THE SECRET ROSE.*
The Secret Bose is a beautiful book. Mr. Yeats explains in a very interesting page of dedication that, though the various stories of which it is made up were written "at different times and in different manners, and without any definite plan, they have but one subject, the war of spiritual with natural order." And then in answer to friends who have importuned him to write a national poem or romance, he announces the true and important principle that "poetry and romance cannot be made by the most conscientious study of famous moments and of the thoughts and feelings of others, but only by looking into that little, infinite, faltering, eternal flame that one calls one's self." None the less, he claims that this little volume of exquisitely told prose-poems, the essence of which he has evolved out of his own subjective consciousness, is representa- tively Irish, inasmuch as it is visionary ; and " Ireland, which is still predominantly Celtic, has preserved with some less excellent things a gift of vision, which has died out among more hurried and more successful nations : no shining candelabra have prevented us from looking into the dark- ness, and when one looks into the darkness there is always something there." After such a dedication, we were prepared for a volume full of the semi-barbaric poetry of impracticable ideals, forlorn hopes, insatiable desires, and restless yearnings, which make the note in literature that modern criticism has called " the wail of the Celt ; " and we were somewhat sadly resigned to the prospect of a series of chapters all pitched in minor keys, all shadowed by the twilight that lurks in the cul de sac of impracticable idealism, and all tending to the unprofitable conclusion that everything is vanity and a striving after wind. But though these things are in The Secret Bose, there are other and better things in it also. Mr. Yeats has not only looked into the twilight and the darkness, but he has looked through them. And there are at least two stories among the collection in which the discords of the semi- 'barbarous poetry in which imagination works as the never. dying worm of the torment of unrest, are resolved by faith into the harmonies of spiritual beatitude. Taken together, with what the dedication tells us, of the absence of plan and the different times governing the production of the various pieces, these two stories, "Out of the Rose " and " Rosa Alchemica," suggest that the author's mind has passed in the course of their composition through phases of vague aspiration after ideals of poetry and passion, to the repose of a definite faith. But the web of the spiritual allegory, that is the essential texture of the book, is delicately ethereal; and it would be a graceless task to render its poetry into prose. The meaning of the " Rose " that figures more or less in all the stories, as well as in the common title, is defined many times by the author. It is the symbol of whatever is, to the soul awakened by the touch of imagination, the goal of desire, holy or unholy— that, in comparison with which, the material order of the uni- verse and the " gain of the whole world " are as nothing. The clearest definition of the " Rose "—in this case the "Rose of God" —is given in the story called "Out of the Rose." An aged kasght described as having " the face of one of those who have come • The Secret Rose. By W. B. Yeats. With Illustrations by J. B. Yeats. 1 vol. London Lawrence and Bonen.
but seldom into the world, and always for its trouble, and to bind the hearts of men as within a leash of mystery," travelling in search of service in which he may render up his soul to God, prays mystically, " 0 Divine Rose of Intellectual Flame, let the gates of thy peace be opened to me at last !" and the answer comes with an irony so absolutely unconscious that it is indistinguishable from poetry, in the sudden loud squealing of a couple of pigs a hundred yards away. A dozen armed peasants come up, and explain that the pigs have been stolen from an old man, and that they (the peasants) having ascertained that the thieves are four times more in number than themselves, are going from barony to barony to seek help against them. The aged knight, who is as practical as he is visionary, suggests that before help has been obtained the pigs will have been eaten ; and, being assured that their rightful owner is a true and pious man, sees as good a cause here as the world is likely to yield him, and undertakes to do battle against the thieves if the peasants will stand by him, Promising them five crowns a head for every man they kill. The knight does most of the fighting and killing himself, then sends the peasants to drive home the pigs while he guards the way at their back. Overpowered by his wounds he is dying alone by the roadside when a " simple lad " comes to him. He has been sent by the peasants to collect their five- crown pieces, and also to put ointment on the knight's wounds. The dialogue between the knight and the lad is exquisitely naïf, and here again it is difficult to say where irony ends and poetry begins. The knight offers the lad his remaining crowns for himself. But the lad declines them, explaining that he is a "bit innocent," and money is therefore of no use to him—otherwise the peasants would not have trusted him to fetch theirs. All he cares for is cocks, whom he can set fighting, and he wears cock's feathers as his symboL But he begs the knight to tell him why he has fought like the gods and the giants and the heroes, and all for such a little thing. We must give the knight's answer in his own words :-
