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Celtic Twilight
by
William Butler Yeats
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The Eaters of Precious Stones
SOMETIMES when I have been shut off from common interests, and
have for a little forgotten to be restless, I get waking dreams, now faint and
shadow-like, now vivid and solid-looking, like the material world under my feet.
Whether they be faint or vivid, they are ever beyond the power of my will to
alter in any way. They have their own will, and sweep hither and thither, and
change according to its commands. One day I saw faintly an immense pit of
blackness, round which went a circular parapet, and on this parapet sat
innumerable apes eating precious stones out of the palms of their hands. The
stones glittered green and crimson, and the apes devoured them with an
insatiable hunger. I knew that I saw the Celtic Hell, and my own Hell, the Hell
of the artist, and that all who sought after beautiful and wonderful things with
too avid a thirst, lost peace and form and became shapeless and common. I have
seen into other people's hells also, and saw in one an infernal Peter, who had a
black face and white lips, and who weighed on a curious double scales not only
the evil deeds committed, but the good deeds left undone, of certain invisible
shades. I could see the scales go up and down, but I could not see the shades
who were, I knew, crowding about him. I saw on another occasion a quantity of
demons of all kinds of shapes--fish-like, serpent-like, ape-like, and
dog-like--sitting about a black pit such as that in my own Hell, and looking at
a moon--like reflection of the Heavens which shone up from the depths of the
pit.
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