Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/91

 Rh short is the time he may hold it. Irish writers of the past have made this peasant only the jarvey wit; but if you read the old romances, or listen to the folk-tales still alive, you will learn that Mr. Yeats is at one with his countryman in this basic likeness.

There is a side of Irish life, the side the world knows best, that Mr. Yeats does not present, but that which he does present is true, though the poet's personality is so dominant that we get more of this than of Ireland in his poetry. So it should be, so it is with every artist. All the world can ask of him is his interpretation of what he knows. Yet so native is Mr. Yeats that the atmosphere of his poetry is the very atmosphere of Ireland. The artist and the setting of his art are in an unwonted harmony. No reader of Mr. Yeats who knows the brooding landscape of West Ireland can escape that realization, but only he who has met the poet amid the scenes that inspired his verse may know how complete is their accord. Such a meeting was mine one lowering August day, in whose late afternoon we walked in the Woods of Coole. Then I knew at last what Mr. Yeats meant by "druid charm" and "druid light." I felt the "druid charm" that was potent in gray skies over gray water and gray rock and gray-green woods; the bewildering "druid light" flashed out as the sun followed westward the trail to Hy Brasil, leaving in the Atlantic skies wild after-glow of winter yellow.