Three or four of the thirty-three poems the book holds are, so to speak, official, written for the Gaelic League by its president; and these, like most official odes, are only for the moment.  Some are ballads dealing with the old subjects of Irish ballads—­emigration, exile, defeat, and death; for Douglas Hyde, as may be guessed from his preface, has, no less than his fellows—­

    ’Hidden in his heart the flame out of the eyes
    Of Kathleen, the daughter of Houlihan.’

But these national ballads, though very popular, are, I think, not so good as his more personal poems.  I suppose no narrative of what others have done or felt or suffered can move one like a flash from ’that little infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls oneself.’  Even in my bare prose translation, this poem will, I think, be found to have as distinct a quality as that of Villon or of Heine:—­

    ’There are three fine devils eating my heart—­
    They left me, my grief! without a thing;
    Sickness wrought, and Love wrought,
    And an empty pocket, my ruin and my woe. 
    Poverty left me without a shirt,
    Barefooted, barelegged, without any covering;
    Sickness left me with my head weak
    And my body miserable, an ugly thing. 
    Love left me like a coal upon the floor,
    Like a half-burned sod, that is never put out,
    Worse than the cough, worse than the fever itself,
    Worse than any curse at all under the sun,
    Worse than the great poverty
    Is the devil that is called “Love” by the people. 
    And if I were in my young youth again,
    I would not take, or give, or ask for a kiss!’

The next, in the form of a little folk-song, expresses the thought of the idealist of all time, that makes him cry, as one of the oldest of the poets cried long ago, ’Mine heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round about are against her.’  Yet, with its whimsical fancies and exaggerations, it could hardly have been written in any but Irish air.

    ’It’s my grief that I am not a little white duck,
    And I’d swim over the sea to France or to Spain;
    I would not stay in Ireland for one week only,
    To be without eating, without drinking, without a full jug.

    ’Without a full jug, without eating, without drinking,
    Without a feast to get, without wine, without meat,
    Without high dances, without a big name, without music;
    There is hunger on me, and I astray this long time.

    ’It’s my grief that I am not an old crow;
    I would sit for awhile up on the old branch,
    I could satisfy my hunger, and I not as I am,
    With a grain of oats or a white potato.

    ’It’s my grief that I am not a red fox,
    Leaping strong and swift on the mountains,
    Eating cocks and hens without pity,
    Taking ducks and geese as a conqueror.