AE in the Irish TheosophistRussell, George William
Religion
AE in the Irish Theosophist
Russell, George William
Theosophy
We see too, that as age after age passes and teems only with the
commonplace, that those who are the poets and teachers falter and
lose faith: they utter no more of man the divine things the poets
said of old. Perhaps the sheer respectability of the people they
address deters them from making statements which in some respects
might be considered libelous. But from whatever cause, from lack
of heart or lack of faith, they have no real inspiration. The
literature of Europe has had but little influence on the Celt in
this isle. Its philosophies and revolutionary ideas have stayed
their waves at his coast: they had no message of interpretation
for him, no potent electric thought to light up the mystery of his
nature. For the mystery of the Celt is the mystery of Amergin the
Druid. All nature speaks through him. He is her darling, the
confidant of her secrets. Her mountains have been more to him
than a feeling. She has revealed them to him as the home of her
brighter children, her heroes become immortal. For him her streams
ripple with magical life and the light of day was once filled with
more aerial rainbow wonder. Though thousands of years have passed
since this mysterious Druid land was at its noonday, and long
centuries have rolled by since the weeping seers saw the lights
vanish from mountain and valley, still this alliance of the soul
of man and the soul of nature more or less manifestly characterizes
the people of this isle. The thought produced in and for complex
civilizations is not pregnant enough with the vast for them, is
not enough thrilled through by that impalpable breathing from
another nature. We have had but little native literature here
worth the name until of late years, and that not yet popularized,
but during all these centuries the Celt has kept in his heart some
affinity with the mighty beings ruling in the unseen, once so
evident to the heroic races who preceded him. His legends and
faery tales have connected his soul with the inner lives of air
and water and earth, and they in turn have kept his heart sweet
with hidden influence. It would make one feel sad to think that
all that beautiful folklore is fading slowly from the memory that
held it so long, were it not for the belief that the watchful
powers who fostered its continuance relax their care because the
night with beautiful dreams and deeds done only in fancy is passing:
the day is coming with the beautiful real, with heroes and heroic deeds.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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