The unbudding hedgerows dark against day's fires
Glitter with gold-lit crystals: on the rim
Over the unregarding city's spires
The lonely beauty shines alone for him."
In "In Connemara" and "An Irish Face," poems with earthly titles, you expect only things earthly, but in these too, he uses the picture of the concrete only as the symbol of the universal. The reason Mr. Russell must take you to the supernatural in these poems is because he sees spirits everywhere he goes in Ireland. "Never a poet," he writes, "has lain on our hillsides, but gentle, stately figures, with hearts shining like the sun, move through his dreams, over radiant grasses, in an enchanted world of their own." Start "The Memory of Earth" and you think you are to read one of the many fine poems of twilight in our literature, but the fourth line undeceives you:—
"In the wet dusk silver sweet,
Down the violet-scented ways,
As I moved with quiet feet
I was met by mighty days.
"On the hedge the hanging dew
Glassed the eve and stars and skies;
While I gazed a madness grew
Into thundered battle-cries.
"Where the hawthorn glimmered white,
Flashed the spear and fell the stroke—
Ah, what faces pale and bright
Where the dazzling battle broke!
"There a hero-hearted queen
With young beauty lit the van.
Gone! the darkness flowed between
All the ancient wars of man.
