Produced by Brian Foley and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) PER AMICA SILENTIA LUNAE OTHER WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS POEMS AND PLAYS, 2 volumes: I--Lyrics. $2.00. II--DRAMATIC POEMS. $2.00. THE CELTIC TWILIGHT. $1.50. IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL. $1.50. STORIES OF RED HANRAHAN. $1.25. REVERIES OVER CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH. Illustrated. $2.00. RESPONSIBILITIES AND OTHER POEMS. $1.25. THE TABLES OF THE LAW. $1.25. THE HOUR GLASS AND OTHER PLAYS. $1.25. THE GREEN HELMET AND OTHER POEMS. $1.25. THE CUTTING OF AN AGATE. $1.50. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. PER AMICA SILENTIA LUNAE _SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION_ PER AMICA SILENTIA LUNAE BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1918 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published January, 1918. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PROLOGUE MY DEAR "MAURICE"--You will remember that afternoon in Calvados last summer when your black Persian "Minoulooshe," who had walked behind us for a good mile, heard a wing flutter in a bramble-bush? For a long time we called her endearing names in vain. She seemed resolute to spend her night among the brambles. She had interrupted a conversation, often interrupted before, upon certain thoughts so long habitual that I may be permitted to call them my convictions. When I came back to London my mind ran again and again to those conversations and I could not rest till I had written out in this little book all that I had said or would have said. Read it some day when "Minoulooshe" is asleep. W. B. YEATS. _May_ 11, 1917. EGO DOMINUS TUUS HIC On the grey sand beside the shallow stream, Under your old wind-beaten tower, where still A lamp burns on above the open book That Michael Robartes left, you walk in the moon, And, though you have passed the best of life, still trace, Enthralled by the unconquerable delusion, Magical shapes. ILLE By the help of an image I call to my own opposite, summon all That I have handled least, least looked upon. HIC And I would find myself and not an image. ILLE That is our modern hope, and by its light We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive mind And lost the old nonchalance of the hand; Whether we have chosen chisel, pen, or brush, We are but critics, or but half create, Timid, entangled, empty, and abashed, Lacking the countenance of our friends. HIC And yet, The chief imagination of Christendom, Dante Alighieri, so utterly found himself, That he has made that hollow face of his More plain to the mind's eye than any face But that of Christ. ILLE