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Celtic Twilight
by
William Butler Yeats
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Time drops in decay
Like a candle burnt out.
And the mountains and woods
Have their day, have their day;
But, kindly old rout
Of the fire-born moods,
You pass not away.
This Book
I.
I HAVE desired, like every artist, to create a little world
out of the beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy
world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own
people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately
and candidly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of commentary,
nothing that I have merely imagined. I have, however, been at no pains to
separate my own beliefs from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men
and women, dhouls and faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any
argument of mine. The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and
if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can
weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven
my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well
content if it do not unbecome me.
Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she
has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their
garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved daughter of Hope
and Memory, be with me for a little.
1893.
II.
I have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old
ones, and would have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something
of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and
to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss per haps.
In these new chapters, as in the old ones, I have invented nothing but my
comments and one or two deceitful sentences that may keep some poor
story-teller's commerce with the devil and his angels, or the like, from being
known among his neighbours. I shall publish in a little while a big book about
the commonwealth of faery, and shall try to make it systematical and learned
enough to buy pardon for this handful of dreams.
1902.
W. B. YEATS.
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