RESPONSIBILITIES

WILLIAM BUTLKR Y 1C ATS
From a pen-and-ink sketch by John B. Yeats, R.H.

/

^23

RESPONSIBILITIES
AND OTHER POEMS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA. LTD.

RESPONSIBILITIES

AND OTHER POEMS

BY
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1916

All rights reserved

COPTBIOHT. 1911

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

COPTBIOHT. 1904, 1908, AND 1912
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1916

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotypcd. Published November, 1916.

CONTENTS

PAGE

RESPONSIBILITIES, 1912-1914 —

INTRODUCTORY RHYMES ... 1

THE GREY ROCK . . . . . 3

THE Two KINGS 11

To A WEALTHY MAN .... 29

SEPTEMBER 1913 32

To A FRIEND WHOSE WORK HAS COME TO

NOTHING ..... 34

PATTDEEN 35

To A SHADE 36

WHEN HELEN LIVED .... 39
THE ATTACK ON 'THE PLAYBOY OF THE

WESTERN WORLD,' 1907 . . 40
THE THREE BEGGARS . . . .41

THE THREE HERMITS .... 45

BEGGAR TO BEGGAR CRIED ... 47

THE WELL AND THE TREE ... 49

RUNNING TO PARADISE ... 50

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN ... 52

THE PLAYER QUEEN .... 59

THE REALISTS 61

THE WITCH 62

THE PEACOCK 63

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

THE MOUNTAIN TOMB .... 64

To A CHILD DANCING IN THE WIND . 66

A MEMORY OF YOUTH .... 68

FALLEN MAJESTY .... 70

FRIENDS 71

THE COLD HEAVEN .... 73

THAT THE NIGHT COME ... 75

AN APPOINTMENT .... 76

THE MAGI 77

THE DOLLS 78

A COAT 80

CLOSING RHYMES . . . .81

FROM THE GREEN HELMET AND OTHER POEMS,
1909-1912—

His DREAM 85

A WOMAN HOMER SUNG ... 87

THE CONSOLATION .... 89

No SECOND TROY .... 91

RECONCILIATION 92

KING AND No KING . . . .94

PEACE 96

AGAINST UNWORTHY PRAISE ... 97

THE FASCINATION OF WHAT'S DIFFICULT 99

A DRINKING SONG .... 101

THE COMING OF WISDOM WITH TIME . 102
ON HEARING THAT THE STUDENTS OF OUB
NEW UNIVERSITY HAVE JOINED THE

ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS . 103

To A POET . 104

CONTENTS vii

PAGE

THE MASK 105

UPON A HOUSE SHAKEN BY THE LAND

AGITATION 106

AT THE ABBEY THEATRE . . . 108

THESE ARE THE CLOUDS . . .110

AT GALWAY RACES . . . .112

A FRIEND'S ILLNESS . . . .113

ALL THINGS CAN TEMPT ME . . .114

THE YOUNG MAN'S SONG . . .115

THE HOUR-GLASS— 1912 . . . .117

NOTES 181

'In dreams begins responsibility.9
Old Play.

'How am I fallen from myself, for a

long time now
I have not seen the Prince of Chang in

my dreams.9

Khoung-fou-tseu.

•CH1N-ANGLKS, OR,

The Story h Told in Duhlin I'hat W. B. Yeats, and George Ru

RESPONSIBILITIES

Pardon, old fathers, if you still remain
Somewhere in ear -shot for the story's

end,
Old Dublin merchant 'free of ten and

four'

Or trading out of Galway into Spain;
And country scholar, Robert Emmet's

friend,

A hundred-year-old memory to the poor;
Traders or soldiers who have left me

blood
That has not passed through any hux-

ter's loin,
Pardon, and you that did not weigh

the cost,
Old Butlers when you took to horse and

stood

Beside the brackish waters of the Boyne
Till your bad master blenched and all

was lost;

\

You merchant skipper that leaped over-
board

After a ragged hat in Biscay Bay,

You most of allt silent and fierce old
man

Because you were the spectacle that
stirred

My fancy, and set my boyish lips to say

'Only the wasteful virtues earn the
sun';

Pardon that for a barren passion9 s sake,

Although I have come close on forty-
nine

I have no child, I have nothing but a
book,

Nothing but that to prove your blood
and mine.

January 1914.

THE GREY ROCK

Poets with whom I learned my trade,
Companions of the Cheshire Cheese,
Here's an old story I've re-made,
Imagining 'twould better please
Your ears than stories now in fashion,
Though you may think I waste my

breath

Pretending that there can be passion
That has more life in it than death,
And though at bottling of your wine
The bow-legged Goban had no say;
The moral's yours because it's mine.

When cups went round at close of

day —

Is not that how good stories run? —
Somewhere within some hollow hill,

3

4 THE GREY ROCK

If books speak truth in Slievenamon,
But let that be, the gods were still
And sleepy, having had their meal,
And smoky torches made a glare
On painted pillars, on a deal
Of fiddles and of flutes hung there
By the ancient holy hands that brought

them

From murmuring Murias, on cups —
Old Goban hammered them and

wrought them,

And put his pattern round their tops
To hold the wine they buy of him.
But from the juice that made them

wise

All those had lifted up the dim
Imaginations of their eyes,
For one that was like woman made
Before their sleepy eyelids ran
And trembling with her passion said,
' Come out and dig for a dead man,
Who's burrowing somewhere in the

ground,

THE GREY ROCK 5

And mock him to his face and then
Hollo him on with horse and hound,
For he is the worst of all dead men.'

We should be dazed and terror struck,
If we but saw in dreams that room,
Those wine-drenched eyes, and curse our

luck

That emptied all our days to come.
I knew a woman none could please,
Because she dreamed when but a child
Of men and women made like these;
And after, when her blood ran wild,
Had ravelled her own story out,
And said, 'In two or in three years
I need must marry some poor lout,9
And having said it burst in tears.
Since, tavern comrades, you have died,
Maybe your images have stood,
Mere bone and muscle thrown aside,
Before that roomful or as good.
You had to face your ends when young —
'Twas wine or women, or some curse —

6 THE GREY ROCK

But never made a poorer song
That you might have a heavier purse,
Nor gave loud service to a cause
That you might have a troop of friends.
You kept the Muses' sterner laws,
And unrelenting faced your ends,
And therefore earned the right — and yet
Dowson and Johnson most I praise —
To troop with those the world's forgot,
And copy their proud steady gaze.

'The Danish troop was driven out
Between the dawn and dusk/ she

said;
'Although the event was long in

doubt,

Although the King of Ireland's dead
And half the kings, before sundown
All was accomplished.'

