CHILDREN OF EARTH 207 



song to rule in solitude under the crescent moon. No 

 lovers walk there. Mortal who enters there must either 

 a poet or a madman be. 



Look again at his " Castle in Spain," how it is perched 

 up above that might of forest, like a child that has climbed 

 whence it can never descend. And the little house at the 

 edge of the high, dark wood — in " The Farm under the 

 Hill " — is as frail and timid as if it heard the roaring 

 of wild beasts, and the little white road winds into the 

 darkness as to death. So, too, with the children who 

 make a pretence of playing hoops at the edge of just 

 such another wood, though mortal has never come out of 

 it since the beginning of the world. The ship in the 

 " Fall of the Leaf " is subdued to the spirit of autumn 

 as is the poet subdued to the immense scenes of " Alastor." 

 To introduce an elvish figure, as he has done, in "Will 

 o' the Wisp " was an unnecessary aid to the elvishness 

 of the scene itself. Indeed, his human or fantastic figures 

 seem to be sometimes as much out of place as a Yankee 

 at the court of King Arthur, though there are two notable 

 exceptions — " The Sower " and " The Weed Burner " — 

 both figures towards which idolatry might be excusable, 

 so nobly do they represent labour in the field. And even 

 in " The Weed Burner " the boy seems bemused by the 

 motion and savour of the smoke that curdles up through 

 the autumn air. The picture of a forest pool is magical, 

 but it repudiates the fairy altogether. Nothing would be 

 more out of place here than the kind of sucking harlequin 

 or columbine which is commonly foisted upon us as a 

 fairy; for here is something more desirable, the very 

 forces which begot the fairies upon a different age from 

 ours. Even when he draws a house it is, I think, for 



