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Book, page 131 / 248 But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange! May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange. Padraic Colum has followed the suggestion of Synge, and made deep excavations for the foundations of his poetry. It grows up out of the soil like a hardy plant; and while it cannot be called major work, it has a wholesome, healthy earthiness. It is realistic in a different way from the town eclogues of James Stephens; it is not merely in the country, it is agricultural. His most important book is _Wild Earth_, published in Dublin in 1901, republished with additions in New York in 1916. The smell of the earth is pungent in such poems as _The Plougher_ and _The Drover_; while his masterpiece, _An Old Woman of the Roads_, voices the primeval and universal longing for the safe shelter of a home. I wonder what those who believe in the abolition of private property are going to do with this natural, human passion? Private property is not the result of an artificial social code--it is the result of an instinct. The first three stanzas of this poem indicate its quality, expressing the all but inexpressible love of women for each stick of furniture and every household article. O, to have a little house! To own the hearth and stool and all! The heaped up sods upon the fire, The pile of turf against the wall! To have a clock with weights and chains And pendulum swinging up and down! A dresser filled with shining delft, Speckled and white and blue and brown! I could be busy all the day Clearing and sweeping hearth and floor, And fixing on their shelf again My white and blue and speckled store! Lord Dunsany brought to public attention a new poet, Francis Ledwidge, whose one volume, _Songs of the Fields_, is full of promise. In October, 1914, he enlisted in Kitchener's first army, and was killed
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