'When this day

Murrough, the King of Ireland's son,
Foot after foot was giving way,

THE GREY ROCK 7

He and his best troops back to back
Had perished there, but the Danes ran,
Stricken with panic from the attack,
The shouting of an unseen man;
And being thankful Murrough found,
Led by a footsole dipped in blood
That had made prints upon the ground,
Where by old thorn .trees that man

stood;
And though when he gazed here and

there,
He had but gazed on thorn trees,

spoke,

"Who is the friend that seems but air
And yet could give so fine a stroke?"
Thereon a young man met his eye,
Who said, "Because she held me in
Her love, and would not have me die,
Rock-nurtured Aoife took a pin,
And pushing it into my shirt,
Promised that for a pin's sake,
No man should see to do me hurt;
But there it's gone; I will not take

8 THE GREY ROCK

The fortune that had been my shame
Seeing, King's son, what wounds you

have."
'Twas roundly spoke, but when night

came

He had betrayed me to his grave,
For he and the King's son were dead.
I'd promised him two hundred years,
And when for all I'd done or said —
And these immortal eyes shed tears —
He claimed his country's need was

most,

I'd save his life, yet for the sake
Of a new friend he has turned a ghost.
What does he care if my heart break?
I call for spade and horse and hound
That we may harry him.' Thereon
She cast herself upon the ground
And rent her clothes and made her

moan:
'Why are they faithless when their

might
Is from the holy shades that rove

THE GREY ROCK 9

The grey rock and the windy light?
Why should the faithfullest heart

most love

The bitter sweetness of false faces?
Why must the lasting love what

passes,
Why are the gods by men betrayed ! '

But thereon every god stood up
With a slow smile and without sound,
And stretching forth his arm and cup
To where she moaned upon the

ground,

Suddenly drenched her to the skin;
And she with Goban's wine adrip,
No more remembering what had been,
Stared at the gods with laughing lip.

/ have kept my faith, though faith was

tried,

To that rock-born, rock-wandering foot,
And the world's altered since you died,
And I am in no good repute

10 THE GREY ROCK

With the loud host before the sea,

That think sword strokes were better

meant

Than lover's music — let that be,
So that the wandering foot's content.

THE TWO KINGS

KING EOCHAID came at sundown to a

wood
Westward of Tara. Hurrying to his

queen

He had out-ridden his war-wasted men
That with empounded cattle trod the

mire;
And where beech trees had mixed a

pale green light
With the ground-ivy's blue, he saw a

stag
Whiter than curds, its eyes the tint

of the sea.
Because it stood upon his path and

seemed
More hands in height than any stag

in the world

11

12 THE TWO KINGS

He sat with tightened rein and loosened

mouth
Upon his trembling horse, then drove

the spur;
But the stag stooped and ran at him,

and passed,
Rending the horse's flank. King

Eochaid reeled
Then drew his sword to hold its

levelled point
Against the stag. When horn and

steel were met
The horn resounded as though it had

been silver,

A sweet, miraculous, terrifying sound.
Horn locked in sword, they tugged

and struggled there
As though a stag and unicorn were

met

In Africa on Mountain of the Moon,
Until at last the double horns, drawn

backward,
Butted below the single and so pierced

THE TWO KINGS 13

The entrails of the horse. Dropping

his sword
King Eochaid seized the horns in his

strong hands
And stared into the sea-green eye, and

so

Hither and thither to and fro they trod
Till all the place was beaten into mire.
The strong thigh and the agile thigh

were met,
The hands that gathered up the might

of the world,
And hoof and horn that had sucked in

their speed

Amid the elaborate wilderness of the air.
Through bush they plunged and over

ivied root,
And where the stone struck fire, while

in the leaves
A squirrel whinnied and a bird screamed

out;
But when at last he forced those

sinewy flanks

14 THE TWO KINGS

Against a beech bole, he threw down

the beast
And knelt above it with drawn knife.

On the instant

It vanished like a shadow, and a cry
So mournful that it seemed the cry of

one
Who had lost some unimaginable

treasure
Wandered between the blue and the

green leaf
And climbed into the air, crumbling

away,

Till all had seemed a shadow or a vision
But for the trodden mire, the pool of

blood,
The disembowelled horse.

King Eochaid ran,
Toward peopled Tara, nor stood to

draw his breath

Until he came before the painted wall,
The posts of polished yew, circled

with bronze,

THE TWO KINGS 15

Of the great door; but though the

hanging lamps
Showed their faint light through the

unshuttered windows,
Nor door, nor mouth, nor slipper made

a noise,
Nor on the ancient beaten paths, that

wound
From well-side or from plough-land,

was there noise;
And there had been no sound of

living thing

Before him or behind, but that far-off
On the horizon edge bellowed the herds.
Knowing that silence brings no good

to kings,
And mocks returning victory, he

Between the pillars with a beating

heart
And saw where in the midst of the

great hall
Pale-faced, alone upon a bench, Edain

16 THE TWO KINGS

Sat upright with a sword before her

feet.
Her hands on either side had gripped

the bench,
Her eyes were cold and steady, her

lips tight.
Some passion had made her stone.

Hearing a foot
She started and then knew whose

foot it was;
But when he thought to take her in

his arms
She motioned him afar, and rose and

spoke:
'I have sent among the fields or to

the woods
The fighting men and servants of this

house,
For I would have your judgment

upon one

Who is self-accused. If she be innocent
She would not look in any known

man's face

THE TWO KINGS 17

Till judgment has been given, and if

guilty,
Will never look again on known man's

face/
And at these words he paled, as she

had paled,
Knowing that he should find upon

her lips
The meaning of that monstrous

day.

Then she:
'You brought me where your brother

Ardan sat
Always in his one seat, and bid me

care him
Through that strange illness that had

fixed him there,
And should he die to heap his burial

mound
And carve his name in Ogham.'

Eochaid said,
'He lives?' 'He lives and is a healthy

18 THE TWO KINGS

* While I have him and you it matters

little
What man you have lost, what evil

you have found.'

'I bid them make his bed under this roof
And carried him his food with my

own hands,
And so the weeks passed by. But

when I said
"What is this trouble?" he would

answer nothing,
Though always at my words his trouble

grew;
And I but asked the more, till he cried

out,
Weary of many questions: "There

are things
That make the heart akin to the dumb

stone."
Then I replied: "Although you hide

a secret,
Hopeless and dear, or terrible to think

on,

THE TWO KINGS 19

Speak it, that I may send through the

wide world

For medicine." Thereon he cried aloud :
"Day after day you question me, and I,
Because there is such a storm amid

my thoughts

I shall be carried in the gust, command,
Forbid, beseech and waste my breath."

Then I,
"Although the thing that you have

hid were evil,
The speaking of it could be no great

wrong,
And evil must it be, if done 'twere

worse
Than mound and stone that keep all

virtue in,
And loosen on us dreams that waste

our life,
Shadows and shows that can but turn

the brain."
But finding him still silent I stooped

down

20 THE TWO KINGS

And whispering that none but he

should hear,

Said: "If a woman has put this on you,
My men, whether it please her or

displease,
And though they have to cross the

Loughlan waters
And take her in the middle of armed

men,

Shall make her look upon her handi-
work,
That she may quench the rick she has

fired; and though
She may have worn silk clothes, or

worn a crown,
She'll not be proud, knowing within

her heart

That our sufficient portion of the world
Is that we give, although it be brief

giving,

Happiness to children and to men."
Then he, driven by his thought beyond

his thought,

THE TWO KINGS 21

And speaking what he would not

though he would,
Sighed: "You, even you yourself,

could work the cure!"
And at those words I rose and I went

out
And for nine days he had food from

other hands,
And for nine days my mind went

whirling round

The one disastrous zodiac, muttering
That the immedicable mound's beyond
Our questioning, beyond our pity even.
But when nine days had gone I stood

again
Before his chair and bending down

my head
Told him, that when Orion rose, and

all
The women of his household were

asleep,
To go — for hope would give his limbs

the power —

22 THE TWO KINGS

To an old empty woodman's house

that's hidden
Close to a clump of beech trees in the

wood
Westward of Tara, there to await a

friend
That could, as he had told her, work

his cure
And would be no harsh friend.

