of so very brief and fragmentary an episode. Though he deals only with the first stage, as it were, in the flight of Deirdre and Naois, Mr. Trench employs no fewer than three ghostly "Chanters" to serve as his mouthpieces. First of all we have the "Voice of Fintan, out of the First Century," speaking in blank verse; then the "Voice of Cir, out of a Century more remote, but unknown," speaking in a rugged, mainly anapastic, four-line stanza; then the "Voice of Urmael, out of the Sixth Century," speaking in an elaborate ten-line stanza of iambic pentameters; and, finally, the "Voice of Fintan," still in blank verse, takes up the tale afresh, and brings it to the point at which Mr. Trench chooses to leave off. As enabling the poet to experiment in different metres and styles, this machinery has clearly its

Otherwise, its artistic advantages entirely escape me. Mr. Trench may possibly conceive that each of the voices. has a peculiar fitness for that portion of the narrative which he assigns to it. This special adaptation is not very apparent; but supposing it to exist, it is certainly purchased at too great cost. The sense of artifice becomes overpowering when we have to summon three "Chanters " from their graves, in widely sundered centuries, to narrate the events of thirty hours. The oldest of the Chanters, indeed-Cir, to wit-was dead long before the date of the events he narrates, and saw them from his tomb. It may be said that there is no particular reason why he should not do so; but is there any particular reason why he should? The burden of proof lies on the poet. He ought, one would think, to make us sensible of some imperative reason for such a gigantic draft on our powers of make-believe.

When he returns to the theme, as I trust he may, and tells the actual story of Deirdre and the Sons of Usnach, let him by all means speak with the Voice of Fintan, or at any rate in the measure adopted by that "chanter divine." Mr. Trench's blank verse is very strong and

resonant: a little lacking in suppleness, perhaps ; but that would come when he warmed to his theme. His description of the preparations for the wedding feast in the palace of King Connachar, of the arrival and dismissal of Naois, and of the discovery that Deirdre has fled, is exceedingly spirited and picturesque throughout. In the following

passage, the painting of the sunset is not in Mr. Trench's happiest manner; but how admirable is the fourth line, and how original and beautiful the last three :

But while outside the black roof on the mount
Outwafted was the gold divinity

On swooning wings, the Lake of Pearls far down
Curdled beneath the unseen seed of rain.
Ramparts run there that misty prisoners
Bore once in bags of slime up from the lake
For barriers of the house they most abhorr'd.
And on the hillside, where that rampart old
Dips lowest to the lakeward, Deirdre stood,
Hearing from distant ridges the faint bleat

Of lambs perturb the dusk-bleats shivering out

Like wool from thorns-there the young Deirdre stood.

While Deirdre is in the dusk by the lake, Connachar, on the hill above, is receiving Naois and his brothers "Back from a hosting and a desperate prey":

Hanging on the young man's lips

The hosts sway'd round him, and above the press
Connachar, glittering all in torques of gold
And writhen armlets, listen'd from the mound
Of judgment, by the doom-oak at his door.
His beak'd helm took the sunset, but he held
His flint-red eyes in shadow and averse.

At once pictorial and dramatic, these two concluding lines are perfect in vision, masterly in condensation. Here, again, is an admirable image describing the moment at which Connachar divines the flight of Deirdre:

And he, consummate lord of fear,

Our never-counsell'd lord, the Forest-odour'd,

That kept about his heart a zone of chill,
Smiled, though within the gateway of his fort
A surmise crept, as 'neath a load of rushes
Creeps in the stabber.

No less striking, and entirely in the spirit of the saga, is the speech of the old nurse when Connachar ironically asks her if her tears can bring Deirdre back.

But she looked up and said: "How shall I bring her?

Look now outside thy door, O Connachar!

The black oak with the vision-dripping boughs
Whose foot is in thy fathers' blood of pride
Stagger'd as I came up in the night-blast.
In vain it stretches angers to the sky:
It cannot keep the white moon from escape
To sail the tempest; nor, O king, canst thou!"

The phrase which describes the oak "stretching angers to the sky" is probably as daring a metonymy as any in literature-perhaps a little over-intrepid.

The Voices of Cir and Urmael say many fine and memorable things, but are to me, on the whole, much less pleasing than that of Fintan. The jolting measure of Cir, though its roughness is, of course, intentional, strikes me as exceedingly wearisome. One quatrain certainly not of the roughest-may serve as a specimen. Naois, with his two brothers, is fleeing from Connachar's hall, and hears Deirdre call him from afar :

"O Aillean, O Ardan, hark! What cry was that? For some cry Rang on my soul's shield; hark! hear ye it now?"

But they rein'd not their weary chariots, shouting reply, "It was fate, 'twas the curst hag that is crouch'd on a bough!"

The stanza of Urmael is a peculiar one. It begins with six lines of alternate rhymes; then comes a single unrhymed line; and finally a rhyming triplet: thus-a ba ba bx c c c. It does not seem to me that the beauty of this stanza compensates for its difficulty; nor is its movement very well

suited to narrative purposes. In spite of many individual passages of striking merit in this section, one is glad when the Voice of Fintan again makes itself heard, in the warnings addressed by the old Druid Cathva to Naois, and in this noble retort of Deirdre's hero-lover:

Then spoke Naois, keeping back his wrath,

"Strange is it one so old should threat with Death!
Are not both thou and I, are not we all,

By Death drawn from the wickets of the womb—
Seal'd with the thumb of Death when we are born?

As for friends lost (though I believe thee not),

A man is nourish'd by his enemies

No less than by his friends. But as for her,
Because no man shall deem me noble still,-

Because I like a sea-gull of the isles

May be driven forth-branded and nationless,—
Because I shall no more, perhaps, behold
The deep-set eaves on that all-sacred house,-
Because the gather'd battle of the powers
Controlling fortune, breaks upon my head,-
Yea! for that very cause, lack'd other cause,
In love the closer,-quenchless, - absolute,
Would Deirdre choose to follow me. Such pains,
Seër, the kingdoms are of souls like hers!"
He spoke; he felt her life-blood at his side
Sprung of the West, the last of human shores,
Throbbing, "Look forth on everlastingness!
Through the coil'd waters and the ebb of light
I'll be thy sail! "'

A few lines more, and the episode comes to an abrupt end. My quotations have left the reader in no doubt, I trust, as to the essentially poetic quality of Mr. Trench's thought and style. His work abounds in images and phrases beyond the reach of any but a true poet-this line, for instance, which tells how, on the lark-haunted upland, the lovers drank in

from the recesses of the sun Tremble of those wings that beat light into music.