-hour instead of beginning their duel. If I felt impatient it was only
that they delayed the coming of the adept Janus, for I hoped to recognise
the moment when Axel cries: "I know that lamp, it was burning before
Solomon"; or that other when he cries: "As for living, our servants will
do that for us."

The movement of letters had been haughty even before Magic had touched it.
Rimbaud had sung: "Am I an old maid that I should fear the embrace of
death?" And everywhere in Paris and in London young men boasted of the
garret, and claimed to have no need of what the crowd values.

Last summer you, who were at the age I was when first I heard of Mallarme
and of Verlaine, spoke much of the French poets young men and women read
to-day. Claudel I already somewhat knew, but you read to me for the first
time from Jammes a dialogue between a poet and a bird, that made us cry,
and a whole volume of Peguy's _Mystere de la Charite de Jeanne d'Arc_.
Nothing remained the same but the preoccupation with religion, for these
poets submitted everything to the Pope, and all, even Claudel, a proud
oratorical man, affirmed that they saw the world with the eyes of
vine-dressers and charcoal-burners. It was no longer the soul, self-moving
and self-teaching--the magical soul--but Mother France and Mother Church.

Have not my thoughts run through a like round, though I have not found my
tradition in the Catholic Church, which was not the church of my
childhood, but where the tradition is, as I believe, more universal and
more ancient?

W. B. Y.

_May_ 11, 1917.

Printed in the United States of America.

The following pages contain advertisements of books by the same author or
on kindred subjects.

Responsibilities

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

_Cloth, $1.25_

"William Butler Yeats is by far the biggest poetic personality living
among us at present. He is great both as a lyric and dramatist poet."

--_John Masefield._

"This poetry has the rhythm that is incantation and sorcery, that is
not of the senses nor of the spirit, but of a mingling which is
exaltation."

--_Chicago Evening Post._

Under the title of "Responsibilities" William Butler Yeats brings together
some of his recent poems. Notable still for his freshness of thought, his
keen originality, and his purely poetic conception of thoughts and facts,
Mr. Yeats sometimes makes us wonder how he has so long been able to hold
his