C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
From The Shadowy Waters
By William Butler Yeats (18651939)
F
The mind is made unchanging, for it finds
Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope,
The flagstone under all, the fire of fires,
The roots of the world.
For it is love that I am seeking for
But of a beautiful unheard of kind
That is not in the world.
Aibric—In middle life
They take a kiss for what a kiss is worth,
And let the dream go by.
Forgael—It’s not a dream,
But the reality that makes our passion
As a lamp shadow—no—no lamp, the sun.
What the world’s million lips are thirsting for
Must be substantial somewhere.
For it is dreams
That lift us to the flowing changing world
That the heart longs for.
I shall find a woman
One of the ever-living, as I think—
One of the laughing people—and she and I
Shall light upon a place in the world’s core
Where passion grows to be a changeless thing,
Like charmed apples made of chrysoprase,
Or chrysoberyl or beryl or chrysolite;
And there, in juggleries of sight and sense,
Become one movement, energy, delight,
Until the over-burthened moon is dead.
In ‘The King’s Threshold’ Yeats uses a motive of the simplest character. Seanchan (pronounced Shanahan) the poet resents the indignity of being offered a place at the king’s table “below the salt” by refusing both food and drink. By dying on the king’s threshold he will leave a curse upon the regal line. In its way it is a fine vindication of the true poet’s mission. Seanchan’s claim is that the mission of the poet, being of a creative character, comes first of all, before even the high kingship. In answer to the pleadings of his pupils to forego his pride and eat, Seanchan answers,
It may be instructive to note the character of Yeats’s women. They are all distinguished by a certain high, heroic quality. Whatever other virtues they may possess: whether the serenity and purity of the Countess Kathleen, the elfish waywardness of Marie Bruin, or the wild romanticism of Dectora, they share in common a certain spirit of wild daring. The unknown has no terror for them. Whatever the chalice of fate may contain they drink boldly. They indeed seem to be cognizant all the while that it is only through some form of human tragedy that they may hope to pass out to the world where love is of truly heroic proportions and of immortal duration—the world of gods and heroes. Their very mirth is but a ripple of laughter on the breaking wave of tragedy. They live and move and have their being in the very shadow of the supernatural realm. In ‘Deirdre’ we have this: