“My lowly little abode, hidden in a mane of green-barked yew-tree. 
  Near is an apple-tree,
  Big like a hostel;
  A pretty bush thick as a fist of hazel-nuts, a choice spring and
          water fit for a Prince to drink. 
  Round it tame swine lie down,
  Wild swine, grazing deer,
  A badger’s brood,
  A peaceful troop, a heavy host of denizens of the soil
  A-trysting at my house. 
  To meet them foxes come. 
  How delightful!”

’The island is about a hundred yards from the shore, and I wondered how the animals crossed from the mainland as I sat under the porch of the ruined church.  I suppose the water was shallower than it is now.  But why and how the foxes came to meet the wild swine is a matter of little moment; suffice it that he lived in this island aware of its loneliness, “without the din of strife, grateful to the Prince who giveth every good to me in my bower.”  To which Guaire answered: 

  ’"I would give my glorious kingship
  With my share of our father’s heritage,—­
  To the hour of my death let me forfeit it,
  So that I may be in thy company, O Marban.”

’There are many such beautiful poems in early Irish.  I know of another, and I’ll send it to you one of these days.  In it is a monk who tells how he and his cat sit together, himself puzzling out some literary or historical problem, the cat thinking of hunting mice, and how the catching of each is difficult and requires much patience.

’Ireland attained certainly to a high degree of civilization in the seventh and eighth centuries, and if the Danes had not come, Ireland might have anticipated Italy.  The poems I have in mind are the first written in Europe since classical times, and though Italy and France be searched, none will be found to match them.

’I write these things to you because I wish you to remember that, when religion is represented as hard and austere, it is the fault of those who administer religion, and not of religion itself.  Religion in Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries was clearly a homely thing, full of tender joy and hope, and the inspiration not only of poems, but of many churches and much ornament of all kinds, illuminated missals, carven porches.  If Ireland had been left to herselfif it had not been for the invasion of the Danes, and the still worse invasion of the English—­there is no saying what high place she might not have taken in the history of the world.  But I am afraid the halcyon light that paused and passed on in those centuries will never return.  We have gotten the after-glow, and the past should incite us; and I am much obliged to you for reminding me that the history of the lake and its castles would make a book.  I will try to write this book, and while writing will look forward to the day when I shall send you a copy of the work, if God gives me strength and patience to complete it.  Little is ever completed in Ireland....  But I mustn’t begin to doubt before I begin the work, and while you and Mr. Poole are studying dry texts, trying to prove that the things that men have believed and loved for centuries are false, I shall be engaged in writing a sympathetic history—­the history of natural things and natural love.