No More Learning

And I have made a curse upon old age and upon the old men, and listen
now while I give it out to you. ' And this is what he said--

The poet, Owen Hanrahan, under a bush of may
Calls down a curse on his own head because it withers grey;
Then on the speckled eagle cock of Ballygawley Hill,
Because it is the oldest thing that knows of cark and ill;
And on the yew that has been green from the times out of mind
By the Steep Place of the Strangers and the Gap of the Wind;
And on the great grey pike that broods in Castle Dargan Lake
Having in his long body a many a hook and ache;
Then curses he old Paddy Bruen of the Well of Bride
Because no hair is on his head and drowsiness inside.
Then Paddy's neighbour, Peter Hart, and Michael Gill, his friend,
Because their wandering histories are never at an end.
And then old Shemus Cullinan, shepherd of the Green Lands
Because he holds two crutches between his crooked hands;
Then calls a curse from the dark North upon old Paddy Doe,
Who plans to lay his withering head upon a breast of snow,
Who plans to wreck a singing voice and break a merry heart,
He bids a curse hang over him till breath and body part;
But he calls down a blessing on the blossom of the may,
Because it comes in beauty, and in beauty blows away.

He said it over to the children verse by verse till all of them could
say a part of it, and some that were the quickest could say the whole
of it.

'That will do for to-day,' he said then. 'And what you have to do now
is to go out and sing that song for a while, to the tune of the Green
Bunch of Rushes, to everyone you meet, and to the old men themselves. '

'I will do that,' said one of the little lads; 'I know old Paddy Doe
well. Last Saint John's Eve we dropped a mouse down his chimney, but
this is better than a mouse. '

'I will go into the town of Sligo and sing it in the street,' said
another of the boys. 'Do that,' said Hanrahan, 'and go into the
Burrough and tell it to Margaret Rooney and Mary Gillis, and bid them
sing to it, and to make the beggars and the bacachs sing it wherever
they go. ' The children ran out then, full of pride and of mischief,
calling out the song as they ran, and Hanrahan knew there was no
danger it would not be heard.

He was sitting outside the door the next morning, looking at his
scholars as they came by in twos and threes. They were nearly all come,
and he was considering the place of the sun in the heavens to know
whether it was time to begin, when he heard a sound that was like the
buzzing of a swarm of bees in the air, or the rushing of a hidden river
in time of flood. Then he saw a crowd coming up to the cabin from the
road, and he took notice that all the crowd was made up of old men, and
that the leaders of it were Paddy Bruen, Michael Gill and Paddy Doe,
and there was not one in the crowd but had in his hand an ash stick or
a blackthorn. As soon as they caught sight of him, the sticks began to
wave hither and thither like branches in a storm, and the old feet to
run.

He waited no longer, but made off up the hill behind the cabin till he
was out of their sight.

After a while he came back round the hill, where he was hidden by the
furze growing along a ditch. And when he came in sight of his cabin he
saw that all the old men had gathered around it, and one of them was
just at that time thrusting a rake with a wisp of lighted straw on it
into the thatch.

'My grief,' he said, 'I have set Old Age and Time and Weariness and
Sickness against me, and I must go wandering again. And, O Blessed
Queen of Heaven,' he said, 'protect me from the Eagle of Ballygawley,
the Yew Tree of the Steep Place of the Strangers, the Pike of Castle
Dargan Lake, and from the lighted wisps of their kindred, the Old Men! '




HANRAHAN'S VISION


IT was in the month of June Hanrahan was on the road near Sligo, but he
did not go into the town, but turned towards Beinn Bulben; for there
were thoughts of the old times coming upon him, and he had no mind to
meet with common men. And as he walked he was singing to himself a song
that had come to him one time in his dreams:

O Death's old bony finger
Will never find us there
In the high hollow townland
Where love's to give and to spare;
Where boughs have fruit and blossom
At all times of the year;
Where rivers are running over
With red beer and brown beer.
An old man plays the bagpipes
In a gold and silver wood;
Queens, their eyes blue like the ice,
Are dancing in a crowd.

