“In this book I have dealt—as I hope in all I write—only with things among which my thought has moved, searching, remembering, examining, sometimes dreaming....
It is not the night-winds in sad hearts only that I hear, or the sighing of vain fatalities: but, often rather, of an Emotion akin to that mysterious Sorrow of Eternity in love with tears, of which Blake speaks in Vala. It is at times, at least I feel it so, because Beauty is more beautiful there. It is the twilight hour in the heart, as Joy is the heart’s morning.
Perhaps I love best the music that leads one into the moonlit coverts of dreams, and old silence, and unawakening peace. But Music, like the rose of the Greeks, is ‘the thirty petalled one’ and every leaf is the gate of an equal excellence. The fragrance of all is Joy, the beauty of all is Sorrow: but the Rose is one—Rosa Sempiterna, the Rose of Life. As to the past, it is because of what is there, that I look back: not because I do not see what is here today, or may be here tomorrow. It is because of what is to be gained that I look back: of what is supremely worth knowing there, of knowing intimately: of what is supremely worth remembering, of remembering constantly: not only as an exile dreaming of the land left behind, but as one travelling in narrow defiles who looks back for familiar fires on the hills, or upward to the familiar stars where is surety. In truth is not all creative art remembrance: is not the spirit of ideal art the recapture of what has gone away from the world, that by an imperious spiritual law is forever withdrawing to come again newly.”
To a friend W. S. wrote:
It is a happiness to me to know that you feel so deeply the beauty that has been so humbly and eagerly and often despairingly sought, and that in some dim measure, at least, is held here as a shaken image in troubled waters. It it a long long road, the road of art ... and those who serve with passion and longing and unceasing labour of inward thought and outward craft are the only votaries who truly know what long and devious roads must be taken, how many pitfalls have to be avoided or escaped from, how many desires have to be foregone, how many hopes have to be crucified in slow death or more mercifully be lost by the way, before one can stand at last on “the yellow banks where the west wind blows,” and see, beyond, the imperishable flowers, and hear the immortal voices.
A thousand perils guard the long road. And when the secret gardens are reached, there is that other deadly peril of which Fiona has written in “The Lynn of Dreams.” And, yet again, there is that mysterious destiny, that may never come, or may come to men but once, or may come and not go, of which I wrote to you some days ago, quoting from Fiona’s latest writing: that destiny which puts dust upon dreams, and silence upon sweet airs, and stills songs, and makes the hand idle, and the spirit as foam upon the sea.
For the gods are jealous, O jealous and remorseless beyond all words to tell. And there is so little time at the best ... and the little gain, the little frail crown, is so apt to be gained too late for the tired votary to care, or to do more than lie down saying ‘I have striven, and I am glad, and now it is over, and I am glad!’
A letter of appreciation to the author from an unknown Gaelic correspondent contained this beautiful wish:
“May you walk by the waters of Life, and may you rest by Still Waters, and may you know the mystery of God.”
To Mrs. Helen Bartlett Bridgman, “Fiona” wrote in acknowledgment of a letter, and of a sympathetic, printed appreciation of The Winged Destiny: