e traditions of the countryman, without
learning those of cultivated life or even educating themselves, and who
because of their poverty, their ignorance, their superstitious piety,
are much subject to all kinds of fear. Immediate victory, immediate
utility, became everything, and the conviction, which is in all who have
run great risks for a cause's sake, in the O'Learys and Mazzinis as in
all rich natures, that life is greater than the cause, withered, and we
artists, who are the servants not of any cause but of mere naked life,
and above all of that life in its nobler forms, where joy and sorrow are
one, Artificers of the Great Moment, became as elsewhere in Europe
protesting individual voices. Ireland's great moment had passed, and she
had filled no roomy vessels with strong sweet wine, where we have filled
our porcelain jars against the coming winter.

August, 1907.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF JOHN M. SYNGE'S POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS

'The Lonely returns to the Lonely, the Divine to the Divinity.'
--_Proclus_

I

While this work was passing through the press Mr. J. M. Synge died. Upon
the morning of his death one friend of his and mine, though away in the
country, felt the burden of some heavy event, without understanding
where or for whom it was to happen; but upon the same morning one of my
sisters said, 'I think Mr. Synge will recover, for last night I dreamed
of an ancient galley labouring in a storm and he was in the galley, and
suddenly I saw it run into bright sunlight and smooth sea, and I heard
the keel grate upon the sand.' The misfortune was for the living
certainly, that must work on, perhaps in vain, to magnify the minds and
hearts of our young men, and not for the dead that, having cast off the
ailing body, is now, as I believe, all passionate and fiery, an heroical
thing. Our Daimon is as dumb as was that of Socrates, when they brought
in the hemlock; and if we speak among ourselves, it is of the thoughts
that have no savour because we cannot hear his laughter, of the work
more difficult because of the strength he has taken with him, of the
astringent joy and hardness that was in all he did, and of his fame in
the world.

II

In his Preface he speaks of these poems as having been written during
the last sixteen or seventeen years, though the greater number were
written very recently, and many during his last illness.