

The English Lyric 19 



I am seven battalions, a strong bull, an eagle on a rock, a ray of 



the sun ; 

 I am the most beautiful of herbs, a courageous wild boar, a salmon 



in the water, a lake upon the plain ; 

 I am a cunning artist, a gigantic, sword-wielding champion, — 

 I can shift my shape like a god. 



In other literatures we find parallels to this mood. Empedo- 

 cles teaches that " with earth we perceive earth, with water the 

 water, with air the air divine, and with fire devouring fire, while 

 love is perceived by means of love, and hate by dismal hate." 

 He tells us, too : " I have been youth and maid and bush and bird 

 and a shining fish in the sea." But Empedocles is a prophet of 

 novel and strange ideas, rather than the voice of a popular con- 

 viction. His pantheism is Eastern rather than Western, and is 

 more akin to the Transcendental Ego figured in Emerson's read- 

 ing of The Sphinx than to the phantasmagorial Naturism of the 

 Celt. 



A nearer parallel lies in the democratic ubiquity of Walt Whit- 

 man's expansive Self; for self-expansion, magnisonant in expres- 

 sion rather than pompous in mood, is the very breath of life to 

 the Celtic soul. Nature and man are all one broidery, inter- 

 minably interwoven. This is the secret of Celtic natural magic ; 

 it springs from the Celt's responsive susceptibility to all the chang- 

 ing glamors of sky and sea, to all the eerie wisdom of the wood, 

 to all the impulsive joys and fears of the world of wilds. It 

 gives him, too, an illocative errantry of mood which naturally 

 seeks in lyric metaphor its fitting expression. Here is a Highland 

 lover's lament for lover : 



Like two plants smiling in the dew, 



By the side of the rocks in the warmth of the sun. 



With undivided root, — 



Two plants happy and joyful. 



The maids of Caothan forebore to hurt the plants ; 



The light hinds also spared them ; 



But the boar gave one of them its death. 



Heavy, heavy, with bending head, 



Is the one weakly plant that still lives on, 



Like a bud withered under the sun. 



O happy were it to be without life! 



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