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Rh And when I saw her large blue eyes,

What was the pain that went through me?

Why did I think on Southern skies

And ships upon the sea?

I think this is as near as Ledwidge ever comes to organic perfection, though two freaks of phrasing fleck its very real beauty and success.

If the success of this is smoother, there is to my mind a suspicion of the happy moment of a professor of poetry in its well-worn theme and the refurbished stock images of the Celtic Muse. The Death of Aillil, the most successful of his attempts at narrative, fails for me in the same way. Songs of the Fields, his first volume, rewards the reader far better than Songs of Peace, in good part written since the war began. Yet his soldiering in Greece gives us this:

THE HOME-COMING OF THE SHEEP

sheep are coming home in Greece,

Hark the bells on every hill!

Flock by flock, and fleece by fleece,

Wandering wide a little piece

Thro' the evening red and still,

Stopping where the pathways cease,

Cropping with a hurried will.

Rh