by W. B. Yeats
WOMAN of the SIDHE
Hold out your arms and hands again You were not so dumbfounded when I was that bird of prey and yet I am all woman now.
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
I am not The young and passionate man I was And though that brilliant light surpass All crescent forms, my memories Weigh down my hands, abash my eyes.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
Then kiss my mouth. Though memory Be beauty’s bitterest enemy I have no dread for at my kiss Memory on the moment vanishes: Nothing but beauty can remain.
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
And shall I never know again Intricacies of blind remorse?
WOMAN of the SIDHE
Time shall seem to stay his course, For when your mouth and my mouth meet All my round shall be complete Imagining all its circles run; And there shall be oblivion Even to quench Cuchulain’s drouth, Even to still that heart.
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
Your mouth.
(They are about to kiss, he turns away)
O Emer, Emer.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
So then it is she Made you impure with memory.
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
Still in that dream I see you stand, A burning wisp in your right hand, To wait my coming to the house, As when our parents married us.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
Being among the dead you love her That valued every slut above her While you still lived.
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
O my lost Emer.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
And there is not a loose-tongued schemer But could draw you if not dead, From her table and her bed. How could you be fit to wive With flesh and blood, being born to live Where no one speaks of broken troth For all have washed out of their eyes Wind blown dirt of their memories To improve their sight?
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
Your mouth, your mouth.
(Their lips approach but Cuchulain turns away as Emer speaks.)
EMER
If he may live I am content, Content that he shall turn on me, If but the dead will set him free That I may speak with him at whiles, Eyes that the cold moon or the harsh sea Or what I know not’s made indifferent.
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
What a wise silence has fallen in this dark! I know you now in all your ignorance Of all whereby a lover’s quiet is rent. What dread so great as that he should forget The least chance sight or sound, or scratch or mark On an old door, or frail bird heard and seen In the incredible clear light love cast All round about her some forlorn lost day? That face, though fine enough, is a fool’s face And there’s a folly in the deathless Sidhe Beyond man’s reach.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
I told you to forget After my fashion; you would have none of it; So now you may forget in a man’s fashion. There’s an unbridled horse at the sea’s edge. Mount; it will carry you in an eye’s wink To where the King of Country-Under-Wave, Old Mananan, nods above the board and moves His chessmen in a dream. Demand your life And come again on the unbridled horse.
GHOST of CUCHULAIN
Forgive me those rough words. How could you know That man is held to those whom he has loved By pain they gave, or pain that he has given, Intricacies of pain.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
I am ashamed That being of the deathless shades I chose A man so knotted to impurity.
(The Ghost of Cuchulain goes out)
WOMAN of the SIDHE (to Figure of Cuchulain)
To you that have no living light, but dropped From a last leprous crescent of the moon, I owe it all.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
Because you have failed I must forego your thanks, I that took pity Upon your love and carried out your plan To tangle all his life and make it nothing That he might turn to you.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
Was it from pity You taught the woman to prevail against me?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
You know my nature — by what name I am called.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
Was it from pity that you hid the truth That men are bound to women by the wrongs They do or suffer?
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
You know what being I am.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
I have been mocked and disobeyed — your power Was more to you than my good-will, and now I’ll have you learn what my ill-will can do; I lay you under bonds upon the instant To stand before our King and face the charge And take the punishment.
FIGURE of CUCHULAIN
I’ll stand there first. And tell my story first, and Mananan Knows that his own harsh sea made my heart cold.
WOMAN of the SIDHE
My horse is there and shall outrun your horse.
(The Figure of Cuchulain falls back, the Woman of the Sidhe goes out. Drum taps, music resembling horse hoofs.)
EITHNE INGUBA (entering quickly)
I heard the beat of hoofs, but saw no horse, And then came other hoofs and after that I heard low angry cries and thereupon I ceased to be afraid.
EMER
Cuchulain wakes.
(The figure turns round. It once more wears the heroic mask.)
CUCHULAIN
Eithne Inguba take me in your arms, I have been in some strange place and am afraid.
(The First Musician comes to the front of stage, the others from each side and unfold the cloth singing)
THE MUSICIANS
What makes her heart beat thus, Plain to be understood I have met in a man’s house A statue of solitude, Moving there and walking; Its strange heart beating fast For all our talking. O still that heart at last.
