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ing to do. It's better to leave the blustering and tremulo-heroism to the middle classes; they do it so much better. Do you remember that week-end last March when you brought Burne Holiday from Princeton to see me? What a magnificent boy he is! It gave me a frightful shock afterward when you wrote that he thought me splendid; how could he be so deceived? Splendid is the one thing that neither you nor I are. We are many other things--we're extraordinary, we're clever, we could be said, I suppose, to be brilliant. We can attract people, we can make atmosphere, we can almost lose our Celtic souls in Celtic subtleties, we can almost always have our own way; but splendid--rather not! I am going to Rome with a wonderful dossier and letters of introduction that cover every capital in Europe, and there will be "no small stir" when I get there. How I wish you were with me! This sounds like a rather cynical paragraph, not at all the sort of thing that a middle-aged clergyman should write to a youth about to depart for the war; the only excuse is that the middle-aged clergyman is talking to himself. There are deep things in us and you know what they are as well as I do. We have great faith, though yours at present is uncrystallized; we have a terrible honesty that all our sophistry cannot destroy and, above all, a childlike simplicity that keeps us from ever being really malicious. I have written a keen for you which follows. I am sorry your cheeks are not up to the description I have written of them, but you _will_ smoke and read all night-- At any rate here it is: A Lament for a Foster Son, and He going to the War Against the King of Foreign. "Ochone He is gone from me the son of my mind And he in his golden youth like Angus Oge Angus of the bright birds And his mind strong and subtle like the mind of Cuchulin on Muirtheme. Awirra sthrue His brow is as white as the milk of the cows of Maeve And his cheeks like the cherries of the tree And it bending down to Mary and she feeding the Son of God. Aveelia Vrone His hair is like the golden collar of the Kings at Tara And his eyes like the four gray seas of Erin. And they swept with the mists of rain. Mavrone go Gudyo He to be in the joyful and red battle Amongst the chieftains and they doing great deeds of valor His life to go from him It is the chords of my own soul would be loosed. A Vich Deelish
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