When night had deepened,
I groped my way through boughs,

and over roots,
Till oak and hazel ceased and beech

began,
And found the house, a sputtering

torch within,
And stretched out sleeping on a pile

of skins
Ardan, and though I called to him

and tried
To shake him out of sleep, I could not

rouse him.
I waited till the night was on the turn,

THE TWO KINGS 23

Then fearing that some labourer, on

his way
To plough or pasture-land, might see

me there,
Went out.

Among the ivy-covered rocks,
As on the blue light of a sword, a man
Who had unnatural majesty, and eyes
Like the eyes of some great kite

scouring the woods,
Stood on my path. Trembling from

head to foot

I gazed at him like grouse upon a kite;
But with a voice that had unnatural

music,

"A weary wooing and a long," he said,
"Speaking of love through other lips

and looking
Under the eyelids of another, for it

was my craft

That put a passion in the sleeper there,
And when I had got my will and

drawn you here,

24 THE TWO KINGS

Where I may speak to you alone, my

craft
Sucked up the passion out of him

again
And left mere sleep. He'll wake when

the sun wakes,
Push out his vigorous limbs and rub

his eyes,
And wonder what has ailed him these

twelve months."

I cowered back upon the wall in terror,
But that sweet-sounding voice ran on:

"Woman,
I was your husband when you rode

the air,
Danced in the whirling foam and in

the dust,

In days you have not kept in memory,
Being betrayed into a cradle, and I

come
That I may claim you as my wife

again."
I was no longer terrified, his voice

THE TWO KINGS 25

Had half awakened some old memory,
Yet answered him: "I am King

Eochaid's wife
And with him have found every

happiness
Women can find." With a most

masterful voice,
That made the body seem as it were

a string

Under a bow, he cried: "What hap-
piness
Can lovers have that know their

happiness
Must end at the dumb stone? But

where we build

Our sudden palaces in the still air
Pleasure itself can bring no weariness,
Nor can time waste the cheek, nor is

there foot
That has grown weary of the whirling

dance,
Nor an unlaughing mouth, but mine

that mourns,

26 THE TWO KINGS

Among those mouths that sing their

sweethearts' praise,
Your empty bed." "How should I

love," I answered,
"Were it not that when the dawn

has lit my bed
And shown my husband sleeping there,

I have sighed,
'Your strength and nobleness will

pass away.'
Or how should love be worth its pains

were it not
That when he has fallen asleep within

my arms,
Being wearied out, I love in man the

child?
What can they know of love that do

not know
She builds her nest upon a narrow

ledge

Above a windy precipice?" Then he:
"Seeing that when you come to the

death-bed

THE TWO KINGS 27

You must return, whether you would

or no,

This human life blotted from memory,
Why must I live some thirty, forty

years,

Alone with all this useless happiness?"
Thereon he seized me in his arms,

but I
Thrust him away with both my hands

and cried,
"Never will I believe there is any

change
Can blot out of my memory this

life
Sweetened by death, but if I could

believe

That were a double hunger in my lips
For what is doubly brief."

And now the shape,
My hands were pressed to, vanished

suddenly.
I staggered, but a beech tree stayed

my fall,

28 THE TWO KINGS

And clinging to it I could hear the

cocks
Crow upon Tara/

King Eochaid bowed his head
And thanked her for her kindness to

his brother,
For that she promised, and for that

refused.

Thereon the bellowing of the em-
pounded herds

Rose round the walls, and through the
bronze-ringed door

Jostled and shouted those war-wasted
men,

And in the midst King Eochaid's
brother stood.

He'd heard that din on the horizon's
edge

And ridden towards it, being ignorant.

TO A WEALTHY MAN" WHO PROMISED
A SECOND SUBSCRIPTION TO THE
DUBLIN MUNICIPAL GALLERY IF
IT WERE PROVED THE PEOPLE
WANTED PICTURES

You gave but will not give again
Until enough of Paudeen's pence
By Biddy's halfpennies have lain
To be 'some sort of evidence,'
Before you'll put your guineas down,
That things it were a pride to give
Are what the blind and ignorant town
Imagines best to make it thrive.
What cared Duke Ercole, that bid
His mummers to the market place,
What th' onion-sellers thought or did
So that his Plautus set the pace
For the Italian comedies?
And Guidobaldo, when he made

30 TO A WEALTHY MAN

That grammar school of courtesies
Where wit and beauty learned their

trade

Upon Urbino's windy hill,
Had sent no runners to and fro
That he might learn the shepherds*

will.

And when they drove out Cosimo,
Indifferent how the rancour ran,
He gave the hours they had set

free

To Michelozzo's latest plan
For the San Marco Library,
Whence turbulent Italy should draw
Delight in Art whose end is peace,
In logic and in natural law
By sucking at the dugs of Greece.

Your open hand but shows our loss,
For he knew better how to live.
Let Paudeens play at pitch and toss,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good

TO A WEALTHY MAN 31

That some new day may breed the

best
Because you gave, not what they

would
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!

December 1912.

SEPTEMBER 1913

WHAT need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the

bone;

For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet they were of a different kind
The names that stilled your childish

play,
They have gone about the world like

wind,

But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was

spun,

SEPTEMBER 1913 33

And what, God help us, could they

save:

Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave;
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.

Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were,
In all their loneliness and pain
You'd cry 'some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son ' :
They weighed so lightly what they

gave,

But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.

TO A FRIEND WHOSE WORK
HAS COME TO NOTHING

Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.

PAUDEEN

INDIGNANT at the fumbling wits, the

obscure spite
Of our old Paudeen in his shop, I

stumbled blind
Among the stones and thorn trees,

under morning light;
Until a curlew cried and in the lumi-
nous wind
A curlew answered; and suddenly

thereupon I thought
That on the lonely height where all

are in God's eye,
There cannot be, confusion of our

sound forgot,
A single soul that lacks a sweet crys-

taline cry.

TO A SHADE

IF you have revisited the town, thin

Shade,

Whether to look upon your monument
(I wonder if the builder has been paid)
Or happier thoughted when the day

is spent
To drink of that salt breath out of

the sea
When grey gulls flit about instead of

men,

And the gaunt houses put on majesty:
Let these content you and be gone

again;
For they are at their old tricks yet.

A man
Of your own passionate serving kind

who had brought

TO A SHADE 37

In his full hands what, had they only

known,
Had given their children's children

loftier thought,
Sweeter emotion, working in their

veins
Like gentle blood, has been driven

from the place,
And insult heaped upon him for his

pains

And for his open-handedness, dis-
grace;
An old foul mouth that slandered

you had set
The pack upon him.

Go, unquiet wanderer,
And gather the Glasnevin coverlet
About your head till the dust stops

your ear,
The time for you to taste of that salt

breath
And listen at the corners has not

come;

38 TO A SHADE

You had enough of sorrow before

death—
Away, away! You are safer in the

tomb.

September 29th, 1914.

