The Project Gutenberg EBook of Responsibilities, by William Butler Yeats
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Title: Responsibilities
and other poems
Author: William Butler Yeats
Illustrator: Thomas Sturge Moore
Release Date: July 27, 2011 [EBook #36865]
Language: English
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[Illustration: (front cover)]
RESPONSIBILITIES AND OTHER POEMS
[Illustration]
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS
ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
RESPONSIBILITIES AND OTHER POEMS
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
=New York=
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916
_All rights reserved_
Copyright, 1911
By WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Copyright, 1904, 1908, and 1912
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Copyright, 1916
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1916.
CONTENTS
PAGE
RESPONSIBILITIES, 1912-1914--
Introductory Rhymes 1
The Grey Rock 3
The Two Kings 11
To a Wealthy Man 29
September 1913 32
To a Friend whose Work has come to Nothing 34
Paudeen 35
To a Shade 36
When Helen Lived 39
The Attack on 'The Playboy of the Western World,' 1907 40
The Three Beggars 41
The Three Hermits 45
Beggar to Beggar cried 47
The Well and the Tree 49
Running to Paradise 50
The Hour before Dawn 52
The Player Queen 59
The Realists 61
The Witch 62
The Peacock 63
The Mountain Tomb 64
To a Child dancing in the Wind 66
A Memory of Youth 68
Fallen Majesty 70
Friends 71
The Cold Heaven 73
That the Night come 75
An Appointment 76
The Magi 77
The Dolls 78
A Coat 80
Closing Rhymes 81
FROM THE GREEN HELMET AND OTHER POEMS, 1909-1912--
His Dream 85
A Woman Homer sung 87
The Consolation 89
No Second Troy 91
Reconciliation 92
King and No King 94
Peace 96
Against Unworthy Praise 97
The Fascination of What's Difficult 99
A Drinking Song 101
The Coming of Wisdom with Time 102
On hearing that the Students of our New University
have joined the Ancient Order of Hibernians 103
To a Poet 104
The Mask 105
Upon a House shaken by the Land Agitation 106
At the Abbey Theatre 108
These are the Clouds 110
At Galway Races 112
A Friend's Illness 113
All Things can tempt me 114
The Young Man's Song 115
THE HOUR-GLASS--1912 117
NOTES 181
'_In dreams begins responsibility._'
_Old Play._
'_How am I fallen from myself, for a long time now_
_I have not seen the Prince of Chang in my dreams._'
_Khoung-fou-tseu._
RESPONSIBILITIES
_Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain_
_Somewhere in ear-shot for the story's end,_
_Old Dublin merchant 'free of ten and four'_
_Or trading out of Galway into Spain;_
_And country scholar, Robert Emmet's friend,_
_A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;_
_Traders or soldiers who have left me blood_
_That has not passed through any huxter's loin,_
_Pardon, and you that did not weigh the cost,_
_Old Butlers when you took to horse and stood_
_Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne_
_Till your bad master blenched and all was lost;_
_You merchant skipper that leaped overboard_
_After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,_
_You most of all, silent and fierce old man_
_Because you were the spectacle that stirred_
_My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say_
_'Only the wasteful virtues earn the sun';_
_Pardon that for a barren passion's sake,_
_Although I have come close on forty-nine_
_I have no child, I have nothing but a book,_
_Nothing but that to prove your blood and mine._
_January 1914._
THE GREY ROCK
_Poets with whom I learned my trade,_
_Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,_
_Here's an old story I've re-made,_
_Imagining 'twould better please_
_Your ears than stories now in fashion,_
_Though you may think I waste my breath_
_Pretending that there can be passion_
_That has more life in it than death,_
_And though at bottling of your wine_
_The bow-legged Goban had no say;_
_The moral's yours because it's mine._
When cups went round at close of day--
Is not that how good stories run?--
Somewhere within some hollow hill,
If books speak truth in Slievenamon,
But let that be, the gods were still
And sleepy, having had their meal,
And smoky torches made a glare
On painted pillars, on a deal
Of fiddles and of flutes hung there
By the ancient holy hands that brought them
From murmuring Murias, on cups--
Old Goban hammered them and wrought them,
And put his pattern round their tops
To hold the wine they buy of him.
But from the juice that made them wise
All those had lifted up the dim
Imaginations of their eyes,
For one that was like woman made
Before their sleepy eyelids ran
And trembling with her passion said,
'Come out and dig for a dead man,
Who's burrowing somewhere in the ground,
And mock him to his face and then
Hollo him on with horse and hound,
For he is the worst of all dead men.'
_We should be dazed and terror struck,_
_If we but saw in dreams that room,_
_Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our luck_
_That emptied all our days to come._
_I knew a woman none could please,_
_Because she dreamed when but a child_
_Of men and women made like these;_
_And after, when her blood ran wild,_
_Had ravelled her own story out,_
_And said, 'In two or in three years_
_I need must marry some poor lout,'_
_And having said it burst in tears._
_Since, tavern comrades, you have died,_
_Maybe your images have stood,_
_Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,_
_Before that roomful or as good._
_You had to face your ends when young--_
_'Twas wine or women, or some curse--_
_But never made a poorer song_
_That you might have a heavier purse,_
_Nor gave loud service to a cause_
_That you might have a troop of friends._
_You kept the Muses' sterner laws,_
_And unrepenting faced your ends,_
_And therefore earned the right--and yet_
_Dowson and Johnson most I praise--_
_To troop with those the world's forgot,_
_And copy their proud steady gaze._
'The Danish troop was driven out
Between the dawn and dusk,' she said;
'Although the event was long in doubt,
Although the King of Ireland's dead
And half the kings, before sundown
All was accomplished.'
'When this day
Murrough, the King of Ireland's son,
Foot after foot was giving way,
He and his best troops back to back
Had perished there, but the Danes ran,
Stricken with panic from the attack,
The shouting of an unseen man;
And being thankful Murrough found,
Led by a footsole dipped in blood
That had made prints upon the ground,
Where by old thorn trees that man stood;
And though when he gazed here and there,
He had but gazed on thorn trees, spoke,
"Who is the friend that seems but air
And yet could give so fine a stroke?"
Thereon a young man met his eye,
Who said, "Because she held me in
Her love, and would not have me die,
Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,
And pushing it into my shirt,
Promised that for a pin's sake,
No man should see to do me hurt;
But there it's gone; I will not take
The fortune that had been my shame
Seeing, King's son, what wounds you have."
'Twas roundly spoke, but when night came
He had betrayed me to his grave,
For he and the King's son were dead.
I'd promised him two hundred years,
And when for all I'd done or said--
And these immortal eyes shed tears--
He claimed his country's need was most,
I'd save his life, yet for the sake
Of a new friend he has turned a ghost.
What does he care if my heart break?
I call for spade and horse and hound
That we may harry him.' Thereon
She cast herself upon the ground
And rent her clothes and made her moan:
'Why are they faithless when their might
Is from the holy shades that rove
The grey rock and the windy light?
Why should the faithfullest heart most love
The bitter sweetness of false faces?
Why must the lasting love what passes,
Why are the gods by men betrayed!'
But thereon every god stood up
With a slow smile and without sound,
And stretching forth his arm and cup
To where she moaned upon the ground,
Suddenly drenched her to the skin;
And she with Goban's wine adrip,
No more remembering what had been,
Stared at the gods with laughing lip.
_I have kept my faith, though faith was tried,_
_To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,_
_And the world's altered since you died,_
_And I am in no good repute_
_With the loud host before the sea,_
_That think sword strokes were better meant_
_Than lover's music--let that be,_
_So that the wandering foot's content._
THE TWO KINGS
King Eochaid came at sundown to a wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his queen
He had out-ridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the mire;
And where beech trees had mixed a pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and seemed
More hands in height than any stag in the world
He sat with tightened rein and loosened mouth
Upon his trembling horse, then drove the spur;
But the stag stooped and ran at him, and passed,
Rending the horse's flank. King Eochaid reeled
Then drew his sword to hold its levelled point
Against the stag. When horn and steel were met
The horn resounded as though it had been silver,
A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.
Horn locked in sword, they tugged and struggled there
As though a stag and unicorn were met
In Africa on Mountain of the Moon,
Until at last the double horns, drawn backward,
Butted below the single and so pierced
The entrails of the horse. Dropping his sword
King Eochaid seized the horns in his strong hands
And stared into the sea-green eye, and so
Hither and thither to and fro they trod
Till all the place was beaten into mire.
The strong thigh and the agile thigh were met,
The hands that gathered up the might of the world,
And hoof and horn that had sucked in their speed
Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air.
Through bush they plunged and over ivied root,
And where the stone struck fire, while in the leaves
A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed out;
But when at last he forced those sinewy flanks
Against a beech bole, he threw down the beast
And knelt above it with drawn knife. On the instant
It vanished like a shadow, and a cry
So mournful that it seemed the cry of one
Who had lost some unimaginable treasure
Wandered between the blue and the green leaf
And climbed into the air, crumbling away,
Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision
But for the trodden mire, the pool of blood,
The disembowelled horse.
