by W. B. Yeats
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?