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