O bitter reward! Of many a tragic tomb! And we though astonished are dumb And give but a sigh and a word A passing word.
Although the door be shut And all seem well enough, Although wide world hold not A man but will give you his love. The moment he has looked at you, He that has loved the best May turn from a statue His too human breast.
O bitter reward! Of many a tragic tomb! And we though astonished are dumb Or give but a sigh and a word A passing word.
What makes your heart so beat? Some one should stay at her side. When beauty is complete Her own thought will have died And danger not be diminished; Dimmed at three quarter light When moon’s round is finished The stars are out of sight.
O bitter reward! Of many a tragic tomb! And we though astonished are dumb Or give but a sigh and a word A passing word.
(When the cloth is folded again the stage is bare.)
CALVARY
PERSONS IN THE PLAY
Three Musicians (their faces made up to resemble masks)
Christ (wearing a mask)
Lazarus (wearing a mask)
Judas (wearing a mask)
Three Roman Soldiers (their faces masked or made up to resemble masks) At the beginning of the play the First Musician comes to the front of the bare place, round three sides of which the audience are seated, with a folded cloth hanging from his joined hands. Two other Musi cians come,... one from either side, and unfold the cloth so that it shuts out the stage, and then fold it again, singing and moving rhythmically. They do the same at the end of the play, which enables the players to leave the stage unseen. [Song for the folding and unfolding of the cloth]
CALVARY
First Musician.
Motionless under the moon-beam,
Up to his feathers in the stream;
Although fish leap, the white heron
Shivers in a dumbfounded dream.
Second Musician.
God has not died for the white heron.
Third Musician.
Although half famished he’ll not dare
Dip or do anything but stare
Upon the glittering image of a heron,
That now is lost and now is there.
Second Musician.
God has not died for the white heron.
First Musician.
But that the full is shortly gone
And after that is crescent moon,
It’s certain that the moon-crazed heron
Would be but fishes’ diet soon.
Second Musician.
God has not died for the white heron.
[The three Musicians are now seated by the drum, flute, and zither at the back of stage.
First Musician. The road to Calvary, and I beside it
Upon an ancient stone. Good Friday’s come,
The day whereon Christ dreams His passion through.
He climbs up hither but as a dreamer climbs.
The cross that but exists because He dreams it
Shortens His breath and wears away His strength.
And now He stands amid a mocking crowd,
Heavily breathing.
[A player with the mask of Christ and carrying a cross has entered and now stands leaning upon the cross.
Those that are behind
Climb on the shoulders of the men in front
To shout their mockery: ‘Work a miracle,’
Cries one, ‘and save yourself’; another cries,
‘Call on your father now before your bones
Have been picked bare by the great desert birds’;
Another cries, ‘Call out with a loud voice
And tell him that his son is cast away
Amid the mockery of his enemies.’
[Singing]
O, but the mockers’ cry
Makes my heart afraid,
As though a flute of bone
Taken from a heron’s thigh,
A heron crazed by the moon,
Were cleverly, softly played.
[Speaking]
Who is this from whom the crowd has shrunk,
As though he had some look that terrified?
He has a deathly face, and yet he moves
Like a young foal that sees the hunt go by
And races in the field.
[A player with the mask of Lazarus has entered.
Lazarus. — He raised me up.
I am the man that died and was raised up;
I am called Lazarus.
Christ. — Seeing that you died,
Lay in the tomb four days and were raised up,
You will not mock at me.
Lazarus. — For four whole days
I had been dead and I was lying still
In an old comfortable mountain cavern
When you came climbing there with a great crowd
And dragged me to the light.
Christ. — I called your name:
‘Lazarus, come out,’ I said, and you came out
Bound up in cloths, your face bound in a cloth.
Lazarus. You took my death, give me your death instead.
Christ. I gave you life.
Lazarus. — But death is what I ask.
Alive I never could escape your love,
And when I sickened towards my death I thought,
‘I’ll to the desert, or chuckle in a corner,
Mere ghost, a solitary thing.’ I died
And saw no more until I saw you stand
In the opening of the tomb; ‘Come out!’ you called;
You dragged me to the light as boys drag out
A rabbit when they have dug its hole away;
And now with all the shouting at your heels
You travel towards the death I am denied.
