[ Boyd argues that Yeats’s reputation as a mystical writer is mistakenly based on his extensive use of symbols and correspondences which ultimately served him as poetic ornament, not philosophical ideas.

Viz.,—

“Mysticism to Yeats us not an intellectual belief, but an emotional or artistic refuge.” (p.139.)

“It is not until the mysticism of the book is examined from an intellectual point of view that one fully realises how fundamentally literary it is.” (p.173.)

“Yeats has repeatedly described with precision the effect of these symbols upon himself, but the very wealth of detail casts a suspicion upon the authenticity of his visions.” (p.185.)

[...]

The Wind Among the Reeds contains many verses like these, yet the cumulative effect of the book is [138] unfavourable to all but the few - or is it the many? - who profess to find in Yeats’s overweighted symbolism the exposition of a profound creed. In spite of the general protest against the numerous poems involving voluminous explanatory notes, and the absolute obscurity of several, this is the collection of verse which has established the author’s claim to the title “mystic poet.”The prose works preceding it, already referred to, constitute a more substantial effort to establish that claim, but The Wind Among the Reeds is the first mature expression of Yeats’s mysticism in verse. It marks the maturity of his technique, the end of his career as purely lyric poet, and the beginning of a phase in his evolution with which he has come to be popularly and completely identified. Yet, it is doubtful, with all its paraphernalia of occultism, its display of mystic lore, if the book is one in which the authentic voice of the mystic is heard. Mysticism is, above all, intellectual, when it is not charlatanism. Vision comes only as the reward of severe mental discipline, after study as rigorous as that demanded by any of the so-called “exact”sciences. But there is no trace of this in Yeats, who cannot properly be described as an intellectual poet. His appeal is primarily sensuous. None can charm the ear more delicately, or please the eye of imagination more skilfully than the author of Oisin. It is improbable that he has ever mastered the science of mysticism as he has mastered the science of verse. So long as the mind surrenders to the heart, thought to emotion, Yeats carries the reader with him. A typical illustration is that wonderful lyric The Rose of the World, one of the earliest pages about which trails “the red rose-bordered hem&”: [139]

Who dreamed that beauty passes like a dream?
For these red lips, with all their mournful pride,
Mournful that no new wonder may betide,
Troy passed away in one high funeral gleam,
And Usna’s children died.
Bow down, archangels, in your dim abode:
Before you were, or any hearts to beat.
Weary and kind one stood beside His seat;
He made the world to be a grassy road
Before her wandering feet.

The last verse empties the poem of all intellectual content. It is impossible to know who is “weary and kind,”for the adjectives are inapplicable to any being conceived by the preceding verses. One cannot imagine Eternal Beauty as ever having been “weary and kind,”and, assuming the allusion to be some living woman, it is equally inconceivable that she should have existed “weary and kind,”in the region of time and space considered by the poet. it would be easy to cite other instances of this inconsequence in Yeats’s thought, and when we shall have considered his prose writings, it will be seen that these incongruities are not due to the exigencies of rhyme. Not poetic licence, but a fundamental misconception of mystic doctrine is the explanation.
 Mysticism to Yeats us not an intellectual belief, but an emotional or artistic refuge. His visions do not convince us, because they are obviously “literary”rather than spiritual. The concepts which are realities to Blake, or to Yeats’s contemporary, A.E., are to him symbols, nor do they strike the reader as being anything more. Of symbolism - even mystic symbolism - there is plenty, but of mysticism hardly a trace. In the earlier poems there is more evidence of genuine mystic feeling than in The Wind Among the Reeds and its successors. Since [140] 1899 the poet has been almost completely merged in the dramatist, but three very slim collections of lyric verse have appeared at long intervals, In the Seven Woods (1903), The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910) and Responsibilities (1914). All three continue the manner of the 1899 volume, but The Wind Among the Reeds remains, nevertheless, the culminating point of progress in the direction of mystic symbolism. Beyond it no advance can be made. It is, therefore, needless to say that, in attempting to go further, the poet has come to a standstill. in The Green Helmet and other Poems he cries:

The fascination of what’s difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins... .

