sun shows one-third much light as your shadow!’ Another lover says of the woman he desires:  ’I will write largely of her, because of the thousands who hoped for her, and who have been lost; and a hundred men of these who still live, are in pain and under locks through love.  And I myself am not free, but am a bondsman in bonds.’  And another boasts of ’a love without littleness, without weakness; love from age till death, love from folly growing, love that shall send me close beneath the clay, love without a hope of the world, love without envy of fortune, love that left me outside in captivity, love of my heart beyond women.’  Douglas Hyde’s own love songs are quiet and staid in contrast to these; but nevertheless they have a sober charm.  Here are the last verses of one of them:—­

    ’Will you be as hard,
        Colleen, as you are quiet? 
    Will you be without pity
        On me for ever?

    ’Listen to me, Noireen,
        Listen, aroon;
    Put healing on me
        From your quiet mouth.

    ’I am in the little road
        That is dark and narrow,
    The little road that has led
        Thousands to sleep.’

In his preface to the ‘Love Songs of Connacht’ he says he finds in them ’more of grief and trouble, more of melancholy and contrition of heart, than of gaiety or hope’; and he writes:  ’Not careless and light-hearted alone is the Gaelic nature; there is also beneath the loudest mirth a melancholy spirit; and if they let on to be without heed for anything but sport and revelry, there is nothing in it but letting on.’  There is grief and trouble, as I have shown, in many of his own songs, which the people have taken to their hearts so quickly; but there is also a touch of hope, of glad belief that, in spite of heavy days of change, all things are working for good at the last.

Here are some verses from a poem called ’There is a Change coming’:—­

    ’When that time comes it will come heavily;
    He will grow fat that was lean;
    He will grow lean that was fat,
    Without shelter for the head, without mirth, without help.

    ’The low will be raised up, says the poet;
    The thing that was high will be thrown down again;
    The world will be changed from end to end: 
    When that time comes it will come heavily.

    ’If you yourself see this thing coming,
    And the country without luck, without law, without authority,
    Swept with the storm, without knowledge, without strength,
    Remember my words, and don’t let your heart break.

    ’This life is like a tree;
    The top green, branches soft, the bark smooth and shining;
    But there is a little worm shut up in it
    Sucking at the sap all through the day.

    ’But from this old, cold, withered tree,
    A new plant will grow up;
    The old world will die without pity,
    But the young world will grow up on its grave.’