worm to the eagle; although they had less
of the old way than the makers of the _Kalavala_, for they lived in a more
crowded and complicated world, and were learning the abstract meditation
which lures men from visible beauty, and were unlearning, it may be, the
impassioned meditation which brings men beyond the edge of trance and
makes trees, and beasts, and dead things talk with human voices.

The old Irish and the old Welsh, though they had less of the old way than
the makers of the _Kalavala_, had more of it than the makers of the Sagas,
and it is this that distinguishes the examples Matthew Arnold quotes of
their 'natural magic,' of their sense of 'the mystery' more than of 'the
beauty' of nature. When Matthew Arnold wrote it was not easy to know as
much as we know now of folk song and folk belief, and I do not think he
understood that our 'natural magic' is but the ancient religion of the
world, the ancient worship of nature and that troubled ecstasy before her,
that certainty of all beautiful places being haunted, which it brought
into men's minds. The ancient religion is in that passage of the
_Mabinogion_ about the making of 'Flower Aspect.' Gwydion and Math made
her 'by charms and illusions' 'out of flowers.' 'They took the blossoms of
the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the
meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden the fairest and most
graceful that man ever saw; and they baptized her, and called her Flower
Aspect'; and one finds it in the not less beautiful passage about the
burning Tree, that has half its beauty from calling up a fancy of leaves
so living and beautiful, they can be of no less living and beautiful a
thing than flame: 'They saw a tall tree by the side of the river, one half
of which was in flames from the root to the top, and the other half was
green and in full leaf.' And one finds it very certainly in the quotations
he makes from English poets to prove a Celtic influence in English poetry;
in Keats's 'magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas in faery
lands forlorn'; in his 'moving waters at their priest-like task of pure
ablution round earth's human shore'; in Shakespeare's 'floor of heaven,'
'inlaid with patens of bright gold'; and in his Dido standing 'on the wild
sea banks,' 'a willow in her hand,' and waving it in the ritual of the old
worship of nature and the spirits of nature, to wave 'her love to come
again to Carthage.' And his other examples h