Although the reference is more particularly to his experiments with the theatre, the lines are appropriate to more than the plays of the later Yeats. Symbolism has been both a good servant and a bad master, for at one period it had vanquished the poet. When we were asked in The Wind Among the Reeds to remember that “Hanrahan is the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather permanent possessions, or the adoration of the shepherds; and Michael Robartes is the pride of imagination brooding upon the greatness of its possessions, or the adoration of the Magi; while Aedh is the myrrh and frankincense that the imagination offers continually before all that it loves”- it was clear that the symbol had become more to Yeats than the thought. In 1899 criticism was indignant at the obscurities of the celebrated, Mongan Laments the Change that has come upon Him and His Beloved, but in 1903 In the Seven Woods contained a similar piece of ingenuity, The Rider from the North, while The Grey Rock in Responsibilities surpasses both in its wealth of [141] enigma. Yeats has abandoned the hope of disarming hostility by notes, as in The Wind Among the Reeds; his allusions and symbols are now left for the few who can read as they run. In this he is wise, for it is doubtful if such a glose as that quoted concerning Hanrahan, Robartes and Aedh, will be of any help to the uninitiated in their attempt to appreciate the poetry. But it is equally doubtful if the existence of such poems as those mentioned is any more justified because to some the symbols are as familiar as to the author.
 It would be unjust to suggest that Yeats’s later poems grow increasingly obscure, and perhaps unintentionally that is the impression left by what has been said. While it is true that In the Seven Woods and subsequent collections mark no advance on The Wind Among the Reeds, they contain work which is equal to the best Yeats has written. The specifically symbolic-mystic poems are inevitably what was to be expected, but the author has still his artistry, the verbal magic, and the technique which made The Wind Among the Reeds an achievement. The return to the themes of Irish legend in The Old Age of Queen Maeve and Baile and Aillinn; the Song of Red Hanrahan and The Withering of the Boughs made In the Seven Woods a volume precious to those admirers of Yeats whose passion for the allusive and elusive was within bounds. This, with The Green Helmet and other Poems and Responsibilities, would make a book to be placed beside The Wind Among the Reeds. The most recent volume, particularly, is interesting, as sounding the note of actuality. The Grey Rock and The Two Kings are here, of course, to remind us that Yeats is unrepentant, but the majority of the poems in Responsibilities are as free from the defects of elaborate symbolism as [142] Yeats’s early work. They are written out of the experience gained from years of controversy and struggle in the practical world on behalf of an ideal. Some are directly inspired by incidents connected with the Irish National Theatre propaganda, others bear upon certain notorious episodes of Ireland’s artistic history, and these contemporaneous utterances bring the poet from the dream-world to everyday life, with most happy results. There is a firmness and directness of outline which are not usually associated with the poetry of Yeats. He has freed himself from the preoccupations of symbolism only to gain in beauty and energy what he has lost in vagueness and mystery. Who will not prefer September, 1913, with its passionate cry:

Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.

to those overcharged memories of diligently acquired mysticism?

[...]

By the simple expedient of listening only to their [144] sound [i.e., the symbolic poems], many have surrendered to the “mystic”poems of Yeats, and have even convinced themselves, in the end, that they have heard something more. When he evokes some beautiful thought or gesture, some real or imaginary landscape, impregnated with the charm of his imagination - these are the true “visions”of the poet, the glimpses of the Ideal, which bring the conviction of Reality, in the Platonic sense. How different from the too deliberate evocations of superficial mysticism! The introduction of intellectualism into that shadowy dreamworld, the desire to make symbols of natural beauty, to attune the mystic voices of Nature to the preaching of some obscure doctrine - these are the defects which mark the development of Yeats. They are responsible for that impression of inhumanity which he creates, for, in the confusion of the intellectual and the imaginative, the reader ceases to recognise in which world he is moving. Reason is revolted by the inconsequences of the transcendental world, while the imagination is fettered by the presence of reason in a sphere where agreement between them is impossible. In order to escape the dilemma, one must either take refuge with the Yeats in whom the conflict does not arise, or surrender to the music of words without examining their meaning. The former course is the wiser, for the full force of this appeal can best be felt where the winds of doctrine do not prevail. W. B. Yeats is not an “intellectual” poet; the instrument he wields gives out its purest tones when unhampered by the wrappings of mystical symbolism. These are often ornamental but seldom useful.

