ristian faith; now it attains to a high and
keen spirituality; now it is mystic and pagan. Among the religious
poets, Lionel Johnson easily stands first--perhaps the Irish poet of
firmest fibre and most resonant voice of his generation. A note of
high courage and of spiritual triumph rings through his verse, even
from the shadow of the wings of the dark angel that gives a title to
one of the saddest of his poems. Often he strikes a note of genuine
religious ecstasy and exaltation rarely heard in English, as in "Te
Martyrum Candidatus":

Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ!
White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God!
They, for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed
All, save the pleasure of treading where He first trod.

These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night,
Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide:
They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the sight,
They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified.

Among the men of the Revival, no personality is stronger or more
attractive than that of G.W. Russell--"AE", as he is always
called--who may be regarded as the hero of George Moore's _Hail and
Farewell_, and who alone in that gallery of wonderful pen-portraits
looks forth with complete amiability. He is a pantheist, a mystic,
and a visionary, with what would seem a literal and living faith in
many gods, though strongly prepossessed in favor of the ancient
divinities of the Gael, now long since in exile. Impressive and
striking by a certain spiritual integrity, so to say, "AE" unites
gifts and faculties seldom combined. He is a poet of rare subtlety, a
painter in whose genius so good a judge as George Moore believed, and
a most practical man of affairs, who, as assistant to Sir Horace
Plunkett, held up the latter's hands in his labors on behalf of
co-operative dairies and the like. His poems have their roots in a
pantheism which half reveals the secrets of an indwelling spirit,
speaking alike "from the dumb brown lips of earth" and from the
passions of the heart of man.

Of novelists, both men and women, the Irish Revival can, in the words
of "Father O'Flynn", offer a charming variety, and among their novels
and short stories are some books of high quality and not a few in a
high degree interesting and entertaining. To Standish O'Grady we turn
for tales, with a kind of bardic affl