THE • YEAR'S • AT • THE • SPRING
Turn back four pages and you will find:
For the good are always the merry,
Save by an evil chance,
And the merry love the fiddle,
And the merry love to dance.
This, by W. B. Yeats, represents a much pleasanter type of thought. In these verses of the Irish poet we have the gaiety of a man who, knowing all about religion, can afford not to be sentimental. And here is the spirit of the book.
The happiness of those who love the earth is so different from the pleasure by proxy of those that abide it in the idea of going to some Heaven afterward. Mr Yeats' "Fiddler of Dooney" is that type of fellow who accepts the symbolism of a national religion only in so far as it may help him to enjoy the condition of being alive. And in his "Lake Isle of Innisfree" he imagines a Paradise which is of the earth only. And he takes you there by reason of his own longing.
VI
This anthology, as a whole, is romantic; its language is simple; its philosophy is that of everyday life, and is entirely undisturbing. It contains a large proportion of poems by authors who write more particularly for children, such as P. R. Chalmers, Rose Fyleman, Queenie Scott-Hopper, and Marion St John Webb, or of children s poems by authors who do not actually specialize in that style, such as "The Ragwort,"
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