King Eochaid ran,
Toward peopled Tara, nor stood to draw his breath
Until he came before the painted wall,
The posts of polished yew, circled with bronze,
Of the great door; but though the hanging lamps
Showed their faint light through the unshuttered windows,
Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made a noise,
Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that wound
From well-side or from plough-land, was there noise;
And there had been no sound of living thing
Before him or behind, but that far-off
On the horizon edge bellowed the herds.
Knowing that silence brings no good to kings,
And mocks returning victory, he passed
Between the pillars with a beating heart
And saw where in the midst of the great hall
Pale-faced, alone upon a bench, Edain
Sat upright with a sword before her feet.
Her hands on either side had gripped the bench,
Her eyes were cold and steady, her lips tight.
Some passion had made her stone. Hearing a foot
She started and then knew whose foot it was;
But when he thought to take her in his arms
She motioned him afar, and rose and spoke:
'I have sent among the fields or to the woods
The fighting men and servants of this house,
For I would have your judgment upon one
Who is self-accused. If she be innocent
She would not look in any known man's face
Till judgment has been given, and if guilty,
Will never look again on known man's face.'
And at these words he paled, as she had paled,
Knowing that he should find upon her lips
The meaning of that monstrous day.
Then she:
'You brought me where your brother Ardan sat
Always in his one seat, and bid me care him
Through that strange illness that had fixed him there,
And should he die to heap his burial mound
And carve his name in Ogham.' Eochaid said,
'He lives?' 'He lives and is a healthy man.'
'While I have him and you it matters little
What man you have lost, what evil you have found.'
'I bid them make his bed under this roof
And carried him his food with my own hands,
And so the weeks passed by. But when I said
"What is this trouble?" he would answer nothing,
Though always at my words his trouble grew;
And I but asked the more, till he cried out,
Weary of many questions: "There are things
That make the heart akin to the dumb stone."
Then I replied: "Although you hide a secret,
Hopeless and dear, or terrible to think on,
Speak it, that I may send through the wide world
For medicine." Thereon he cried aloud:
"Day after day you question me, and I,
Because there is such a storm amid my thoughts
I shall be carried in the gust, command,
Forbid, beseech and waste my breath." Then I,
"Although the thing that you have hid were evil,
The speaking of it could be no great wrong,
And evil must it be, if done 'twere worse
Than mound and stone that keep all virtue in,
And loosen on us dreams that waste our life,
Shadows and shows that can but turn the brain."
But finding him still silent I stooped down
And whispering that none but he should hear,
Said: "If a woman has put this on you,
My men, whether it please her or displease,
And though they have to cross the Loughlan waters
And take her in the middle of armed men,
Shall make her look upon her handiwork,
That she may quench the rick she has fired; and though
She may have worn silk clothes, or worn a crown,
She'll not be proud, knowing within her heart
That our sufficient portion of the world
Is that we give, although it be brief giving,
Happiness to children and to men."
Then he, driven by his thought beyond his thought,
And speaking what he would not though he would,
Sighed: "You, even you yourself, could work the cure!"
And at those words I rose and I went out
And for nine days he had food from other hands,
And for nine days my mind went whirling round
The one disastrous zodiac, muttering
That the immedicable mound's beyond
Our questioning, beyond our pity even.
But when nine days had gone I stood again
Before his chair and bending down my head
Told him, that when Orion rose, and all
The women of his household were asleep,
To go--for hope would give his limbs the power--
To an old empty woodman's house that's hidden
Close to a clump of beech trees in the wood
Westward of Tara, there to await a friend
That could, as he had told her, work his cure
And would be no harsh friend.
When night had deepened,
I groped my way through boughs, and over roots,
Till oak and hazel ceased and beech began,
And found the house, a sputtering torch within,
And stretched out sleeping on a pile of skins
Ardan, and though I called to him and tried
To shake him out of sleep, I could not rouse him.
I waited till the night was on the turn,
Then fearing that some labourer, on his way
To plough or pasture-land, might see me there,
Went out.
Among the ivy-covered rocks,
As on the blue light of a sword, a man
Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes
Like the eyes of some great kite scouring the woods,
Stood on my path. Trembling from head to foot
I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;
But with a voice that had unnatural music,
"A weary wooing and a long," he said,
"Speaking of love through other lips and looking
Under the eyelids of another, for it was my craft
That put a passion in the sleeper there,
And when I had got my will and drawn you here,
Where I may speak to you alone, my craft
Sucked up the passion out of him again
And left mere sleep. He'll wake when the sun wakes,
Push out his vigorous limbs and rub his eyes,
And wonder what has ailed him these twelve months."
I cowered back upon the wall in terror,
But that sweet-sounding voice ran on: "Woman,
I was your husband when you rode the air,
Danced in the whirling foam and in the dust,
In days you have not kept in memory,
Being betrayed into a cradle, and I come
That I may claim you as my wife again."
I was no longer terrified, his voice
Had half awakened some old memory,
Yet answered him: "I am King Eochaid's wife
And with him have found every happiness
Women can find." With a most masterful voice,
That made the body seem as it were a string
Under a bow, he cried: "What happiness
Can lovers have that know their happiness
Must end at the dumb stone? But where we build
Our sudden palaces in the still air
Pleasure itself can bring no weariness,
Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is there foot
That has grown weary of the whirling dance,
Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine that mourns,
Among those mouths that sing their sweethearts' praise,
Your empty bed." "How should I love," I answered,
"Were it not that when the dawn has lit my bed
And shown my husband sleeping there, I have sighed,
'Your strength and nobleness will pass away.'
Or how should love be worth its pains were it not
That when he has fallen asleep within my arms,
Being wearied out, I love in man the child?
What can they know of love that do not know
She builds her nest upon a narrow ledge
Above a windy precipice?" Then he:
"Seeing that when you come to the death-bed
You must return, whether you would or no,
This human life blotted from memory,
Why must I live some thirty, forty years,
Alone with all this useless happiness?"
Thereon he seized me in his arms, but I
Thrust him away with both my hands and cried,
"Never will I believe there is any change
Can blot out of my memory this life
Sweetened by death, but if I could believe
That were a double hunger in my lips
For what is doubly brief."
And now the shape,
My hands were pressed to, vanished suddenly.
I staggered, but a beech tree stayed my fall,
And clinging to it I could hear the cocks
Crow upon Tara.'
King Eochaid bowed his head
And thanked her for her kindness to his brother,
For that she promised, and for that refused.
Thereon the bellowing of the empounded herds
Rose round the walls, and through the bronze-ringed door
Jostled and shouted those war-wasted men,
And in the midst King Eochaid's brother stood.
He'd heard that din on the horizon's edge
And ridden towards it, being ignorant.
TO A WEALTHY MAN WHO PROMISED A SECOND SUBSCRIPTION TO THE DUBLIN
MUNICIPAL GALLERY IF IT WERE PROVED THE PEOPLE WANTED PICTURES
You gave but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be 'some sort of evidence,'
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made
That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their trade
Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds' will.
And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set free
To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.
Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!
_December 1912._
SEPTEMBER 1913
What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were,
In all their loneliness and pain
You'd cry 'some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave,
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.
TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO NOTHING
Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
PAUDEEN
Indignant at the fumbling wits, the obscure spite
Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn trees, under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the luminous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crystaline cry.
TO A SHADE
If you have revisited the town, thin Shade,
Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier thoughted when the day is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of men,
And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.
A man
Of your own passionate serving kind who had brought
In his full hands what, had they only known,
Had given their children's children loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven from the place,
And insult heaped upon him for his pains
And for his open-handedness, disgrace;
An old foul mouth that slandered you had set
The pack upon him.
Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops your ear,
The time for you to taste of that salt breath
And listen at the corners has not come;
You had enough of sorrow before death--
Away, away! You are safer in the tomb.
_September 29th, 1914._
WHEN HELEN LIVED
We have cried in our despair
That men desert,
For some trivial affair
Or noisy, insolent sport,
Beauty that we have won
From bitterest hours;
Yet we, had we walked within
Those topless towers
Where Helen walked with her boy,
Had given but as the rest
Of the men and women of Troy,
A word and a jest.
THE ATTACK ON 'THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD,' 1907
Once, when midnight smote the air,
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
From thoroughfare to thoroughfare,
While that great Juan galloped by;
And like these to rail and sweat
Staring upon his sinewy thigh.
THE THREE BEGGARS
_'Though to my feathers in the wet,_
_I have stood here from break of day,_
_I have not found a thing to eat_
_For only rubbish comes my way._
_Am I to live on lebeen-lone?'_
_Muttered the old crane of Gort._
_'For all my pains on lebeen-lone.'_
King Guari walked amid his court
The palace-yard and river-side
And there to three old beggars said:
'You that have wandered far and wide
Can ravel out what's in my head.
Do men who least desire get most,
Or get the most who most desire?'
A beggar said: 'They get the most
Whom man or devil cannot tire,
And what could make their muscles taut
Unless desire had made them so.'
But Guari laughed with secret thought,
'If that be true as it seems true,
One of you three is a rich man,
For he shall have a thousand pounds
Who is first asleep, if but he can
Sleep before the third noon sounds.'
