Читать книгу Lyra Celtica: An Anthology of Representative Celtic Poetry онлайн

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Him to sail the old boat—me to fall asleep.

The dry wrack,

The sea wrack,

The wrack was dead so soon.

There’s a fire low upon the rocks to burn the wrack to kelp;

There’s a boat gone down upon the Moyle, an’ sorra one to help.

Him beneath the salt sea—me upon the shore—

By sunlight or moonlight we’ll lift the wrack no more.

The dark wrack,

The sea wrack,

The wrack may drift ashore.

When we come to examine the literature of the four great divisions of the Celtic race, a vast survey lies before us, with innumerable vistas. A lifetime might well be given to the study of any one of the ancient Erse, Alban-Gaelic, Cymric, and Armorican literatures: a lifetime that would yet have to leave much undiscovered, much unrelated. There is room for every student. In old Irish literature alone, though so many enthusiasts are now working towards its greater elucidation and the transference of the better part of it into Anglo-Celtic literature, there remain whole tracts, and even regions, of unexploited land. In a score of ways, pioneers have been clearing the ground for us: philologists like Windisch, Loth, Kuno Meyer, Whitley Stokes; literary scholars like S. Hayes O’Grady, Campbell of Islay, Cameron of Brodick, Dr Douglas Hyde; folklorists innumerable, in Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; romancists like Standish O’Grady, who write across the angle of the historic imagination, and romancists like W. B. Yeats, who write across the angle of the poetic imagination; and poets, an ever-growing band of sweet singers, who catch for us the fugitive airs, the exquisite fleeting cadences, the haunting, indefinable music of an earlier day.