I
I have desired, like every artist, to create a little world out of the beautiful, pleasant, and signifit things of this marred and clumsy world, and to show in a vision something of the face of Ireland to any of my own people who would look where I bid them. I have therefore written down accurately and didly much that I have heard and seen, and, except by way of entary, nothing that I have merely imagined.
I have, however, been at no pains to separate my own beliefs from those of the peasantry, but have rather let my men and women, dhouls and faeries, go their way unoffended or defended by any argument of mihe things a man has heard and seehreads of life, and if he pull them carefully from the fused distaff of memory, any who will weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best. I too have woven my garment like another, but I shall try to keep warm in it, and shall be well tent if it do not unbee.
Hope and Memory have one daughter and her name is Art, and she has built her dwelling far from the desperate field where men hang out their garments upon forked boughs to be banners of battle.
O beloved daughter of Hope and Memory, be with me for a little.
1893.
II
I have added a few more chapters in the manner of the old ones, and would have added others, but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one』s dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss per haps. In these neters, as in the old ones, I have ied nothing but my ents and one or two deceitful sentehat may keep some poor story-teller』s erce with the devil and his angels, or the like, from being known among his neighbours. I shall publish in a little while a big book about the oh of faery, and shall try to make it systematical and learned enough to buy pardon for this handful of dreams.
1902.
W. B. YEATS.