It would be difficult to find one who could be the subject of a
genuine lyric. Whitman, himself the most democratic poet of the modern
world, felt this deficiency in the literature of the later democracies,
and lamented the absence of great heroic figures. The poets have dropped
out of the divine procession, and sing a solitary song. They inspire
nobody to be great, and failing any finger-post in literature pointing
to true greatness our democracies too often take the huckster from his
stall, the drunkard from his pot, the lawyer from his court, and the
company promoter from the director's chair, and elect them as
representative men. We certainly do this in Ireland. It is--how many
hundred years since greatness guided us? In Ireland our history begins
with the most ancient of any in a mythical era when earth mingled with
heaven. The gods departed, the half-gods also, hero and saint after
that, and we have dwindled down to a petty peasant nationality, rural
and urban life alike mean in their externals. Yet the cavalcade, for
all its tattered habiliments, has not lost spiritual dignity.
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