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.