Read "Synge and the Ireland of his Time" by W.B. Yeats online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Taylor always spoke with confidence though he was no determined man, / being easily flattered or jostled from his way; and this, putting as it / were his fiery heart into his mouth made him formidable. And I have / noticed that all those who speak the thoughts of many, speak / confidently, while those who speak their own thoughts are hesitating / and timid, as though they spoke out of a mind and body grown sensitive / to the edge of bewilderment among many impressions. They speak to us / that we may give them certainty, by seeing what they have seen; and so / it is, that enlargement of experience does not come from those / oratorical thinkers, or from those decisive rhythms that move large / numbers of men, but from writers that seem by contrast as feminine as / the soul when it explores in Blake's picture the recesses of the grave, / carrying its faint lamp trembling and astonished; or as the Muses who / are never pictured as one-breasted amazons, but as women needing / protection. Indeed, all art which appeals to individual man and awaits / the confirmation of his senses and his reveries, seems when arrayed / against the moral zeal, the confident logic, the ordered proof of / journalism, a trifling, impertinent, vexatious thing, a tumbler who has / unrolled his carpet in the way of a marching army.