"' I will tell you of myself,' replied the knight, 'for now that I am the last of the fellowship I may tell all and witness for God. Look at the Rose of Rubies on my helmet, and see the symbol of my life and of my hope? And then he told the lad this story, but with always more frequent pauses ; and, while he told it, the Rose shone a deep blood-colour in the fire-light, and the lad stuck the cock's feathers in the earth in front of him, and moved them about as though he made them actcrs in the play. I live in a land far from this, and was one of the Knights of St. John,' said the old man ; ' but I was one of those in the Order who always longed for more arduous labour in the service of the Most High. At last there came to us a knight of Palestine, to whom the truth of truths had been revealed by God Himself. He had seen a great Rose of Fire, and a Voice out of the Rose had told him how men would turn from the light of their own hearts, and bow down before external order and outer fixity, and that then the light would cease, and none escape the curse except the foolish mood man who could not, and the passionate wicked man who would not, think. Already, the Voice told him, the wayward light of the heart was shining out upon the world to keep it alive, with a less clear lustre, and that, as it paled, a strange infection was touching the stars and the hills and the grass and the trees with corruption, and that none of those who had seen clearly the truth and the ancient way could enter into the Kingdom of God, which is in the Heart of the Rose, if they stayed on willingly in the infected world; and so they must prove their anger against the Powers of Corruption by dying in the service of the Rose of God. While the knight of Palestine was telling us these things we seemed to see in a vision a crimson Rose spreading itself about him, so that he seemed to speak out its heart, and the air was filled with fragrance. By this we knew that it was the very Voice of God which spoke to us by the knight, and we gathered about him and bade him direct us in all things. and teach us how to obey the Voice. So he bound us with an oath, and gave us signs and words whereby we might know each other even after many years, and he appointed places of meeting, and he sent us out in troops into the world to seek good causes, and die in doing battle for them. . . . . . And the years passed, and one by one my fellows died in the Holy Land, or in warring upon the evil princes of the earth, or is clearing the roads of robbers ; and among them died the knight of Palestine, and at last I was alone. I fought in every cause where the few contended against the many, and my hair grew white, and a terrible fear lest I had fallen under the displeasure of God came upon me. But, hearing at last how this western isle was fuller of wars and rapine than any other land, I came hither, and I have found the thing I sought, and behold ! I am filled with a great joy.' Thereat he began to sing a Latin hymn, and while he sang his voice grew fainter and fainter. Then his eyes closed, and his lips fell apart, and the lad knew he was dead. He has told me a good tale,' he said, for there was fighting in it, but I did not understand much of it, and it is hard to remember so long a story.' And, taking the knight's sword, he began to dig a grave in the soft clay. He dug hard, and a faint light of dawn had touched his hair and he had almost done his work, when a cock crowed in the valley below. 'Ah,' he said, must have that bird,' and he ran down the narrow path to the valley."
Here assuredly we have not only a beautiful little story, but all Ireland in the allegory. Another very delightful sketch is that called " The Heart of the Spring," in which Angus, the son of Forbie, grown old in searching after hidden things, tells the boy who serves him that to-morrow he will be in possession of the elimir of everlasting youth. The boy, who describes himself as possessing " an incurious and reverent heart," has no wish to pry into his master's secrets, but something must be told him in order that he may do his part, which is to gather rushes and roses and lilies in the night and cover his master's table with them, and then come an hour after dawn to see what has happened :—" Will you be quite young then ? ' said the boy.= I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and tired, and you must help me to my chair and to my books." The boy does
his master's bidding, but when he comes to him in the morn- ing the old man is dead :—" It were better for him,' said the
lad, 'to have told his beads and said his prayers like another, and not to have spent his days in seeking amongst the mortal Powers what he could have found in his own deeds and days had he willed."
It is impossible to analyse all the stories or to quote a tenth part of the passages that tempt us. But here is a description of a poet which we cannot pass over :-
"As he swam through the smooth sea he laughed and sang up at the shifting clouds until they seemed but vague passions drift- ing about his heart; and he longed to feel as they did, the silvery arrows of the stars shoot through him. He spent a night in the cave and, as he lay there, the immense shadows seemed to be taking him to themselves, disembodying him away into the dim life of the Powers that have never lived in mortal bodies. All night they passed through his dreams crowned with rubies, and having roses in their hands ; and in the morning he awoke, a rough-clad peasant shivering on the earthen floor."
Not less remarkable is this conception of the god Eros appear- ing in a mystic masque, which indeed hits a truth not always as clearly apprehended as it should be by those who write of
Love :—
" Sometimes, but only for a moment, I saw a faint solitary figure with a veiled face, and carrying a faint torch, flit among the dancers, but like a dream within a dream, like a shadow of a shadow, and I knew by an understanding born from a deeper fountain than thought, that it was Eros himself, and that his face was veiled because no man or woman from the beginning of the world has ever known what love is, or looked into his eyes, for Eres alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, un- ending sympathy ; and if ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire ; but unveiled love he never knows."
This extract is from the last story of all, "Rosa Alchemica," in which we read the transparent allegory of fin-de-siecle estheticism and eclecticism ; of the weariness it brings ; of
the search after something more soul-satisfying in occultism, and of a terrified reaction and flight from the Temple of the Alchemical Rose seen falling to ruin in a sudden catastrophe of Nature, amid voices of men and women exulting and lamenting. The last word of the story and the book shall be our last extract
'"sere are moments even now, when I seem to hear those af exultation and lamentation, and when the indefinite world, which has but half lost its mastery :,ver my heart and my intellect, seems about to claim a perfect mastery ; but I carry the rosary about my neck, and when I hear or seem to hear them, I press it to my heart and say: He whose name is Legion is at our doors deceiving our intellects with subtlety and flattering our hearts with beauty, and we have no trust but in Thee ; ' and then the war that rages within me at other times is still, and I am at peace."
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