The substance of The Secret Rose and kindred stories is akin to that of The Celtic Twilight, in that both works are an attempt to portray visionary Ireland.  Fairy lore and legend are again put under contribution, and are woven into a delicate fabric by the imagination of the poet.  But the earlier work is concerned with the simpler visions of the peasant mind, whereas The Secret Rose, as its very title indicates, is influenced strongly by the doctrines of the intellectual mystics, those whose beliefs are something more conscious and reasoned than the native, instinctive mysticism of the Celtic countryside.  The commentator of Blake, the disciple of Sar Péladan, is now in evidence. His form has become more impeccable, his style is wonderfully adapted to the thought of the narrator, but his former simplicity of manner has disappeared. The naive, artless stories of The Celtic Twilight are transformed by a mind that has been fed on Boehme and Swedenborg. Many, however, such as Rosa Alchemica, are the direct product of the author’s studies of the occult.
 Regarded as “tales of mystery and imagination,”Rosa Alchemica and The Tables of the Law have an interest which quite justifies their existence. They are written with great skill; the atmosphere of the supernatural, and an evident acquaintance with the paraphernalia of alchemy and occultism, combine to give an impression of mystery and reality which successfully appeals to the reader. Similarly, in the narratives drawn from Irish legend, Yeats utilises [173] to their advantage the knowledge of mystic teaching and cabalistic formulae which he had gleaned from various sources. Coupled with the peculiar style, at once highly artificial and very simple, in which the stories are told, these elements of mysticism complete the special charm of The Secret Rose. They correspond in his thought to the studied simplicity of his style, both are the product of an artifice, and are so complementary as to make the book a consummate piece of artistry. One has only to compare Red Hanrahan in its recent Kiltartan garb with its original appearance to see how inseparable are form and matter in the original volume, The Secret Rose. To make the stories convincing in peasant speech they must be emptied of all the esoteric content which harmonised with the mood and language of their first telling. To some extent this was done when the Hanrahan stories were published separately in 1904, but they have not been reduced to the essentials whose directness and simplicity of outline would permit of their being rewritten “nearer to the mind of the country places.”Hanrahan is still, as the poet conceived him, “ the simplicity of an imagination too changeable to gather permanent possessions.”Symbolism of this kind does not seem congruous with the dialect of Kiltartan. Douglas Hyde’s Casadh an tSugáin, treating of one of Yeats’s Hanrahan episodes, is better calculated to reach the folk imagination than the belated simplifications of The Secret Rose.
 It is not until the mysticism of the book is examined from an intellectual point of view that one fully realises how fundamentally literary it is. Not for nothing are form and content so necessary to one another.  What was stated of The Wind Among the Reeds is true of The Secret Rose, their mysticism [174] is decorative, or at best symbolic, and must not be interrogated too closely for a revelation of doctrinal certainty. Yeats has heard the mystic messages of! Blake and Boehme, but he does not appear to have correlated the various teachings of his masters into any coherent body of belief. While he himself may find a personal satisfaction in a certain wavering and nebulous theosophy, his own utterances are hardly sufficiently substantial to help the uninitiated. The transcendental common-sense of the true mystic cannot but be shocked at Red Hanrahan’s vision in which the lovers had “heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts, and they were looking and ever looking on their own faces in one another’s mirrors.”This is obviously no mystic’s vision, but simply the conceit of a poet, a symbol not without literary charm. More fundamental is the weakness revealed by such an allusion as that, in Rosa Alchemica, to beings “each wrapped in his eternal moment. In the perfect lifting of an arm, in a little circlet of rhythmical words.”The eternal moment does not come to the mystic in another’s conception of him, and “the perfect lifting of an arm”has no other sense but that it is a purely external idea of perfection as seen by another. Mysticism teaches that the eternal moment is one of self-realisation, it is subjective not objective. The highest moment of a man’s life is fixed by himself, and cannot be a beautiful gesture, which is felt to be such only by an onlooker. These two points, which might be multiplied by reference to other stories, illustrate precisely the two aspects of Yeats’s mysticism. It is neither symbolism or ornament. The visions of others have supplied him with rich material for his art, which is essentially external. A “circlet of rhythmical words,”a beautiful movement of the [175] body, these are things upon which his poetic imagination seizes, and who will deny that he has thereby achieved effects of great beauty? Whatever of mysticism he possesses is far more closely related to the fairy beliefs of the people than to the