And thereon merry as a bird,
With his old thoughts King Guari went
From river-side and palace-yard
And left them to their argument.
'And if I win,' one beggar said,
'Though I am old I shall persuade
A pretty girl to share my bed';
The second: 'I shall learn a trade';
The third: 'I'll hurry to the course
Among the other gentlemen,
And lay it all upon a horse';
The second: 'I have thought again:
A farmer has more dignity.'
One to another sighed and cried:
The exorbitant dreams of beggary,
That idleness had borne to pride,
Sang through their teeth from noon to noon;
And when the second twilight brought
The frenzy of the beggars' moon
They closed their blood-shot eyes for naught.
One beggar cried: 'You're shamming sleep.'
And thereupon their anger grew
Till they were whirling in a heap.
They'd mauled and bitten the night through
Or sat upon their heels to rail,
And when old Guari came and stood
Before the three to end this tale,
They were commingling lice and blood.
'Time's up,' he cried, and all the three
With blood-shot eyes upon him stared.
'Time's up,' he cried, and all the three
Fell down upon the dust and snored.
_'Maybe I shall be lucky yet,_
_Now they are silent,' said the crane._
_'Though to my feathers in the wet_
_I've stood as I were made of stone_
_And seen the rubbish run about,_
_It's certain there are trout somewhere_
_And maybe I shall take a trout_
_If but I do not seem to care.'_
THE THREE HERMITS
Three old hermits took the air
By a cold and desolate sea,
First was muttering a prayer,
Second rummaged for a flea;
On a windy stone, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year,
Sang unnoticed like a bird.
'Though the Door of Death is near
And what waits behind the door,
Three times in a single day
I, though upright on the shore,
Fall asleep when I should pray.'
So the first but now the second,
'We're but given what we have earned
When all thoughts and deeds are reckoned,
So it's plain to be discerned
That the shades of holy men,
Who have failed being weak of will,
Pass the Door of Birth again,
And are plagued by crowds, until
They've the passion to escape.'
Moaned the other, 'They are thrown
Into some most fearful shape.'
But the second mocked his moan:
'They are not changed to anything,
Having loved God once, but maybe,
To a poet or a king
Or a witty lovely lady.'
While he'd rummaged rags and hair,
Caught and cracked his flea, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year
Sang unnoticed like a bird.
BEGGAR TO BEGGAR CRIED
'Time to put off the world and go somewhere
And find my health again in the sea air,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And make my soul before my pate is bare.'
'And get a comfortable wife and house
To rid me of the devil in my shoes,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And the worse devil that is between my thighs.'
'And though I'd marry with a comely lass,
She need not be too comely--let it pass,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'But there's a devil in a looking-glass.'
'Nor should she be too rich, because the rich
Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'And cannot have a humorous happy speech.'
'And there I'll grow respected at my ease,
And hear amid the garden's nightly peace,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
'The wind-blown clamor of the barnacle-geese.'
THE WELL AND THE TREE
'The Man that I praise,'
Cries out the empty well,
'Lives all his days
Where a hand on the bell
Can call the milch-cows
To the comfortable door of his house.
Who but an idiot would praise
Dry stones in a well?'
'The Man that I praise,'
Cries out the leafless tree,
'Has married and stays
By an old hearth, and he
On naught has set store
But children and dogs on the floor.
Who but an idiot would praise
A withered tree?'
RUNNING TO PARADISE
As I came over Windy Gap
They threw a halfpenny into my cap,
For I am running to Paradise;
And all that I need do is to wish
And somebody puts his hand in the dish
To throw me a bit of salted fish:
And there the king _is_ but as the beggar.
My brother Mourteen is worn out
With skelping his big brawling lout,
And I am running to Paradise;
A poor life do what he can,
And though he keep a dog and a gun,
A serving maid and a serving man:
And there the king _is_ but as the beggar.
Poor men have grown to be rich men,
And rich men grown to be poor again,
And I am running to Paradise;
And many a darling wit's grown dull
That tossed a bare heel when at school,
Now it has filled an old sock full:
And there the king _is_ but as the beggar.
The wind is old and still at play
While I must hurry upon my way,
For I am running to Paradise;
Yet never have I lit on a friend
To take my fancy like the wind
That nobody can buy or bind:
And there the king _is_ but as the beggar.
THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN
A one-legged, one-armed, one-eyed man,
A bundle of rags upon a crutch,
Stumbled on windy Cruachan
Cursing the wind. It was as much
As the one sturdy leg could do
To keep him upright while he cursed.
He had counted, where long years ago
Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been nursed,
A pair of lapwings, one old sheep
And not a house to the plain's edge,
When close to his right hand a heap
Of grey stones and a rocky ledge
Reminded him that he could make,
If he but shifted a few stones,
A shelter till the daylight broke.
But while he fumbled with the stones
They toppled over; 'Were it not
I have a lucky wooden shin
I had been hurt'; and toppling brought
Before his eyes, where stones had been,
A dark deep hole in the rock's face.
He gave a gasp and thought to run,
Being certain it was no right place
But the Hell Mouth at Cruachan
That's stuffed with all that's old and bad,
And yet stood still, because inside
He had seen a red-haired jolly lad
In some outlandish coat beside
A ladle and a tub of beer,
Plainly no phantom by his look.
So with a laugh at his own fear
He crawled into that pleasant nook.
Young Red-head stretched himself to yawn
And murmured, 'May God curse the night
That's grown uneasy near the dawn
So that it seems even I sleep light;
And who are you that wakens me?
Has one of Maeve's nine brawling sons
Grown tired of his own company?
But let him keep his grave for once
I have to find the sleep I have lost.'
And then at last being wide awake,
'I took you for a brawling ghost,
Say what you please, but from day-break
I'll sleep another century.'
The beggar deaf to all but hope
Went down upon a hand and knee
And took the wooden ladle up
And would have dipped it in the beer
But the other pushed his hand aside,
'Before you have dipped it in the beer
That sacred Goban brewed,' he cried,
'I'd have assurance that you are able
To value beer--I will have no fool
Dipping his nose into my ladle
Because he has stumbled on this hole
In the bad hour before the dawn.
If you but drink that beer and say
I will sleep until the winter's gone,
Or maybe, to Midsummer Day
You will sleep that length; and at the first
I waited so for that or this--
Because the weather was a-cursed
Or I had no woman there to kiss,
And slept for half a year or so;
But year by year I found that less
Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo
Even a half hour's nothingness,
And when at one year's end I found
I had not waked a single minute,
I chose this burrow under ground.
I will sleep away all Time within it:
My sleep were now nine centuries
But for those mornings when I find
The lapwing at their foolish cries
And the sheep bleating at the wind
As when I also played the fool.'
The beggar in a rage began
Upon his hunkers in the hole,
'It's plain that you are no right man
To mock at everything I love
As if it were not worth the doing.
I'd have a merry life enough
If a good Easter wind were blowing,
And though the winter wind is bad
I should not be too down in the mouth
For anything you did or said
If but this wind were in the south.'
But the other cried, 'You long for spring
Or that the wind would shift a point
And do not know that you would bring,
If time were suppler in the joint,
Neither the spring nor the south wind
But the hour when you shall pass away
And leave no smoking wick behind,
For all life longs for the Last Day
And there's no man but cocks his ear
To know when Michael's trumpet cries
That flesh and bone may disappear,
And souls as if they were but sighs,
And there be nothing but God left;
But I alone being blessed keep
Like some old rabbit to my cleft
And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'
He dipped his ladle in the tub
And drank and yawned and stretched him out.
The other shouted, 'You would rob
My life of every pleasant thought
And every comfortable thing
And so take that and that.' Thereon
He gave him a great pummelling,
But might have pummelled at a stone
For all the sleeper knew or cared;
And after heaped the stones again
And cursed and prayed, and prayed and cursed:
'Oh God if he got loose!' And then
In fury and in panic fled
From the Hell Mouth at Cruachan
And gave God thanks that overhead
The clouds were brightening with the dawn.
THE PLAYER QUEEN
(_Song from an Unfinished Play_)
My mother dandled me and sang,
'How young it is, how young!'
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung.
'He went away,' my mother sang,
'When I was brought to bed,'
And all the while her needle pulled
The gold and silver thread.
She pulled the thread and bit the thread
And made a golden gown,
And wept because she had dreamt that I
Was born to wear a crown.
'When she was got,' my mother sang,
'I heard a sea-mew cry,
And saw a flake of the yellow foam
That dropped upon my thigh.'
How therefore could she help but braid
The gold into my hair,
And dream that I should carry
The golden top of care?
THE REALISTS
Hope that you may understand!
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?
I
THE WITCH
Toil, and grow rich,
What's that but to lie
With a foul witch
And after, drained dry,
To be brought
To the chamber where
Lies one long sought
With despair.
II
THE PEACOCK
What's riches to him
That has made a great peacock
With the pride of his eye?
The wind-beaten, stone-grey,
And desolate Three-rock
Would nourish his whim.
Live he or die
Amid wet rocks and heather,
His ghost will be gay
Adding feather to feather
For the pride of his eye.
