Rosa Alchemica

Rosa Alchemica

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Title: Rosa Alchemica
Author: W. B. Yeats
Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5794] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of
schedule] [This file was first posted on September 1, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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ROSA ALCHEMICA
BY
W.B. YEATS
O blessed and happy he, who knowing the mysteries of the gods, sanctifies his life, and
purifies his soul, celebrating orgies in the mountains with holy purifications.--Euripides.

ROSA ALCHEMICA. I
It is now more than ten years since I met, for the last time, Michael Robartes, and for the
first time and the last time his friends and fellow students; and witnessed his and their
tragic end, and endured those strange experiences, which have changed me so that my
writings have grown less popular and less intelligible, and driven me almost to the verge
of taking the habit of St. Dominic. I had just published Rosa Alchemica, a little work on
the Alchemists, somewhat in the manner of Sir Thomas Browne, and had received many
letters from believers in the arcane sciences, upbraiding what they called my timidity, for
they could not believe so evident sympathy but the sympathy of the artist, which is half
pity, for everything which has moved men's hearts in any age. I had discovered, early in
my researches, that their doctrine was no merely chemical phantasy, but a philosophy
they applied to the world, to the elements and to man himself; and that they sought to
fashion gold out of common metals merely as part of an universal transmutation of all
things into some divine and imperishable substance; and this enabled me to make my
little book a fanciful reverie over the transmutation of life into art, and a cry of
measureless desire for a world made wholly of essences.
I was sitting dreaming of what I had written, in my house in one of the old parts of
Dublin; a house my ancestors had made almost famous through their part in the politics
of the city and their friendships with the famous men of their generations; and was
feeling an unwonted happiness at having at last accomplished a long-cherished design,
and made my rooms an expression of this favourite doctrine. The portraits, of more
historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of
peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty
and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of
the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a
thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew
all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the
antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a
pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour
with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound
in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour:
Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger,
Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of
human passions without their bitterness and without satiety. I had gathered about me all
gods because I believed in none, and experienced every pleasure because I gave myself to

none, but held myself apart, individual, indissoluble, a mirror of polished steel: I looked
in the triumph