MODERN IRISH POETS.

Waikato Times, Volume 109, Issue 18346, 4 June 1931, Page 8

MODERN IRISH POETS.

GENIUS OF W. B. YEATS.

HAUNTING MUSIC OF VERSE. AN ENTERTAINING LECTURE. A most entertaining lecture on the modern Irish poets was given by Rev. William Constable, of Auckland, under the auspices of the Waikato branch of the Workers’ Educational Association, at Invicta Chambers on Tuesday. Mr F. A. de la Mare, chairman of the Hamilton Advisory Committee, presided. The lecturer quoted extensively from W. B. Yeats and other poets, his delightful readings captivating the large audience. “Yeats, though not the initiator, is the central figure of the Irish literary revival,” said Mr Constable. “This claim is justified not merely by the great beauty of his lyric poetry, the delicacy of his prose, and his important contributions to the poetic drama, but also by his unflagging enthusiasm and work for the Irish Literary Theatre, and by that prophetic insight with which he recognised latent genius in J. M. Synge and directed him to one place where his literary powers would develop; and because, through his own poetic genius, he was almost the first cause of the new literary movement. “It was not long before his ‘lnnis■free’ was known over the Englishspeaking world, and deservedly so, for the haunting music of ‘lake water lapping with low' sounds by the shore’ is not easily forgotten.

Yeats’ Early Life. Yeats was born at Sandymount, near Dublin, in 1865. The family hailed from County Sligo, which the poet knew well and whose landscape provided much inspiration. His father was a well-knowm portrait-painter, and his brother, Jack B. Yeats, was also an artist whose work, like that of Synge in drama, discovered much that was bizarre and fantastic in the western types of Irish peasantry. As a boy he removed to London, where he lived among a group of artists, whose aestheticism was marked in some of his work. When he returned to Dublin as a young man he puzzled the city by a want of fixed convictions, which did not impair the vehemence of his likes and dislikes. Through his friendship with a Brahmin and several Theosophists he became keenly interested in Eastern thought, astrology and magic, which have sometimes led him, as a poet, into strange by-paths. This influence may be seen in some of his earliest poetry, especially ‘The Indian Upon God.’

Patriotic Influenco,, “As one might expect, he had a wide knowledge of English literature, and his chief enthusiasms were for Spenser, Shakespeare, Doune, Shelley, and particularly William Blake,” continued the lecturer. It was also as a young man in Dublin that through the influence of the early Fenians, John O’Leary and a group of Nationalists, he first experienced the sense of patriotism. In time, however, w’hile still retaining some of that patriotic spirit, he came to see that in himself, as poet and dramatist, nationalism must be subjected to art, though with the coming of the Irish Free State he was made a life member of the Irish Senate. The best of his earlier poems were "Indian and His Love” and “Indian Upon God." He next turned with enthusiasm to the legends of Ireland and began to take his place in the new revival of Irish literature that had been pioneered by Standish o’Gra.dy and others before him. Thus in 1888 when several of his friends joined with him in publishing a volume of “Poems and Ballads of Young Ireland," Yeats contributed four poems, two of which, though he was only 22 years of age, were far superior to anv of the other work. These were “Madness of King Goll,” describing the ancient Fenian wandering forth, haunted by the sound of the leaves, and the other was “The Stolen Child,” in which he delved into the faery lore of the Irish countryside.

His Own Hardest Crllto. In his later years Yeats, with tho Increase of poetic symbolism, came to feel that the ballads were too “popular” in their appeal. He was his own hardest critic, though not always the best judge of his own work. Since 1890 he had never returned to the ballad, because he did net feel it expressed his spirit. . . . With the volume called “Responsibilities,” published in 1914, a new note was struck, at once harsher and simpler. Those delicate embroideries which characterised his earlier poems were then discarded. There was a new nakedness and boldness of statement, but his later poetry needed even more concentration and careful reading if it was to be fully appreciated Sometimes in his later volumes there was a little of the old magic, with its delicate and subtle shades, mingled with the new. Sought Refuge In Dreams.

A large part of all poetry was realisation of the brevity of all beautiful things, of bloom, of youth, of life, and no poet had lamented fate and time and change more often than W. B. Yeats. Thus he sought refuge in his own dreams and in contemplation of the life from which he came and to which he would return. While in his later poetry Yeats’ appeal is keenly intellectual and to the few who read poetry with concentration, his appeal in the earlier verse is largely sensuous to eye and car. Ho could make readers see those misty Irish hills, with their grey, Druid light. He could create atmosphere. Indeed he did that so well that some people, judging Irish literature solely by Yeats and his imitators, thought that it was nothing but atmosphere. Great as his achievements had been in other spheres, Yeats would be remembered chiefly as the greatest lyric poet of modern Ireland. For it was mainly as a poet that he was awarded the Nobel Prize by the Swedish Academy in 1921.

The Other Poets . After W. B. Yeats, added the lecturer, the greatest poet of modern Ireland was George W. Russell, known to the world as “A.E."' He was the greatest personality living in Ireland to-day, and was a mystic, as both his poetry and his painting witnessed. But he was also a mystic who could realise something of his vision in the hard world of practical affairs, in the last 30 years them had been a revolution in Irish agriculture. This extraordinary progress was developed in the first case by Sir Horace Plunkett, who planned Ino Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. Rut the farmers were so suspicious of one another that lie could not get the scheme to work until at the suggestion of Yeats he asked “A.E.” to frLmiinmd in next column.)

help him. “A.E.” took a secretaryship, and for the next few years went around the farms of Ireland on his bicycle. By the magic of his personality he persuaded the farmers to try the scheme, and reconciled Protestants and Homan Catholics, Unionists and Nationalists, lo working in cooperation for the advancement of Irish agriculture. Mr Constable then dealt briefly with the poetry of James Stephens, Deuwar O’Sullivan, Thomas McDoncgh, Joseph Plunkett, and Padrcic Pcarse, and with the women poets, Katherine Tyneir, Eva Gore Booth and Mon* O’Neill.