The little fox he murmured,
'O what of the world's bane? '
The sun was laughing sweetly,
The moon plucked at my rein;
But the little red fox murmured,
'O do not pluck at his rein,
He is riding to the townland
That is the world's bane. '

When their hearts are so high
That they would come to blows,
They unhook their heavy swords
From golden and silver boughs:
But all that are killed in battle
Awaken to life again:
It is lucky that their story
Is not known among men.
For O, the strong farmers
That would let the spade lie,
Their hearts would be like a cup
That somebody had drunk dry.

Michael will unhook his trumpet
From a bough overhead,
And blow a little noise
When the supper has been spread.
Gabriel will come from the water
With a fish tail, and talk
Of wonders that have happened
On wet roads where men walk,
And lift up an old horn
Of hammered silver, and drink
Till he has fallen asleep
Upon the starry brink.

Hanrahan had begun to climb the mountain then, and he gave over
singing, for it was a long climb for him, and every now and again he
had to sit down and to rest for a while. And one time he was resting he
took notice of a wild briar bush, with blossoms on it, that was growing
beside a rath, and it brought to mind the wild roses he used to bring
to Mary Lavelle, and to no woman after her. And he tore off a little
branch of the bush, that had buds on it and open blossoms, and he went
on with his song:

The little fox he murmured,
'O what of the world's bane? '
The sun was laughing sweetly,
The moon plucked at my rein;
But the little red fox murmured,
'O do not pluck at his rein,
He is riding to the townland
That is the world's bane. '

And he went on climbing the hill, and left the rath, and there came
to his mind some of the old poems that told of lovers, good and bad,
and of some that were awakened from the sleep of the grave itself by
the strength of one another's love, and brought away to a life in some
shadowy place, where they are waiting for the judgment and banished
from the face of God.

And at last, at the fall of day, he came to the Steep Gap of the
Strangers, and there he laid himself down along a ridge of rock, and
looked into the valley, that was full of grey mist spreading from
mountain to mountain.

And it seemed to him as he looked that the mist changed to shapes of
shadowy men and women, and his heart began to beat with the fear and
the joy of the sight. And his hands, that were always restless, began
to pluck off the leaves of the roses on the little branch, and he
watched them as they went floating down into the valley in a little
fluttering troop.

Suddenly he heard a faint music, a music that had more laughter in it
and more crying than all the music of this world. And his heart rose
when he heard that, and he began to laugh out loud, for he knew that
music was made by some who had a beauty and a greatness beyond the
people of this world. And it seemed to him that the little soft rose
leaves as they went fluttering down into the valley began to change
their shape till they looked like a troop of men and women far off in
the mist, with the colour of the roses on them. And then that colour
changed to many colours, and what he saw was a long line of tall
beautiful young men, and of queen-women, that were not going from
him but coming towards him and past him, and their faces were full of
tenderness for all their proud looks, and were very pale and worn, as
if they were seeking and ever seeking for high sorrowful things. And
shadowy arms were stretched out of the mist as if to take hold of them,
but could not touch them, for the quiet that was about them could not
be broken. And before them and beyond them, but at a distance as if in
reverence, there were other shapes, sinking and rising and coming and
going, and Hanrahan knew them by their whirling flight to be the Sidhe,
the ancient defeated gods; and the shadowy arms did not rise to take
hold of them, for they were of those that can neither sin nor obey. And
they all lessened then in the distance, and they seemed to be going
towards the white door that is in the side of the mountain.

The mist spread out before him now like a deserted sea washing the
mountains with long grey waves, but while he was looking at it, it
began to fill again with a flowing broken witless life that was a part
of itself, and arms and pale heads covered with tossing hair appeared
in the greyness. It rose higher and higher till it was level with the
edge of the steep rock, and then the shapes grew to be solid, and a
new procession half lost in mist passed very slowly with uneven steps,
and in the midst of each shadow there was something shining in the
starlight. They came nearer and nearer, and Hanrahan saw that they also
were lovers, and that they had heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts,
and they were looking and ever looking on their own faces in one
another's mirrors. They passed on, sinking downward as they passed, and
other shapes rose in their place, and these did not keep side by side,
but followed after one another, holding out wild beckoning arms, and he
saw that those who were followed were women, and as to their heads they
were beyond all beauty, but as to their bodies they were but shadows
without life, and their long hair was moving and trembling about them,
as if it lived with some terrible life of its own. And then the mist
rose of a sudden and hid them, and then a light gust of wind blew them
away towards the north-east, and covered Hanrahan at the same time with
a white wing of cloud.

He stood up trembling and was going to turn away from the valley,
when he saw two dark and half-hidden forms standing as if in the air
just beyond the rock, and one of them that had the sorrowful eyes of
a beggar said to him in a woman's voice, 'Speak to me, for no one in
this world or any other world has spoken to me for seven hundred years. '

'Tell me who are those that have passed by,' said Hanrahan.

'Those that passed first,' the woman said, 'are the lovers that had the
greatest name in the old times, Blanad and Deirdre and Grania and their
dear comrades, and a great many that are not so well known but are as
well loved. And because it was not only the blossom of youth they were
looking for in one another, but the beauty that is as lasting as the
night and the stars, the night and the stars hold them for ever from
the warring and the perishing, in spite of the wars and the bitterness
their love brought into the world. And those that came next,' she said,
'and that still breathe the sweet air and have the mirrors in their
hearts, are not put in songs by the poets, because they sought only to
triumph one over the other, and so to prove their strength and beauty,
and out of this they made a kind of love. And as to the women with
shadow-bodies, they desired neither to triumph nor to love but only
to be loved, and there is no blood in their hearts or in their bodies
until it flows through them from a kiss, and their life is but for a
moment. All these are unhappy, but I am the unhappiest of all, for
I am Dervadilla, and this is Dermot, and it was our sin brought the
Norman into Ireland. And the curses of all the generations are upon
us, and none are punished as we are punished. It was but the blossom
of the man and of the woman we loved in one another, the dying beauty
of the dust and not the everlasting beauty. When we died there was no
lasting unbreakable quiet about us, and the bitterness of the battles
we brought into Ireland turned to our own punishment. We go wandering
together for ever, but Dermot that was my lover sees me always as a
body that has been a long time in the ground, and I know that is the
way he sees me. Ask me more, ask me more, for all the years have left
their wisdom in my heart, and no one has listened to me for seven
hundred years. '

A great terror had fallen upon Hanrahan, and lifting his arms above his
head he screamed out loud three times, and the cattle in the valley
lifted their heads and lowed, and the birds in the wood at the edge
of the mountain awaked out of their sleep and fluttered through the
trembling leaves. But a little below the edge of the rock, the troop of
rose leaves still fluttered in the air, for the gateway of Eternity had
opened and shut again in one beat of the heart.




THE DEATH OF HANRAHAN


HANRAHAN, that was never long in one place, was back again among the
villages that are at the foot of Slieve Echtge, Illeton and Scalp and
Ballylee, stopping sometimes in one house and sometimes in another,
and finding a welcome in every place for the sake of the old times and
of his poetry and his learning. There was some silver and some copper
money in the little leather bag under his coat, but it was seldom he
needed to take anything from it, for it was little he used, and there
was not one of the people that would have taken payment from him. His
hand had grown heavy on the blackthorn he leaned on, and his cheeks
were hollow and worn, but so far as food went, potatoes and milk and a
bit of oaten cake, he had what he wanted of it; and it is not on the
edge of so wild and boggy a place as Echtge a mug of spirits would be
wanting, with the taste of the turf smoke on it. He would wander about
the big wood at Kinadife, or he would sit through many hours of the
day among the rushes about Lake Belshragh, listening to the streams
from the hills, or watching the shadows in the brown bog pools; sitting
so quiet as not to startle the deer that came down from the heather
to the grass and the tilled fields at the fall of night. As the days
went by it seemed as if he was beginning to belong to some world out of
sight and misty, that has for its mearing the colours that are beyond
all other colours and the silences that are beyond all silences of
this world. And sometimes he would hear coming and going in the wood
music that when it stopped went from his memory like a dream; and once
in the stillness of midday he heard a sound like the clashing of many
swords, that went on for a long time without any break. And at the fall
of night and at moonrise the lake would grow to be like a gateway of
silver and shining stones, and there would come from its silence the
faint sound of keening and of frightened laughter broken by the wind,
and many pale beckoning hands.

