Eyes of Youth

A free download from www.dertz.in

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eyes of Youth, by Various
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Eyes of Youth
A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum, Shane Leslie, A.O.
Author: Various
Release Date: February 9, 2006 [EBook #17735]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EYES OF
YOUTH ***
Produced by Marc D'Hooghe.
EYES OF YOUTH

A Book of Verse by Padraic Colum--Shane
Leslie--Viola Meynell--Ruth Lindsay--
Hugh Austin--Judith Lytton--Olivia
Meynell--Maurice Healy--Monica
Saleeby--Francis Meynell--With

four early Poems by Francis
Thompson, & a Foreword by
Gilbert K. Chesterton.

"He has eyes of youth,
he writes verses"
The Merry Wives of Windsor.

The four early poems of Francis Thompson are here published, for the
first time in book form, by the permission of his Literary Executor.
We have also to thank the Editors of _The Station, The Tablet, The
Outlook, The New Age, The Westminster Gazette, The Evening
Standard, The Irish Rosary_ and The Lamp, for permission to
re-publish other Verses.

CONTENTS
G.K. CHESTERTON
Foreword
FRANCIS THOMPSON
Threatened Tears
Arab Love Song
Buona Notte
The Passion of
Mary
PADRAIC COLUM
"I shall not die for you"
An Idyll
Christ the Comrade
Arab Songs
(I)
Arab Songs (II)

SHANE LESLIE
A Dead Friend (J.S. 1905)
Forest Song
The Bee
Outside the
Carlton
The Pater of the Cannon
Fleet Street
Nightmare
To a
Nobleman becoming Socialist
St. George-in-the-East
VIOLA MEYNELL
The Ruin
The Dream
The Wanderer
"Nature is the living mantle
of God"
Secret Prayer
The Unheeded
Dream of Death
THE HON. MRS. LINDSAY
Mater Salvatoris
To Choose
The Hunters
HUGH AUSTIN
The Astronomer's Prayer
The Moon
To Yvonne
The Burial of
Scald
THE HON. MRS. LYTTON
A Day Remembered
Childhood
Love in Idleness
Love's
Counterfeit
OLIVIA MEYNELL
A Grief without Christ
The Crowning
MAURICE HEALY
In Memoriam
A Ballad of Friendship
In the Midst of Them
Sic
Transit
MONICA SALEEBY
Retrospect

FRANCIS MEYNELL
Any Stone
Lux in Tenebris
Mater Inviolata
Song-burden
Gifts

Wraith
A Dedication

FOREWORD
My office on this occasion is one which I may well carry as lightly as
possible. In our society, I am told, one needs an introduction to a
beautiful woman; but I have never heard of men needing an
introduction to a beautiful song. Prose before poetry is an unmeaning
interruption; for poetry is perhaps the one thing in the world that
explains itself. The only possible prelude for songs is silence; and I
shall endeavour here to imitate the brevity of the silence as well as its
stillness.
This collection contains four new poems by one whom all serious
critics now class with Shelley and Keats and those other great ones cut
down with their work unfinished. Yet I would not speak specially of
him, lest modern critics should run away with their mad notion of a
one-man influence; and call this a "school" of Francis Thompson.
Francis Thompson was not a schoolmaster. He would have said as
freely as Whitman (and with a far more consistent philosophy), "I
charge you to leave all free, as I have left all free." The modern world
has this mania about plagiarism because the modern world cannot
comprehend the idea of communion. It thinks that men must steal ideas;
it does not understand that men may share them. The saints did not
imitate each other; not always even study each other; they studied the
Imitation of Christ. A real religion is that in which any two solitary
people might suddenly say the same thing at any moment. It would
therefore be most misleading to give to this collection an air of having
been inspired by its most famous contributor. The little lyrics of this
little book must surely be counted individual, even by those who may
count them mysterious. A variety verging on quaintness is the very note
of the assembled bards.

Take, for example, Mr. Colum's stern and simple rendering of the bitter
old Irish verses:
"O woman, shapely as the swan,
On your account I shall not die."
Like Fitzgerald's Omar and all good translations, it leaves one
wondering whether the original was as good; but to an Englishman the
note is not only unique, but almost hostile. It is the hardness of the real
Irishman which has been so skilfully hidden under the softness of the
stage Irishman. The words are ages old, I believe; they come out of the
ancient Ireland of Cairns and fallen Kings: and yet the words might
have been spoken by one of Bernard Shaw's modern heroes to one of
his modern heroines. The curt, bleak words, the haughty, heathen spirit
are certainly as remote as anything can be from the luxuriant humility
of Francis Thompson.
If the writers have a real point of union