THE MOUNTAIN TOMB
Pour wine and dance if Manhood still have pride,
Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom;
The cataract smokes upon the mountain side,
Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet
That there be no foot silent in the room
Nor mouth from kissing, nor from wine unwet;
Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.
In vain, in vain; the cataract still cries
The everlasting taper lights the gloom;
All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes
Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his tomb.
TO A CHILD DANCING IN THE WIND
I
Dance there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?
II
Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?
Or warned you how despairing
The moths are when they are burned,
I could have warned you, but you are young,
So we speak a different tongue.
O you will take whatever's offered
And dream that all the world's a friend,
Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.
A MEMORY OF YOUTH
The moments passed as at a play,
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother wit
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat north
Suddenly hid love's moon away.
Believing every word I said
I praised her body and her mind
Till pride had made her eyes grow bright,
And pleasure made her cheeks grow red,
And vanity her footfall light,
Yet we, for all that praise, could find
Nothing but darkness overhead.
We sat as silent as a stone,
We knew, though she'd not said a word,
That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous moon.
FALLEN MAJESTY
Although crowds gathered once if she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim, this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy camping place,
Babbling of fallen majesty, records what's gone.
The lineaments, a heart that laughter has made sweet,
These, these remain, but I record what's gone. A crowd
Will gather, and not know it walks the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that seemed a burning cloud.
FRIENDS
Now must I these three praise--
Three women that have wrought
What joy is in my days;
One that no passing thought,
Nor those unpassing cares,
No, not in these fifteen
Many times troubled years,
Could ever come between
Heart and delighted heart;
And one because her hand
Had strength that could unbind
What none can understand,
What none can have and thrive,
Youth's dreamy load, till she
So changed me that I live
Labouring in ecstasy.
And what of her that took
All till my youth was gone
With scarce a pitying look?
How should I praise that one?
When day begins to break
I count my good and bad,
Being wakeful for her sake,
Remembering what she had,
What eagle look still shows,
While up from my heart's root
So great a sweetness flows
I shake from head to foot.
THE COLD HEAVEN
Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting Heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the ghost begins to quicken,
Confusion of the death-bed over, is it sent
Out naked on the roads, as the books say, and stricken
By the injustice of the skies for punishment?
THAT THE NIGHT COME
She lived in storm and strife,
Her soul had such desire
For what proud death may bring
That it could not endure
The common good of life,
But lived as 'twere a king
That packed his marriage day
With banneret and pennon,
Trumpet and kettledrum,
And the outrageous cannon,
To bundle time away
That the night come.
AN APPOINTMENT
Being out of heart with government
I took a broken root to fling
Where the proud, wayward squirrel went,
Taking delight that he could spring;
And he, with that low whinnying sound
That is like laughter, sprang again
And so to the other tree at a bound.
Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,
Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly limb
And threw him up to laugh on the bough;
No government appointed him.
I
THE MAGI
Now as at all times I can see in the mind's eye,
In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale unsatisfied ones
Appear and disappear in the blue depth of the sky
With all their ancient faces like rain-beaten stones,
And all their helms of silver hovering side by side,
And all their eyes still fixed, hoping to find once more,
Being by Calvary's turbulence unsatisfied,
The uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor.
II
THE DOLLS
A doll in the doll-maker's house
Looks at the cradle and balls:
'That is an insult to us.'
But the oldest of all the dolls
Who had seen, being kept for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Although
There's not a man can report
Evil of this place,
The man and the woman bring
Hither to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing.'
Hearing him groan and stretch
The doll-maker's wife is aware
Her husband has heard the wretch,
And crouched by the arm of his chair,
She murmurs into his ear,
Head upon shoulder leant:
'My dear, my dear, oh dear,
It was an accident.'
A COAT
I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eye
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.
* * * * *
_While I, from that reed-throated whisperer_
_Who comes at need, although not now as once_
_A clear articulation in the air_
_But inwardly, surmise companions_
_Beyond the fling of the dull ass's hoof,_
_--Ben Jonson's phrase--and find when June is come_
_At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof_
_A sterner conscience and a friendlier home,_
_I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,_
_Those undreamt accidents that have made me_
_--Seeing that Fame has perished this long while_
_Being but a part of ancient ceremony--_
_Notorious, till all my priceless things_
_Are but a post the passing dogs defile._
FROM THE GREEN HELMET AND OTHER POEMS
HIS DREAM
I swayed upon the gaudy stern
The butt end of a steering oar,
And everywhere that I could turn
Men ran upon the shore.
And though I would have hushed the crowd
There was no mother's son but said,
'What is the figure in a shroud
Upon a gaudy bed?'
And fishes bubbling to the brim
Cried out upon that thing beneath,
--It had such dignity of limb--
By the sweet name of Death.
Though I'd my finger on my lip,
What could I but take up the song?
And fish and crowd and gaudy ship
Cried out the whole night long,
Crying amid the glittering sea,
Naming it with ecstatic breath,
Because it had such dignity
By the sweet name of Death.
A WOMAN HOMER SUNG
If any man drew near
When I was young,
I thought, 'He holds her dear,'
And shook with hate and fear.
But oh, 'twas bitter wrong
If he could pass her by
With an indifferent eye.
Whereon I wrote and wrought,
And now, being grey,
I dream that I have brought
To such a pitch my thought
That coming time can say,
'He shadowed in a glass
What thing her body was.'
For she had fiery blood
When I was young,
And trod so sweetly proud
As 'twere upon a cloud,
A woman Homer sung,
That life and letters seem
But an heroic dream.
THE CONSOLATION
I had this thought awhile ago,
'My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would do
In this blind bitter land.'
And I grew weary of the sun
Until my thoughts cleared up again,
Remembering that the best I have done
Was done to make it plain;
That every year I have cried, 'At length
My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call.'
That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the sieve?
I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.
NO SECOND TROY
Why should I blame her that she filled my days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the great,
Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful with a mind
That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind
That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most stern?
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to burn?
RECONCILIATION
Some may have blamed you that you took away
The verses that could move them on the day
When, the ears being deafened, the sight of the eyes blind
With lightning you went from me, and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but kings,
Helmets, and swords, and half-forgotten things
That were like memories of you--but now
We'll out, for the world lives as long ago;
And while we're in our laughing, weeping fit,
Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me to the bone.
KING AND NO KING
'Would it were anything but merely voice!'
The No King cried who after that was King,
Because he had not heard of anything
That balanced with a word is more than noise;
Yet Old Romance being kind, let him prevail
Somewhere or somehow that I have forgot,
Though he'd but cannon--Whereas we that had thought
To have lit upon as clean and sweet a tale
Have been defeated by that pledge you gave
In momentary anger long ago;
And I that have not your faith, how shall I know
That in the blinding light beyond the grave
We'll find so good a thing as that we have lost?
The hourly kindness, the day's common speech,
The habitual content of each with each
When neither soul nor body has been crossed.
PEACE
Ah, that Time could touch a form
That could show what Homer's age
Bred to be a hero's wage.
'Were not all her life but storm,
Would not painters paint a form
Of such noble lines,' I said,
'Such a delicate high head,
All that sternness amid charm,
All that sweetness amid strength?'
Ah, but peace that comes at length,
Came when Time had touched her form.
AGAINST UNWORTHY PRAISE
O heart, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.
What, still you would have their praise!
But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,
From self-same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these,
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.
THE FASCINATION OF WHAT'S DIFFICULT
The fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins, and rent
Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's something ails our colt
That must, as if it had not holy blood,
Nor on an Olympus leaped from cloud to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My curse on plays
That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day's war with every knave and dolt,
Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round again
I'll find the stable and pull out the bolt.
A DRINKING SONG
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
THE COMING OF WISDOM WITH TIME
Though leaves are many, the root is one;
Through all the lying days of my youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.
ON HEARING THAT THE STUDENTS OF OUR NEW UNIVERSITY HAVE JOINED THE
ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS AND THE AGITATION AGAINST IMMORAL LITERATURE
Where, where but here have Pride and Truth,
That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age.
TO A POET, WHO WOULD HAVE ME PRAISE CERTAIN BAD POETS, IMITATORS OF HIS
AND MINE
You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or sung,
'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But have you known a dog to praise his fleas?
THE MASK
'Put off that mask of burning gold
With emerald eyes.'
'O no, my dear, you make so bold
To find if hearts be wild and wise,
And yet not cold.'
'I would but find what's there to find,
Love or deceit.'
'It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what's behind.'
'But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire.'
'O no, my dear, let all that be,
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?'
UPON A HOUSE SHAKEN BY THE LAND AGITATION
How should the world be luckier if this house,
Where passion and precision have been one
Time out of mind, became too ruinous
To breed the lidless eye that loves the sun?
And the sweet laughing eagle thoughts that grow
Where wings have memory of wings, and all
That comes of the best knit to the best? Although
Mean roof-trees were the sturdier for its fall,
How should their luck run high enough to reach
The gifts that govern men, and after these
To gradual Time's last gift, a written speech
Wrought of high laughter, loveliness and ease?
AT THE ABBEY THEATRE
(_Imitated from Ronsard_)
Dear Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into our case.
