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PERSONAL friend has said of William Butler Yeats and his verse: "Other poets have written of Wisdom overshadowing man and speaking through his lips, or a Will working within the human will, but I think in this poetry we find for the first time the revelation of the Spirit as a weaver of beauty."

With the deep poetic insight that is his, Mr. George Russell has in this estimate perceived the vital issue; for it has indeed been left to a poet of our own day to reveal the illusive yet pervasive beauty of

the spirit the ancient inner loveliness that, unloosed from secret origins, works its way through the medium of unnoticed things out toward the eternal end. The entire verse of W. B. Yeats pulsates with a consciousness that when one looks into the darkness something is always to be found there: but beyond the darkness he beholds, like the first grey smirch of dawn borne in by hopeful and awakening birds, the contemplative vision of a breaking day. A seer of Beauty, he also excels in his interpretation of the vision, for his poetic artistry is the completion in

detail of that great unrest which strives for realisation: the reflection in cool and -trembling depths of the clouds and sunshine of heaven and the shadowy forests of earth.

What may be called Mr. Yeats's poems of promise "Monsada," "The Island of Statues," and "The Wanderings of Oisin" were all published fifteen or twenty years ago and fell far short in prediction of the attainment that is now his. The height of this attainment, up to the present time, is undoubtedly his dramatic poem, "The Shadowy Waters." It is the story of one who is seeking what is beyond the joys of mortal love and ambition, when there comes to him Dectora, the personification of the best love of woman, and he is tempted by the "brief longing and deceiving hope and bodily tenderness." But:

"All that know love among the winds of the world

Have found it like the froth upon the ale;" and he tells her:

"My beloved, farewell. Seek Aibric on the Lochlann galley, and tell him

That Forgael has followed the grey birds alone,

And bid him to your country."

Dectora, however, will have none of the love in Aibric's eyes, saying to Forgael:

"I follow you. Whether among the cold winds of the dead, Or among winds that move in the meadows and woods.

I have cut the cords that held this galley

to ours.

She is already fading, as though the gods
Had woven her of wind.

(She throws herself at Forgael's feet.) Life withers out.

I hide you with my hair, that we may gaze Upon this world no longer."

"The Shadowy Waters" is yet another rendering of the thought in "The Land of Heart's Desire": a voicing of the divine discontent in no way to be confused with the discontent that interferes with accomplishment and serene temper: a groping after the eternal verities merely because of the heart-breaking and transitory conditions of earthly life. It is cast in the mould of symbol, as are nearly all of Yeats's perceptions of truth-his belief being that myths are briefer and more beautiful than exposition, as well as deeper and more companionable.

So unaccustomed are we to the full extent of such hidden interpretation as to be sometimes reminded of the saying of an old Irish King to an old Irish Bard: "That is a good poem, but I do not understand a word of its meaning." Yet once in possession of the key to its meaning and what a wonderful vista of possibilities is opened to the imagination; that "imaginative energy," as Blake called it, which lays hold upon the application of the things below unto the things above. It is the process of utterance by suggestion, and is to be loved for the suggestion rather than for its actual expression. As Mr. Yeats has said: "Whatever the passions of man have gathered about, becomes a symbol in the great memory, and in the hands of him who hath the Secret, it is a worker of wonders, a caller-up of angels or of devils." Such symbolism is veritable word magic-for magic is but suggestion and symbols are the magician's wand or the process used to suggest the supreme transmutation of the weary heart into a weariless spirit to the dreamers who must do what they dream. “All imaginative men," again says Yeats, "must be forever casting forth enchantments, glamours, illusions," and few are the poets who have discarded the spell of symbol. The caves and evening star of Shelley and the eagle and sun of Blake are perhaps too well known to instance; but the extreme symbolism of Blake's disciple has received but an indicative acknowledgment, for we have not yet learned his language. For example, with him, Hanrahan in The Secret Rose represents "the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather permanent possessions." Michael Robartes is "the pride of the imagination brooding upon the greatness of its possessions." Aodh (the Centic word for fire) symbolises the myrrh and frankincense that the imagination offers constantly to all it loves: the sea is the drifting and indefinite bitterness of life: the rose is the flower of spiritual love and beauty.

Indeed, Yeats may be regarded as the master of the particular form of spiritual beauty called "that subtle language within language." He has taken up and carried on the work of William Blake, the crusader against Philistinism of whom it could be said with far greater truth than of Count Villiers l'Isle Adam that "he

opened the doors of the unknown with a crash, and a generation has gone through them to the infinite." Blake it was who preached the Golden Age when "all that was not inspiration should be cast off from poetry" and an interesting colloquial version of his belief is to be found in his marginal notes to one of Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses, the text of which reads: "In the midst of the highest flights of the fancy or imagination, reason ought to preside." "If this be true," wrote Blake, "it is a Devilish Foolish Thing to Be an Artist."

What entitles the work of W. B. Yeats to universal recognition is the fact that over and above its spiritual beauty, the symbolism of its expression is in itself universal. Though the vehicle used is so distinctly Celtic, the result is more than individual, racial, or political. In this Yeats stands head and shoulders above his fellows of the Irish Revival. "If a writer wishes to interest a certain people among whom he has grown up," he says, "or fancies he has a duty toward 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 the substances of art." And as the final effort of "the vast and vague extravagance that lies at the bottom of our Celtic heart" is to find the best medium for an expression of the spiritual longing-the striving after a something never to be completely expressed in either word or deed-so it is the Celtic version of world-wide truths and beauties that best satisfy him.

