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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 darkness, and when one looks into the darkness there is always something there.
W.B. YEATS.
TO THE SECRET ROSE
Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose, Enfold me in my hour of hours; where those Who sought thee at the Holy Sepulchre, Or in the wine-vat, dwell beyond the stir And tumult of defeated dreams; and deep Among pale eyelids heavy with the sleep Men have named beauty. Your great leaves enfold The ancient beards, the helms of ruby and gold Of the crowned Magi; and the king whose eyes Saw the Pierced Hands and Rood of Elder rise In druid vapour and make the torches dim; Till vain frenzy awoke and he died; and him Who met Fand walking among flaming dew, By a grey shore where the wind never blew, And lost the world and Emir for a kiss; And him who drove the gods out of their liss And till a hundred morns had flowered red Feasted, and wept the barrows of his dead; And the proud dreaming king who flung the crown And sorrow away, and calling bard and clown Dwelt among wine-stained wanderers in deep woods; And him who sold tillage and house and goods, And sought through lands and islands numberless years Until he found with laughter and with tears A woman of so shining loveliness That men threshed corn at midnight by a tress, A little stolen tress. I too await The hour of thy great wind of love and hate. When shall the stars be blown about the sky, Like the sparks blown out of a smithy, and die? Surely thine hour has come, thy great wind blows, Far off, most secret, and inviolate Rose?
THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE OUTCAST.
A man, with thin brown hair and a pale face, half ran, half walked, along the road that wound from the south to the town of Sligo. Many called him Cumhal, the son of Cormac, and many called him the Swift, Wild Horse; and he was a gleeman, and he wore a short parti-coloured doublet, and had pointe