WHEN HELEN LIVED

WE have cried in our despair

That men desert,

For some trivial affair

Or noisy, insolent sport,

Beauty that we have won

From bitterest hours;

Yet we, had we walked within

Those topless towers

Where Helen walked with her boy,

Had given but as the rest

Of the men and women of Troy,

A word and a jest.

THE ATTACK ON 'THE PLAYBOY
OF THE WESTERN WORLD/

1907

ONCE, when midnight smote the air,
Eunuchs ran through Hell and met
From thoroughfare to thoroughfare,
While that great Juan galloped by;
And like these to rail and sweat
Staring upon his sinewy thigh.

THE THREE BEGGARS

' Though to my feathers in the wet,
I have stood here from break of day,
I have not found a thing to eat
For only rubbish comes my way.
Am I to live on lebeen-lone? '
Muttered the old crane of Gort.
'For all my pains on lebeen-lone.9

King Guari walked amid his court
The palace-yard and river-side
And there to three old beggars said:
'You that have wandered far and

wide

Can ravel out what's in my head.
Do men who least desire get most,
Or get the most who most desire? '
A beggar said: 'They get the most

41

42 THE THREE BEGGARS

Whom man or devil cannot tire,

And what could make their muscles

taut

Unless desire had made them so.'
But Guari laughed with secret thought,
'If that be true as it seems true,
One of you three is a rich man,
For he shall have a thousand pounds
Who is first asleep, if but he can
Sleep before the third noon sounds/
And thereon merry as a bird,
With his old thoughts King Guari

went

From river-side and palace-yard
And left them to their argument.
'And if I win/ one beggar said,
'Though I am old I shall persuade
A pretty girl to share my bed ' ;
The second: 'I shall learn a trade';
The third: 'I'll hurry to the course
Among the other gentlemen,
And lay it all upon a horse';
The second: 'I have thought again:

THE THREE BEGGARS 43

A farmer has more dignity.'
One to another sighed and cried:
The exorbitant dreams of beggary,
That idleness had borne to pride,
Sang through their teeth from noon

to noon;

And when the second twilight brought
The frenzy of the beggars' moon
They closed their blood-shot eyes for

naught.
One beggar cried: 'You're shamming

sleep.'

And thereupon their anger grew
Till they were whirling in a heap.

They'd mauled and bitten the night

through

Or sat upon their heels to rail,
And when old Guari came and stood
Before the three to end this tale,
They were commingling lice and blood.
* Time's up,' he cried, and all the

three

44 THE THREE BEGGARS

With blood-shot eyes upon him stared.
'Time's up,' he cried, and all the

three
Fell down upon the dust and snored.

'Maybe I shall be lucky yet,
Now they are silent,9 said the crane.
' Though to my feathers in the wet
I've stood as I were made of stone
And seen the rubbish run about.
It's certain there are trout somewhere
And maybe I shall take a trout
If but I do not seem to care.'

THE THREE HERMITS

THREE old hermits took the air
By a cold and desolate sea,
First was muttering a prayer,
Second rummaged for a flea;
On a windy stone, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year,
Sang unnoticed like a bird.
'Though the Door of Death is near
And what waits behind the door,
Three times in a single day
I, though upright on the shore,
Fall asleep when I should pray.'
So the first but now the second,
'We're but given what we have

earned
When all thoughts and deeds are

reckoned,
So it's plain to be discerned

46 THE THREE HERMITS

That the shades of holy men,
Who have failed being weak of will,
Pass the Door of Birth again,
And are plagued by crowds, until
They've the passion to escape/
Moaned the other, 'They are thrown
Into some most fearful shape.'
But the second mocked his moan:
'They are not changed to anything,
Having loved God once, but maybe,
To a poet or a king
Or a witty lovely lady.'
While he'd rummaged rags and hair,
Caught and cracked his flea, the third,
Giddy with his hundredth year
Sang unnoticed like a bird.

BEGGAR TO BEGGAR CRIED

'TiME to put off the world and go
somewhere

And find my health again in the sea
air/

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-
struck,

'And make my soul before my pate
is bare.'

'And get a comfortable wife and house
To rid me of the devil in my shoes,'
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-
struck,

'And the worse devil that is between
my thighs.'

'And though I'd marry with a comely
lass,

47

48 BEGGAR TO BEGGAR CRIED

She need not be too comely — let it
pass/

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-
struck,

'But there's a devil in a looking-
glass/

'Nor should she be too rich, because
the rich

Are driven by wealth as beggars by
the itch/

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-
struck,

'And cannot have a humorous happy
speech/

'And there I'll grow respected at my

And hear amid the garden's nightly
peace/

Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-
struck,

'The wind-blown clamor of the
barnacle-geese/

THE WELL AND THE TREE

'THE Man that I praise,'

Cries out the empty well,

'Lives all his days

Where a hand on the bell

Can call the milch-cows

To the comfortable door of his house.

Who but an idiot would praise

Dry stones in a well?'

'The Man that I praise,'

Cries out the leafless tree,

'Has married and stays

By an old hearth, and he

On naught has set store

But children and dogs on the floor.

Who but an idiot would praise

A withered tree? '

RUNNING TO PARADISE

As I came over Windy Gap

They threw a halfpenny into my cap,

For I am running to Paradise;

And all that I need do is to wish

And somebody puts his hand in the

dish

To throw me a bit of salted fish :
And there the king is but as the

beggar.

My brother Mourteen is worn out
With skelping his big brawling lout,
And I am running to Paradise;
A poor life do what he can,
And though he keep a dog and a gun,
A serving maid and a serving man :
And there the king is but as the
beggar.

RUNNING TO PARADISE 51

Poor men have grown to be rich men,
And rich men grown to be poor again,
And I am running to Paradise;
And many a darling wit's grown dull
That tossed a bare heel when at school,
Now it has filled an old sock full:
And there the king is but as the
beggar.

The wind is old and still at play
While I must hurry upon my way,
For I am running to Paradise;
Yet never have I lit on a friend
To take my fancy like the wind
That nobody can buy or bind:
And there the king is but as the
beggar.

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN

A ONE-LEGGED, one-armed, one-eyed

man,

A bundle of rags upon a crutch,
Stumbled on windy Cruachan
Cursing the wind. It was as much
As the one sturdy leg could do
To keep him upright while he cursed.
He had counted, where long years ago
Queen Maeve's nine Maines had been

nursed,

A pair of lapwings, one old sheep
And not a house to the plain's edge,
When close to his right hand a heap
Of grey stones and a rocky ledge
Reminded him that he could make,
If he but shifted a few stones,
A shelter till the daylight broke.

