d--and aloof from the world though
this consciousness sometimes makes him appear--he is full of an
extraordinary pity and brotherliness for men. He wanders among them, not
with the condescension of so many earnest writers, but with the humility
almost of one of the early Franciscans. One may amuse oneself by
fancying that there is something in the manner of St. Francis even in
Mr. Masefield's attitude to his little brothers the swear-words. He may
not love them by nature, but he is kind to them by grace. They strike
one as being the most innocent swear-words in literature.

XVIII

MR. W.B. YEATS

1. HIS OWN ACCOUNT OF HIMSELF

Mr. W.B. Yeats has created, if not a new world, a new star. He is not a
reporter of life as it is, to the extent that Shakespeare or Browning
is. One is not quite certain that his kingdom is of the green earth. He
is like a man who has seen the earth not directly but in a crystal. He
has a vision of real things, but in unreal circumstances. His poetry
repels many people at first because it is unlike any other poetry. They
are suspicious of it as of a new sect in religion. They have been
accustomed to bow in other temples. They resent the ritual, the
incantations, the unearthly light and colour of the temple of this
innovating high priest.

They resent, most of all, the self-consciousness of the priest himself.
For Mr. Yeats's is not a genius with natural readiness of speech. His
sentences do not pour from him in stormy floods. It is as though he had
to pursue and capture them one by one, like butterflies. Or, perhaps, it
is that he has not been content with the simple utterance of his vision.
He has reshaped and embroidered it, and has sung of passion in a mask.
There are many who see in his poetry only the mask, and who are
apparently blind to the passion of sorrowful ecstasy that sets _The Wind
Among the Reeds_ apart from every other book that has ever been written
in English. They imagine that the book amounts to little more than the
attitude of a stylist, a trifler with Celtic nomenclature and fairy
legend.

One may agree that some of the less-inspired poems are works of
intellectual craftsmanship rather than of immediate genius, and that
here and there the originality of the poet's vision is clouded by
reminiscences of the aesthetic painters. But the greatest poems in the
book are a new thing in literature, a "rapturous music" not heard
before. One is not surprised to learn