During the process of this ardent quest among the substances of art Mr. Yeats has become enamoured of "the ancient simplicity and amplitude of imagination." "Simplicity and amplitude" - massed lights and shadows: breadth and directness, and the wisdom that treads in the footsteps of simplicity. Somewhere in The Celtic Twilight he mourns the entanglement of moods that makes us old, and says: "It is one of the great troubles of life that we cannot have any unmixed emotions. There is always something in our enemy that we like, and something in our sweetheart that we dislike." Therefore, his love for the beauty of simplicity and the simplicity of beauty has given this man of most complex and sensitive emotions, who could never have existed ex

cept as the finished product of subtleties, a great understanding of all folk-lore and traditions. He is always, though sometimes half unconsciously, following the direction of Max Müller, who applied it so differently, to "learn how things have become what they are and you will understand them." "Folk art is indeed the oldest of the aristocracies of thought," he has written, "and because it refuses what is passing and trivial, the merely clever and pretty, as certainly as the vulgar and insincere, and because it has gathered into itself the simplest and most unforgettable thoughts of the generations, it is the soil where all great art is rooted." Yet his verse is most intricately complex in emotion and most perfect in form. Even his every lyrical expression is completed and laid aside.

As a prose writer W. B. Yeats does not yet stand out clearly in the minds of men, partly because the writers of fine prose exceed in number the masters of verse and therefore his position is less distinctive and partly because verse is his preeminent expression. His attainment in prose has also been slower of development than his attainment in verse: is more a matter of deliberate and intentional forming of words to his will and less of an inevitable output. There is in it also an element of promise not found in his verse :—for his verse is like the laying on of the hands of fulfillment. Yet his folk-lore tales are equally aflame with spiritual alchemy. The Secret Rose is an embodiment of the ancient rose symbolism as the impelling force of a deeply spiritual anticipation of immortality. The Celtic Twilight is a blessed meeting place of semi-light and semi-darkness in which the Irish peasantry wander, convinced that this world and the world we go to after death are not far apart. Throughout it there is "an understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought."

"A nation whose mission it is to revolve in its bosom spiritual truths is often weak politically," Renan said of the Jews: and the truth of this receives another verification in Ireland. When W. B. Yeats becomes a patriot he partakes of this same weakness that, while it can hardly be called political, nevertheless works from the outside inward: therefore, it is much to be deplored that his later work is almost entirely along na

tional lines. Kathleen ni Hoolihan is the personified cry of Irish patriotism. The morality play called The Hour Glass is a rude awakening into approximate Irish orthodoxy. In the Seven Woods is a harking back to Ireland's heroic age, without the mystic insight. Not that such writing. is to be wholly decried :—in the words of Mr. Yeats a dog chasing rabbits in a field becomes a form of the eternal chimera-but he has so proved himself among better and more sweeping breadths that it is to be regretted his greatest possibilities should be at all overshadowed by the very national and beloved forms which are his best medium of expression. Indeed, one who loves the

verse of William Butler Yeats cannot but mourn his emerging out into the light of common day; for this light only points more clearly the conviction that the idealist cannot go with the crowd. As A. E. (George Russell) has said: "The danger of art is not in its subjects, but in the attitude of the artist's mind."

Yeats is preeminently a poet: preëminently the poet to reveal "the Spirit as the weaver of beauty." That he himself at times has misgivings about whither he is tending there can be little doubt, for he has voiced this feeling in the words: "I have never been quite certain that one should become more than an artist." Isabel Moore.

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GES ago when we were all young and went to evening parties, there was always, it will be recalled, at least one blasé guest who entered with a look of pain and remained with conscious cynicism. So the world is still at it, he seemed to say, as if from centuries of experience (most of it dark), looking more bored than mortal man could ever feel-as bored perhaps as Satan might be at an afternoon tea with cherubs. But he went home no earlier than any one else and had you at any time felt his pulse you would have found it pumping away as cheerfully as other people's. It was only that he would not confess his indefensible emotions. It is the same way with some of us playgoers. We profess to enjoy only as we judge, but night after night we can fold up our judgment like an opera hat and contentedly sit with it under the seat, though we damn the play with it afterwards. It is just this lenient playgoing mood that makes stage criticism seem unreal. The intellect is detachable. Sometimes you are happier if you keep it on; sometimes you feel better without it; at a certain kind of conventional play it is simply poisonous.

We have been reading some inappropriately intelligent remarks on John Ermine of Yellowstone, a simple melo

drama of Indian fights and primitive valour, wherein Mr. James Hackett impersonates a Western scout, a noble, athletic creature, a child of nature of the Leatherstocking Tales, who is full of the moon and stars and the Great Spirit, and does not know how heroic he is when he saves a regiment at the risk of his life. The critic says the character is not lifelike, as if it mattered, and adds that he is beneath the standard of Broadway, as if there were one. John Ermine belongs to the juvenilia of our stage and if you kill him you will find yourself embarked on a career of slaughter. There have been a dozen like him this year and last. There is no reason why criticism should straighten itself up with this sudden dignity and let the other eleven go through. Classify him and let him alone; enjoy the moment if you can; forget your age and education and everything else; feel on the top of your bald head for sunny curls, and try and wonder how the play will turn out. Will the Indians get him? It may be his gun will go off and shoot the orchestra. There is always something to wonder at. Where there's a will, there's a way. A play can be seen with two standards the standard of what you have previously seen or read or studied, and the standard of what you would have been doing if you had staid at home that