Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/156

 132 believe. Yet "A. E." so longs to be rapt into everlasting union with the Universal Spirit that he tires of the earth, where that union is interrupted by the necessities of daily life. The fairies call to him and he would away—

"'Come away,' the red lips whisper, 'all the world is weary now; 'Tis the twilight of the ages and it's time to quit the plough. Oh, the very sunlight's weary ere it lightens up the dew, And its gold is changed and faded before it falls to you.'"

But it is not always twilight to him, and there are many blither moods. Over against these lines you may put,

and

Earth is not an unhappy place, but he sighs sometimes for the happiness unalloyed of heaven.

When we come to consider the technique of Mr. Russell's art, we find him anything but Emersonian. Mr. Russell has, in general, command of form, melody, harmony, distinction. Who reads carefully will remember many fine lines; who reads only once will be as one lost in sun-filled fog like that of "A E.'s" own Irish mountains, but he should be patient, he should wait and look again and again, and finally he will see, even if earth be still dimmed with fogbanks, much of the heavens, free of fog, and radiant with cold white light.


 * "Forest glooms

Rumorous of old romance"

and