' We used to discuss
everything
that was known to us
about Ireland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history.
about Ireland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history.
Yeats
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William Butler Yeats, Vol. 6 (of 8), by William Butler Yeats
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
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to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
Title: The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 6 (of 8)
Ideas of Good and Evil
Author: William Butler Yeats
Release Date: August 5, 2015 [EBook #49613]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF W B YEATS, VOL 6 ***
Produced by Emmy, mollypit and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL
BEING THE SIXTH VOLUME OF
THE COLLECTED WORKS IN
VERSE & PROSE OF WILLIAM
BUTLER YEATS :: IMPRINTED
AT THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD
PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON
MCMVIII
LONDON:
CHAPMAN & HALL
LIMITED
CONTENTS
PAGE
WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'? 1
SPEAKING TO THE PSALTERY 13
MAGIC 23
THE HAPPIEST OF THE POETS 55
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY'S POETRY 71
AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON 111
WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE IMAGINATION 131
WILLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE
'DIVINE COMEDY' 138
SYMBOLISM IN PAINTING 176
THE SYMBOLISM OF POETRY 185
THE THEATRE 200
THE CELTIC ELEMENT IN LITERATURE 210
THE AUTUMN OF THE BODY 230
THE MOODS 238
THE BODY OF THE FATHER CHRISTIAN ROSENCRUX 240
THE RETURN OF ULYSSES 243
IRELAND AND THE ARTS 249
THE GALWAY PLAINS 259
EMOTION OF MULTITUDE 264
WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?
I THINK it was a Young Ireland Society that set my mind running on
'popular poetry.
' We used to discuss everything that was known to us
about Ireland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history. We
had no Gaelic, but paid great honour to the Irish poets who wrote in
English, and quoted them in our speeches. I could have told you at that
time the dates of the birth and death, and quoted the chief poems, of
men whose names you have not heard, and perhaps of some whose names I
have forgotten. I knew in my heart that the most of them wrote badly,
and yet such romance clung about them, such a desire for Irish poetry
was in all our minds, that I kept on saying, not only to others but
to myself, that most of them wrote well, or all but well. I had read
Shelley and Spenser and had tried to mix their styles together in a
pastoral play which I have not come to dislike much, and yet I do not
think Shelley or Spenser ever moved me as did these poets. I thought
one day--I can remember the very day when I thought it--'If somebody
could make a style which would not be an English style and yet would
be musical and full of colour, many others would catch fire from him,
and we would have a really great school of ballad poetry in Ireland.
If these poets, who have never ceased to fill the newspapers and the
ballad-books with their verses, had a good tradition they would write
beautifully and move everybody as they move me. ' Then a little later on
I thought, 'If they had something else to write about besides political
opinions, if more of them would write about the beliefs of the people
like Allingham, or about old legends like Ferguson, they would find
it easier to get a style. ' Then, with a deliberateness that still
surprises me, for in my heart of hearts I have never been quite certain
that one should be more than an artist, that even patriotism is more
than an impure desire in an artist, I set to work to find a style and
things to write about that the ballad writers might be the better.
They are no better, I think, and my desire to make them so was, it may
be, one of the illusions Nature holds before one, because she knows
that the gifts she has to give are not worth troubling about. It is for
her sake that we must stir ourselves, but we would not trouble to get
out of bed in the morning, or to leave our chairs once we are in them,
if she had not her conjuring bag. She wanted a few verses from me, and
because it would not have seemed worth while taking so much trouble
to see my books lie on a few drawing-room tables, she filled my head
with thoughts of making a whole literature, and plucked me out of the
Dublin art schools where I should have stayed drawing from the round,
and sent me into a library to read bad translations from the Irish,
and at last down into Connaught to sit by turf fires. I wanted to
write 'popular poetry' like those Irish poets, for I believed that all
good literatures were popular, and even cherished the fancy that the
Adelphi melodrama, which I had never seen, might be good literature,
and I hated what I called the coteries. I thought that one must write
without care, for that was of the coteries, but with a gusty energy
that would put all straight if it came out of the right heart. I had
a conviction, which indeed I have still, that one's verses should
hold, as in a mirror, the colours of one's own climate and scenery in
their right proportion; and, when I found my verses too full of the
reds and yellows Shelley gathered in Italy, I thought for two days of
setting things right, not as I should now by making rhythms faint
and nervous and filling my images with a certain coldness, a certain
wintry wildness, but by eating little and sleeping upon a board. I felt
indignant with Matthew Arnold because he complained that somebody,
who had translated Homer into a ballad measure, had tried to write
epic to the tune of Yankee Doodle.
