er swallows skim the stream: the swift horses seek the pool;
The heather spreads out her long hair; the weak fair bow-down grows.
Sudden consternation attacks the signs; the planets, in their
courses running, exert an influence:
The sea is lulled to rest, flowers cover the earth.

VISION OF A FAIR WOMAN

Tell us some of the charms of the stars:
Close and well set were her ivory teeth;
White as the canna upon the moor
Was her bosom the tartan bright beneath.

Her well-rounded forehead shone
Soft and fair as the mountain snow;
Her two breasts were heaving full;
To them did the hearts of heroes flow.

Her lips were ruddier than the rose;
Tender and tunefully sweet her tongue;
White as the foam adown her side
Her delicate fingers extended hung.

Smooth as the dusky down of the elk
Appeared her shady eyebrows to me;
Lovely her cheeks were, like berries red;
From every guile she was wholly free.

Her countenance looked like the gentle buds
Unfolding their beauty in early spring;
Her yellow locks like the gold-browed hills;
And her eyes like the radiance the sunbeams bring.

In contemporary Celtic poetry no one surpasses Mr. W. B. Yeats,
particularly in the re-creation of that wonderful past with whose
atmosphere his whole work is charged. As an example of Mr. Yeats's
narrative method with legendary themes we may quote some lines from
his beautiful 'The Wanderings of Oisin' (Ossian):--

Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke,
High as the saddle-girth, covering away from our glances the tide;
And those that fled, and that followed, from the foam-pale distance
broke;
The immortal desire of immortals we saw in their faces, and sighed.

I mused on the chase with the Fenians, and Bran, Sgeolan, Lomair,
And never a song sang Neave, and over my finger-tips
Came now the sliding of tears and sweeping of mist-cold hair,
And now the warmth of sighs, and after the quiver of lips.

Were we days long or hours long in riding, when, rolled in a grisly
peace,
An isle lay level before us, with dripping hazel and oak?
And we stood on a sea's edge we saw not; for whiter than new-washed
fleece
Fled foam underneath us, and round us a wandering and milky smoke.

And we rode on the plains of the sea's edge--the sea's edge barren
and gray,
Gray sands on the gr