Prophet, Priest and King by W.B. Yeats

The little theatrical company I write my plays for had come to a west of / Ireland town and was to give a performance in an old ball-room, for / there was no other room big enough. I went there from a neighbouring / country house and arriving a little before the players, tried to open a / window. My hands were black with dirt in a moment and presently a pane / of glass and a part of the window frame came out in my hands. Everything / in this room was half in ruins, the rotten boards cracked under my feet, / and our new proscenium and the new boards of the platform looked out of / place, and yet the room was not really old, in spite of the musicians' / gallery over the stage. It had been built by some romantic or / philanthropic landlord some three or four generations ago, and was a / memory of we knew not what unfinished scheme.

From there I went to look for the players and called for information on / a young priest, who had invited them, and taken upon himself the finding / of an audience. He lived in a high house with other priests, and as I / went in I noticed with a whimsical pleasure a broken pane of glass in / the fan-light over the door, for he had once told me the story of an old / woman who a good many years ago quarrelled with the bishop, got drunk, / and hurled a stone through the painted glass. He was a clever man, who / read Meredith and Ibsen, but some of his books had been packed in the / fire-grate by his house-keeper, instead of the customary view of an / Italian lake or the coloured tissue-paper. The players, who had been / giving a performance in a neighbouring town, had not yet come, or were / unpacking their costumes and properties at the hotel he had recommended / them. We should have time, he said, to go through the half-ruined town / and to visit the convent schools and the cathedral, where, owing to his / influence, two of our young Irish sculptors had been set to carve an / altar and the heads of pillars. I had only heard of this work, and I / found its strangeness and simplicity -- one of them had been Rodin's / pupil -- could not make me forget the meretriciousness of the architecture / and the commercial commonplace of the inlaid pavements. The new movement / had seized on the cathedral midway in its growth, and the worst of the / old & the best of the new were side by side without any sign of / transition.