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THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS




    DISCOVERIES. EDMUND SPENSER.
    POETRY AND TRADITION; & OTHER
    ESSAYS:: BEING THE EIGHTH VOLUME
    OF THE COLLECTED WORKS IN VERSE
    & PROSE OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS :: IMPRINTED
    AT THE SHAKESPEARE
    HEAD PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON
    MCMVIII




CONTENTS


                                                           PAGE
    DISCOVERIES:
      PROPHET, PRIEST AND KING                                3
      PERSONALITY AND THE INTELLECTUAL ESSENCES               8
      THE MUSICIAN AND THE ORATOR                            12
      A GUITAR PLAYER                                        13
      THE LOOKING-GLASS                                      14
      THE TREE OF LIFE                                       15
      THE PRAISE OF OLD WIVES’ TALES                         18
      THE PLAY OF MODERN MANNERS                             20
      HAS THE DRAMA OF CONTEMPORARY LIFE A ROOT OF ITS OWN?  22
      WHY THE BLIND MAN IN ANCIENT TIMES WAS MADE A POET     24
      CONCERNING SAINTS AND ARTISTS                          29
      THE SUBJECT MATTER OF DRAMA                            32
      THE TWO KINDS OF ASCETICISM                            36
      IN THE SERPENT’S MOUTH                                 38
      THE BLACK AND THE WHITE ARROWS                         39
      HIS MISTRESS’S EYEBROWS                                39
      THE TRESSES OF THE HAIR                                41
      A TOWER ON THE APENNINE                                42
      THE THINKING OF THE BODY                               43
      RELIGIOUS BELIEF NECESSARY TO SYMBOLIC ART             45
      THE HOLY PLACES                                        48
    EDMUND SPENSER                                           51
    POETRY AND TRADITION                                     91
    MODERN IRISH POETRY                                     113
    LADY GREGORY’S CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE                  131
    LADY GREGORY’S GODS AND FIGHTING MEN                    147
    MR. SYNGE AND HIS PLAYS                                 171
    LIONEL JOHNSON                                          183
    THE PATHWAY                                             189

    BIBLIOGRAPHY                                            197




DISCOVERIES




PROPHET, PRIEST AND KING


THE little theatrical company I write my plays for had come to a west
of Ireland town, and was to give a performance in an old ball-room, for
there was no other room big enough. I went there from a neighbouring
country-house, and, arriving a little before the players, tried to open
a window. My hands were black with dirt in a moment, and presently a
pane of glass and a part of the window-frame came out in my hands.
Everything in this room was half in ruins, the rotten boards cracked
under my feet, and our new proscenium and the new boards of the
platform looked out of place, and yet the room was not really old, in
spite of the musicians’ gallery over the stage. It had been built by
some romantic or philanthropic landlord some three or four generations
ago, and was a memory of we knew not what unfinished scheme.

From there I went to look for the players, and called for information
on a young priest, who had invited them and taken upon himself the
finding of an audience. He lived in a high house with other priests,
and as I went in I noticed with a whimsical pleasure a broken pane of
glass in the fanlight over the door, for he had once told me the story
of an old woman who a good many years ago quarrelled with the bishop,
got drunk and hurled a stone through the painted glass. He was a clever
man who read Meredith and Ibsen, but some of his books had been packed
in the fire-grate by his housekeeper, instead of the customary view of
an Italian lake or the  tissue-paper. The players, who had been
giving a performance in a neighbouring town, had not yet come, or were
unpacking their costumes and properties at the hotel he had recommended
them. We should have time, he said, to go through the half-ruined
town and to visit the convent schools and the cathedral, where, owing
to his influence, two of our young Irish sculptors had been set to
carve an altar and the heads of pillars. I had only heard of this
work, and I found its strangeness and simplicity—one of them had been
Rodin’s pupil—could not make me forget the meretriciousness of the
architecture and the commercial commonplace of the inlaid pavements.
The new movement had seized on the cathedral midway in its growth, and
the worst of the old and the best of the new were side by side without
any sign of transition. The convent school was, as other like places
have been to me—a long room in a workhouse hospital at Portumna, in
particular—a delight to the imagination and the eyes. A new floor had
been put into some ecclesiastical building and the light from a great
mullioned window, cut off at the middle, fell aslant upon rows of clean
and seemingly happy children. The nuns, who show in their own convents,
where they can put what they like, a love of what is mean and pretty,
make beautiful rooms where the regulations compel them to do all with
a few colours and a few flowers. I think it was that day, but am not
sure, that I had lunch at a convent and told fairy stories to a couple
of nuns, and I hope it was not mere politeness that made them seem to
have a child’s interest in such things.

A good many of our audience, when the curtain went up in the old
ball-room, were drunk, but all were attentive, for they had a great
deal of respect for my friend, and there were other priests there.
Presently the man at the door opposite to the stage strayed off
somewhere and I took his place, and when boys came up offering two or
three pence and asking to be let into the sixpenny seats, I let them
join the melancholy crowd. The play professed to tell of the heroic
life of ancient Ireland, but was really full of sedentary refinement
and the spirituality of cities. Every emotion was made as dainty-footed
and dainty-fingered as might be, and a love and pathos where passion
had faded into sentiment, emotions of pensive and harmless people,
drove shadowy young men through the shadows of death and battle. I
watched it with growing rage. It was not my own work, but I have
sometimes watched my own work with a rage made all the more salt in
the mouth from being half despair. Why should we make so much noise
about ourselves and yet have nothing to say that was not better said
in that workhouse dormitory, where a few flowers and a few 
counterpanes and the  walls had made a severe and gracious
beauty? Presently the play was changed and our comedian began to act
a little farce, and when I saw him struggle to wake into laughter
an audience, out of whom the life had run as if it were water, I
rejoiced, as I had over that broken window-pane. Here was something
secular, abounding, even a little vulgar, for he was gagging horribly,
condescending to his audience, though not without contempt.

We had supper in the priest’s house, and a government official, who
had come down from Dublin, partly out of interest in this attempt ‘to
educate the people,’ and partly because it was his holiday and it was
necessary to go