When we are high and airy hundreds say
That if we hold that flight they'll leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock another day
Because we have made our art of common things,
So bitterly, you'd dream they longed to look
All their lives through into some drift of wings.
You've dandled them and fed them from the book
And know them to the bone; impart to us--
We'll keep the secret--a new trick to please.
Is there a bridle for this Proteus
That turns and changes like his draughty seas?
Or is there none, most popular of men,
But when they mock us that we mock again?
THESE ARE THE CLOUDS
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye;
The weak lay hand on what the strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted high
And discord follow upon unison,
And all things at one common level lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great race were run
And these things came, so much the more thereby
Have you made greatness your companion,
Although it be for children that you sigh:
These are the clouds about the fallen sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning eye.
AT GALWAY RACES
There where the course is,
Delight makes all of the one mind,
The riders upon the galloping horses,
The crowd that closes in behind:
We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid breath.
Sing on: sometime, and at some new moon,
We'll learn that sleeping is not death,
Hearing the whole earth change its tune,
Its flesh being wild, and it again
Crying aloud as the race course is,
And we find hearteners among men
That ride upon horses.
A FRIEND'S ILLNESS
Sickness brought me this
Thought, in that scale of his:
Why should I be dismayed
Though flame had burned the whole
World, as it were a coal,
Now I have seen it weighed
Against a soul?
ALL THINGS CAN TEMPT ME
All things can tempt me from this craft of verse:
One time it was a woman's face, or worse--
The seeming needs of my fool-driven land;
Now nothing but comes readier to the hand
Than this accustomed toil. When I was young,
I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword upstairs;
Yet would be now, could I but have my wish,
Colder and dumber and deafer than a fish.
THE YOUNG MAN'S SONG
I whispered, 'I am too young,'
And then, 'I am old enough;'
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
'Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
Oh, love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.
* * * * *
THE HOUR-GLASS
NEW VERSION--1912
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
WISE MAN.
BRIDGET, his wife.
TEIGUE, a fool.
ANGEL.
Children and Pupils.
_Pupils come in and stand before the stage curtain, which is still
closed. One pupil carries a book._
FIRST PUPIL
He said we might choose the subject for the lesson.
SECOND PUPIL
There is none of us wise enough to do that.
THIRD PUPIL
It would need a great deal of wisdom to know what it is we want to know.
FOURTH PUPIL
I will question him.
FIFTH PUPIL
You?
FOURTH PUPIL
Last night I dreamt that some one came and told me to question him.
I was to say to him, 'You were wrong to say there is no God and no
soul--maybe, if there is not much of either, there is yet some tatters,
some tag on the wind--so to speak--some rag upon a bush, some bob-tail
of a god.' I will argue with him,--nonsense though it be--according to
my dream, and you will see how well I can argue, and what thoughts I have.
FIRST PUPIL
I'd as soon listen to dried peas in a bladder, as listen to your thoughts.
[_Fool comes in._
FOOL
Give me a penny.
SECOND PUPIL
Let us choose a subject by chance. Here is his big book. Let us turn
over the pages slowly. Let one of us put down his finger without looking.
The passage his finger lights on will be the subject for the lesson.
FOOL
Give me a penny.
THIRD PUPIL
(_Taking up book_) How heavy it is.
FOURTH PUPIL
Spread it on Teigue's back, and then we can all stand round and see the
choice.
SECOND PUPIL
Make him spread out his arms.
FOURTH PUPIL
Down on your knees. Hunch up your back. Spread your arms out now, and
look like a golden eagle in a church. Keep still, keep still.
FOOL
Give me a penny.
THIRD PUPIL
Is that the right cry for an eagle cock?
SECOND PUPIL
I'll turn the pages--you close your eyes and put your finger down.
THIRD PUPIL
That's it, and then he cannot blame us for the choice.
FIRST PUPIL
There, I have chosen. Fool, keep still--and if what's wise is strange
and sounds like nonsense, we've made a good choice.
FIFTH PUPIL
The Master has come.
FOOL
Will anybody give a penny to a fool?
[_One of the pupils draws back the stage curtain showing the Master
sitting at his desk. There is an hour-glass upon his desk or in
a bracket on the wall. One pupil puts the book before him._
FIRST PUPIL
We have chosen the passage for the lesson, Master. 'There are two
living countries, one visible and one invisible, and when it is summer
there, it is winter here, and when it is November with us, it is
lambing-time there.'
WISE MAN
That passage, that passage! what mischief has there been since yesterday?
FIRST PUPIL
None, Master.
WISE MAN
Oh yes, there has; some craziness has fallen from the wind, or risen
from the graves of old men, and made you choose that subject.
FOURTH PUPIL
I knew that it was folly, but they would have it.
THIRD PUPIL
Had we not better say we picked it by chance?
SECOND PUPIL
No; he would say we were children still.
FIRST PUPIL
I have found a sentence under that one that says--as though to show it
had a hidden meaning--a beggar wrote it upon the walls of Babylon.
WISE MAN
Then find some beggar and ask him what it means, for I will have nothing
to do with it.
FOURTH PUPIL
Come, Teigue, what is the old book's meaning when it says that there are
sheep that drop their lambs in November?
FOOL
To be sure--everybody knows, everybody in the world knows, when it is
Spring with us, the trees are withering there, when it is Summer with
us, the snow is falling there, and have I not myself heard the lambs
that are there all bleating on a cold November day--to be sure, does not
everybody with an intellect know that; and maybe when it's night with
us, it is day with them, for many a time I have seen the roads lighted
before me.
WISE MAN
The beggar who wrote that on Babylon wall meant that there is a
spiritual kingdom that cannot be seen or known till the faculties
whereby we master the kingdom of this world wither away, like green
things in winter. A monkish thought, the most mischievous thought that
ever passed out of a man's mouth.
FIRST PUPIL
If he meant all that, I will take an oath that he was spindle-shanked,
and cross-eyed, and had a lousy itching shoulder, and that his heart was
crosser than his eyes, and that he wrote it out of malice.
SECOND PUPIL
Let's come away and find a better subject.
FOURTH PUPIL
And maybe now you'll let me choose.
FIRST PUPIL
Come.
WISE MAN
Were it but true 'twould alter everything
Until the stream of the world had changed its course,
And that and all our thoughts had run
Into some cloudy thunderous spring
They dream to be its source--
Aye, to some frenzy of the mind;
And all that we have done would be undone,
Our speculation but as the wind.
[_A pause._
I have dreamed it twice.
FIRST PUPIL
Something has troubled him.
[_Pupils go out._
WISE MAN
Twice have I dreamed it in a morning dream,
Now nothing serves my pupils but to come
With a like thought. Reason is growing dim;
A moment more and Frenzy will beat his drum
And laugh aloud and scream;
And I must dance in the dream.
No, no, but it is like a hawk, a hawk of the air,
It has swooped down--and this swoop makes the third--
And what can I, but tremble like a bird?
FOOL
Give me a penny.
WISE MAN
That I should dream it twice, and after that, that they should pick it out.
FOOL
Won't you give me a penny?
WISE MAN
What do you want? What can it matter to you whether the words I am
reading are wisdom or sheer folly?
FOOL
Such a great, wise teacher will not refuse a penny to a fool.
WISE MAN
Seeing that everybody is a fool when he is asleep and dreaming, why do
you call me wise?
FOOL
O, I know,--I know, I know what I have seen.
WISE MAN
Well, to see rightly is the whole of wisdom, whatever dream be with us.
FOOL
When I went by Kilcluan, where the bells used to be ringing at the break
of every day, I could hear nothing but the people snoring in their houses.
When I went by Tubbervanach, where the young men used to be climbing the
hill to the blessed well, they were sitting at the cross-roads playing
cards. When I went by Carrigoras, where the friars used to be fasting
and serving the poor, I saw them drinking wine and obeying their wives.
And when I asked what misfortune had brought all these changes, they
said it was no misfortune, but that it was the wisdom they had learned
from your teaching.
WISE MAN
And you too have called me wise--you would be paid for that good opinion
doubtless--Run to the kitchen, my wife will give you food and drink.
FOOL
That's foolish advice for a wise man to give.
WISE MAN
Why, Fool?
FOOL
What is eaten is gone--I want pennies for my bag. I must buy bacon in
the shops, and nuts in the market, and strong drink for the time the sun
is weak, and snares to catch the rabbits and the hares, and a big pot to
cook them in.
WISE MAN
I have more to think about than giving pennies to your like, so run away.
FOOL
Give me a penny and I will bring you luck. The fishermen let me sleep
among their nets in the loft because I bring them luck; and in the
summer time, the wild creatures let me sleep near their nests and their
holes. It is lucky even to look at me, but it is much more lucky to give
me a penny. If I was not lucky I would starve.
WISE MAN
What are the shears for?
FOOL
I won't tell you. If I told you, you would drive them away.
WISE MAN
Drive them away! Who would I drive away?
FOOL
I won't tell you.
WISE MAN
Not if I give you a penny?
FOOL
No.
WISE MAN
Not if I give you two pennies?
FOOL
You will be very lucky if you give me two pennies, but I won't tell you.