intellectual doctrines of the great mystics. There is a note of sincerity, therefore, in The Celtic Twilight which one misses in the more elaborate stories of The Secret Rose. But the latter is the more finished work from the point of view of technique. In this it resembles The Wind Among the Reeds, the product of the same mood and similarly more perfect in its art than the poems which preceded it. Just as many prefer the verse prior to 1899, so they will put The Celtic Twilight above its successor. It is useless to seek, in either The Wind Among the Reeds or The Secret Rose, any intelligible statement of mysticism. Both are primarily the work of an artist rather than a thinker, and may be enjoyed to the full as such. They are rich in beauty of style and abound in evidences of a sensitive yet powerful imagination. As contributions to the literature of fantasy and symbol they have a value transcending that which must always entitle them to a high place in the history of the Literary Revival. The essays of Yeats, though numerous, have been only in part reprinted. The early years of journalism in London saw him engaged in a great deal of journeyman work - prefaces to editions and anthologies of Irish authors, book reviews and the like - which he has allowed to remain uncollected. All this writing was good propaganda, and had considerable influence in defining and asserting the position of modern Anglo-Irish literature. If it does not find a place in the list of his published works, the fault must be attributed to the necessarily ephemeral [176] nature of most journalism. Nevertheless not all of this propagandist work has been rejected, as may be seen from the essays included in the Collected Edition of Yeats’s works.
 The earliest and most important book of essays, Ideas of Good and Evil, was published in 1903, and was followed in 1907 by Discoveries, a much smaller collection, issued semi-privately by the Dun Emer Press, now known as the Cuala Press, and conducted by a sister of the poet. This mode of publication was adopted for the subsequent volumes of prose. Poetry and Ireland (1908) and J. M. Synge and the Ireland of his Time (1911). But so slight are all three that they have been incorporated with some other essays into the volume, The Cutting of an Agate, which was published in New York in 1912. Upon this book, and Ideas of Good and Evil, rests the claim of Yeats to be considered as an essayist. They contain all the essays included in the Collected Edition, except the articles from Beltaine, Samhain and its supplement. The Arrow. These publications, which ran respectively from 1899 to 1900, and from 1903 to 1908, are evidence of the energy and enthusiasm with which Yeats forwarded the Dramatic Movement, but they do not add anything to the author’s reputation as an essayist, unless it be to reveal his skill in controversy. They do, however, provide data relating to the history of the Irish Theatre worthy of preservation, as the original publications are difficult to obtain.
 The priority of Ideas of Good and Evil would alone be sufficient to explain the precedence which it has taken in the works of W. B. Yeats. It was the first contribution of its kind made by him, and that, too, at a time when he had not yet obtained the degree of recognition which he now enjoys. The essays which [177] appeared subsequently were not issued to catch the attention of the general public, so that it was not until nine years later that The Cutting of an Agate supplied a companion volume to that of 1903. During that interval Yeats had arrived; and his work was receiving the customary measure of conventional praise, instead of the no less traditionally suspicious criticism accorded to those not yet accepted. Ideas of Good and Evil met with the latter rather than the former reception, and, therefore, drew upon itself an amount of critical attention which his more recent essays have escaped. It was pronounced by some stilted and precious, by others, the clearest and most flexible prose Yeats had written. The accusation derives justification from a comparison between this book and The Celtic Twilight. The wistfulness and spontaneity of that early prose are gone, but gone also is the mood of which it was the expression. Ideas of Good and Evil is the work of the author of The Secret Rose, who is indeed a changed man from him who wrote The Last Gleeman and A Visionary. The Yeats who revealed in 1897 his preoccupation with magic and alchemy, whose mind had become filled with the dreams and images of mystic symbolism, could not but allow these things to colour his prose. The change which we saw creeping into his writing in The Secret Rose, and becoming more pronounced in The Wind Among the Reeds, had become a permanent condition when Ideas of Good and Evil appeared. Given, therefore, the complexion of Yeats’s thought, it may be asked whether the last-mentioned work is really deserving of the censure passed upon it. If “the style is the man,”then Ideas of Good and Evil is a perfect portrait of the author. Its defects are not literary but intellectual. Those who complain of preciosities and obscurities are simply [178] engaged in denouncing the ideas of Yeats. Once it is recognised that the mysticism he teaches is merely an attempt to explain theoretically an artistic instinct, then the charge of artificiality and obscurity falls to the ground.

