THE CUTTING OF AN AGATE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
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THE CUTTING
OF AN AGATE

BY

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

AUTHOR OF “IDEAS OF GOOD AND EVIL,” ETC.

New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1912

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1912,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1912.

PREFACE

When I wrote the essay on Edmund Spenser the company of Irish playerswho have now their stage at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin had beenfounded, but gave as yet few performances in a twelvemonth. I could letmy thought stray where it would, and even give a couple of summers toThe Faerie Queene; while for some ten years now I have written littleverse and no prose that did not arise out of some need of those playersor some thought suggested by their work, or was written in the defenceof some friend whose life has been a part of the movement of eventswhich is creating a new Ireland unintelligible to an old Ireland thatwatches with anger or indifference. The detailed defence of plays andplayers, published originally in Samhain, the occasional periodical ofthe theatre, and now making some three hundred pages of Mr. Bullen’scollected edition of my writings, is not here, but for the most part anexposition of principles, whether suggested by my own work or by thedeath of friend or fellow-worker, that, intended for no great public,has been printed and published from a Hand Press which my sisters manageat Dundrum with the help of the village girls. I have been busy with asingle art, that of the theatre, of a small, unpopular theatre; and thisart may well seem to practical men, busy with some programme ofindustrial or political regeneration, of no more account than theshaping of an agate; and yet in the shaping of an agate, whether in thecutting or the making of the design, one discovers, if one have aspeculative mind, thoughts that seem important and principles that maybe applied to life itself, and certainly if one does not believe so, oneis but a poor cutter of so hard a stone.

W. B. YEATS.

August, 1912.

CONTENTS

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