Mr. Yeats published his first poem in 1886. Since that date, despite his preoccupation with the management of the Abbey Theatre, he has produced a long list of works in verse and prose, decidedly unequal in merit, but shining with the light of a luminous mind.
From the first, Mr. Yeats has seemed to realize that he could serve Ireland best by making beautiful and enduring works of art, rather than by any form of political agitation. This is well; for despite the fact that a total ineptitude for statesmanship seldom prevents the enthusiast from issuing and spreading dogmatic propaganda, a merely elementary conception of the principle of division of labour should make us all rejoice when the artist confines himself to art. True artists are scarce and precious; and although practical men of business often regard them as superfluous luxuries, the truth is that we cannot live without them. As poet and dramatist, Mr. Yeats has done more for his country than he could have accomplished in any other way.
Never was there more exclusively an artist. He writes pure, not applied poetry. I care little for his theories of symbolism, magic and what not. Poets are judged not by their theories, not by the "schools" to which they give passionate adherence, but simply and solely by the quality of their work. No amount of theory, no correctness of method, no setting up of new or defence of old standards, no elevated ideals can make a poet if he have not the divine gift. Theories have hardly more effect on the actual value of his poetry than the colour of the ink in which he writes. The reason why it is interesting to read what Mr. Yeats says about his love of magic and of symbols is not because there is any truth or falsehood in these will-o'-the-wisps, but because he is such an artist that even when he writes in prose, his style is so beautiful, so harmonious that one is forced to listen. Literary art has enormous power in propelling a projectile of thought. I do not doubt that the chief reason for the immense effect of such a philosophy as that of Schopenhauer or that of Nietzsche is because each man was a literary artist—indeed I think both were greater writers than thinkers. A good thing this is for their fame, for art lasts longer than thought. The fashion of a man's thought may pass away; his knowledge and his ideas may lose their stamp, either because they prove to be false or because they become universally current. Everybody believes Copernicus, but nobody reads him. Yet when a book, no matter how obsolete in thought, is marked by great beauty of style, it lives forever. Consider the case of Sir Thomas Browne. Art is the great preservative.
Mr. Yeats has a genius for names and titles. His names, like those of Rossetti's, are sweet symphonies. The Wind Among the Reeds, The Shadowy Waters, The Secret Rose, The Land of Heart's Desire, The Island of Statues are poems in themselves, and give separate pleasure like an overture without the opera. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to observe that The Wind Among the Reeds suggests better than any other arrangement of words the lovely minor melodies of our poet, while The Shadowy Waters gives exactly the picture that comes into one's mind in thinking of his poems. There is an extraordinary fluidity in his verse, like running water under the shade of overhanging branches. One feels that Mr. Yeats loves these titles, and chooses them with affectionate solicitude, like a father naming beautiful children.
The love poetry of Mr. Yeats, like the love poetry of Poe, is swept with passion, but the passion is mingled with unutterable reverence. It is unlike much modern love poetry in its spiritual exaltation. Just as manners have become more free, and intimacies that once took months to develop, now need only minutes, so much contemporary verse-tribute to women is so detailed, so bold, so cock-sure, that the elaborate compliments only half-conceal a sneer. In all such work love is born of desire—its sole foundation—and hence is equally short-lived and fleeting. In the poems of Mr. Yeats, desire seems to follow rather than to precede love. Love thus takes on, as it ought to, something of the beauty of holiness.
Fasten your hair with a golden pin,
And bind up every wandering tress;
I bade my heart build these poor rhymes:
It worked at them, day out, day in,
Building a sorrowful loveliness
Out of the battles of old times.
You need but lift a pearl-pale hand,
And bind up your long hair and sigh;
And all men's hearts must burn and beat;
And candle-like foam on the dim sand,
And stars climbing the dew-dropping sky,
Live but to light your passing feet.
A still more characteristic love-poem is the one which gleams with the symbols of the cloths of heaven.
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the halflight,
I would spread the cloths under your feet;
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
In mysticism, in symbolism, and in the quality of his imagination, Mr. Yeats of course reminds us of Maeterlinck. He has the same twilit atmosphere, peopled with elusive dream-footed figures, that make no more noise than the wings of an owl. He is of imagination all compact. He is neither a teacher nor a prophet; he seems to turn away from the real sorrows of life, yes, even from its real joys, to dwell in a world of his own creation. He invites us thither, if we care to go; and if we go not, we cannot understand either his art or his ideas. But if we wander with him in the shadowy darkness, like the lonely man in Titanic alleys accompanied only by Psyche, we shall see strange visions. We may be led to the door of a legended tomb; we may be led along the border of dim waters; but we shall live for a time in the realm of Beauty, and be the better for the experience, even though it resemble nothing in the town and country that we know.