WISE MAN
Three pennies?
FOOL
Four, and I will tell you.
WISE MAN
Very well--four, but from this out I will not call you Teigue the Fool.
FOOL
Let me come close to you, where nobody will hear me; but first you must
promise not to drive them away. (_Wise Man nods._) Every day men go out
dressed in black and spread great black nets over the hills, great black
nets.
WISE MAN
A strange place that to fish in.
FOOL
They spread them out on the hills that they may catch the feet of the
angels; but every morning just before the dawn, I go out and cut the
nets with the shears and the angels fly away.
WISE MAN
(_Speaking with excitement_) Ah, now I know that you are Teigue the
Fool. You say that I am wise, and yet I say, there are no angels.
FOOL
I have seen plenty of angels.
WISE MAN
No, no, you have not.
FOOL
They are plenty if you but look about you. They are like the blades
of grass.
WISE MAN
They are plenty as the blades of grass--I heard that phrase when I was
but a child and was told folly.
FOOL
When one gets quiet. When one is so quiet that there is not a thought in
one's head maybe, there is something that wakes up inside one, something
happy and quiet, and then all in a minute one can smell summer flowers,
and tall people go by, happy and laughing, but they will not let us look
at their faces. Oh no, it is not right that we should look at their faces.
WISE MAN
You have fallen asleep upon a hill, yet, even those that used to dream
of angels dream now of other things.
FOOL
I saw one but a moment ago--that is because I am lucky. It was coming
behind me, but it was not laughing.
WISE MAN
There's nothing but what men can see when they are awake. Nothing, nothing.
FOOL
I knew you would drive them away.
WISE MAN
Pardon me, Fool,
I had forgotten who I spoke to.
Well, there are your four pennies--Fool you are called,
And all day long they cry, 'Come hither, Fool.'
[_The Fool goes close to him._
Or else it's, 'Fool, be gone.'
[_The Fool goes further off._
Or, 'Fool, stand there.'
[_The Fool straightens himself up._
Or, 'Fool, go sit in the corner.'
[_The Fool sits in the corner._
And all the while
What were they all but fools before I came?
What are they now, but mirrors that seem men,
Because of my image? Fool, hold up your head.
[_Fool does so._
What foolish stories they have told of the ghosts
That fumbled with the clothes upon the bed,
Or creaked and shuffled in the corridor,
Or else, if they were pious bred,
Of angels from the skies,
That coming through the door,
Or, it may be, standing there,
Would solidly out stare
The steadiest eyes with their unnatural eyes,
Aye, on a man's own floor.
[_An angel has come in. It should be played by a man if a
man can be found with the right voice, and may wear a
little golden domino and a halo made of metal. Or the
whole face may be a beautiful mask, in which case the
last sentence on page 136 should not be spoken._
Yet it is strange, the strangest thing I have known,
That I should still be haunted by the notion
That there's a crisis of the spirit wherein
We get new sight, and that they know some trick
To turn our thoughts for their own ends to frenzy.
Why do you put your finger to your lip,
And creep away?
[_Fool goes out._
(_Wise Man sees Angel._) What are you? Who are you?
I think I saw some like you in my dreams,
When but a child. That thing about your head,--
That brightness in your hair--that flowery branch;
But I have done with dreams, I have done with dreams.
ANGEL
I am the crafty one that you have called.
WISE MAN
How that I called?
ANGEL
I am the messenger.
WISE MAN
What message could you bring to one like me?
ANGEL (_turning the hour-glass_)
That you will die when the last grain of sand
Has fallen through this glass.
WISE MAN
I have a wife.
Children and pupils that I cannot leave:
Why must I die, my time is far away?
ANGEL
You have to die because no soul has passed
The heavenly threshold since you have opened school,
But grass grows there, and rust upon the hinge;
And they are lonely that must keep the watch.
WISE MAN
And whither shall I go when I am dead?
ANGEL
You have denied there is a purgatory,
Therefore that gate is closed; you have denied
There is a heaven, and so that gate is closed.
WISE MAN
Where then? For I have said there is no hell.
ANGEL
Hell is the place of those who have denied;
They find there what they planted and what dug,
A Lake of Spaces, and a Wood of Nothing,
And wander there and drift, and never cease
Wailing for substance.
WISE MAN
Pardon me, blessed Angel,
I have denied and taught the like to others.
But how could I believe before my sight
Had come to me?
ANGEL
It is too late for pardon.
WISE MAN
Had I but met your gaze as now I met it--
But how can you that live but where we go
In the uncertainty of dizzy dreams
Know why we doubt? Parting, sickness and death,
The rotting of the grass, tempest and drouth,
These are the messengers that came to me.
Why are you silent? You carry in your hands
God's pardon, and you will not give it me.
Why are you silent? Were I not afraid,
I'd kiss your hands--no, no, the hem of your dress.
ANGEL
Only when all the world has testified,
May soul confound it, crying out in joy,
And laughing on its lonely precipice.
What's dearth and death and sickness to the soul
That knows no virtue but itself? Nor could it,
So trembling with delight and mother-naked,
Live unabashed if the arguing world stood by.
WISE MAN
It is as hard for you to understand
Why we have doubted, as it is for us
To banish doubt--what folly have I said?
There can be nothing that you do not know:
Give me a year--a month--a week--a day,
I would undo what I have done--an hour--
Give me until the sand has run in the glass.
ANGEL
Though you may not undo what you have done,
I have this power--if you but find one soul,
Before the sands have fallen, that still believes,
One fish to lie and spawn among the stones
Till the great fisher's net is full again,
You may, the purgatorial fire being passed,
Spring to your peace.
[_Pupils sing in the distance._
'Who stole your wits away
And where are they gone?'
WISE MAN
My pupils come,
Before you have begun to climb the sky
I shall have found that soul. They say they doubt,
But what their mothers dinned into their ears
Cannot have been so lightly rooted up;
Besides, I can disprove what I once proved--
And yet give me some thought, some argument,
More mighty than my own.
ANGEL
Farewell--farewell,
For I am weary of the weight of time.
[_Angel goes out. Wise Man makes a step to follow and pauses.
Some of his pupils come in at the other side of the stage._
FIRST PUPIL
Master, master, you must choose the subject.
[_Enter other pupils with Fool, about whom they dance; all
the pupils may have little cushions on which presently
they seat themselves._
SECOND PUPIL
Here is a subject--where have the Fool's wits gone? (_singing_)
'Who dragged your wits away
Where no one knows?
Or have they run off
On their own pair of shoes?'
FOOL
Give me a penny.
FIRST PUPIL
The Master will find your wits,
SECOND PUPIL
And when they are found, you must not beg for pennies.
THIRD PUPIL
They are hidden somewhere in the badger's hole,
But you must carry an old candle end
If you would find them.
FOURTH PUPIL
They are up above the clouds.
FOOL
Give me a penny, give me a penny.
FIRST PUPIL (_singing_)
'I'll find your wits again,
Come, for I saw them roll,
To where old badger mumbles
In the black hole.'
SECOND PUPIL (_singing_)
'No, but an angel stole them
The night that you were born,
And now they are but a rag,
On the moon's horn.'
WISE MAN
Be silent.
FIRST PUPIL
Can you not see that he is troubled?
[_All the pupils are seated._
WISE MAN
What do you think of when alone at night?
Do not the things your mothers spoke about,
Before they took the candle from the bedside,
Rush up into the mind and master it,
Till you believe in them against your will?
SECOND PUPIL (_to first pupil_)
You answer for us.
THIRD PUPIL (_in a whisper to first pupil_)
Be careful what you say;
If he persuades you to an argument,
He will but turn us all to mockery.
FIRST PUPIL
We had no minds until you made them for us;
Our bodies only were our mothers' work.
WISE MAN
You answer with incredible things. It is certain
That there is one,--though it may be but one--
Believes in God and in some heaven and hell--
In all those things we put into our prayers.
FIRST PUPIL
We thought those things before our minds were born,
But that was long ago--we are not children.
WISE MAN
You are afraid to tell me what you think
Because I am hot and angry when I am crossed.
I do not blame you for it; but have no fear,
For if there's one that sat on smiling there,
As though my arguments were sweet as milk
Yet found them bitter, I will thank him for it,
If he but speak his mind.
FIRST PUPIL
There is no one, Master,
There is not one but found them sweet as milk.
WISE MAN
The things that have been told us in our childhood
Are not so fragile.
SECOND PUPIL
We are no longer children.
THIRD PUPIL
We all believe in you and in what you have taught.
OTHER PUPILS
All, all, all, all, in you, nothing but you.
WISE MAN
I have deceived you--where shall I go for words--
I have no thoughts--my mind has been swept bare.
The messengers that stand in the fiery cloud,
Fling themselves out, if we but dare to question,
And after that, the Babylonian moon
Blots all away.
FIRST PUPIL (_to other pupils_)
I take his words to mean
That visionaries, and martyrs when they are raised
Above translunary things, and there enlightened,
As the contention is, may lose the light,
And flounder in their speech when the eyes open.
SECOND PUPIL
How well he imitates their trick of speech.
THIRD PUPIL
Their air of mystery.
