“Ever yours,
“William Barry.”
So our preparations went on. Mr. Yeats wrote a little time before the first performance: “Everybody tells me we are going to have good audiences. My play, too, in acting goes wonderfully well. The actors are all pretty sound. The first Demon is a little over-violent and restless but he will improve. Lionel Johnson has done a prologue which I enclose.”
That prologue, written by so Catholic and orthodox a poet, was spoken before the plays at the Ancient Concert Rooms on May 8, 1899:
The May fire once on every dreaming hill
All the fair land with burning bloom would fill;
All the fair land, at visionary night,
Gave loving glory to the Lord of Light.
Have we no leaping flames of Beltaine praise
To kindle in the joyous ancient ways;
No fire of song, of vision, of white dream,