He was sitting looking into the water one evening in harvest time,
thinking of all the secrets that were shut into the lakes and the
mountains, when he heard a cry coming from the south, very faint at
first, but getting louder and clearer as the shadow of the rushes grew
longer, till he could hear the words, 'I am beautiful, I am beautiful;
the birds in the air, the moths under the leaves, the flies over the
water look at me, for they never saw any one so beautiful as myself. I
am young; I am young: look upon me, mountains; look upon me, perishing
woods, for my body will shine like the white waters when you have been
hurried away. You and the whole race of men, and the race of the beasts
and the race of the fish and the winged race are dropping like a candle
that is nearly burned out, but I laugh out because I am in my youth. '
The voice would break off from time to time, as if tired, and then it
would begin again, calling out always the same words, 'I am beautiful,
I am beautiful. ' Presently the bushes at the edge of the little lake
trembled for a moment, and a very old woman forced her way among them,
and passed by Hanrahan, walking with very slow steps. Her face was of
the colour of earth, and more wrinkled than the face of any old hag
that was ever seen, and her grey hair was hanging in wisps, and the
rags she was wearing did not hide her dark skin that was roughened by
all weathers. She passed by him with her eyes wide open, and her head
high, and her arms hanging straight beside her, and she went into the
shadow of the hills towards the west.

A sort of dread came over Hanrahan when he saw her, for he knew her to
be one Winny Byrne, that went begging from place to place crying always
the same cry, and he had often heard that she had once such wisdom that
all the women of the neighbours used to go looking for advice from her,
and that she had a voice so beautiful that men and women would come
from every part to hear her sing at a wake or a wedding; and that the
Others, the great Sidhe, had stolen her wits one Samhain night many
years ago, when she had fallen asleep on the edge of a rath, and had
seen in her dreams the servants of Echtge of the hills.

And as she vanished away up the hillside, it seemed as if her cry, 'I
am beautiful, I am beautiful,' was coming from among the stars in the
heavens.

There was a cold wind creeping among the rushes, and Hanrahan began to
shiver, and he rose up to go to some house where there would be a fire
on the hearth. But instead of turning down the hill as he was used, he
went on up the hill, along the little track that was maybe a road and
maybe the dry bed of a stream. It was the same way Winny had gone, and
it led to the little cabin where she stopped when she stopped in any
place at all. He walked very slowly up the hill as if he had a great
load on his back, and at last he saw a light a little to the left, and
he thought it likely it was from Winny's house it was shining, and he
turned from the path to go to it. But clouds had come over the sky,
and he could not well see his way, and after he had gone a few steps
his foot slipped and he fell into a bog drain, and though he dragged
himself out of it, holding on to the roots of the heather, the fall
had given him a great shake, and he felt better fit to lie down than
to go travelling. But he had always great courage, and he made his way
on, step by step, till at last he came to Winny's cabin, that had no
window, but the light was shining from the door. He thought to go into
it and to rest for a while, but when he came to the door he did not see
Winny inside it, but what he saw was four old grey-haired women playing
cards, but Winny herself was not among them. Hanrahan sat down on a
heap of turf beside the door, for he was tired out and out, and had no
wish for talking or for card-playing, and his bones and his joints
aching the way they were. He could hear the four women talking as they
played, and calling out their hands. And it seemed to him that they
were saying, like the strange man in the barn long ago: 'Spades and
Diamonds, Courage and Power. Clubs and Hearts, Knowledge and Pleasure. '
And he went on saying those words over and over to himself; and whether
or not he was in his dreams, the pain that was in his shoulder never
left him. And after a while the four women in the cabin began to
quarrel, and each one to say the other had not played fair, and their
voices grew from loud to louder, and their screams and their curses,
till at last the whole air was filled with the noise of them around and
above the house, and Hanrahan, hearing it between sleep and waking,
said: 'That is the sound of the fighting between the friends and the
ill-wishers of a man that is near his death. And I wonder,' he said,
'who is the man in this lonely place that is near his death. '

