A spiritual adventure seems to be implied in the poem from which this fragment is taken, similar to that which Mr Cousins has recorded in "Straight and Crooked." It is the call of reality: the impulse which is drawing the poetic spirit closer and closer to life, and bidding it seek inspiration in common human experience. Thus when we find Mr O'Sullivan invoking the vision of earth we soon discover that 'earth' means something more to him than 'countryside'--the beauty of Nature and of pastoral existence. It comprises also towns and crowded streets and busy people; and it seems to mean ultimately any aspect of human existence which has the power to induce poetic ecstasy. An infinitely wider range is thus open to the poet, and though this little volume does not pretend to cover any large part of it, there are pieces which suggest its almost boundless possibility. Let us put two of them together. The first, "A Piper," describes a little street scene: A Piper in the streets to-day Set up, and tuned, and started to play, And away, away, away on the tide Of his music we started; on every side Doors and windows were opened wide, And men left down their work and came, And women with petticoats coloured like flame And little bare feet that were blue with cold, Went dancing back to the age of gold, And all the world went gay, went gay, For half an hour in the street to-day. That expresses the rapture which is evoked directly by the touch of the actual. The next piece, a fragment from "A Madonna," is equally characteristic; but its inspiration came through another art, a picture by Beatrice Elvery: Draw nigh, O foolish worshippers who mock With pious woe of sainted imagery The kingly-human presence of your God. Draw near, and with new reverence gaze on her. See you, these hands have toiled, these feet have trod In all a woman's business; bend the knee. For this of very certainty is she Ordained of heavenly hierarchies to rock The cradle of the infant carpenter. Under the diverse sources from which such poems immediately spring, there flows the current which is fertilizing, in greater or less degree, all modern poetry. It has been running strongly in England for some years, but hitherto the Irish poet has hardly seemed conscious of it, though it was visibly moving him. Its presence has been mainly felt in the silence of Mr Yeats, whose lovely romanticism fell dumb at its touch. But, significantly, the latest poetic utterance of Ireland is a cry of complete realization. It has remained for Mr Cousins, more sensitive and complex than his compatriots, to hear the call of his age more consciously than they; and it is left to him, in grace and courage, to declare it: