MICHAEL ROBARTES AND THE DANCER By William Butler Yeats THE CUALA PRESS CHURCHTOWN DUNDRUM MCMXX CONTENTS Preface Michael Robartes and the Dancer Solomon and the Witch An Image from a Past Life Under Saturn Easter, 1916 Sixteen Dead Men The Rose Tree On a Political Prisoner The Leaders of the Crowd Towards Break of Day Demon and Beast The Second Coming A Prayer for My Daughter A Meditation in Time of War To Be Carved on a Stone at Ballylee Notes PREFACE A few of these poems may be difficult to understand, perhaps more difficult than I know. Goethe has said that the poet needs all philosophy, but that he must keep it out of his work. After the first few poems I came into possession of Michael Robartes’ exposition of the _Speculum Angelorum et Hominum_ of Geraldus, and in the excitement of arranging and editing could no more keep out philosophy than could Goethe himself at certain periods of his life. I have tried to make understanding easy by a couple of notes, which are at anyrate much shorter than those Dante wrote on certain of his odes in the _Convito_, but I may not have succeeded. It is hard for a writer, who has spent much labour upon his style, to remember that thought, which seems to him natural and logical like that style, may be unintelligible to others. The first excitement over, and the thought changed into settled conviction, his interest in simple, that is to say in normal emotion, is always I think increased; he is no longer looking for candlestick and matches but at the objects in the room. I have given no account of Robartes himself, nor of his discovery of the explanation of Geraldus’ diagrams and pictures in the traditional knowledge of a certain obscure Arab tribe, for I hope that my selection from the great mass of his letters and table talk, which I owe to his friend John Aherne, may be published before, or at any rate but soon after this little book, which, like all hand-printed books will take a long time for the setting up and printing off and for the drying of the pages. W. B. Yeats. MICHAEL ROBARTES AND THE DANCER HE Opinion is not worth a rush; In this altar-piece the knight, Who grips his long spear so to push That dragon through the fading light, Loved the lady; and it’s plain The half-dead dragon was her thought, That every morning rose again And dug its claws and shrieked and fought. Could the impossible come to pass She would have time to turn her eyes, Her lover thought, upon the glass And on the instant would grow wise. SHE You mean they argued. HE Put it so; But bear in mind your lover’s wage Is what your looking-glass can show, And that he will turn green with rage At all that is not pictured there. SHE May I not put myself to college?