I have no doubt that at this time began the lyric poetry of Ireland, and it reached, under Christian influences, a level of good, I can scarcely say excellent, work, at a time when no other lyrical poetry in any vernacular existed in Europe or the Islands.

It was religious, mystic, and chiefly pathetic--prayers, hymns, dirges, regrets in exile, occasional stories of the saints whose legendary acts were mixed with pagan elements, and most of these were adorned with illustrations drawn from natural beauty or from the doings of birds and beasts--a great affection for whom is prominent in the Celtic nature.

The Irish poets sent this lyric impulse into Iceland, Wales, and Scotland, and from Scotland into England; and the rise of English vernacular poetry instead of Latin in the seventh and eighth centuries is due to the impulse given by the Irish monasteries at Whitby and elsewhere in Northumbria.

The first rude lyric songs of Caedmon were probably modelled on the hymns of Colman.
One would think that poetry, which arose so early in a nation's life, would have developed fully.

But this was not the case in Ireland.