52

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN 53

But while he fumbled with the stones

They toppled over; 'Were it not

I have a lucky wooden shin

I had been hurt'; and toppling

brought
Before his eyes, where stones had

been,

A dark deep hole in the rock's face.
He gave a gasp and thought to

run,

Being certain it was no right place
But the Hell Mouth at Cruachan
That's stuffed with all that's old and

bad,

And yet stood still, because inside
He had seen a red-haired jolly lad
In some outlandish coat beside
A ladle and a tub of beer,
Plainly no phantom by his look.
So with a laugh at his own fear
He crawled into that pleasant nook.
Young Red-head stretched himself to

yawn

54 THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN

And murmured, 'May God curse the

night

That's grown uneasy near the dawn
So that it seems even I sleep light;
And who are you that wakens me?
Has one of Maeve's nine brawling sons
Grown tired of his own company?
But let him keep his grave for once
I have to find the sleep I have lost.'
And then at last being wide awake,
'I took you for a brawling ghost,
Say what you please, but from day-
break

I'll sleep another century.'
The beggar deaf to all but hope
Went down upon a hand and knee
And took the wooden ladle up
And would have dipped it in the beer
But the other pushed his hand aside,
'Before you have dipped it in the beer
That sacred Goban brewed,' he cried,
'I'd have assurance that you are able
To value beer — I will have no fool

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN 55

Dipping his nose into my ladle
Because he has stumbled on this hole
In the bad hour before the dawn.
If you but drink that beer and say
I will sleep until the winter's gone,
Or maybe, to Midsummer Day
You will sleep that length; and at the

first

I waited so for that or this —
Because the weather was a-cursed
Or I had no woman there to kiss,
And slept for half a year or so;
But year by year I found that less
Gave me such pleasure I'd forgo
Even a half hour's nothingness,
And when at one year's end I found
I had not waked a single minute,
I chose this burrow under ground.
I will sleep away all Time within it:
My sleep were now nine centuries
But for those mornings when I find
The lapwing at their foolish cries
And the sheep bleating at the wind

56 THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN

As when I also played the fool.'

The beggar in a rage began

Upon his hunkers in the hole,

'It's plain that you are no right man

To mock at everything I love

As if it were not worth the doing.

I'd have a merry life enough

If a good Easter wind were blowing,

And though the winter wind is bad

I should not be too down in the mouth

For anything you did or said

If but this wind were in the south.'

But the other cried, 'You long for

spring

Or that the wind would shift a point
And do not know that you would

bring,

If time were suppler in the joint,
Neither the spring nor the south wind
But the hour when you shall pass

away

And leave no smoking wick behind,
For all life longs for the Last Day

THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN 57

And there's no man but cocks his ear
To know when Michael's trumpet

cries

That flesh and bone may disappear,
And souls as if they were but sighs,
And there be nothing but God left;
But I alone being blessed keep
Like some old rabbit to my cleft
And wait Him in a drunken sleep.'

He dipped his ladle in the tub

And drank and yawned and stretched

him out.

The other shouted, 'You would rob
My life of every pleasant thought
And every comfortable thing
And so take that and that.' Thereon
He gave him a great pummelling,
But might have pummelled at a stone
For all the sleeper knew or cared;
And after heaped the stones again
And cursed and prayed, and prayed

and cursed:

58 THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN

* Oh God if he got loose!' And then
In fury and in panic fled
From the Hell Mouth at Cruachan
And gave God thanks that overhead
The clouds were brightening with the
dawn.

THE PLAYER QUEEN

(Song from an Unfinished Play)

MY mother dandled me and sang,
'How young it is, how young!'
And made a golden cradle
That on a willow swung.

* He went away,' my mother sang,
' When I was brought to bed,'
And all the while her needle pulled
The gold and silver thread.

She pulled the thread and bit the

thread

And made a golden gown,
And wept because she had dreamt that I
Was born to wear a crown.

59

60 THE PLAYER QUEEN

'When she was got,' my mother sang,
* I heard a sea-mew cry,
And saw a flake of the yellow foam
That dropped upon my thigh.'

How therefore could she help but

braid

The gold into my hair,
And dream that I should carry
The golden top of care?

THE REALISTS

HOPE that you may understand !
What can books of men that wive
In a dragon-guarded land,
Paintings of the dolphin-drawn
Sea-nymphs in their pearly waggons
Do, but awake a hope to live
That had gone
With the dragons?

I

THE WITCH

TOIL and grow rich,
What's that but to lie
With a foul witch
And after, drained dry,
To be brought
To the chamber where
Lies one long sought
With despair.

II

THE PEACOCK

WHAT'S riches to him

That has made a great peacock

With the pride of his eye?

The wind-beaten, stone-grey,

And desolate Three-rock

Would nourish his whim.

Live he or die

Amid wet rocks and heather,

His ghost will be gay

Adding feather to feather

For the pride of his eye.

THE MOUNTAIN TOMB

POUR wine and dance if Manhood still
have pride,

Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom;

The cataract smokes upon the moun-
tain side,

Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and

•clarionet
That there be no foot silent in the

room
Nor mouth from kissing, nor from

wine unwet;
Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb.

In vain, in vain; the cataract still
cries

THE MOUNTAIN TOMB 65

The everlasting taper lights the gloom;
All wisdom shut into his onyx eyes
Our Father Rosicross sleeps in his
tomb.

TO A CHILD DANCING IN
THE WIND

DANCE there upon the shore;
What need have you to care
For wind or water's roar?
And tumble out your hair
That the salt drops have wet;
Being young you have not known
The fool's triumph, nor yet
Love lost as soon as won,
Nor the best labourer dead
And all the sheaves to bind.
What need have you to dread
The monstrous crying of wind?

ii

Has no one said those daring
Kind eyes should be more learn'd?

TO A CHILD 67

Or warned you how despairing

The moths are when they are burned,

I could have warned you, but you are

young,
So we speak a different tongue.

O you will take whatever's offered
And dream that all the world's a

friend,

Suffer as your mother suffered,
Be as broken in the end.
But I am old and you are young,
And I speak a barbarous tongue.

A MEMORY OF YOUTH

THE moments passed as at a play,
I had the wisdom love brings forth;
I had my share of mother wit
And yet for all that I could say,
And though I had her praise for it,
A cloud blown from the cut-throat

north
Suddenly hid love's moon away.

Believing every word I said

I praised her body and her mind

Till pride had made her eyes grow

bright,
And pleasure made her cheeks grow

red,

And vanity her footfall light,
Yet we, for all that praise, could find
Nothing but darkness overhead.

68

A MEMORY OF YOUTH 69

We sat as silent as a stone,

We knew, though she'd not said a

word,

That even the best of love must die,
And had been savagely undone
Were it not that love upon the cry
Of a most ridiculous little bird
Tore from the clouds his marvellous

moon.

FALLEN MAJESTY

ALTHOUGH crowds gathered once if

she but showed her face,
And even old men's eyes grew dim,

this hand alone,
Like some last courtier at a gypsy

camping place,
Babbling of fallen majesty, records

what's gone.

The lineaments, a heart that laughter

has made sweet,
These, these remain, but I record

what's gone. A crowd
Will gather, and not know it walks

the very street
Whereon a thing once walked that

seemed a burning cloud.

FRIENDS

Now must I these three praise —
Three women that have wrought
What joy is in my days;
One that no passing thought,
Nor those unpassing cares,
No, not in these fifteen
Many times troubled years,
Could ever come between
Heart and delighted heart;
And one because her hand
Had strength that could unbind
What none can understand,
What none can have and thrive,
Youth's dreamy load, till she
So changed me that I live
Labouring in ecstasy.
And what of her that took
All till my youth was gone

71

72 FRIENDS

With scarce a pitying look?
How should I praise that one?
When day begins to break
I count my good and bad,
Being wakeful for her sake,
Remembering what she had,
What eagle look still shows,
While up from my heart's root
So great a sweetness flows
I shake from head to foot.

