A variety verging on quaintness is the very note of the assembled bards.
Take, for example, Mr. Colum's stern and simple rendering of the bitter
old Irish verses:
"O woman, shapely as the swan,
On your account I shall not die."
Like Fitzgerald's Omar and all good translations, it leaves one
wondering whether the original was as good; but to an Englishman the
note is not only unique, but almost hostile. It is the hardness of the
real Irishman which has been so skilfully hidden under the softness of
the stage Irishman. The words are ages old, I believe; they come out of
the ancient Ireland of Cairns and fallen Kings: and yet the words might
have been spoken by one of Bernard Shaw's modern heroes to one of his
modern heroines. The curt, bleak words, the haughty, heathen spirit are
certainly as remote as anything can be from the luxuriant humility of
Francis Thompson.
If the writers have a real point of union it is in a certain instinct
for contrast between their shape and subject matter. All the poems are
brief in form, and at the same time big in topic. They remind us of the
vivid illuminations of the virile thirteenth century, when artists
crowded cosmic catastrophes into the corner of an initial letter; where
one may find a small picture of the Deluge or of the flaming Cities of
the Plain.
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