PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION
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have added some passages to "The Land of Heart's Desire," and a newscene of some little length, besides passages here and there, to "TheCountess Cathleen." The goddess has never come to me with her hands sofull that I have not found many waste places after I had planted allthat she had brought me. The present version of "The Countess Cathleen"is not quite the version adopted by the Irish Literary Theatre a coupleof years ago, for our stage and scenery were capable of little; and itmay differ more from any stage version I make in future, for it seemsthat my people of the waters and my unhappy dead, in the third act,cannot keep their supernatural essence, but must put on too much of ourmortality, in any ordinary theatre. I am told that I must abandon ameaning or two and make my merchants carry away the treasurethemselves. The act was written long ago, when I had seen so few playsthat I took pleasure in stage effects. Indeed, I am not yet certain thata wealthy theatre could not shape it to an impressive pageantry, or thata theatre without any wealth could not lift it out of pageantry into themind, with a dim curtain, and some dimly lighted players, and thebeautiful voices that should be as important in poetical as in musicaldrama. The Elizabethan stage was so little imprisoned in materialcircumstance that the Elizabethan imagination was not strained by god orspirit, nor even by Echo herself--no, not even when she answered, as in"The Duchess of Malfi," in clear, loud words which were not the wordsthat had been spoken to her. We have made a prison-house of paint andcanvas, where we have as little freedom as under our own roofs, forthere is no freedom in a house that has been made with hands. All artmoves in the cave of the Chimæra, or in the garden of the Hesperides, orin the more silent house of the gods, and neither cave, nor garden, norhouse can show itself clearly but to the mind's eye. Besides rewriting a lyric or two, I have much enlarged the note on "TheCountess Cathleen," as there has been some discussion in Ireland aboutthe origin of the story, but the other notes are as they have alwaysbeen. They are short enough, but I do not think that anybody who knowsmodern poetry will find obscurities in this book. In any case, I mustleave my myths and symbols to explain themselves as the years go by andone poems lights up another, and the stories that friends, and onefriend in particular, have gathered for me, or that I have gatheredmyself in many cottages, find their way into the light. I would, if Icould, add to that majestic heraldry of the poets, that great andcomplicated inheritance of images which written literature hassubstituted for the greater and more complex inheritance of spokentradition, some new heraldic images, gathered from the lips of thecommon people. Christianity and the old nature faith have lain down sideby side in the cottages, and I would proclaim that peace as loudly as Ican among the kingdoms of poetry, where there is no peace that is notjoyous, no battle that does not give life instead of death; I may eventry to persuade others, in more sober prose, that there can be nolanguage more worthy of poetry and of the meditation of the soul thanthat which has been made, or can be made, out of a subtlety of desire,an emotion of sacrifice, a delight in order, that are perhapsChristian, and myths and images that mirror the energies of woods andstreams, and of their wild creatures. Has any part of that majesticheraldry of the poets had a very different fountain? Is it not theritual of the marriage of heaven and earth? These details may seem to many unnecessary; but after all one writespoetry for a few careful readers and for a few friends, who will notconsider such details unnecessary. When Cimabue had the cry it was, itseems, worth thinking of those that run; but to-day, when they can writeas well as read, one can sit with one's companions under the hedgerowcontentedly. If one writes well and has the patience, somebody will comefrom among the runners and read what one has written quickly, and goaway quickly, and write out as much as he can remember in the languageof the highway.
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