It was only at the last in his unfinished _Deirdre of the Sorrows_ that
his mood changed. He knew some twelve months ago that he was dying,
though he told no one about it but his betrothed, and he gave all his
thought to this play, that he might finish it. Sometimes he would
despond and say that he could not; and then his betrothed would act it
for him in his sick room, and give him heart to write again. And now by
a strange chance, for he began the play before the last failing of his
health, his persons awake to no disillusionment but to death only, and
as if his soul already thirsted for the fiery fountains there is nothing
grotesque, but beauty only.
V
He was a solitary, undemonstrative man, never asking pity, nor
complaining, nor seeking sympathy but in this book's momentary cries:
all folded up in brooding intellect, knowing nothing of new books and
newspapers, reading the great masters alone; and he was but the more
hated because he gave his country what it needed, an unmoved mind where
there is a perpetual last day, a trumpeting, and coming up to judgment.
April 4, 1909.