t.

The truth is Mr. Yeats is too original and, as it were, secret a poet to
capture all at once the imagination that has already fixed the outlines
of its kingdom amid the masterpieces of literature. His is a genius
outside the landmarks. There is no prototype in Shelley or Keats, any
more than there is in Shakespeare, for such a poem as that which was at
first called _Breasal the Fisherman_, but is now called simply _The
Fisherman_:

Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords.
And think that you were hard and unkind,
And blame you with many bitter words.

There, in music as simple as a fable of Aesop, Mr. Yeats has figured the
pride of genius and the passion of defeated love in words that are
beautiful in themselves, but trebly beautiful in their significances.

Beautifully new, again, is the poem beginning, "I wander by the edge,"
which expresses the desolation of love as it is expressed in few modern
poems:

I wander by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
_Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West
And the girdle of light is unbound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep._

Rhythms like these did not exist in the English language until Mr. Yeats
invented them, and their very novelty concealed for a time the passion
that is immortal in them. It is by now a threadbare saying of Wordsworth
that every great artist has himself to create the taste by which he is
enjoyed, but it is worth quoting once more because it is especially
relevant to a discussion of the genius of Mr. Yeats. What previous
artist, for example, had created the taste which would be prepared to
respond imaginatively to such a revelation of a lover's triumph in the
nonpareil beauty of his mistress as we have in the poem that ends:--

I cried in my dream, "_O women bid the young men lay
Their heads on your knees, and drown their eyes with your hair,
Or remembering hers they will find no other face fair
Till all the valleys of the world have been withered away_,"

One may doubt at times whether Mr. Yeats does not too consciously show
himself an artist of the aes