THE COLD HEAVEN

SUDDENLY I saw the cold and rook-
delighting Heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and

was but the more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart

were driven
So wild that every casual thought

of that and this
Vanished, and left but memories, that

should be out of season
With the hot blood of youth, of love

crossed long ago;
And I took all the blame out of all

sense and reason,
Until I cried and trembled and rocked

to and fro,
Riddled with light. Ah! when the

ghost begins to quicken,

73

74 THE COLD HEAVEN

Confusion of the death-bed over, is it
sent

Out naked on the roads, as the books
say, and stricken

By the injustice of the skies for pun-
ishment?

THAT THE NIGHT COME

SHE lived in storm and strife,
Her soul had such desire
For what proud death may bring
That it could not endure
The common good of life,
But lived as 'twere a king
That packed his marriage day
With banneret and pennon,
Trumpet and kettledrum,
And the outrageous cannon,
To bundle time away
That the night come.

75

AN APPOINTMENT

BEING out of heart with government

I took a broken root to fling

Where the proud, wayward squirrel

went,

Taking delight that he could spring;
And he, with that low whinnying

sound

That is like laughter, sprang again
And so to the other tree at a bound.
Nor the tame will, nor timid brain,
Bred that fierce tooth and cleanly

limb
And threw him up to laugh on the

bough;
No government appointed him.

THE MAGI

Now as at all times I can see in the
mind's eye,

In their stiff, painted clothes, the pale
unsatisfied ones

Appear and disappear in the blue
depth of the sky

With all their ancient faces like rain-
beaten stones,

And all their helms of silver hovering
side by side,

And all then* eyes still fixed, hoping
to find once more,

Being by Calvary's turbulence un-
satisfied,

The uncontrollable mystery on the
bestial floor.

77

n

THE DOLLS

A DOLL in the doll-maker's house
Looks at the cradle and balls:
'That is an insult to us/
But the oldest of all the dolls
Who had seen, being kept for show,
Generations of his sort,
Out-screams the whole shelf: 'Al-
though

There's not a man can report
Evil of this place,
The man and the woman bring
Hither to our disgrace,
A noisy and filthy thing.'
Hearing him groan and stretch
The doll-maker's wife is aware
Her husband has heard the wretch,
And crouched by the arm of his chair,

78

THE DOLLS 79

She murmurs into his ear,
Head upon shoulder leant:
'My dear, my dear, oh dear,
It was an accident.'

A COAT

I MADE my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eye
As though they'd wrought it.
Song, let them take it
For there's more enterprise
In walking naked.

While I, from that reed-throated

whisperer
Who comes at need, although not now

as once

A clear articulation in the air
But inwardly, surmise companions
Beyond the fling of the dull ass's hoof,
— Ben Jonsons phrase — and find when

June is come

At Kyle-na-no under that ancient roof
A sterner conscience and a friendlier

home,

I can forgive even that wrong of wrongs,
Those undreamt accidents that have

made me
— Seeing that Fame has perished this

long while

Being but a part of ancient ceremony —
Notorious, till all my priceless things
Are but a post the passing dogs defile.

81

FROM THE GREEN HELMET
AND OTHER POEMS

HIS DREAM

I SWAYED upon the gaudy stern
The butt end of a steering oar,
And everywhere that I could turn
Men ran upon the shore.

And though I would have hushed the

crowd

There was no mother's son but said,
'What is the figure in a shroud
Upon a gaudy bed?'

And fishes bubbling to the brim
Cried out upon that thing beneath,
— It had such dignity of limb —
By the sweet name of Death.

Though I'd my finger on my lip,
What could I but take up the song?

85

J HIS DREAM

And fish and crowd and gaudy ship
Cried out the whole night long,

Crying amid the glittering sea,
Naming it with ecstatic breath,
Because it had such dignity
By the sweet name of Death.

A WOMAN HOMER SUNG

IF any man drew near
When I was young,
I thought, * He holds her dear,'
And shook with hate and fear.
But oh, 'twas bitter wrong
If he could pass her by
With an indifferent eye.

Whereon I wrote and wrought,
And now, being grey,
I dream that I have brought
To such a pitch my thought
That coming time can say,
'He shadowed in a glass
What thing her body was.'

For she had fiery blood
When I was young,

87

88 A WOMAN HOMER SUNG

And trod so sweetly proud
As 'twere upon a cloud,
A woman Homer sung,
That life and letters seem
But an heroic dream.

THE CONSOLATION

I HAD this thought awhile ago,
'My darling cannot understand
What I have done, or what would

do
In this blind bitter land.'

And I grew weary of the sun

Until my thoughts cleared up again,

Remembering that the best I have

done
Was done to make it plain;

That every year I have cried, 'At

length

My darling understands it all,
Because I have come into my strength,
And words obey my call/

90 THE CONSOLATION

That had she done so who can say
What would have shaken from the

sieve?

I might have thrown poor words away
And been content to live.

NO SECOND TROY

WHY should I blame her that she

filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late
Have taught to ignorant men most

violent ways,
Or hurled the little streets upon the

great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?
What could have made her peaceful

with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,
With beauty like a tightened bow, a

kind

That is not natural in an age like this,
Being high and solitary and most

stern?
Why, what could she have done being

what she is?
Was there another Troy for her to

burn?

91 -

RECONCILIATION

SOME may have blamed you that you

took away
The verses that could move them on

the day
When, the ears being deafened, the

sight of the eyes blind
With lightning you went from me,

and I could find
Nothing to make a song about but

kings,

Helmets, and swords, and half-for-
gotten things
That were like memories of you — but

now
We'll out, for the world lives as long

ago;
And while we're in our laughing,

weeping fit,

92

RECONCILIATION 93

Hurl helmets, crowns, and swords

into the pit.
But, dear, cling close to me; since

you were gone,
My barren thoughts have chilled me

to the bone.

KING AND NO KING

'WOULD it were anything but merely

voice!'
The No King cried who after that was

King,

Because he had not heard of anything
That balanced with a word is more

than noise;
Yet Old Romance being kind, let him

prevail
Somewhere or somehow that I have

forgot,
Though he'd but cannon — Whereas

we that had thought
To have lit upon as clean and sweet

a tale
Have been defeated by that pledge

you gave
In momentary anger long ago;

94

KING AND NO KING 95

And I that have not your faith, how
shall I know

That in the blinding light beyond the
grave

We'll find so good a thing as that we
have lost?

The hourly kindness, the day's com-
mon speech,

The habitual content of each with each

When neither soul nor body has been
crossed.

PEACE

AH, that Time could touch a form
That could show what Homer's age
Bred to be a hero's wage.
* Were not all her life but storm,
Would not painters paint a form
Of such noble lines,' I said,
'Such a delicate high head,
All that sternness amid charm,
All that sweetness amid strength?'
Ah, but peace that comes at length,
Came when Time had touched her
form.

AGAINST UNWORTHY PRAISE

O HEART, be at peace, because
Nor knave nor dolt can break
What's not for their applause,
Being for a woman's sake.
Enough if the work has seemed,
So did she your strength renew,
A dream that a lion had dreamed
Till the wilderness cried aloud,
A secret between you two,
Between the proud and the proud.

