measured the Irish tradition
by another greater than itself, and was quick to feel any falling
asunder of the two, yet at many moments they seemed but one in his
imagination. Ireland, all through his poem of that name, speaks to him
with the voice of the great poets, and in _Ireland Dead_ she is still
mother of perfect heroism, but there doubt comes too.

Can it be they do repent
That they went, thy chivalry,
Those sad ways magnificent?

And in _Ways of War_, dedicated to John O'Leary, he dismissed the belief
in an heroic Ireland as but a dream.

A dream! a dream! an ancient dream!
Yet ere peace come to Innisfail,
Some weapons on some field must gleam,
Some burning glory fire the Gael.

That field may lie beneath the sun,
Fair for the treading of an host:
That field in realms of thought be won,
And armed hands do their uttermost:

Some way, to faithful Innisfail,
Shall come the majesty and awe
Of martial truth, that must prevail
To lay on all the eternal law.

I do not think either of us saw that, as belief in the possibility of
armed insurrection withered, the old romantic nationalism would wither
too, and that the young would become less ready to find pleasure in
whatever they believed to be literature. Poetical tragedy, and indeed
all the more intense forms of literature, had lost their hold on the
general mass of men in other countries as life grew safe, and the sense
of comedy which is the social bond in times of peace as tragic feeling
is in times of war, had become the inspiration of popular art. I always
knew this, but I believed that the memory of danger, and the reality of
it seemed near enough sometimes, would last long enough to give Ireland
her imaginative opportunity. I could not foresee that a new class,
which had begun to rise into power under the shadow of Parnell, would
change the nature of the Irish movement, which, needing no longer great
sacrifices, nor bringing any great risk to individuals, could do without
exceptional men, and those activities of the mind that are founded on
the exceptional moment.[4] John O'Leary had spent much of his thought in
an unavailing war with the agrarian party, believing it the root of
change, but the fox that crept into the badger's hole did not come from
there. Power passed to small shop-keepers, to clerks, to that very class
who had seemed to John O'Leary so ready to bend to the power of others,
to men who had risen above th