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This is comparable with Whitman's "when I try to describe the best, I can not. My tongue is ineffectual on its pivots." Another sentence from Fiona: "There is a great serenity in the thought of death, when it is known to be the gate of Life." Like all who have gained the Great Blessing, the revelation to the mind of that higher Self, that we are, William Sharp suffered keenly.
Jack: "I think a sensible woman wouldn't be out of place in Atlas' schemes for the regeneration of humanity." Mrs. Jack: "No; but Egeria isn't a yes, she is, too; I can't deny it, but I don't believe she knows anything about the sweating system, and she adores Ossian and Fiona Macleod, so she probably won't appeal to Atlas in his present state, which, to my mind, is unnecessarily intense.
In the shade made by the drooping branches he could not be seen, yet he could hear and see all. There was silence for a moment, and then Patsy began the tale of St. Droid "whoever he was," as Patsy said to himself; for he was going to make up out of his head this story of St. Droid and St. Droid's Day, and Queen Moira, Filion and Fiona.
But, of course, one can readily understand that such work would naturally lack spontaneity of impulse, having to be done, more or less, against the grain, from reasons of expediency: so long as "Fiona Macleod" must remain a secret, William Sharp must produce something to show for himself, in order to go on protecting that secret, which would, also, be all the better kept by William Sharp continuing in his original mediocrity.
The following extracts are from the Fiona Macleod phase of William Sharp and are characteristic of the Self, as evidenced in all instances of Illumination, particularly as these expressions refer to the nothingness of death, and the beauty and power of Love. "Do not speak of the spiritual life as 'another life'; there is no 'other life'; what we mean by that, is with us now.
Delicacy of fancy, a freedom from any touch of impurity, a beauty as of "dew-sweet moon-flowers glimmering white through the mirk of a dust laden with sea-mist," are the qualities of Fiona Macleod's best verse. John Masefield.
He is in spite of his seclusion above all a prophet amongst men. He made great discoveries in the realm of the mind the mind attending closely to Nature, but he is too much the naturalist and the land-surveyor to lose himself in the raptures of nature love. He is a stranger to the ethereal touch with which Fiona Macleod opens the magic door of that which is felt but not seen in earth and sky.
In the later years of his activity he fell captive to the new and unaccustomed music of Fiona Macleod's exquisite prose and verse; he wanted to dedicate his "New England Idyls" to the author of "Pharais" and "From the Hills of Dream," and wrote for her permission; but the identity of the mysterious author was then jealously guarded, and his letter must have gone astray; for it was never answered.
In these memoirs, the point is made obvious that Fiona Macleod is not merely a nom de plume; neither is she an obsessing personality; a guide or "control," as the Spiritualists know that phenomenon.
Why spoil 'William Sharp' by this inadequate and misleading translation?" The curious thing, too, was that the work he did over his own name, after "Fiona Macleod" had escaped into the freedom of her own beautiful individual utterance, showed no improvement in quality, no marks of having sprung from the same mental womb where it had lain side by side with so fair a sister.
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