And that is why I have hurried to this road
And claimed your death.
Christ. — But I have conquered death,
And all the dead shall be raised up again.
Lazarus. Then what I heard is true. I thought to die
When my allotted years ran out again;
And that, being gone, you could not hinder it;
But now you will blind with light the solitude
That death has made; you will disturb that corner
Where I had thought I might lie safe for ever.
Christ. I do my Father’s will.
Lazarus. — And not your own;
And I was free four days, four days being dead.
Climb up to Calvary, but turn your eyes
From Lazarus that cannot find a tomb
Although he search all height and depth: make way,
Make way for Lazarus that must go search
Among the desert places where there is nothing
But howling wind and solitary birds. — [He goes out.
First Musician. The crowd shrinks backward from the face that
seems
Death-stricken and death-hungry still; and now
Martha, and those three Marys, and the rest
That live but in His love are gathered round Him.
He holds His right arm out, and on His arm
Their lips are pressed and their tears fall; and now
They cast them on the ground before His dirty
Blood-dabbled feet and clean them with their hair.
[Sings]
Take but His love away,
Their love becomes a feather
Of eagle, swan or gull,
Or a drowned heron’s feather
Tossed hither and thither
Upon the bitter spray
And the moon at the full.
Christ. I felt their hair upon my feet a moment
And then they fled away — why have they fled?
Why has the street grown empty of a sudden
As though all fled in terror?
Judas (who has just entered]. I am Judas
That sold you for the thirty pieces of silver.
Christ. You were beside me every day, and saw
The dead raised up and blind men given their sight,
And all that I have said and taught you have known,
Yet doubt that I am God.
Judas. — I have not doubted;
I knew it from the first moment that I saw you;
I had no need of miracles to prove it.
Christ. And yet you have betrayed me.
Judas. — I have betrayed you
Because you seemed all-powerful.
Christ. — My Father
Even now, if I were but to whisper it,
Would break the world in His miraculous fury
To set me free.
Judas. — And is there not one man
In the wide world that is not in your power?
Christ. My Father put all men into my hands.
Judas. That was the very thought that drove me wild.
I could not bear to think you had but to whistle
And I must do; but after that I thought,
‘Whatever man betrays Him will be free’;
And life grew bearable again. And now
Is there a secret left I do not know,
Knowing that if a man betrays a God
He is the stronger of the two?
Christ. — But if
‘Twere the commandment of that God Himself,
That God were still the stronger.
Judas. — When I planned it
There was no live thing near me but a heron
So full of itself that it seemed terrified.
Christ. But my betrayal was decreed that hour
When the foundations of the world were laid-
Judas. It was decreed that somebody betray you —
I’d thought of that — but not that I should do it,
I the man Judas, born on such a day,
In such a village, such and such his parents;
Nor that I’d go with my old coat upon me
To the High Priest, and chuckle to myself
As people chuckle when alone, and do it
For thirty pieces and no more, no less,
And neither with a nod nor a sent message,
But with a kiss upon your cheek. I did it,
I, Judas, and no other man, and now
You cannot even save me.
Christ. — Begone from me.
[Three Roman Soldiers have entered.
First Roman
Soldier. He has been chosen to hold up the cross.
[During what follows, Judas holds up the cross while Christ stands with His arms stretched out upon it.
Second Roman Soldier. We’ll keep the rest away; they are too persistent;
They are always wanting something.
Third Roman Soldier. — Die in peace.
There’s no one here but Judas and ourselves.
Christ. And who are you that ask your God for nothing?
Third Roman Soldier. We are the gamblers, and when you are dead
We’ll settle who is to have that cloak of yours
By throwing dice.
Second Roman Soldier. Our dice were carved
Out of an old sheep’s thigh at Ephesus.
First Roman Soldier. Although but one of us can win the cloak
That will not make us quarrel; what does it matter?
One day one loses and the next day wins.
Second Roman Soldier. Whatever happens is the best, we say,
So that it’s unexpected.
Third Roman Soldier. Had you sent
A crier through the world you had not found
More comfortable companions for a deathbed
Than three old gamblers that have asked for nothing.