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Celtic Twilight
by
William Butler Yeats
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A Voice
ONE day I was walking over a bit of marshy ground close to
Inchy Wood when I felt, all of a sudden, and only for a second, an emotion which
I said to myself was the root of Christian mysticism. There had swept over me a
sense of weakness, of dependence on a great personal Being somewhere far off yet
near at hand. No thought of mine had prepared me for this emotion, for I had
been pre-occupied with Ængus and Edain, and with Mannanan, son of the sea. That
night I awoke lying upon my back and hearing a voice speaking above me and
saying, "No human soul is like any other human soul, and therefore the love
of God for any human soul is infinite, for no other soul can satisfy the same
need in God." A few nights after this I awoke to see the loveliest people I
have ever seen. A young man and a young girl dressed in olive-green raiment, cut
like old Greek raiment, were standing at my bedside. I looked at the girl and
noticed that her dress was gathered about her neck into a kind of chain, or
perhaps into some kind of stiff embroidery which represented ivy-leaves. But
what filled me with wonder was the miraculous mildness of her face. There are no
such faces now. It was beautiful, as few faces are beautiful, but it had
neither, one would think, the light that is in desire or in hope or in fear or
in speculation. It was peaceful like the faces of animals, or like mountain
pools at evening, so peaceful that it was a little sad. I thought for a moment
that she might be the beloved of Ængus, but how could that hunted, alluring,
happy, immortal wretch have a face like this? Doubtless she was from among the
children of the Moon, but who among them I shall never know.
1902.
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