alone, shapeliness and warmth are gone from me; the couch
of honor shall be no more mine; I am miserable, I am bent on my crutch.

How evil was the lot allotted to Llywarch, the night when he was brought
forth! sorrows without end, and no deliverance from his burden."[265]

There is the Titanism of the Celt, his passionate, turbulent,
indomitable reaction against the despotism of fact; and of whom does it
remind us so much as of Byron?

"The fire which on my bosom preys
Is lone as some volcanic isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze;
A funeral pile!"[266]

Or, again:--

"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be."[267]

One has only to let one's memory begin to fetch passages from Byron
striking the same note as that passage from Llywarch Hen, and she will
not soon stop. And all Byron's heroes, not so much in collision with
outward things, as breaking on some rock of revolt and misery in the
depths of their own nature; Manfred, self-consumed, fighting blindly and
passionately with I know not what, having nothing of the consistent
development and intelligible motive of Faust,--Manfred, Lara, Cain,[268]
what are they but Titanic? Where in European poetry are we to find this
Celtic passion of revolt so warm-breathing, puissant, and sincere;
except perhaps in the creation of a yet greater poet than Byron, but an
English poet, too, like Byron,--in the Satan of Milton?

"... What though the field be lost?
All is not lost; the unconquerable will,
And study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield,
And what is else not to be overcome."[269]

There, surely, speaks a genius to whose composition the Celtic fibre was
not wholly a stranger!

* * * * *

The Celt's quick feeling for what is noble and distinguished gave his
poetry style; his indomitable personality gave it pride and passion; his
sensibility and nervous exaltation gave it a better gift still, the gift
of rendering with wonderful felicity the magical charm of nature. The
forest solitude, the bubbling spring, the wild flowers, are everywhere
in romance. They have a mysterious life and grace there; they are
Nature's own children, and utter her secret in a way which makes them
something quite different from the woods, waters, and plants of Greek
and Latin poetry. Now of this