We have come by curious ways Deep in every heart it lies With its untranscended skies; For what heaven should bend above Carol, Carol, we have come Padraic Colum Padraic Colum was born at Longford, Ireland (in the same county as Oliver Goldsmith), December 8, 1881, and was educated at the local schools. At 20 he was a member of a group that created the Irish National Theatre, afterwards called The Abbey Theatre. He has lived in America since 1914. Colum began as a dramatist with Broken Soil (1904), The Land (1905), Thomas Muskerry (1910), and this early dramatic influence has colored much of his work, his best poetry being in the form of dramatic lyrics. Wild Earth, his most notable collection of verse, first appeared in 1909, and an amplified edition of it was published in America in 1916. THE PLOUGHER Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken; Beside him two horses-a plough! Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn man there in the sunset, And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities! "Brute-tamer, plough-maker, earth-breaker! Can'st hear? There are ages between us. "Is it praying you are as you stand there alone in the sunset? "Surely our sky-born gods can be naught to you, earth child and earth master? "Surely your thoughts are of Pan, or of Wotan, or Dana? "Yet, why give thought to the gods? Has Pan led your brutes where they stumble? "Has Dana numbed pain of the child-bed, or Wotan put hands to your plough? "What matter your foolish reply! O, man, standing lone and bowed earthward, "Your task is a day near its close. Give thanks to the night-giving God." Slowly the darkness falls, the broken lands blend with the savage; The brute-tamer stands by the brutes, a head's breadth only above them. A head's breadth? Ay, but therein is hell's depth, and the height up to heaven, And the thrones of the gods and their halls, their chariots, purples, and splendors. (Seosamh MacCathmhaoil) Joseph Campbell was born in Belfast in 1881, and is not only a poet but an artist; he made all the illustrations for The Rushlight (1906), a volume of his own poems. Writing under the Gaelic form of his name, he has published half a dozen books of verse, the most striking of which is The Mountainy Singer, first published in Dublin in 1909. THE OLD WOMAN As a white candle In a holy place, So is the beauty Of an aged face. As the spent radiance Of the winter sun, So is a woman With her travail done. Her brood gone from her, Under a ruined mill. Lascelles Abercrombie Lascelles Abercrombie was born in 1881 and educated at Victoria University, Manchester. Like Masefield, he gained his reputation rapidly. Totally unknown until 1909, upon the publication of Interludes and Poems, he was recognized as one of the greatest metaphysical poets of his period. Emblems of Love (1912), the ripest collection of his blank verse dialogues, justified the enthusiasm of his admirers. Many of Abercrombie's poems, the best of which are too long to quote, are founded on scriptural themes, but it is the undercurrent rather than the surface of his verse which moves with a strong religious conviction. Abercrombie's images are daring and brilliant; his lines, sometimes too closely packed, glow with an intensity that is warmly spiritual and fervently human. FROM "VASHTI” What thing shall be held up to woman's beauty? This Heaven-wander'd princess, woman's beauty? Thy flesh was tempered. Behold in thy body Given thy flesh, the meaning of thy shape! How is earth good to look on, woods and fields, Secret still on the point of being blabbed, The ghost in the world that flies from being named? James Stephens This unique personality was born in Dublin in February, 1882. Stephens was discovered in an office and saved from clerical slavery by George Russell ("A. E."). Always a poet, Stephens's most poetic moments are in his highly-colored prose. And yet, although the finest of his novels, The Crock of Gold (1912), contains more wild phantasy and quaint imagery than all his volumes of verse, his Insurrections (1909) and The Hill of Vision (1912) reveal a rebellious spirit that is at once hotly ironic and coolly whimsical. Stephens's outstanding characteristic is his delightful blend of incongruities-he combines in his verse the grotesque, the buoyant and the profound. THE SHELL And then I pressed the shell Close to my ear And listened well, And straightway like a bell Came low and clear The slow, sad murmur of the distant seas, Whipped by an icy breeze Upon a shore Wind-swept and desolate. It was a sunless strand that never bore The footprint of a man, Nor felt the weight |