It seemed as if he had been asleep a long time, and he opened his eyes,
and the face he saw over him was the old wrinkled face of Winny of the
Cross Roads. She was looking hard at him, as if to make sure he was not
dead, and she wiped away the blood that had grown dry on his face with
a wet cloth, and after a while she partly helped him and partly lifted
him into the cabin, and laid him down on what served her for a bed. She
gave him a couple of potatoes from a pot on the fire, and, what served
him better, a mug of spring water. He slept a little now and again, and
sometimes he heard her singing to herself as she moved about the house,
and so the night wore away. When the sky began to brighten with the
dawn he felt for the bag where his little store of money was, and held
it out to her, and she took out a bit of copper and a bit of silver
money, but she let it drop again as if it was nothing to her, maybe
because it was not money she was used to beg for, but food and rags; or
maybe because the rising of the dawn was filling her with pride and a
new belief in her own great beauty. She went out and cut a few armfuls
of heather, and brought it in and heaped it over Hanrahan, saying
something about the cold of the morning, and while she did that he took
notice of the wrinkles in her face, and the greyness of her hair, and
the broken teeth that were black and full of gaps. And when he was well
covered with the heather she went out of the door and away down the
side of the mountain, and he could hear her cry, 'I am beautiful, I
am beautiful,' getting less and less as she went, till at last it died
away altogether.

Hanrahan lay there through the length of the day, in his pains and his
weakness, and when the shadows of the evening were falling he heard
her voice again coming up the hillside, and she came in and boiled the
potatoes and shared them with him the same way as before. And one day
after another passed like that, and the weight of his flesh was heavy
about him. But little by little as he grew weaker he knew there were
some greater than himself in the room with him, and that the house
began to be filled with them; and it seemed to him they had all power
in their hands, and that they might with one touch of the hand break
down the wall the hardness of pain had built about him, and take him
into their own world. And sometimes he could hear voices, very faint
and joyful, crying from the rafters or out of the flame on the hearth,
and other times the whole house was filled with music that went through
it like a wind. And after a while his weakness left no place for
pain, and there grew up about him a great silence like the silence in
the heart of a lake, and there came through it like the flame of a
rushlight the faint joyful voices ever and always.

One morning he heard music somewhere outside the door, and as the day
passed it grew louder and louder until it drowned the faint joyful
voices, and even Winny's cry upon the hillside at the fall of evening.
About midnight and in a moment, the walls seemed to melt away and to
leave his bed floating on a pale misty light that shone on every side
as far as the eye could see; and after the first blinding of his eyes
he saw that it was full of great shadowy figures rushing here and there.

At the same time the music came very clearly to him, and he knew that
it was but the continual clashing of swords.

'I am after my death,' he said, 'and in the very heart of the music of
Heaven. O Cherubim and Seraphim, receive my soul! '

At his cry the light where it was nearest to him filled with sparks of
yet brighter light, and he saw that these were the points of swords
turned towards his heart; and then a sudden flame, bright and burning
like God's love or God's hate, swept over the light and went out and
he was in darkness. At first he could see nothing, for all was as dark
as if there was black bog earth about him, but all of a sudden the
fire blazed up as if a wisp of straw had been thrown upon it. And as
he looked at it, the light was shining on the big pot that was hanging
from a hook, and on the flat stone where Winny used to bake a cake now
and again, and on the long rusty knife she used to be cutting the roots
of the heather with, and on the long blackthorn stick he had brought
into the house himself. And when he saw those four things, some memory
came into Hanrahan's mind, and strength came back to him, and he rose
sitting up in the bed, and he said very loud and clear: 'The Cauldron,
the Stone, the Sword, the Spear. What are they? Who do they belong to?
And I have asked the question this time,' he said.

