our literature has been filled with a less noble life. I think a
due may be found in the withdrawal of thought from nature, the
great mother who, is the giver of all life, and without whose life
ideals become inoperative and listless dwellers in the heart. The
eyes of the ancient Gael were fixed in wonder on the rocks and hills,
and the waste places of the earth were piled with phantasmal palaces
where the Sidhe sat on their thrones. Everywhere there was life,
and as they saw so they felt. To conceive of nature in any way,
as beautiful and living, as friendly or hostile, is to receive from
her in like measure out of her fullness. With whatever face we
approach the mirror a similar face approaches ours. "Let him
approach it, saying, 'This is the Mighty,' he becomes mighty," says
an ancient scripture, teaching us that as our aspiration is so will
be our inspiration and power. Out of this comradeship with earth
there came a commingling of natures, and we do not know when we
read who are the Sidhe and who are human. The great energies are
all in the heroes. They bound to themselves, like the Talkend,
the strength of the fire, the brightness of the sun, and the
swiftness of the wind. They seem truly the earth-born. The waves
respond to their deeds; the elemental creatures respond and there
are clashing echoes and allies innumerable, and armies in the air
continuing their battles illimitably beyond: a proud race, who
felt with bursting heart the heavens were watching them, who defied
their gods and exiled them to have free play for their own deeds.
A very different humanity indeed from those who have come to walk
the earth with humility, who are afraid of heaven and its rulers,
and whose dread is the greatest of all sins, for in it is a denial
of their own divinity. Surely the sight heroes is more welcome
to the King, in whose heaven are sworded seraphim, than the bowed
knees and the spirits who make themselves as worms in His sight.