merely followed them like will-o'-the-wisps away from the world he knew.
Now, possessing neither world, he sits by the edge of a barren road that
vanishes into a no-man's land, where is no future, and whence there is
no way back to the past.

'My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor;
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.'

It may be that Mr Yeats has succumbed to the malady of a nation. We do
not know whether such things are possible; we must consider him only in
and for himself. From this angle we can regard him only as a poet whose
creative vigour has failed him when he had to make the highest demands
upon it. His sojourn in the world of the imagination, far from enriching
his vision, has made it infinitely tenuous. Of this impoverishment, as
of all else that has overtaken him, he is agonisedly aware.

'I would find by the edge of that water
The collar-bone of a hare,
Worn thin by the lapping of the water,
And pierce it through with a gimlet, and stare
At the old bitter world where they marry in churches,
And laugh over the untroubled water
At all who marry in churches,
Through the white thin bone of a hare.'

Nothing there remains of the old bitter world which for all its
bitterness is a full world also; but nothing remains of the sweet world
of imagination. Mr Yeats has made the tragic mistake of thinking that to