"A.E."

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 972, 12 November 1910, Page 7

"A.E."

—; o——All lovers of the fino work of tho present-day Irish poets know "A.E.," Tho London "Daily News" gossips pleasantly about him:—

What is tho best description ever given by the poets of a purely town thing, like a shop window, or a street lamp, or a motor-bus? Mr. Richard Le Galfienno's "iron lilies of tho Strand" as a description of street lamps is an instance—a rather precious one—of the sort of thing wo mean. Tho October number of "Tho Quest" contains a poem by "A. E./> entitled "The City," with a fino line 011 "tho trams, the high-built glittering galleons of the streets." incidentally "A. E.V poem is also interesting because he is probtho first to discover tho spiritual significance of electric tramcars.

"A. E.," by tho way, little though ho is known in England, is considered by many pooplo to be tho most remarkable man iu contemporary Ireland. A mystic—a poet, in wboso work, n good critic lias said, "there is something of cosmic utteranco seldom heard in poetry sinco Emerson"—a painter v/lioso pearly and mysterious canvases are treasured by an ever-growing circlo of enthusiasts —a practical journalist, who edits "The Irish Homestead," the weekly paper of the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, of which Sir Horace Plunkett is the head—lie is at once tho most practical of idealists, and tho most idealistic of agricultural philosophers. "A. E." —or to give him his real name, Mr. George Russell —is a contemporary of Sir. W. B. Yeats, and we think bo and Mr. Yeats have dedicated hooks to each other. Mr. Russell, however, as will liavo been gathered, is much less exclusively an artist than Mr. Yeats. Ho recently made the Dublin papers cxciting by his controversy with Mr. T. W. Russell on agricultural banks nnd other things which sound equally unpromising for controversial purposes: