s are dazzled by strange graces of color flowing over the pages:
everywhere there is mystery and magnificence. Procession's pass by in
Druid ritual, kings and queens, and harpers who look like kings. When
the wind passes over them and stirs their garments a sweetness comes
over the teller of the tale, who felt that delight in draperies blown
over shapely forms which is the inspiration of the Winged Victory and
many Greek marbles. The bards will not have the hands of those proud
people touch anything which is not beautiful. "It was a beautiful
chessboard they had, all of white bronze, and the chessmen of gold and
silver, and a candlestick of precious stones lighting it." The wasting
of time has spared us a few things to show that this rare and intricate
metal work was not a myth, and we are forced by an inexorable logic
to accept as mainly true the narration of the pride, the beauty, the
generosity, and the large lovable character of the ancient heroes. We
may come to realize that, losing their Druid vision of a more shining
world mingling with this, we have lost the vision of that life into the
likeness of which it is the true labor of the spirit to transform this
life. For the Tirnanoge is that Garden where, in the mind of the Lord,
the flowers and trees blossomed before they grew in the fields, where
man lived in the Golden Age before the outer darkness of the earth
was built and he was outcast from Paradise. There is no true art or
literature which has not some image of the Golden Life lurking within
it, and through the archaic rudeness of these legends the light shines
as sunlight through the hoary branches of ancient oaks. Lady Gregory
has done her work, as compiler with a judgment which could hardly be too
much praised, and she has translated the stories into an idiom which
is a reflection of the original Gaelic and is full of charm. We are
indebted to her for this labor as much as to any of those who sang to
sweeten Ireland's wrong.

1902

A POET OF SHADOWS

When I was asked to write "anything" about Yeats, our Irish poet, my
thoughts were like rambling flocks that have no shepherd, and without
guidance my rambling thoughts have run anywhere.

I confess I have feared to enter or linger too long in the many-colored
land of Druid twilights and tunes. A beauty not our own, more perfect
than we can ourselves conceive, is a danger to the imagination. I am
too often tempted to wander with Usheen in Timano