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
? The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of
William Butler Yeats, Vol. 6 (of 8), by William Butler Yeats
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www. gutenberg. org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
Title: The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 6 (of 8)
Ideas of Good and Evil
Author: William Butler Yeats
Release Date: August 5, 2015 [EBook #49613]
Language: English
Character set encoding: UTF-8
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WORKS OF W B YEATS, VOL 6 ***
Produced by Emmy, mollypit and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL
BEING THE SIXTH VOLUME OF
THE COLLECTED WORKS IN
VERSE & PROSE OF WILLIAM
BUTLER YEATS :: IMPRINTED
AT THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD
PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON
MCMVIII
LONDON:
CHAPMAN & HALL
LIMITED
CONTENTS
PAGE
WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'? 1
SPEAKING TO THE PSALTERY 13
MAGIC 23
THE HAPPIEST OF THE POETS 55
THE PHILOSOPHY OF SHELLEY'S POETRY 71
AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON 111
WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE IMAGINATION 131
WILLIAM BLAKE AND HIS ILLUSTRATIONS TO THE
'DIVINE COMEDY' 138
SYMBOLISM IN PAINTING 176
THE SYMBOLISM OF POETRY 185
THE THEATRE 200
THE CELTIC ELEMENT IN LITERATURE 210
THE AUTUMN OF THE BODY 230
THE MOODS 238
THE BODY OF THE FATHER CHRISTIAN ROSENCRUX 240
THE RETURN OF ULYSSES 243
IRELAND AND THE ARTS 249
THE GALWAY PLAINS 259
EMOTION OF MULTITUDE 264
WHAT IS 'POPULAR POETRY'?
I THINK it was a Young Ireland Society that set my mind running on
'popular poetry.
' We used to discuss everything that was known to us
about Ireland, and especially Irish literature and Irish history. We
had no Gaelic, but paid great honour to the Irish poets who wrote in
English, and quoted them in our speeches. I could have told you at that
time the dates of the birth and death, and quoted the chief poems, of
men whose names you have not heard, and perhaps of some whose names I
have forgotten. I knew in my heart that the most of them wrote badly,
and yet such romance clung about them, such a desire for Irish poetry
was in all our minds, that I kept on saying, not only to others but
to myself, that most of them wrote well, or all but well. I had read
Shelley and Spenser and had tried to mix their styles together in a
pastoral play which I have not come to dislike much, and yet I do not
think Shelley or Spenser ever moved me as did these poets. I thought
one day--I can remember the very day when I thought it--'If somebody
could make a style which would not be an English style and yet would
be musical and full of colour, many others would catch fire from him,
and we would have a really great school of ballad poetry in Ireland.
If these poets, who have never ceased to fill the newspapers and the
ballad-books with their verses, had a good tradition they would write
beautifully and move everybody as they move me. ' Then a little later on
I thought, 'If they had something else to write about besides political
opinions, if more of them would write about the beliefs of the people
like Allingham, or about old legends like Ferguson, they would find
it easier to get a style. ' Then, with a deliberateness that still
surprises me, for in my heart of hearts I have never been quite certain
that one should be more than an artist, that even patriotism is more
than an impure desire in an artist, I set to work to find a style and
things to write about that the ballad writers might be the better.
They are no better, I think, and my desire to make them so was, it may
be, one of the illusions Nature holds before one, because she knows
that the gifts she has to give are not worth troubling about. It is for
her sake that we must stir ourselves, but we would not trouble to get
out of bed in the morning, or to leave our chairs once we are in them,
if she had not her conjuring bag. She wanted a few verses from me, and
because it would not have seemed worth while taking so much trouble
to see my books lie on a few drawing-room tables, she filled my head
with thoughts of making a whole literature, and plucked me out of the
Dublin art schools where I should have stayed drawing from the round,
and sent me into a library to read bad translations from the Irish,
and at last down into Connaught to sit by turf fires. I wanted to
write 'popular poetry' like those Irish poets, for I believed that all
good literatures were popular, and even cherished the fancy that the
Adelphi melodrama, which I had never seen, might be good literature,
and I hated what I called the coteries. I thought that one must write
without care, for that was of the coteries, but with a gusty energy
that would put all straight if it came out of the right heart. I had
a conviction, which indeed I have still, that one's verses should
hold, as in a mirror, the colours of one's own climate and scenery in
their right proportion; and, when I found my verses too full of the
reds and yellows Shelley gathered in Italy, I thought for two days of
setting things right, not as I should now by making rhythms faint
and nervous and filling my images with a certain coldness, a certain
wintry wildness, but by eating little and sleeping upon a board. I felt
indignant with Matthew Arnold because he complained that somebody,
who had translated Homer into a ballad measure, had tried to write
epic to the tune of Yankee Doodle.