FOURTH PUPIL
Their empty gaze,
As though they'd looked upon some winged thing,
And would not condescend to mankind after.
FIRST PUPIL
Master, we have all learnt that truth is learnt
When the intellect's deliberate and cold,
As it were a polished mirror that reflects
An unchanged world; and not when the steel melts,
Bubbling and hissing, till there's naught but fume.
WISE MAN
When it is melted, when it all fumes up,
They walk, as when beside those three in the furnace
The form of the fourth.
FIRST PUPIL
Master, there's none among us
That has not heard your mockery of these,
Or thoughts like these, and we have not forgot.
WISE MAN
Something incredible has happened--some one has come
Suddenly like a grey hawk out of the air,
And all that I declared untrue is true.
FIRST PUPIL (_to other pupils_)
You'd think the way he says it, that he felt it.
There's not a mummer to compare with him.
He's something like a man.
SECOND PUPIL
Give us some proof.
WISE MAN
What proof have I to give, but that an angel
An instant ago was standing on that spot.
[_The pupils rise._
THIRD PUPIL
You dreamed it.
WISE MAN
I was awake as I am now.
FIRST PUPIL (_to the others_)
I may be dreaming now for all I know.
He wants to show we have no certain proof
Of anything in the world.
SECOND PUPIL
There is this proof
That shows we are awake--we have all one world
While every dreamer has a world of his own,
And sees what no one else can.
THIRD PUPIL
Teigue sees angels.
So when the Master says he has seen an angel,
He may have seen one.
FIRST PUPIL
Both may still be dreamers;
Unless it's proved the angels were alike.
SECOND PUPIL
What sort are the angels, Teigue?
THIRD PUPIL
That will prove nothing,
Unless we are sure prolonged obedience
Has made one angel like another angel
As they were eggs.
FIRST PUPIL
The Master's silent now:
For he has found that to dispute with us--
Seeing that he has taught us what we know--
Is but to reason with himself. Let us away,
And find if there is one believer left.
WISE MAN
Yes, yes. Find me but one that still believes
The things that we were told when we were children.
THIRD PUPIL
He'll mock and maul him.
FOURTH PUPIL
From the first I knew
He wanted somebody to argue with.
[_They go._
WISE MAN
I have no reason left. All dark, all dark!
[_Pupils return laughing. They push forward fourth pupil._
FIRST PUPIL
Here, Master, is the very man you want.
He said, when we were studying the book,
That maybe after all the monks were right,
And you mistaken, and if we but gave him time,
He'd prove that it was so.
FOURTH PUPIL
I never said it.
WISE MAN
Dear friend, dear friend, do you believe in God?
FOURTH PUPIL
Master, they have invented this to mock me.
WISE MAN
You are afraid of me.
FOURTH PUPIL
They know well, Master,
That all I said was but to make them argue.
They've pushed me in to make a mock of me,
Because they knew I could take either side
And beat them at it.
WISE MAN
If you believe in God,
You are my soul's one friend.
[_Pupils laugh._
Mistress or wife
Can give us but our good or evil luck
Amid the howling world, but you shall give
Eternity, and those sweet-throated things
That drift above the moon.
[_The pupils look at one another and are silent._
SECOND PUPIL
How strange he is.
WISE MAN
The angel that stood there upon that spot,
Said that my soul was lost unless I found out
One that believed.
FOURTH PUPIL
Cease mocking at me, Master,
For I am certain that there is no God
Nor immortality, and they that said it
Made a fantastic tale from a starved dream
To plague our hearts. Will that content you, Master?
WISE MAN
The giddy glass is emptier every moment,
And you stand there, debating, laughing and wrangling.
Out of my sight! Out of my sight, I say.
[_He drives them out._
I'll call my wife, for what can women do,
That carry us in the darkness of their bodies,
But mock the reason that lets nothing grow
Unless it grow in light. Bridget, Bridget.
A woman never ceases to believe,
Say what we will. Bridget, come quickly, Bridget.
[_Bridget comes in wearing her apron. Her sleeves turned up
from her arms, which are covered with flour._
Wife, what do you believe in? Tell me the truth,
And not--as is the habit with you all--
Something you think will please me. Do you pray?
Sometimes when you're alone in the house, do you pray?
BRIDGET
Prayers--no, you taught me to leave them off long ago. At first I was
sorry, but I am glad now, for I am sleepy in the evenings.
WISE MAN
Do you believe in God?
BRIDGET
Oh, a good wife only believes in what her husband tells her.
WISE MAN
But sometimes, when the children are asleep
And I am in the school, do you not think
About the Martyrs and the saints and the angels,
And all the things that you believed in once?
BRIDGET
I think about nothing--sometimes I wonder if the linen is bleaching
white, or I go out to see if the crows are picking up the chickens' food.
WISE MAN
My God,--my God! I will go out myself.
My pupils said that they would find a man
Whose faith I never shook--they may have found him.
Therefore I will go out--but if I go,
The glass will let the sands run out unseen.
I cannot go--I cannot leave the glass.
Go call my pupils--I can explain all now,
Only when all our hold on life is troubled,
Only in spiritual terror can the Truth
Come through the broken mind--as the pease burst
Out of a broken pease-cod.
[_He clutches Bridget as she is going._
Say to them,
That Nature would lack all in her most need,
Could not the soul find truth as in a flash,
Upon the battle-field, or in the midst
Of overwhelming waves, and say to them--
But no, they would but answer as I bid.
BRIDGET
You want somebody to get up an argument with.
WISE MAN
Look out and see if there is any one
There in the street--I cannot leave the glass,
For somebody might shake it, and the sand
If it were shaken might run down on the instant.
BRIDGET
I don't understand a word you are saying. There's a crowd of people
talking to your pupils.
WISE MAN
Go out and find if they have found a man
Who did not understand me when I taught,
Or did not listen.
BRIDGET
It is a hard thing to be married to a man of learning that must always
be having arguments.
[_She goes out._
WISE MAN
Strange that I should be blind to the great secret,
And that so simple a man might write it out
Upon a blade of grass or bit of rush
With naught but berry juice, and laugh to himself
Writing it out, because it was so simple.
[_Enter Bridget followed by the Fool._
FOOL
Give me something; give me a penny to buy bacon in the shops and nuts in
the market, and strong drink for the time when the sun is weak.
BRIDGET
I have no pennies. (_To Wise Man_) Your pupils cannot find anybody to
argue with you. There's nobody in the whole country with belief enough
for a lover's oath. Can't you be quiet now, and not always wanting to
have arguments? It must be terrible to have a mind like that.
WISE MAN
Then I am lost indeed.
BRIDGET
Leave me alone now, I have to make the bread for you and the children.
[_She goes into kitchen._
WISE MAN
Children, children!
BRIDGET
Your father wants you, run to him.
[_Children run in._
WISE MAN
Come to me, children. Do not be afraid.
I want to know if you believe in Heaven,
God or the soul--no, do not tell me yet;
You need not be afraid I shall be angry,
Say what you please--so that it is your thought--
I wanted you to know before you spoke,
That I shall not be angry.
FIRST CHILD
We have not forgotten, Father.
SECOND CHILD
Oh no, Father.
BOTH CHILDREN
(_As if repeating a lesson_) There is nothing we cannot see, nothing we
cannot touch.
FIRST CHILD
Foolish people used to say that there was, but you have taught us better.
WISE MAN
Go to your mother, go--yet do not go.
What can she say? If I am dumb you are lost;
And yet, because the sands are running out,
I have but a moment to show it all in. Children,
The sap would die out of the blades of grass
Had they a doubt. They understand it all,
Being the fingers of God's certainty,
Yet can but make their sign into the air;
But could they find their tongues they'd show it all;
But what am I to say that am but one,
When they are millions and they will not speak--
[_Children have run out._
But they are gone; what made them run away?
[_The Fool comes in with a dandelion._
Look at me, tell me if my face is changed,
Is there a notch of the fiend's nail upon it
Already? Is it terrible to sight?
Because the moment's near.
[_Going to glass._
I dare not look,
I dare not know the moment when they come.
No, no, I dare not. (_Covers glass._)
Will there be a footfall,
Or will there be a sort of rending sound,
Or else a cracking, as though an iron claw
Had gripped the threshold stone?
[_Fool has begun to blow the dandelion._
What are you doing?
FOOL
Wait a minute--four--five--six--
WISE MAN
What are you doing that for?
FOOL
I am blowing the dandelion to find out what hour it is.
WISE MAN
You have heard everything, and that is why
You'd find what hour it is--you'd find that out,
That you may look upon a fleet of devils
Dragging my soul away. You shall not stop,
I will have no one here when they come in,
I will have no one sitting there--no one--
And yet--and yet--there is something strange about you.
I half remember something. What is it?
Do you believe in God and in the soul?
FOOL
So you ask me now. I thought when you were asking your pupils, 'Will he
ask Teigue the Fool? Yes, he will, he will; no, he will not--yes, he
will.' But Teigue will say nothing. Teigue will say nothing.
WISE MAN
Tell me quickly.
