



Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team






THE SECRET ROSE:

By W.B. Yeats

THE SECRET ROSE:

   DEDICATION TO A.E.
   TO THE SECRET ROSE
   THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST
   OUT OF THE ROSE
   THE WISDOM OF THE KING
   THE HEART OF THE SPRING
   THE CURSE OF THE FIRES AND OF THE SHADOWS
   THE OLD MEN OF THE TWILIGHT
   WHERE THERE IS NOTHING, THERE IS GOD
   OF COSTELLO THE PROUD, OF OONA THE DAUGHTER OF DERMOTT, AND OF THE
   BITTER TONGUE


As for living, our servants will do that for us.--_Villiers de L'Isle
Adam._


Helen, when she looked in her mirror, seeing the withered wrinkles
made in her face by old age, wept, and wondered why she had twice been
carried away.--_Leonardo da Vinci_.


_My dear A.E.--I dedicate this book to you because, whether you think
it well or ill written, you will sympathize with the sorrows and
the ecstasies of its personages, perhaps even more than I do myself.
Although I wrote these stories at different times and in different
manners, and without any definite plan, they have but one subject, the
war of spiritual with natural order; and how can I dedicate such a book
to anyone but to you, the one poet of modern Ireland who has moulded
a spiritual ecstasy into verse? My friends in Ireland sometimes ask me
when I am going to write a really national poem or romance, and by a
national poem or romance I understand them to mean a poem or romance
founded upon some famous moment of Irish history, and built up out of
the thoughts and feelings which move the greater number of patriotic
Irishmen. I on the other hand believe that poetry and romance cannot
be made by the most conscientious study of famous moments and of the
thoughts and feelings of others, but only by looking into that little,
infinite, faltering, eternal flame that we call ourselves. If a writer
wishes to interest a certain people among whom he has grown up, or
fancies he has a duty towards them, he may choose for the symbols of his
art their legends, their history, their beliefs, their opinions, because
he has a right to choose among things less than himself, but he cannot
choose among the substances of art. So far, however, as this book is
visionary it is Irish for Ireland, which is still predominantly Celtic,
has preserved with some less excellent things a gift of vision, which
has died out among more hurried and more successful nations: no shining
candelabra have prevented us from looking into the darkness, and when
one looks into the darkness there is always something there.

W.B. YEATS._




TO THE SECRET ROSE

     Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose,
     Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those
     Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre,
     Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir
     And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep
     Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep
     Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold
     The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold
     Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes
     Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise
     In druid vapour and make the torches dim;
     Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him
     Who met Fand walking among flaming dew,
     By a grey shore where the wind never blew,
     And lost the world and Emir for a kiss;
     And him who drove the gods out of their liss
     And till a hundred morns had flowered red
     Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead;
     And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown
     And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown
     Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods;
     And him who sold tillage and house and goods,
     And sought through lands and islands numberless years
     Until he found with laughter and with tears
     A woman of so shining loveliness
     That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress,
     A little stolen tress. I too await
     The hour of thy great wind of love and hate.
     When shall the stars be blown about the sky,
     Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die?
     Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows,
     Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?




THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST.

A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked,
along the road that wound from the south to the