The English Lyric 2 1 



mourners from a magic land, — throughout, the echo of prophecy, 

 Celtic fey-vision. 



The antithesis appears again in direct comparison of the formal 

 elements of the two poetries. Saxon poetry is laconic, force- 

 ful, pointed, never illogical ; Celtic is full of irrelevant by-play 

 and inconsequential succession of ideas, — the eye has seen too 

 much to have perceived any one thing seriously. Both literatures 

 abound in parenthesis and apposition ; but in the Saxon these are 

 always significant to the matter in hand, in the Celtic they are 

 mere incidental suggestion. The distinction reappears in dra- 

 matic handling. Celtic recitative as Saxon epic was chanted to 

 the harp's accompaniment. But the bard seldom troubles himself 

 to designate a speaker in his tale; himself assumes role after 

 role, doubtless with dramatic impersonation, leaving his audience 

 to infer from the context the turns from character to character. 

 On the other hand, the gleeman, having to do with less quick- 

 witted hearers, takes no chances; each hero is formally intro- 

 duced: " Beowulf spake, son of Ecgtheow," — such is the formula. 

 Possibly here we have a Saxon emphasis of individual right and 

 dignity in contrast with the expansive impersonality of the Celt. 



Other qualities are no less in contrast. Compare Saxon and 

 Celtic metaphor. I have already given examples of the former : 

 hilde-gicel, " battle-icicle," the fast-chilling pendant of blood 

 clinging to the sword after carnage, — that will recall their quality. 

 How unlike is Ossian's likening of a woman's soul to "an impetu- 

 ous current foaming white within a rocky strait " : or Taliessin's 

 " minstrelsy of perception " and " baptism of consolation " in that 

 Song to the Great World already in part quoted ! The very title 

 of that song, or of that other To the Wind, — do they not dis- 

 tinguish the Celt from the Saxon? 



Indeed, we cannot do better than set beside the magniloquent 

 devotion of Taliessin's hymn, 



I will adore my Father, 



My God, my strengthener. . . . 



the humility and simplicity of Caedmon's 



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