The Celtic Twilight

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Title: The Celtic Twilight
Author: W. B. Yeats
Release Date: December 14, 2003 [EBook #10459]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
0. START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELTIC
TWILIGHT ***
Produced by Carrie Lorenz. Special thanks to John B. Hare, redactor
for this text and significant contributor to its preparation for PG.
THE CELTIC TWILIGHT
by
W. B. YEATS
Time drops in decay
Like a candle burnt out.
And the mountains
and woods
Have their day, have their day;
But, kindly old rout
Of
the fire-born moods,
You pass not away.
THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE
The host is riding from Knocknarea,
And over the grave of
Clooth-na-bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling,
"Away, come away;
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The
winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair

is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are a-gleam,
Our
arms are waving, our lips are apart,
And if any gaze on our rushing
band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come
between him and the hope of his heart."
The host is rushing 'twixt
night and day;
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte
tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling, "Away, come away."
THIS BOOK
I
I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the
beautiful, pleasant, and significant things of this marred and clumsy
world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any
of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore
written down accurately and candidly much that I have heard and seen,
and, except by way of commentary, nothing that I have merely
imagined. I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs
from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women,
dhouls and faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any
argument of mine. The things a man has heard and seen are threads of
life, and if he pull them carefully from the confused distaff of memory,
any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please
them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to
keep warm in it, and shall be well content if it do not unbecome me.
Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has
built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their
garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle. O beloved
daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.
1893.
II
I have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old ones, and
would have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something

of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both
hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great
loss per haps. In these new chapters, as in the old ones, I have invented
nothing but my comments and one or two deceitful sentences that may
keep some poor story-teller's commerce with the devil and his angels,
or the like, from being known among his neighbours. I shall publish in
a little while a big book about the commonwealth of faery, and shall try
to make it systematical and learned enough to buy pardon for this
handful of dreams.
1902.
W. B. YEATS.
A TELLER OF TALES
Many of the tales in this book were told me by one Paddy Flynn, a little
bright-eyed old man, who lived in a leaky and one-roomed cabin in the
village of Ballisodare, which is, he was wont to say, "the most
gentle"--whereby he meant faery--"place in the whole of County
Sligo." Others hold it, however, but second to Drumcliff and
Drumahair. The first time I saw him he was cooking mushrooms for
himself; the next time he was asleep under a hedge, smiling in his sleep.
He was indeed always cheerful, though I thought I could see in his eyes
(swift as the eyes of a rabbit, when they peered out of their wrinkled
holes) a melancholy which was well-nigh a portion of their joy; the
visionary melancholy of purely instinctive natures and of all animals.
And yet there was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple
solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went about much
pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps