E'en those who still its knowledge kept
Have thought the living music dead.

And some, to save the lore from death,
With modern arts each tale would deck,
Inflate its rhymes with magic breath,
As if to buoy a sinking wreck.

They graft new morbid magic dreams
On tales where beating life is felt:
In each romance find mystic gleams,
And traces of the "moody Celt."

Yet, though with awe the grassy mound
That fairies haunt, is marked to-day;
And though in ancient tales are found
Dim forms of gods, long passed away;

Though later men to magic turned,
Inserting many a Druid spell;
And ill the masters' craft had learned
Who told the tales, and told them well;

No tale should need a magic dress
Or modern art, its life to give:
Each for itself, or great, or less,
Should speak, if it deserves to live.

Think not a dull, a scribal pen
Dead legends wrote, half-known, and feared: