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Delphi Complete Poetry and Plays of W. B. Yeats (Illustrated) (Delphi Poets Series)

Page 65

by W. B. Yeats


  SIBBY. Give me a taste of it. TRAMP [takes the pot off and slips the ham bone behind him]. Give me some vessel till I’ll give this sky-woman a taste of it.

  [JOHN gives him an egg-cup which he fills and gives to SIBBY. JOHN gives him a mug, and he fills this for himself, pouring it back and forward from the mug to a bowl that is on the table, and drinking gulps now and again, SIBBY blows at hers and smells it.

  SIBBY. There’s a good smell on it anyway. [Tasting.] It’s lovely. Oh, I’d give the world and all to have the stone that made that!

  TRAMP. The world and all wouldn’t buy- it, ma’am. If I was inclined to sell it the Lord Lieutenant would have given me Dublin Castle and all that’s in it long ago.

  SIBBY. Oh, couldn’t we coax it out of you any way at all?

  TRAMP [drinking more soup]. The whole world wouldn’t coax it out of me except maybe for one thing... [looks depressed]. Now I think of it there’s only one reason I might think of parting it at all.

  SIBBY [eagerly]. What reason is that?

  TRAMP. It’s a misfortune that overtakes me, ma’am, every time I make an attempt to keep a pot of my own to boil it in, and I don’t like to be always under a compliment to the neighbours, asking the loan of one. But whatever way it is, I never can keep a pot with me. I had a right to ask one of the little man that gave me the stone. The last one I bought got the bottom burned out of it one night I was giving a hand to a friend that keeps a still, and the one before that I hid under a bush one time I was going into Ennis for the night, and some boys in the town dreamed about it and went looking for treasure in it, and they found nothing but eggshells, but they brought it away for all that. And another one....

  SIBBY. Give me the loan of the stone itself, and I’ll engage I’ll keep a pot for it.... Wait now till I’ll make some offer to you....

  TRAMP [aside], I’d best not be stopping to bargain, the priest might be coming in on me. [Gets up.] Well, ma’am, I’m sorry I can’t oblige you. [Goes to door, shades his eyes and looks out, turns suddenly.] I have no time to lose, ma’am, I’m off. [Comes to table and takes his hat.] Well, ma’am, what offer will you make?

  JOHN. You might as well leave it for a day on trial first.

  TRAMP [to JOHN]. I think it likely I’ll not be passing this way again. [To SIBBY] Well, now, ma’am, as you were so kind, and for the sake of the good treatment you gave me I’ll ask nothing at all for it. Here it is for you and welcome, and that you may live long to use it. But I’ll just take a little bit in my bag that’ll do for my supper, for fear I mightn’t be in Tubber before night. [He takes up the chicken.] And you won’t begrudge me a drop of whisky when you can make plenty for yourself from this out. [Takes the bottled]

  JOHN. You deserve it, you deserve it indeed. You are a very gifted man. Don’t forget the kippeen!

  TRAMP. It’s here! [Slaps his pocket and exit, JOHN follows him.]

  SIBBY [looking at the stone in her hand]. Broth of the best, stirabout, poteen, wine itself, he said! And the people that will be coming to see the miracle! I’ll be as rich a£ Biddy Early before I die!

  [JOHN comes back. SIBBY. Where were you, John?

  JOHN. I just went out to shake him by the hand. He’s a very gifted man.

  SIBBY. He is so indeed.

  JOHN. And the priest’s at the top of the boreen coming for his dinner. Maybe you’d best put the stone in the pot again.

  THE KING’S THRESHOLD

  TO FRANK FAY

  Because of his beautiful speaking in

  the character of Seanchan

  PERSONS IN THE PLAY

  KING GUAIRE.

  SEANCHAN (pronounced SHANAHAN).

  HIS PUPILS.

  THE MAYOR OF KINVARA.

  TWO CRIPPLES.

  BRIAN, an old servant.

  THE LORD HIGH CHAMBERLAIN.

  A SOLDIER.

  A MONK.

  COURT LADIES.

  TWO PRINCESSES.

  FEDELM.

  THE KING’S THRESHOLD

  SCENE: Steps before the Palace of KING

  GUAIRE at Gort. A table or litter in front of steps at one side, with food on it, and a bench. SEANCHAN lying on steps. PUPILS before steps. KING on the upper step before a curtained door.

  KING. I welcome you that have the mastery

  Of the two kinds of Music: the one kind

  Being like a woman, the other like a man.

  Both you that understand stringed instruments,

  And how to mingle words and notes together

  So artfully, that all the Art’s but Speech

  Delighted with its own music; and you that carry

  The long twisted horn, and understand

  The heady notes that, being without words,

  Can hurry beyond Time and Fate and Change.

  For the high angels that drive the horse of Time —

  The golden one by day, by night the silver —

  Are not more welcome to one that loves the world

  For some fair woman’s sake.

  I have called you hither

  To save the life of your great master, Seanchan,

  For all day long it has flamed up or flickered

  To the fast cooling hearth.

  OLDEST PUPIL. When did he sicken?

  Is it a fever that is wasting him?

