The spirit of poetry is native to Ireland. It awakened there in the early dawn, and has hardly slumbered in two thousand years. Probably before the Christian era it had become vocal; and as long as twelve hundred years ago it had woven for the garment of its thought an intricate and subtle prosody. You would think it had grown old in so great a time. You would almost expect to find, in these latter days, a pale and mournful wraith of poetry in the green isle. You would look for the symbol of it in the figure of some poor old woman, like the legendary Kathleen ni Houlihan, who is supposed to incarnate the spirit of the country. But even while you are looking it will happen with you as it happened before the eyes of the lad in the play by Mr Yeats. The bent form will straighten and the old limbs become lithe and free, the eyes will sparkle and the cheeks flush and the head be proudly lifted. And when you are asked, "Did you see an old woman?" you will answer with the boy in the play: I did not; but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen. So it is with the later poetry of Ireland. One would not guess, in the more recent lyrics, that these singers are the heirs of a great antiquity. Their songs are as fresh as a blade of grass: they are as new as a spring morning, as young and sweet as field flowers in May. They partake of youth in their essence; and they would seem to proceed from that strain in the Irish nature which has always adored the young and beautiful, and which dreamed, many centuries ago, a pagan paradise of immortal youth which has never lost its glamour: Where nobody gets old and godly and grave, Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise, Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.