his compositions do not, his themes will never fail--of so much we are
sure--to awaken unsuspected echoes even in unsuspecting minds.

[JANUARY 1919.




_Mr Yeats's Swan Song_


In the preface to _The Wild Swans at Coole_,[3] Mr W.B. Yeats speaks of
'the phantasmagoria through which alone I can express my convictions
about the world.' The challenge could hardly be more direct. At the
threshold we are confronted with a legend upon the door-post which gives
us the essential plan of all that we shall find in the house if we enter
in. There are, it is true, a few things capable of common use, verses
written in the seeming-strong vernacular of literary Dublin, as it were
a hospitable bench placed outside the door. They are indeed inside the
house, but by accident or for temporary shelter. They do not, as the
phrase goes, belong to the scheme, for they are direct transcriptions of
the common reality, whether found in the sensible world or the emotion
of the mind. They are, from Mr Yeats's angle of vision (as indeed from
our own), essentially _vers d'occasion._

[Footnote 3: _The Wild Swans at Coole_. By W.B. Yeats.(Macmillan.)]

The poet's high and passionate argument must be sought elsewhere, and
precisely in his expression of his convictions about the world. And
here, on the poet's word and the evidence of our search, we shall find