And then he fell back again, weak, and the breath going from him.

Winny Byrne, that had been tending the fire, came over then, having her
eyes fixed on the bed; and the faint laughing voices began crying out
again, and a pale light, grey like a wave, came creeping over the room,
and he did not know from what secret world it came. He saw Winny's
withered face and her withered arms that were grey like crumbled earth,
and weak as he was he shrank back farther towards the wall. And then
there came out of the mud-stiffened rags arms as white and as shadowy
as the foam on a river, and they were put about his body, and a voice
that he could hear well but that seemed to come from a long way off
said to him in a whisper: 'You will go looking for me no more upon the
breasts of women. '

'Who are you? ' he said then.

'I am one of the lasting people, of the lasting unwearied Voices, that
make my dwelling in the broken and the dying, and those that have lost
their wits; and I came looking for you, and you are mine until the
whole world is burned out like a candle that is spent. And look up
now,' she said, 'for the wisps that are for our wedding are lighted. '

He saw then that the house was crowded with pale shadowy hands, and
that every hand was holding what was sometimes like a wisp lighted for
a marriage, and sometimes like a tall white candle for the dead.

When the sun rose on the morning of the morrow Winny of the Cross Roads
rose up from where she was sitting beside the body, and began her
begging from townland to townland, singing the same song as she walked,
'I am beautiful, I am beautiful. The birds in the air, the moths under
the leaves, the flies over the water look at me. Look at me, perishing
woods, for my body will be shining like the lake water after you have
been hurried away. You and the old race of men, and the race of the
beasts, and the race of the fish, and the winged race, are wearing away
like a candle that has been burned out. But I laugh out loud, because I
am in my youth. '

She did not come back that night or any night to the cabin, and it was
not till the end of two days that the turf cutters going to the bog
found the body of Red Owen Hanrahan, and gathered men to wake him and
women to keen him, and gave him a burying worthy of so great a poet.




_Printed by_ A. H. BULLEN, _at The Shakespeare Head Press,
Stratford-on-Avon. _

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Varied hyphenation was retained
such as Drumahair on page 3 and Drum-a-hair on page 96.

Page 85, repeated word "a" removed from text. Original read (I fling a
a pebble on)

Page 191, "unforgetable" changed to "unforgettable" (most unforgettable
thoughts)

Page 235, "san" changed to "sang" (sang Hanrahan, and his)





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? The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of
William Butler Yeats, Vol. 6 (of 8), by William Butler Yeats

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
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Title: The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 6 (of 8)
Ideas of Good and Evil

Author: William Butler Yeats

Release Date: August 5, 2015 [EBook #49613]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF W B YEATS, VOL 6 ***




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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS




IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL
BEING THE SIXTH VOLUME OF
THE COLLECTED WORKS IN
VERSE & PROSE OF WILLIAM
BUTLER YEATS :: IMPRINTED
AT THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD
PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON
MCMVIII


LONDON:
CHAPMAN & HALL
LIMITED




CONTENTS


PAGE

WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'? 1

SPEAKING TO THE PSALTERY 13

MAGIC 23

THE HAPPIEST OF THE POETS 55

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY'S POETRY 71

AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON 111

WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE IMAGINATION 131

WILLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE
'DIVINE COMEDY' 138

SYMBOLISM IN PAINTING 176

THE SYMBOLISM OF POETRY 185

THE THEATRE 200

THE CELTIC ELEMENT IN LITERATURE 210

THE AUTUMN OF THE BODY 230

THE MOODS 238

THE BODY OF THE FATHER CHRISTIAN ROSENCRUX 240

THE RETURN OF ULYSSES 243

IRELAND AND THE ARTS 249

THE GALWAY PLAINS 259

EMOTION OF MULTITUDE 264




WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?