[...]

 The ultimate impression left by Yeats’s prose, as by his verse, is one of beauty. Both are the creation of a mind skilled in the technique of words, the art which most completely absorbed the attention of the poet. Had Yeats brought the same concentration to the study of mysticism as to the creation of a style, his poetry might more worthily claim consideration on account of its content. But the philosophy which he has expressed in prose is no less vague, though less obscure, than certain poems, and resolves itself into a few commonplaces. Starting from a belief in the great mind and memory of nature, of which our minds and memories are a part, Yeats conceives the imagination as the link between the immortal memory and the memory of man, and symbolism as the instrument by which to awaken the correspondence between the two. The elaborate symbols he so frequently employs must be justified, therefore, because of the moods which they produce in him, enabling the poet to enter into communication with the world beyond. Unfortunately they do not always arouse the requisite emotion in the reader who is left, not in a state of mystic exaltation, but of mystification, by their abstruseness. Yeats has repeatedly described with precision the effect of these symbols upon himself, but the very wealth of detail casts a suspicion upon the authenticity of his visions. They are the fantastic dreams of a poet, rather than the [186] glimpses of reality to which the true mystic attains. As we saw when discussing The Secret Rose, the author too often outrages one’s transcendental common-sense. The doctrine of inertia, the shrinking from the problems of daily life, which is implicitly - indeed, explicitly - a part of Yeats’s theory, does not fit into the mystic philosophy of which it is commonly supposed to be a part. The practical strength of mysticism, the heightened sense of power which it confers, is by no means compatible with the popular view fostered by writers like Yeats. Theirs is the aloofness, not of contemplation, but of the literary theorist, who professes to disdain the humble preoccupations of humanity. In short, examine it as we may, the mystic symbolism of Yeats leads inevitably to the conclusion that it is not mysticism but “mere literature, &c.”
 Fortunately Yeats has not allowed his theory of life to interfere with his practice. His practical value to the Literary Revival cannot be overestimated. Just as his poetry provided the example, so his prose furnished the precept, necessary to recreate a literature for Ireland. Most of what he has written, and everything he has done, had this object in view, and however one may criticise his “mysticism,&” nobody will say that it has prevented him from succeeding. Regarded without reference to its theoretical import, the symbolism of Yeats is, in the main, a literary asset which has contributed much to the charm of his style. Similarly his aloofness has never degenerated into that quietism whose theorist he appears to be. It simply provided him with a sufficient contempt for the wisdom of “the practical man&” to ensure the initial success of the Irish National Theatre. The faith and patriotism required to fight for that ideal are a happy demonstration [187] of his own lack of consistency where intellectual theory is concerned.
 There has been a tendency to insist unduly upon the mystic side of Yeats’s work. To Irishmen this is the side of least importance. We prefer to think of him as one who has long been foremost in asserting our right to literary existence, and who has himself enforced our claim. He found a style which established him in the first rank of living poets, and at the same time proclaimed the advent of a new force in literature. More than any other of his contemporaries he challenged directly the attention of English critics, and by taking his place beside the best living poets in England, he freed his countrymen from the inevitable ascendancy of the English tradition. Where none is found to do this, as in the United States, whose writers are dominated by English models, a purely imitative un-national literature results. If we have in Ireland to-day a literature which is national, and therefore un-English, we must not forget the poet who refuted for us, by anticipation, the accusation of provincialism. In addition to the great literary debt which we owe to the author of the Celtic Twilight and The Wanderings of Oisin, in addition to our obligations to the practical Idealist of the Irish National Theatre, we are indebted intellectually to W. B. Yeats. Had he been less true to himself and to us, we should not have to thank him for preparing the way to Irish freedom in literature. He made it possible for those who followed him to write in the certainty that English criticism could not dismiss them as mere “provincials.”