What, still you would have their

praise !

But here's a haughtier text,
The labyrinth of her days
That her own strangeness perplexed;
And how what her dreaming gave
Earned slander, ingratitude,

97

98 AGAINST UNWORTHY PRAISE

From self -same dolt and knave;
Aye, and worse wrong than these,
Yet she, singing upon her road,
Half lion, half child, is at peace.

THE FASCINATION OF WHAT'S
DIFFICULT

THE fascination of what's difficult
Has dried the sap out of my veins,

and rent

Spontaneous joy and natural content
Out of my heart. There's something

ails our colt

That must, as if it had not holy blood,
Nor on an Olympus leaped from cloud

to cloud,
Shiver under the lash, strain, sweat

and jolt
As though it dragged road metal. My

curse on plays

That have to be set up in fifty ways,
On the day's war with every knave

and dolt,

99

100 WHAT'S DIFFICULT

Theatre business, management of men.
I swear before the dawn comes round

again
I'll find the stable and pull out the

bolt.

A DRINKING SONG

WINE comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

101

THE COMING OF WISDOM WITH
TIME

THOUGH leaves are many, the root is

one;
Through all the lying days of my

youth
I swayed my leaves and flowers in the

sun;
Now I may wither into the truth.

ON HEARING THAT THE STUDENTS
OF OUR NEW UNIVERSITY HAVE
JOINED THE ANCIENT ORDER OF
HIBERNIANS AND THE AGITATION
AGAINST IMMORAL LITERATURE

WHERE, where but here have Pride

and Truth,

That long to give themselves for wage,
To shake their wicked sides at youth
Restraining reckless middle-age.

103

TO A POET, WHO WOULD HAVE ME
PRAISE CERTAIN BAD POETS, IMI-
TATORS OF HIS AND MINE

You say, as I have often given tongue
In praise of what another's said or

sung,

'Twere politic to do the like by these;
But have you known a dog to praise

his fleas?

104

THE MASK

'PuT off that mask of burning gold
With emerald eyes.'
*O no, my dear, you make so bold
To find if hearts be wild and wise,
And yet not cold/

*I would but find what's there to find,
Love or deceit.'

* It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what's behind.'

'But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire.'
*O no, my dear, let all that be,
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?'

105

UPON A HOUSE SHAKEN BY
THE LAND AGITATION

How should the world be luckier if

this house,
Where passion and precision have

been one

Time out of mind, became too ruinous
To breed the lidless eye that loves the

sun?
And the sweet laughing eagle thoughts

that grow
Where wings have memory of wings,

and all
That comes of the best knit to the

best? Although
Mean roof-trees were the sturdier for

its fall,
How should their luck run high enough

to reach

106

THE LAND AGITATION 107

The gifts that govern men, and after

these
To gradual Time's last gift, a written

speech
Wrought of high laughter, loveliness

and ease?

AT THE ABBEY THEATRE

(Imitated from Ronsard)

DEAR Craoibhin Aoibhin, look into

our case.
When we are high and airy hundreds

say
That if we hold that flight they'll

leave the place,
While those same hundreds mock

another day
Because we have made our art of

common things,
So bitterly, you'd dream they longed

to look
All their lives through into some drift

of wings.
You've dandled them and fed them

from the book

108

AT THE ABBEY THEATRE 109

And know them to the bone; impart

to us —
We'll keep the secret — a new trick to

please.

Is there a bridle for this Proteus
That turns and changes like his

draughty seas?

Or is there none, most popular of men,
But when they mock us that we mock

again?

THESE ARE THE CLOUDS

THESE are the clouds about the fallen

sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning

eye;
The weak lay hand on what the

strong has done,
Till that be tumbled that was lifted

high

And discord follow upon unison,
And all things at one common level

lie.
And therefore, friend, if your great

race were run
And these things came, so much the

more thereby

Have you made greatness your com-
panion,

no

THESE ARE THE CLOUDS 111

Although it be for children that you

sigh:
These are the clouds about the fallen

sun,
The majesty that shuts his burning

eye.

AT GAL WAY RACES

THERE where the course is,
Delight makes all of the one mind,
The riders upon the galloping horses,
The crowd that closes in behind :
We, too, had good attendance once,
Hearers and hearteners of the work;
Aye, horsemen for companions,
Before the merchant and the clerk
Breathed on the world with timid

breath.
Sing on: sometime, and at some new

moon,

We'll learn that sleeping is not death,
Hearing the whole earth change its

tune,

Its flesh being wild, and it again
Crying aloud as the race course is,
And we find hearteners among men

That ride upon horses.
112

A FRIEND'S ILLNESS

SICKNESS brought me this
Thought, in that scale of his:
Why should I be dismayed
Though flame had burned the whole
World, as it were a coal,
Now I have seen it weighed
Against a soul?

us

ALL THINGS CAN TEMPT ME

ALL things can tempt me from this

craft of verse:
One time it was a woman's face, or

worse —
The seeming needs of my fool-driven

land;
Now nothing but comes readier to the

hand
Than this accustomed toil. When I

was young,

I had not given a penny for a song
Did not the poet sing it with such airs
That one believed he had a sword

upstairs;
Yet would be now, could I but have

my wish,
Colder and dumber and deafer than

a fish.

in

THE YOUNG MAN'S SONG

I WHISPERED, *I am too young,'

And then, 'I am old enough;'

Wherefore I threw a penny

To find out if I might love.

'Go and love, go and love, young

man,

If the lady be young and fair.'
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown

penny,
I am looped in the loops of her

hair.

Oh, love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away,

115

116 THE YOUNG MAN'S SONG

And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown

penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

THE HOUR-GLASS
NEW VERSION— 1912

117

THE HOUR-GLASS

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
WISE MAN.
BRIDGET, his wife.
TEIGUE, a fool.
ANGEL.
Children and Pupils.

Pupils come in and stand before the
stage curtain, which is still closed. One
pupil carries a book.

FIRST PUPIL

He said we might choose the subject
for the lesson.

SECOND PUPIL

There is none of us wise enough to
do that.

119

120 THE HOUR-GLASS

THIRD PUPIL

It would need a great deal of
wisdom to know what it is we want
to know.

FOURTH PUPIL
I will question him.

FIFTH PUPIL
You?

FOURTH PUPIL

Last night I dreamt that some one
came and told me to question him.
I was to say to him, 'You were wrong
to say there is no God and no soul —
maybe, if there is not much of either,
there is yet some tatters, some tag
on the wind — so to speak — some rag
upon a bush, some bob-tail of a god.'
I will argue with him, — nonsense
though it be — according to my dream,
and you will see how well I can argue,
and what thoughts I have.

THE HOUR-GLASS 121

FIRST PUPIL

I'd as soon listen to dried peas in
a bladder, as listen to your thoughts.
[Fool comes in.

FOOL
Give me a penny.

SECOND PUPIL

Let us choose a subject by chance.
Here is his big book. Let us turn
over the pages slowly. Let one of us
put down his finger without looking.
The passage his finger lights on will
be the subject for the lesson.

FOOL
Give me a penny.

THIRD PUPIL
(Taking up book) How heavy it

122 THE HOUR-GLASS

FOURTH PUPIL

Spread it on Teigue's back, and
then we can all stand round and see
the choice.