I THINK it was a Young Ireland Society that set my mind running on
'popular poetry. ' We used to discuss everything that was known to us
about Ireland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history. We
had no Gaelic, but paid great honour to the Irish poets who wrote in
English, and quoted them in our speeches. I could have told you at that
time the dates of the birth and death, and quoted the chief poems, of
men whose names you have not heard, and perhaps of some whose names I
have forgotten. I knew in my heart that the most of them wrote badly,
and yet such romance clung about them, such a desire for Irish poetry
was in all our minds, that I kept on saying, not only to others but
to myself, that most of them wrote well, or all but well. I had read
Shelley and Spenser and had tried to mix their styles together in a
pastoral play which I have not come to dislike much, and yet I do not
think Shelley or Spenser ever moved me as did these poets. I thought
one day--I can remember the very day when I thought it--'If somebody
could make a style which would not be an English style and yet would
be musical and full of colour, many others would catch fire from him,
and we would have a really great school of ballad poetry in Ireland.
If these poets, who have never ceased to fill the newspapers and the
ballad-books with their verses, had a good tradition they would write
beautifully and move everybody as they move me. ' Then a little later on
I thought, 'If they had something else to write about besides political
opinions, if more of them would write about the beliefs of the people
like Allingham, or about old legends like Ferguson, they would find
it easier to get a style. ' Then, with a deliberateness that still
surprises me, for in my heart of hearts I have never been quite certain
that one should be more than an artist, that even patriotism is more
than an impure desire in an artist, I set to work to find a style and
things to write about that the ballad writers might be the better.

They are no better, I think, and my desire to make them so was, it may
be, one of the illusions Nature holds before one, because she knows
that the gifts she has to give are not worth troubling about. It is for
her sake that we must stir ourselves, but we would not trouble to get
out of bed in the morning, or to leave our chairs once we are in them,
if she had not her conjuring bag. She wanted a few verses from me, and
because it would not have seemed worth while taking so much trouble
to see my books lie on a few drawing-room tables, she filled my head
with thoughts of making a whole literature, and plucked me out of the
Dublin art schools where I should have stayed drawing from the round,
and sent me into a library to read bad translations from the Irish,
and at last down into Connaught to sit by turf fires. I wanted to
write 'popular poetry' like those Irish poets, for I believed that all
good literatures were popular, and even cherished the fancy that the
Adelphi melodrama, which I had never seen, might be good literature,
and I hated what I called the coteries. I thought that one must write
without care, for that was of the coteries, but with a gusty energy
that would put all straight if it came out of the right heart. I had
a conviction, which indeed I have still, that one's verses should
hold, as in a mirror, the colours of one's own climate and scenery in
their right proportion; and, when I found my verses too full of the
reds and yellows Shelley gathered in Italy, I thought for two days of
setting things right, not as I should now by making rhythms faint
and nervous and filling my images with a certain coldness, a certain
wintry wildness, but by eating little and sleeping upon a board. I felt
indignant with Matthew Arnold because he complained that somebody,
who had translated Homer into a ballad measure, had tried to write
epic to the tune of Yankee Doodle. It seemed to me that it did not
matter what tune one wrote to, so long as that gusty energy came often
enough and strongly enough. And I delighted in Victor Hugo's book
upon Shakespeare, because he abused critics and coteries and thought
that Shakespeare wrote without care or premeditation and to please
everybody. I would indeed have had every illusion had I believed in
that straightforward logic, as of newspaper articles, which so tickles
the ears of the shopkeepers; but I always knew that the line of Nature
is crooked, that, though we dig the canal beds as straight as we can,
the rivers run hither and thither in their wildness.

From that day to this I have been busy among the verses and stories
that the people make for themselves, but I had been busy a very little
while before I knew that what we call popular poetry never came from
the people at all. Longfellow, and Campbell, and Mrs.