Poems. William Butler Yeats

murmur of "The porter! the porter!")

PORTER

      Demons were here. I sat beside the door

      In my stone niche, and two owls passed me by,

      Whispering with human voices.

OLD PEASANT

      God forsakes us.

CATHLEEN

      Old man, old man, He never closed a door

      Unless one opened. I am desolate,

      Because of a strange thought that's in my heart;

      But I have still my faith; therefore be silent;

      For surely He does not forsake the world,

      But stands before it modelling in the clay

      And moulding there His image. Age by age

      The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard

      For its old, heavy, dull and shapeless ease;

      But sometimes – though His hand is on it still —

      It moves awry and demon hordes are born.

      (PEASANTS cross themselves.)

      Yet leave me now, for I am desolate,

      I hear a whisper from beyond the thunder.

      (She comes from the oratory door.)

      Yet stay an instant. When we meet again

      I may have grown forgetful. Oona, take

      These two – the larder and the dairy keys.

      (To the PORTER.)

      But take you this. It opens the small room

      Of herbs for medicine, of hellebore,

      Of vervain, monkshood, plantain, and self-heal.

      The book of cures is on the upper shelf.

PORTER

      Why do you do this, lady; did you see

      Your coffin in a dream?

CATHLEEN

      Ah, no, not that.

      But I have come to a strange thought. I have heard

      A sound of wailing in unnumbered hovels,

      And I must go down, down – I know not where —

      Pray for all men and women mad from famine;

      Pray, you good neighbours.

      (The PEASANTS all kneel. COUNTESS CATHLEEN ascends the steps to the door of the oratory, and turning round stands there motionless for a little, and then cries in a loud voice:)

      Mary, Queen of angels,

      And all you clouds on clouds of saints, farewell!

END OF SCENE III

      SCENE IV

      Scene. —A wood near the Castle, as in Scene II. A group of PEASANTS pass.

FIRST PEASANT

      I have seen silver and copper, but not gold.

SECOND PEASANT

      It's yellow and it shines.

FIRST PEASANT

      It's beautiful.

      The most beautiful thing under the sun,

      That's what I've heard.

THIRD PEASANT

      I have seen gold enough.

FOURTH PEASANT

      I would not say that it's so beautiful.

FIRST PEASANT

      But doesn't a gold piece glitter like the sun?

      That's what my father, who'd seen better days,

      Told me when I was but a little boy —

      So high – so high, it's shining like the sun,

      Round and shining, that is what he said.

SECOND PEASANT

      There's nothing in the world it cannot buy.

FIRST PEASANT

      They've bags and bags of it.

      (They go out. The two MERCHANTS follow silently. Then ALEEL passes over the stage singing.)

ALEEL

      Impetuous heart be still, be still,

      Your sorrowful love can never be told,

      Cover it up with a lonely tune.

      He who could bend all things to His will

      Has covered the door of the infinite fold

      With the pale stars and the wandering moon.

END OF SCENE IV

      SCENE V

      Scene. —The house of SHEMUS RUA. There is an alcove at the back with curtains; in it a bed, and on the bed is the body of MARY with candles round it. The two MERCHANTS while they speak put a large book upon a table, arrange money, and so on.

FIRST MERCHANT

      Thanks to that lie I told about her ships

      And that about the herdsman lying sick,

      We shall be too much thronged with souls to-morrow.

SECOND MERCHANT

      What has she in her coffers now but mice?

FIRST MERCHANT

      When the night fell and I had shaped myself

      Into the image of the man-headed owl,

      I hurried to the cliffs of Donegal,

      And saw with all their canvas full of wind

      And rushing through the parti-coloured sea

      Those ships that bring the woman grain and meal.

      They're but three days from us.

SECOND MERCHANT

      When the dew rose

      I hurried in like feathers to the east,

      And saw nine hundred oxen driven through Meath

      With goads of iron. They're but three days from us.

FIRST MERCHANT

      Three days for traffic.

      (PEASANTS crowd in with TEIG and SHEMUS.)

SHEMUS

      Come in, come in, you are welcome.

      That is my wife. She mocked at my great masters,

      And would not deal with them. Now there she is;

      She does not even know she was a fool,

      So great a fool she was.

TEIG

      She would not eat

      One crumb of bread bought with our master's money,

      But lived on nettles, dock, and dandelion.

SHEMUS

      There's nobody could put into her head

      That Death is the worst thing can happen us.

      Though that sounds simple, for her tongue grew rank

      With all the lies that she had heard in chapel.

      Draw to the curtain. (TEIG draws it.) You'll not play the fool

      While these good gentlemen are there to save you.

SECOND MERCHANT

      Since