The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

have sent for. While he is lying there

      Perishing, my good name in the world

      Is perishing also. I cannot give way,

      Because I am King. Because if I gave way,

      My Nobles would call me a weakling, and it may be

      The very throne be shaken.

      OLDEST PUPIL.

      I will persuade him.

      Your words had been enough persuasion, King;

      But being lost in sleep or reverie,

      He cannot hear them.

      KING.

      Make him eat or drink.

      Nor is it all because of my good name

      I’d have him do it, for he is a man

      That might well hit the fancy of a king,

      Banished out of his country, or a woman’s,

      Or any other’s that can judge a man

      For what he is. But I that sit a throne,

      And take my measure from the needs of the State,

      Call his wild thought that overruns the measure,

      Making words more than deeds, and his proud will

      That would unsettle all, most mischievous,

      And he himself a most mischievous man.

      [He turns to go, and then returns again.

      Promise a house with grass and tillage land,

      An annual payment, jewels and silken ware,

      Or anything but that old right of the poets.

      [He goes into palace.

      OLDEST PUPIL.

      The King did wrong to abrogate our right;

      But Seanchan, who talks of dying for it,

      Talks foolishly. Look at us, Seanchan;

      Waken out of your dream and look at us,

      Who have ridden under the moon and all the day,

      Until the moon has all but come again,

      That we might be beside you.

      SEANCHAN.

       [Half turning round, leaning on his elbow, and speaking as if in a dream.]

      I was but now

      In Almhuin, in a great high-raftered house,

      With Finn and Osgar. Odours of roast flesh

      Rose round me, and I saw the roasting-spits;

      And then the dream was broken, and I saw

      Grania dividing salmon by a stream.

      OLDEST PUPIL.

      Hunger has made you dream of roasting flesh;

      And though I all but weep to think of it,

      The hunger of the crane, that starves himself

      At the full moon because he is afraid

      Of his own shadow and the glittering water,

      Seems to me little more fantastical

      Than this of yours.

      SEANCHAN.

      Why, that’s the very truth.

      It is as though the moon changed everything—

      Myself and all that I can hear and see;

      For when the heavy body has grown weak,

      There’s nothing that can tether the wild mind

      That, being moonstruck and fantastical,

      Goes where it fancies. I had even thought

      I knew your voice and face, but now the words

      Are so unlikely that I needs must ask

      Who is it that bids me put my hunger by.

      OLDEST PUPIL.

      I am your oldest pupil, Seanchan;

      The one that has been with you many years—

      So many, that you said at Candlemas

      That I had almost done with school, and knew

      All but all that poets understand.

      SEANCHAN.

      My oldest pupil? No, that cannot be,

      For it is some one of the courtly crowds

      That have been round about me from sunrise,

      And I am tricked by dreams; but I’ll refute them.

      At Candlemas I bid that pupil tell me

      Why poetry is honoured, wishing to know

      If he had any weighty argument

      For distant countries and strange, churlish kings.

      What did he answer?

      OLDEST PUPIL.

      I said the poets hung

      Images of the life that was in Eden

      About the child-bed of the world, that it,

      Looking upon those images, might bear

      Triumphant children. But why must I stand here,

      Repeating an old lesson, while you starve?

      SEANCHAN.

      Tell on, for I begin to know the voice.

      What evil thing will come upon the world

      If the Arts perish?

      OLDEST PUPIL.

      If the Arts should perish,

      The world that lacked them would be like a woman,

      That looking on the cloven lips of a hare,

      Brings forth a hare-lipped child.

      SEANCHAN.

      But that’s not all:

      For when I asked you how a man should guard

      Those images, you had an answer also,

      If you’re the man that you have claimed to be,

      Comparing them to venerable things

      God gave to men before he gave them wheat.

      OLDEST PUPIL.

      I answered—and the word was half your own—

      That he should guard them as the Men of Dea

      Guard their four treasures, as the Grail King guards

      His holy cup, or the pale, righteous horse

      The jewel that is underneath his horn,

      Pouring out life for it as one pours out

      Sweet heady wine. … But now I understand;

      You would refute me out of my own mouth;

      And yet a place at table, near the King,

      Is nothing of great moment, Seanchan.

      How does so light a thing touch poetry?

      [Seanchan is now sitting up. He still looks dreamily in front of him.

      SEANCHAN.

      At Candlemas you called this poetry

      One of the fragile, mighty things of God,

      That