  KING. NO fever or sickness. He has chosen death:

  Refusing to eat or drink, that he may bring

  Disgrace upon me; for there is a custom,

  An old and foolish custom, that if a man

  Be wronged, or think that he is wronged, and starve

  Upon another’s threshold till he die,

  The common people, for all time to come,

  Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold,

  Even though it be the King’s.

  OLDEST PUPIL. My head whirls round;

  I do not know what I am to think or say.

  I owe you all obedience, and yet

  How can I give it, when the man I have loved

  More than all others, thinks that he is wronged

  So bitterly, that he will starve and die

  Rather than bear it? Is there any man

  Will throw his life away for a light issue?

  KING. It is but fitting that you take his side

  Until you understand how light an issue

  Has put us by the ears. Three days ago

  I yielded to the outcry of my courtiers —

  Bishops, Soldiers, and Makers of the Law —

  Who long had thought it against their dignity

  For a mere man of words to sit amongst them

  At the great council of the state and share

  In their authority. I bade him go,

  Though at the first with kind and courteous words,

  But when he pleaded for the poets’ right,

  Established at the establishment of the world,

  I said that I was King, and that all rights

  Had their original fountain in some king,

  And that it was the men who ruled the world,

  And not the men who sang to it, who should sit

  Where there was the most honour. My courtiers —

  Bishops, Soldiers, and Makers of the Law —

  Shouted approval; and amid that noise

  Seanchan went out, and from that hour to this

  Although there is good food and drink beside him,

  Has eaten nothing.

  OLDEST PUPIL. I can breathe again.

  You have taken a great burden from my mind

  For that old custom’s not worth dying for.

  KING. Persuade him to eat or drink. Till yesterday

  I thought that hunger and weakness had been enough;

  But finding them too trifling and too light

  To hold his mouth from biting at the grave,

  I called you hither, and all my hope’s in you,

  And certain of his neighbours and good friends

  That I
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 every-thing —

  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 have 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 under- stand;

  You would refute me out of my own mouth;

  And yet a place at council, 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 die at an insult.

  OLDEST PUPIL [to other PUPILS]. Give me

  some true answer,

  Upon that day he spoke about the Court

  And called it the first comely child of the world,

  And said that all that was insulted there

  The world insulted, for the Courtly life

  Is the world’s model. How shall I answer him?

  Can you not give me some true argument?

  I will not tempt him with a lying one.

  YOUNGEST PUPIL. O, tell him that the

  lovers of his music

  Have need of him.

  SEANCHAN. — But I am labouring

  For some that shall be born in the nick o’ time,

  And find sweet nurture, that they may have voices,

  Even in anger, like the strings of harps;

  And how could they be born to majesty

  If I had never made the golden cradle?

  YOUNGEST PUPIL [throwing himself at SEAN-

  CHAN’S feet]. Why did you take me from

  my father’s fields?

  If you would leave me now, what shall I love?

  Where shall I go? What shall I set my hand to?

  And why have you put music in my ears,

  If you would send me to the clattering houses?

  I will throw down the trumpet and the harp,

  For how could I sing verses or make music

  With none to praise me, and a broken heart?

  SEANCHAN. What was it that the poets promised you,

  If it was not their sorrow? Do not speak.

  Have I not opened school on these bare steps,

  And are not you the youngest of my scholars?

  And I would have all know that when all falls

  In ruin, poetry calls out in joy,

  Being the scattering hand, the bursting pod,

  The victim’s joy among the holy flame,

  God’s laughter at the shattering of the world.

  And now that joy laughs out, and weeps and burns

  On these bare steps.

  YOUNGEST PUPIL. O master, do not die!

  OLDEST PUPIL. Trouble him with no useless argument.

  Be silent! There is nothing we can do

  Except find out
the King and kneel to him,

  And beg our ancient right.

  For here are some

  To say whatever we could say and more,

  And fare as badly. Come, boy, that is no use.

  [Raises YOUNGEST PUPIL.

  If it seem well that we beseech the King,

  Lay down your harps and trumpets on the stones

  In silence, and come with me silently.

  Come with slow footfalls, and bow all your heads,

  For a bowed head becomes a mourner best.

  [They lay harps and trumpets down one

  by one, and then go out very solemnly

  and slowly, following one another.

  Enter MAYOR, TWO CRIPPLES, and

  BRIAN, an old servant. The MAYOR,

  who has been heard, before he came

  “pon the stage, muttering ‘Chief

  Poet,”Ireland,’ etc., crosses in

  front of SEANCHAN to the other side

  of the steps. BRIAN takes food out of

  basket. The CRIPPLES are watching

  the basket. The MAYOR has an

  Ogham stick in his hand.

  MAYOR [as he crosses]. ‘Chief Poet,”Ireland,”Townsman,”Grazing land.’

  Those are the words I have to keep in mind —

  ‘Chief Poet,”Ireland,”Townsman,’ ‘Grazing land.’

  I have the words. They are all upon the Ogham.

  ‘Chief Poet,’’ Ireland,”Townsman,” Grazing land.’

  But what’s their order?

  [He keeps muttering over his speech

  during what follows.

  FIRST CRIPPLE. The King were rightly served

  If Seanchan drove his good luck away.

  What’s there about a king, that’s in the world

 

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