spirits. Poets and Poetry                           19

The illustration opposite is an example of Jones's exquisite
script. It is a page of automatic writing from a prose-poem entitled
"TheCelts." This manuscript, which consists of 128 pages of fools¬
cap, is in an enormous script, with the words written out again
underneath in ordinary size. One is aghast at the prodigal ex¬
penditure of paper: sometimes only one word will fit on a page!
The manuscript begins: "There is a long message which can
come when you will. . . The subject of the message? It is a thing
foreshadowed . . . Now rest for five minutes; then no talking as
it comes." Then the prose-poem follows. At page 84, the "Muse"
announces: "Now for to-day enough. Read aloud Ezekiel 26 and
27. We bless you. Leave it now, little dweller in God's Garden."
However, the writing continues for a few pages, answering
questions about obscure points in the preceding material.

These are not wholly unique documents, for writing of this
sort, or very like it, has been fairly well known; but it may well be
doubted if so full a record of automatic writing of verse is any¬
where else to be found.

Although Jones did not claim direct communication with the
dead, his meditations gave him a powerful sense of intimacy with
them. Like William Blake, he could project himself backwards
till he felt himself in the mystic company of "patriarchs and Druid
kings." A dream world, a world of vision, or of art, was rendered
possible for Jones by this extraordinary habit of composition. A
library becomes a poetic laboratory which possesses such an inti¬
mate record of a poet's mind.

Spirit-writing may strike some as humbug. The excerpts quoted
from "The Celts" have, perhaps, an air of the mediumistic seance
with its sham reverence and portentousness. However, there was
in Jones a spring of genuine religious mysticism which redeems
him, and which he himself recognized as the essential nourisher
of his spiritual being. Writing of his spiritual developmenr, he
says: "You can trace a growth that leads up to 'As in a Rose-Jar,'
but never is there a consciousness of a certain divine Immanence
until I make a discovery and write it out in 'Joyous Gard'___And