FOOL
I said, 'Teigue knows everything, not even the green-eyed cats and the
hares that milk the cows have Teigue's wisdom'; but Teigue will not speak,
he says nothing.
WISE MAN
Speak, speak, for underneath the cover there
The sand is running from the upper glass,
And when the last grain's through, I shall be lost.
FOOL
I will not speak. I will not tell you what is in my mind. I will not
tell you what is in my bag. You might steal away my thoughts. I met a
bodach on the road yesterday, and he said, 'Teigue, tell me how many
pennies are in your bag; I will wager three pennies that there are
not twenty pennies in your bag; let me put in my hand and count them.'
But I gripped the bag the tighter, and when I go to sleep at night I
hide the bag where nobody knows.
WISE MAN
There's but one pinch of sand, and I am lost
If you are not he I seek.
FOOL
O, what a lot the Fool knows, but he says nothing.
WISE MAN
Yes, I remember now. You spoke of angels.
You said but now that you had seen an angel.
You are the one I seek, and I am saved.
FOOL
Oh no. How could poor Teigue see angels? Oh, Teigue tells one tale here,
another there, and everybody gives him pennies. If Teigue had not his
tales he would starve.
[_He breaks away and goes out._
WISE MAN
The last hope is gone,
And now that it's too late I see it all,
We perish into God and sink away
Into reality--the rest's a dream.
[_The Fool comes back._
FOOL
There was one there--there by the threshold stone, waiting there; and he
said, 'Go in, Teigue, and tell him everything that he asks you. He will
give you a penny if you tell him.'
WISE MAN
I know enough, that know God's will prevails.
FOOL
Waiting till the moment had come--That is what the one out there was
saying, but I might tell you what you asked. That is what he was saying.
WISE MAN
Be silent. May God's will prevail on the instant,
Although His will be my eternal pain.
I have no question:
It is enough, I know what fixed the station
Of star and cloud.
And knowing all, I cry
That what so God has willed
On the instant be fulfilled,
Though that be my damnation.
The stream of the world has changed its course,
And with the stream my thoughts have run
Into some cloudy thunderous spring
That is its mountain source--
Aye, to some frenzy of the mind,
For all that we have done's undone,
Our speculation but as the wind.
[_He dies._
FOOL
Wise man--Wise man, wake up and I will tell you everything for a penny.
It is I, poor Teigue the Fool. Why don't you wake up, and say, 'There
is a penny for you, Teigue'? No, no, you will say nothing. You and I,
we are the two fools, we know everything, but we will not speak.
[_Angel enters holding a casket._
O, look what has come from his mouth! O, look what has come from his
mouth--the white butterfly! He is dead, and I have taken his soul in my
hands; but I know why you open the lid of that golden box. I must give
it to you. There then, (_he puts butterfly in casket_) he has gone
through his pains, and you will open the lid in the Garden of Paradise.
(_He closes curtain and remains outside it._) He is gone, he is gone,
he is gone, but come in, everybody in the world, and look at me.
'I hear the wind a blow
I hear the grass a grow,
And all that I know, I know.'
But I will not speak, I will run away.
[_He goes out._
* * * * *
NOTES
PREFATORY POEM
'Free of the ten and four' is an error I cannot now correct, without
more rewriting than I have a mind for. Some merchant in Villon, I forget
the reference, was 'free of the ten and four.' Irish merchants exempted
from certain duties by the Irish Parliament were, unless memory deceives
me again for I am writing away from books, 'free of the eight and six.'
POEMS BEGINNING WITH THAT 'TO A WEALTHY MAN' AND ENDING WITH THAT
'TO A SHADE'
During the thirty years or so during which I have been reading Irish
newspapers, three public controversies have stirred my imagination. The
first was the Parnell controversy. There were reasons to justify a man's
joining either party, but there were none to justify, on one side or
on the other, lying accusations forgetful of past service, a frenzy of
detraction. And another was the dispute over 'The Playboy.' There were
reasons for opposing as for supporting that violent, laughing thing,
but none for the lies, for the unscrupulous rhetoric spread against
it in Ireland, and from Ireland to America. The third prepared for the
Corporation's refusal of a building for Sir Hugh Lane's famous collection
of pictures.
One could respect the argument that Dublin, with much poverty and many
slums, could not afford the £22,000 the building was to cost the city,
but not the minds that used it. One frenzied man compared the pictures
to Troy horse which 'destroyed a city,' and innumerable correspondents
described Sir Hugh Lane and those who had subscribed many thousands to
give Dublin paintings by Corot, Manet, Monet, Degas, and Renoir, as
'self-seekers,' 'self-advertisers,' 'picture-dealers,' 'log-rolling
cranks and faddists,' and one clerical paper told 'picture-dealer Lane'
to take himself and his pictures out of that. A member of the Corporation
said there were Irish artists who could paint as good if they had a
mind to, and another described a half-hour in the temporary gallery in
Harcourt Street as the most dismal of his life. Some one else asked
instead of these eccentric pictures to be given pictures 'like those
beautiful productions displayed in the windows of our city picture
shops.' Another thought that we would all be more patriotic if we
devoted our energy to fighting the Insurance Act. Another would not
hang them in his kitchen, while yet another described the vogue of
French impressionist painting as having gone to such a length among
'log-rolling enthusiasts' that they even admired 'works that were
rejected from the Salon forty years ago by the finest critics in the
world.'
The first serious opposition began in the _Irish Catholic_, the chief
Dublin clerical paper, and Mr. William Murphy, the organiser of the
recent lock-out and Mr. Healy's financial supporter in his attack upon
Parnell, a man of great influence, brought to its support a few days
later his newspapers _The Evening Herald_ and _The Irish Independent_,
the most popular of Irish daily papers. He replied to my poem 'To a
Wealthy Man' (I was thinking of a very different wealthy man) from what
he described as 'Paudeen's point of view,' and 'Paudeen's point of view'
it was. The enthusiasm for 'Sir Hugh Lane's Corots'--one paper spelled
the name repeatedly 'Crot'--being but 'an exotic fashion,' waited 'some
satirist like Gilbert' who 'killed the æsthetic craze,' and as for the
rest 'there were no greater humbugs in the world than art critics and
so-called experts.' As the first avowed reason for opposition, the
necessities of the poor got but a few lines, not so many certainly as the
objection of various persons to supply Sir Hugh Lane with 'a monument
at the city's expense,' and as the gallery was supported by Mr. James
Larkin, the chief Labour leader, and important slum workers, I assume
that the purpose of the opposition was not exclusively charitable.
These controversies, political, literary, and artistic, have showed that
neither religion nor politics can of itself create minds with enough
receptivity to become wise, or just and generous enough to make a
nation. Other cities have been as stupid--Samuel Butler laughs at
shocked Montreal for hiding the Discobolus in a cellar--but Dublin is
the capital of a nation, and an ancient race has nowhere else to look
for an education. Goethe in _Wilhelm Meister_ describes a saintly and
naturally gracious woman, who getting into a quarrel over some trumpery
detail of religious observance, grows--she and all her little religious
community--angry and vindictive. In Ireland I am constantly reminded of
that fable of the futility of all discipline that is not of the whole
being. Religious Ireland--and the pious Protestants of my childhood were
signal examples--thinks of divine things as a round of duties separated
from life and not as an element that may be discovered in all circumstance
and emotion, while political Ireland sees the good citizen but as a man
who holds to certain opinions and not as a man of good will. Against all
this we have but a few educated men and the remnants of an old traditional
culture among the poor. Both were stronger forty years ago, before the
rise of our new middle class which showed as its first public event,
during the nine years of the Parnellite split, how base at moments of
excitement are minds without culture. 1914.
'Romantic Ireland's dead and gone' sounds old-fashioned now. It seemed
true in 1913, but I did not foresee 1916. The late Dublin Rebellion,
whatever one can say of its wisdom, will long be remembered for its
heroism. 'They weighed so lightly what they gave,' and gave too in some
cases without hope of success. July 1916.
THE DOLLS
The fable for this poem came into my head while I was giving some
lectures in Dublin. I had noticed once again how all thought among us is
frozen into 'something other than human life.' After I had made the poem,
I looked up one day into the blue of the sky, and suddenly imagined, as
if lost in the blue of the sky, stiff figures in procession. I remembered
that they were the habitual image suggested by blue sky, and looking for
a second fable called them 'The Magi', complimentary forms to those
enraged dolls.
THE HOUR-GLASS
A friend suggested to me the subject of this play, an Irish folk-tale
from Lady Wilde's _Ancient Legends_. I have for years struggled with
something which is charming in the naive legend but a platitude on the
stage. I did not discover till a year ago that if the wise man humbled
himself to the fool and received salvation as his reward, so much more
powerful are pictures than words, no explanatory dialogue could set the
matter right. I was faintly pleased when I converted a music-hall singer
and kept him going to Mass for six weeks, so little responsibility does
one feel for those to whom one has never been introduced; but I was
always ashamed when I saw any friend of my own in the theatre. Now I
have made my philosopher accept God's will, whatever it is, and find his
courage again, and helped by the elaboration of verse, have so changed
the fable that it is not false to my own thoughts of the world.
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