Page:The Collected Poems of Dora Sigerson Shorter.djvu/9

vi of April?” We are in a clearer atmosphere at present, as to reviewers, whatever may be said of the poets. Nevertheless an Irishwoman writing from her heart of the legends of her country and the superstitions of the peasantry, may have her way smoothed in advance by some consideration of the Celtic mind. And she writes ballads, too, which are rather in disfavour now.

The mind of the Celt has been much discussed. It is generally taken to be overpoweringly emotional, vapourish as well, and fantastical, remote, divorced from reality. Such is the impression of it on the Saxon mind. But reality has more than one way of speaking. The rightly poetic is only another language for flat prose. Thus a fair young cousin loves a gallant lord, and he gives her a kiss on the cheek as he rides away, caring but for the chase. She vows in her heart that he shall have his wish: she swallows a potion. Red Richard sees a white doe ahead of him, and pursues her; she has the dark eyes of his cousin; day after day she flits before the exasperated hunter until at last his spear transfixes her. Returning home, he finds the corpse of his cousin, his spear buried in her breast. Prose would put it that Red Richard,