Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/149

 Rh of the soul into the Universal Spirit in moments Emerson experienced as "revelation" and Plotinus as ecstasy.

"A. E.'s" friend, Mr. Charles Johnston, records the two young Irishmen's joint attempts to attain ecstasy, when he writes of those days when "we lay on our backs in the grass, and, looking up into the blue, tried to think ourselves into that new world which we had suddenly discovered ourselves to inhabit." Do not think this ecstasy too rare and wonderful a thing. To Plotinus it meant an utter blotting-out of self, a rapture of peace, and to Mr. Russell it frequently means that he is entirely "heart-hidden from the outer things," but I suspect it means sometimes mere lift of the heart through lungs full of fresh air, or through green fields for tired eyes, or through mountain air for worn nerves, or through skies thick-sown with stars for the vexed spirit.

The typical poem of "A. E." is that in which the sight of beautiful things of this phenomenal world in which we live lifts his soul to participation in the Universal Spirit. It is most often through some beauty of the sky at sunset, when

as in "The Great Breath"; or at twilight, when

as in "Dusk"; or at night, when

"The yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory In the lilac-scented stillness,"

as in "The Singing Silences"; or at sunrise, when there is