No More Learning

The lovely likeness of the Lord
Is in thy pure face,
The loveliest likeness that was upon earth.

I soon learned to cast away one other illusion of 'popular poetry. ' I
learned from the people themselves, before I learned it from any book,
that they cannot separate the idea of an art or a craft from the idea
of a cult with ancient technicalities and mysteries. They can hardly
separate mere learning from witchcraft, and are fond of the words and
verses that keep half their secret to themselves. Indeed, it is certain
that before the counting-house had created a new class and a new art
without breeding and without ancestry, and set this art and this class
between the hut and the castle, and between the hut and the cloister,
the art of the people was as closely mingled with the art of the
coteries as was the speech of the people that delighted in rhythmical
animation, in idiom, in images, in words full of far-off suggestion,
with the unchanging speech of the poets.

Now I see a new generation in Ireland which discusses Irish literature
and history in Young Ireland societies, and societies with newer names,
and there are far more than when I was a boy who would make verses for
the people. They have the help, too, of a vigorous journalism, and this
journalism sometimes urges them to desire the direct logic, the clear
rhetoric, of 'popular poetry. ' It sees that Ireland has no cultivated
minority, and it does not see, though it would cast out all English
things, that its literary ideal belongs more to England than to other
countries. I have hope that the new writers will not fall into its
illusion, for they write in Irish, and for a people the counting-house
has not made forgetful. Among the seven or eight hundred thousand who
have had Irish from the cradle, there is, perhaps, nobody who has not
enough of the unwritten tradition to know good verses from bad ones, if
he have enough mother-wit. Among all that speak English in Australia,
in America, in Great Britain, are there many more than the ten thousand
the prophet saw, who have enough of the written tradition education has
set in room of the unwritten to know good verses from bad ones, even
though their mother-wit has made them Ministers of the Crown or what
you will? Nor can things be better till that ten thousand have gone
hither and thither to preach their faith that 'the imagination is the
man himself,' and that the world as imagination sees it is the durable
world, and have won men as did the disciples of Him who

His seventy disciples sent
Against religion and government.

1901.




SPEAKING TO THE PSALTERY.


I

I HAVE always known that there was something I disliked about singing,
and I naturally dislike print and paper, but now at last I understand
why, for I have found something better.
I have just heard a poem spoken
with so delicate a sense of its rhythm, with so perfect a respect for
its meaning, that if I were a wise man and could persuade a few people
to learn the art I would never open a book of verses again. A friend,
who was here a few minutes ago, has sat with a beautiful stringed
instrument upon her knee, her fingers passing over the strings, and
has spoken to me some verses from Shelley's _Skylark_ and Sir Ector's
lamentation over the dead Launcelot out of the _Morte d' Arthur_ and
some of my own poems. Wherever the rhythm was most delicate, wherever
the emotion was most ecstatic, her art was the most beautiful, and yet,
although she sometimes spoke to a little tune, it was never singing,
as we sing to-day, never anything but speech. A singing note, a word
chanted as they chant in churches, would have spoiled everything; nor
was it reciting, for she spoke to a notation as definite as that of
song, using the instrument which murmured sweetly and faintly, under
the spoken sounds, to give her the changing notes. Another speaker
could have repeated all her effects, except those which came from her
own beautiful voice that would have given her fame if the only art that
gives the speaking voice its perfect opportunity were as well known
among us as it was known in the ancient world.


II

Since I was a boy I have always longed to hear poems spoken to a harp,
as I imagined Homer to have spoken his, for it is not natural to enjoy
an art only when one is by oneself. Whenever one finds a fine verse
one wants to read it to somebody, and it would be much less trouble
and much pleasanter if we could all listen, friend by friend, lover
by beloved. Images used to rise up before me, as I am sure they have
arisen before nearly everybody else who cares for poetry, of wild-eyed
men speaking harmoniously to murmuring wires while audiences in
many-coloured robes listened, hushed and excited. Whenever I spoke of
my desire to anybody they said I should write for music, but when
I heard anything sung I did not hear the words, or if I did their
natural pronunciation was altered and their natural music was altered,
or it was drowned in another music which I did not understand. What
was the good of writing a love-song if the singer pronounced love,
'lo-o-o-o-o-ve,' or even if he said 'love,' but did not give it its
exact place and weight in the rhythm? Like every other poet, I spoke
verses in a kind of chant when I was making them, and sometimes, when
I was alone on a country road, I would speak them in a loud chanting
voice, and feel that if I dared I would speak them in that way to
other people. One day I was walking through a Dublin street with the
Visionary I have written about in _The Celtic Twilight_, and he began
speaking his verses out aloud with the confidence of those who have
the inner light. He did not mind that people stopped and looked after
him even on the far side of the road, but went on through poem after
poem. Like myself, he knew nothing of music, but was certain that he
had written them to a manner of music, and he had once asked somebody
who played on a wind instrument of some kind, and then a violinist,
to write out the music and play it. The violinist had played it,
or something like it, but had not written it down; but the man with
the wind instrument said it could not be played because it contained
quarter-tones and would be out of tune. We were not at all convinced
by this, and one day, when we were staying with a Galway friend who is
a learned musician, I asked him to listen to our verses, and to the
way we spoke them.