WHILE the poets mentioned in the last chapter were spreading the fame of the Literary Revival in England, where most of them lived or published their work, there had come together in Dublin a group of writers whose part in the building up of the new Anglo-Irish literature has been of far greater importance than is generally recognised. [...;213] The study of mysticism was the common factor which brought together the younger writers, W. B. Yeats, Charles Johnston, John Eglinton, Charles Weekes and George W. Russell (A.E.), to mention only some of the names which have since come into prominence in Irish literature.

[...]

Of the young writers who created the Theosophical Movement in Dublin, Yeats was the first to make his work known in book form, his Mosada having appeared the same year in which the Dublin Lodge received its charter, while The Wanderings of Oisin was published two years later. That mysticism was but a very small part of his inspiration seems confirmed by the fact that before his companions had [216] become, as it were, articulate, he had produced five original works, had collaborated in two others, and was known as the editor of four collections of folktales. The only volume which bore distinctly the trace of those speculations with which the Dublin mystics were preoccupied was The Celtic Twilight, published in 1893, but written earlier. Its completion coincided, therefore, with the first coordinated effort of the mystics to make themselves known to the public, when The Irish Theosophist appeared in the autumn of 1892.

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of the collaboration of Lady Gregory and Yeats, and its result, is furnished by Where there is Nothing. This work was originally published in 1903, as the first volume of Plays for an Irish Theatre, but curious to relate, it was produced by the London Stage Society, and has never been part of the Abbey Theatre repertory. The play performed there in 1907 was a rehandling of Yeats’s subject by Lady Gregory under the title The Unicorn from the Stars [sic]. It is this latter version which Yeats has included in his Collected Works, the original play [68] having been utterly discarded by him.

In thus belying the series which it so inappropriately opened, Where there is Nothing naturally excites curiosity as to the reason of its appearance and subsequent abandonment. In his preface to The Unicorn from the Stars in 1908, the author hinted at some mystery, when he said that the earlier play has been written in a fortnight, in order to “save from a plagiarist a subject that seemed worth the keeping till greater knowledge of the stage made an adequate treatment possible.’ What was the precise scope of this allusion we do not know, but the speed and general circumstances of the play’s construction sufficiently explain why it does not figure in later editions of Yeats’s works.

Nevertheless, Where there is Nothing is very far from being an inconsiderable piece of hasty writing, and most readers will regret that he did not retain, and himself revise, this analysis of the revolt of the spirit against convention. Paul Ruttledge is a wealthy young landowner who abandons his money and position to join a band of vagrant tinkers. His delicate constitution is not fitted for the life of these hardy wanderers, so he falls ill, after many curious experiences and adventures. In the monastery where he is nursed, the mystic qualities in his nature are awakened by the presence of religion. Ruttledge joins the order in the hope of finding that Nirvana where finite and infinite are merged, and the soul of man is at peace. The brethren are swayed by his transcendental preaching and share his desire for that condition “where there is nothing that is anything and nobody that is anybody’, for “where [69] here is nothing, there is God.” The frenzy of his exaltation is contagious, and he finishes by bringing the rank and file of the order to a state bordering on religious anarchism. The great sermon in which he advocates a mystical iconoclasm, whose destructive fury must not spare even the church itself, proves, however, too great a trial of the Superior’s patience. Ruttledge and his disciples are ejected from the monastery, and finally fall victims to the fury of the peasantry, who cannot appreciate these excesses of Christian virtue. But the outcasts were already on the way of destruction because of their failure to agree to the intransigeant teaching of their leader. Ruttledge’s mystic ecstasy at the thought of death was beyond the imagination of his companions, who opposed his passive resignation by attempts to compromise with reality, to the extent, at least, of keeping life in their bodies by active work amongst the peasant population.’