The Celtic Twilight | Page 4

of a person who is alive I should feel the living
influence in my living body, and my heart would beat and my breath
would fail. It is a spirit. It is some one who is dead or who has never
lived."
[FN#1] I wrote this sentence long ago. This sadness now seems to me a
part of all peoples who preserve the moods of the ancient peoples of the
world. I am not so pre-occupied with the mystery of Race as I used to
be, but leave this sentence and other sentences like it unchanged. We
once believed them, and have, it may be, not grown wiser.
I asked what he was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His
pleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to
halfmad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and
consciencestricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles
into his care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging,

more than one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and
sun them as it were in the subtle light of his mind. Sometimes visions
come to him as he talks with them, and he is rumoured to have told
divers people true matters of their past days and distant friends, and left
them hushed with dread of their strange teacher, who seems scarce
more than a boy, and is so much more subtle than the oldest among
them.
The poetry he recited me was full of his nature and his visions.
Sometimes it told of other lives he believes himself to have lived in
other centuries, sometimes of people he had talked to, revealing them
to their own minds. I told him I would write an article upon him and it,
and was told in turn that I might do so if I did not mention his name, for
he wished to be always "unknown, obscure, impersonal." Next day a
bundle of his poems arrived, and with them a note in these words:
"Here are copies of verses you said you liked. I do not think I could
ever write or paint any more. I prepare myself for a cycle of other
activities in some other life. I will make rigid my roots and branches. It
is not now my turn to burst into leaves and flowers."
The poems were all endeavours to capture some high, impalpable mood
in a net of obscure images. There were fine passages in all, but these
were often embedded in thoughts which have evidently a special value
to his mind, but are to other men the counters of an unknown coinage.
To them they seem merely so much brass or copper or tarnished silver
at the best. At other times the beauty of the thought was obscured by
careless writing as though he had suddenly doubted if writing was not a
foolish labour. He had frequently illustrated his verses with drawings,
in which an unperfect anatomy did not altogether hide extreme beauty
of feeling. The faeries in whom he believes have given him many
subjects, notably Thomas of Ercildoune sitting motionless in the
twilight while a young and beautiful creature leans softly out of the
shadow and whispers in his ear. He had delighted above all in strong
effects of colour: spirits who have upon their heads instead of hair the
feathers of peacocks; a phantom reaching from a swirl of flame towards
a star; a spirit passing with a globe of iridescent crystal-symbol of the
soulhalf shut within his hand. But always under this largess of colour

lay some tender homily addressed to man's fragile hopes. This spiritual
eagerness draws to him all those who, like himself, seek for
illumination or else mourn for a joy that has gone. One of these
especially comes to mind. A winter or two ago he spent much of the
night walking up and down upon the mountain talking to an old peasant
who, dumb to most men, poured out his cares for him. Both were
unhappy: X----- because he had then first decided that art and poetry
were not for him, and the old peasant because his life was ebbing out
with no achievement remaining and no hope left him. Both how Celtic!
how full of striving after a something never to be completely expressed
in word or deed. The peasant was wandering in his mind with
prolonged sorrow. Once he burst out with "God possesses the
heavens--God possesses the heavens--but He covets the world"; and
once he lamented that his old neighbours were gone, and that all had
forgotten him: they used to draw a chair to the fire for him in every
cabin, and now they said, "Who is that old fellow there?" "The fret