, but AE's desire is to lose himself in the Spirit of Poetry.
This difference in attitude makes a very great difference in the character of their poetry. AE's is simple, sometimes almost careless, in form. Yeats' is highly polished, more lengthy, and exalted in expression even when trying to be homely. Both poets look towards the " white radiance of eternity," but Yeats would not be happy without the splendour of the "dome of many-coloured glass." He clothes the simplest feeling or idea in garments of rich beauty, as in the following lines:
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths Enwrougbt with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light; I would spread the cloths under your feet; But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I spread my dreams under your feet ;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. In these lines, with their interweaving of sound, their repetition of words, as colours and design in a piece of embroidery, we have a fragment of fine art. When we search for the secret of their richness and apparent complexity, we find something like poverty in the absence of rhyme ; for the sensation of rhyme is an illusion conjured by the mere repetition of the same words, " cloths, light, feet, dreams;" and instead of complexity we find an almost bald simplicity. Yet the embroidered richness remains, no matter how often the little poem is read or repeated from memory. It is a piece of verbal magic.
We find a similar kind of artistic power in one of Yeats patriotic poems. I call it one of his patriotic poems although it is given as the song of a legendary poet—" Red Han-rahan's Song about Ireland "—because it is a true expression of every Irishman's attitude to his country, and is as much Yeats' own feeling as it is mine or Sir Edward Carson's. The poet takes three simple phenomena of nature,. a thorn-tree broken by the wind, a cloudy, thunderous day, and heavy rain, and in these he sees a metaphor of human degradation below the ideal; yet the ideal unites the contrarieties of human temperament. Anyone who grasps the full import of the poem is near the secret of Ireland. Cathleen the Daughter of Houlahan (or sorrow) is another of the names for Ireland given to her as mentioned in the chapter "Irish Bards and Ballad-makers," in that period of her agony (so tragically repeated to-day) when it was criminal for an Irish poet to name his country directly in his songs. This is the song :
The old brown thorn-trees break in two high over Cummen strand Under a bitter black wind that blows from the left hand. Oar courage breaks like an old tree in a black wind and dies, But we have hidden "in our hearts the flame out f the eyes Of Cathleen the daughter of Houlahan. The wind has bundled up the clouds high over Knocknarea, And thrown the thunder on the stones for all the Maeve can say.
Angers that are like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat. But we have all bent low and low, and kissed the quiet feet Of Cathleen the daughter of Houlahan. The yellow pool has overflowed high up on Cloothnahare, For the wet winds are blowing out of the clinging air. Like heavy flooded waters our bodies and our blood ; But purer than a tall candle before the holy rood Is Cathleen the daughter of houlaban.
There is another side to Yeats' genius, a simple human compassion, which finds voice in the " Ballad of Father Gilligan " and " The Fiddler of Dooney."
These two masters, AE and Yeats, became the dual heads of a group of singers who retained the fundamental spirituality and artistic quality of the leaders, yet who could not escape the Irish racial characteristic of individual independence. Even where this ambition went no higher than following the lead of the masters, there was some strong personal differentiation ; so that the " school of poets was a school of temparamental affinity with individuality of expression. This was pointed out by critics on the simultaneous-appearance of a new book by each of three of the younger poets from the press of Messrs. Maunsel who have been the fairy-godmother to the young poets, and pioneers in beautiful publishing.
The three poets were obviousiy Irish, yet were as distinctive as they could well be. They were called the three Jameses (a minor and junior triumvirate to balance the Three Georges—Shaw, Russell (AE) and Moore). One was James (Seumas in Irish) O'Sullivan, one James Stephens, the third myself. I am debarred by a thing called modesty from referring to my own work, though I probably know more about it than anyone else ! I shall speak of the other two in their class order, taking first Seumas O'Sullivan who comes nearest in style and substance to AE. He touches the spirit world, and sings thus :
What have the heavens for their wonder of starry glory To show like these ? I have seen in the flashing of their white swords the story Of victories. Forth they go, the conquerors, the path of their going To the world's end : Greet the stars their brothers, and shout in the sunrise knowing The sun their friend. Forth they go uncaring, as fitteth immortals, How the quest ends Here, or beyond red seas, in the flaming portals. They will greet friends.
But Seumas O'Sullivan moves some degrees nearer the common life than AE. Not that AE has not sung of the glory that every soul returns to in sleep out of the filthiest slums. But when AE sings of the common his eye is also on the glory behind. O'Sullivan's eye is less troubled by double vision. He is fully occupied with the thing seen. Thus :
The senses stifle in this narrow lane Where the fierce merciless summer sun beats down On rows of stinking fish, and vegetables Half rotten, and tortured flowers with stems of wire Enforced to live beyond their fragrant hour A horrid death in life. O God in Heaven. Who made the fish to go in cool green ways, And flowers to laugh beside the water's edge, And autumn fruit to lurk in odorous shade, If thou rememberest Eden, Lord, look down On this thy world defaced by usage vile; And send thy fire and purge away the sin Of those who, losing Eden, would destroy That Eden left unto thy innocents.
He also unites himself with Yeats in a great pride in the poet's office. Yeats wrote a play, "The King's Threshold," in celebration of the superiority of the poet over the King. O'Sullivan puts the whole matter of the poet's power and aloofness into three verses under the title "The Onlooker."
I hear their singing fierce and high, And now they pass me one by one, And scorn me that I stay alone And look with unperturbed eye. They march to battle unafraid Because of songs that I have made. And one in passing turns to me And spits upon me, and my sword Springs to him of its own accord. I hold it fast and let him be. His coward heart is unafraid Because of songs that I " Tis the Beauty of all beauty that is calling for your love, AE sings, and Miss Young sings it thus : One night the beauty of the stars Made magic for me white and still : I I met my Lady in the wood, The black pine wood above the hill, 83 Dream-fair her beauty white and still; I
To some this presence is Beauty. Others call it by other names. To Susan Mitchell, another woman singer of the group, it is a spiritual realm, a kingdom of certainty and repose behind the fluctuant details of this realm of life that obscures the inner and true world. Hence Miss Mitchell sings of immortality:"
Age cannot reach me where the veils of God Have shut me in. For me the myriad births of stars and suns Do but begin, And here, how fragrantly there blows to me The: holy breath, Sweet from the flowers and stars and hearts of men, From life and death. We are not old, O heart ! we are not old. The breath that blows The soul aflame is still a wandering wind That comes and goes ; And the stirred heart with sudden raptured life A moment glows............... Awhile we walk the world on its wide roads And narrow ways, And they pass by, the countless shadowy groups Of nights and days ; We know them not, O happy heart I For you and I Watch where within, a slow dawn lightens up Another sky. |
