Romantic Ireland's dead and gone—
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Thomas Macdonagh and Padraic Pearse and James Connolly were preparing themselves for a romantic death.

John Davidson, in a book called "Sentences and Paragraphs," writes of Keats that, "beginning and ending his intemperate period with the too ample verge and room, the trailing fringe and sample-like embroidery of 'Endymion,' he was soon writing the most perfect odes in the language." Mr. Yeats, in spite of some reluctant instructions into enthusiastic movements, escaped "the intemperate period"; but he did so at the cost of his youth and ardour. Like the Magi in his poem of that name, he, "being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied," seeks "to find once more" "the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor"; but it eludes him, and will always elude him, because he thinks of its habitation as "a bestial floor." It can only be found by a poet who, whatever happens, still believes that the earth is a place where God may yet walk in safety. Mr. Yeats is the greatest poet that Ireland has produced, but he has meant very little to the people of Ireland, for he has forgotten the ancient purpose of the bards, to urge men to a higher destiny by reminding them of their high origin, and has lived, aloof and disdainful, as far from human kind as he can conveniently get.

 

 

Transcriber's Note:

Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.