—­July 15, 1897

The Fountains of Youth

I heard that a strange woman, dwelling on the western coast, who had the repute of healing by faery power, said a little before she died, “There’s a cure for all things in the well at Ballykeele”:  and I know not why at first, but her words lingered with me and repeated themselves again and again, and by degrees to keep fellowship with the thought they enshrined came more antique memories, all I had heard or dreamed of the Fountains of Youth; for I could not doubt, having heard these fountains spoken of by people like herself, that her idea had a druid ancestry.  Perhaps she had bent over the pool until its darkness grew wan and bright and troubled with the movements of a world within and the agitations of a tempestuous joy; or she had heard, as many still hear, the wild call to “Come away,” from entreating lips and flame-encircled faces, or was touched by the star-tipped fingers, and her heart from the faery world came never back again to dwell as before at ease in this isle of grey mists and misty sunlight.  These things are not fable only, for Ireland is still a land of the gods, and in out of the way places we often happen on wonderlands of romance and mystic beauty.  I have spoken to people who have half parted from their love for the world in a longing for the pagan paradise of Tir-na-nog, and many who are outwardly obeisant to another religion are altogether pagan in their hearts, and Meave the Queen of the Western Host is more to them than Mary Queen of Heaven.  I was told of this Meave that lately she was seen in vision by a peasant, who made a poem on her, calling her “The Beauty of all Beauty”:  and the man who told me this of his friend had himself seen the jetted fountains of fire-mist winding up in spiral whirls to the sky, and he too had heard of the Fountains of Youth.

The natural longing in every heart that its youth shall not perish makes one ponder and sigh over this magical past when youth, ecstasy, and beauty welled from a bountiful nature at the sung appeal of her druid children holding hand in hand around the sacred cairn.  Our hearts remember: 

A wind blows by us fleeting
        Along the reedy strand: 
And sudden our hearts are beating
        Again in the druid-land.

All silver-pale, enchanted,
        The air-world lies on the hills,
And the fields of light are planted
        With the dawn-frail daffodils.

The yellow leaves are blowing
        The hour when the wind-god weaves,
And hides the stars and their glowing
        In a mist of daffodil leaves.

We stand in glimmering whiteness,
        Each face like the day-star fair,
And rayed about in its brightness
        With a dawn of daffodil air.

And through each white robe gleaming,
        And under each snow-white breast,
Is a golden dream-light streaming
        Like eve through an opal west.