SECOND PUPIL
Make him spread out his arms.

FOURTH PUPIL

Down on your knees. Hunch up
your back. Spread your arms out
now, and look like a golden eagle in
a church. Keep still, keep still.

FOOL
Give me a penny.

THIRD PUPIL

Is that the right cry for an eagle
cock?

SECOND PUPIL

I'll turn the pages — you close your
eyes and put your finger down.

THE HOUR-GLASS 123

THIRD PUPIL

That's it, and then he cannot blame
us for the choice.

FIRST PUPIL

There, I have chosen. Fool, keep
still — and if what's wise is strange and
sounds like nonsense, we've made a
good choice.

FIFTH PUPIL
The Master has come.

FOOL

Will anybody give a penny to a fool?
[One of the pupils draws back the
stage curtain showing the Master
sitting at his desk. There is an
hour-glass upon his desk or in
a bracket on the wall. One pupil
puts the book before him.

FIRST PUPIL

We have chosen the passage for
the lesson, Master. * There are two

124 THE HOUR-GLASS

living countries, one visible and one
invisible, and when it is summer there,
it is winter here, and when it is Novem-
ber with us, it is lambing-time there.'

WISE MAN

That passage, that passage! what
mischief has there been since yester-
day?

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.

THE HOUR-GLASS 125

THIRD PUPIL

Had we not better say we picked
it by chance?

SECOND PUPIL
No; he would say we were children

stm.

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?

126 THE HOUR-GLASS

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

THE HOUR-GLASS 127

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 every-
thing

Until the stream of the world had
changed its course,

128 THE HOUR-GLASS

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 grow-
ing dim;

A moment more and Frenzy will beat
his drum

THE HOUR-GLASS 129

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?

130 THE HOUR-GLASS

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 noth-
ing but the people snoring in their
houses. When I went by Tubber-

THE HOUR-GLASS 131

vanach, 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 mis-
fortune, 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.

132 THE HOUR-GLASS

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

THE HOUR-GLASS 133

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?

134 THE HOUR-GLASS

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.

THE HOUR-GLASS 135

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.

136 THE HOUR-GLASS

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 some-
thing that wakes up inside one, some-
thing 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.

THE HOUR-GLASS 137

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,

138 THE HOUR-GLASS

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,

THE HOUR-GLASS 139

That coming through the door,
Or, it may be, standing there,
Would solidly out stare
The steadiest eyes with their un-
natural 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

140 THE HOUR-GLASS

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.

THE HOUR-GLASS 141

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;

142 THE HOUR-GLASS

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,

THE HOUR-GLASS 143

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

144 THE HOUR-GLASS

Know why we doubt? Parting, sick-
ness 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,

THE HOUR-GLASS 145

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,

146 THE HOUR-GLASS

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

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 —

THE HOUR-GLASS 147

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

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.

148 THE HOUR-GLASS

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.

THE HOUR-GLASS 149

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.

150 THE HOUR-GLASS

WISE MAN
What do you think of when alone at

night?
Do not the things your mothers spoke

about,
Before they took the candle from the

bedside,

Rush up into the mind and master it,
Till you believe in them against your

will?

SECOND PUPIL (to first pupil)
You answer for us.

THIRD PUPIL (in a whisper to first

pupil)

Be careful what you say;
If he persuades you to an argument,
He will but turn us all to mockery.

FIRST PUPIL

We had no minds until you made them
for us;

THE HOUR-GLASS 151

Our bodies only were our mothers'
work.

WISE MAN
You answer with incredible things.

It is certain
That there is one, — though it may be

but one —
Believes in God and in some heaven

and hell —
In all those things we put into our

prayers.

FIRST PUPIL
We thought those things before our

minds were born,
But that was long ago — we are not

children.

WISE MAN

You are afraid to tell me what you think
Because I am hot and angry when I

am crossed.
I do not blame you for it; but have

no fear,

152 THE HOUR-GLASS

For if there's one that sat on smiling

there,
As though my arguments were sweet

as milk
Yet found them bitter, I will thank

him for it,
If he but speak his mind.

FIRST PUPIL

There is no one, Master,
There is not one but found them sweet
as milk.

WISE MAN
The things that have been told us in

our childhood
Are not so fragile.

SECOND PUPIL

We are no longer children.

THIRD PUPIL

We all believe in you and in what you
have taught.

THE HOUR-GLASS 153
OTHER PUPILS

All, all, all, all, in you, nothing but
you.

WISE MAN

I have deceived you — where shall I go

for words —
I have no thoughts — my mind has

been swept bare.
The messengers that stand in the fiery

cloud,
Fling themselves out, if we but dare

to question,

And after that, the Babylonian moon
Blots all away.

FIRST PUPIL (to other pupils)

I take his words to mean
That visionaries, and martyrs when

they are raised
Above translunary things, and there

enlightened,

154 THE HOUR-GLASS

As the contention is, may lose the

light,
And flounder in their speech when

the eyes open.

SECOND PUPIL

How well he imitates their trick of
speech.

THIRD PUPIL
Their air of mystery.

FOURTH PUPIL

Their empty gaze,
As though they'd looked upon some

winged thing,
And would not condescend to mankind

after.

FIRST PUPIL
Master, we have all learnt that truth

is learnt
When the intellect's deliberate and

cold,

THE HOUR-GLASS 155

As it were a polished mirror that re-
flects

An unchanged world; and not when
the steel melts,

Bubbling and hissing, till there's
naught but fume.

WISE MAN

When it is melted, when it all fumes up,
They walk, as when beside those three

in the furnace
The form of the fourth.

FIRST PUPIL

Master, there's none among us
That has not heard your mockery of

these,

Or thoughts like these, and we have
not forgot.

WISE MAN

Something incredible has happened —
some one has come

156 THE HOUR-GLASS

Suddenly like a grey hawk out of the

air,
And all that I declared untrue is

true.

FIRST PUPIL (to other pupils)
You'd think the way he says it, that

he felt it.
There's not a mummer to compare

with him.
He's something like a man.

SECOND PUPIL

Give us some proof.

WISE MAN
What proof have I to give, but that

an angel
An instant ago was standing on that

spot. [The pupils rise.

THIRD PUPIL
You dreamed it.

THE HOUR-GLASS 157

WISE MAN
I was awake as I am now.

FIRST PUPIL (to the others)

I may be dreaming now for all I know.
He wants to show we have no certain

proof
Of anything in the world.

SECOND PUPIL

There is this proof
That shows we are awake — we have all

one world
While every dreamer has a world of

his own,
And sees what no one else can.

THIRD PUPIL

Teigue sees angels.
So when the Master says he has seen

an angel,
He may have seen one.

158 THE HOUR-GLASS

FIRST PUPIL

Both may still be dreamers;
Unless it's proved the angels were
alike.

SECOND PUPIL
What sort are the angels, Teigue?

THIRD PUPIL

That will prove nothing,
Unless we are sure prolonged obedience
Has made one angel like another angel
As they were eggs.

FIRST PUPIL

The Master's silent now:
For he has found that to dispute with

us —
Seeing that he has taught us what we

know —
Is but to reason with himself. Let us

away,
And find if there is one believer left.

THE HOUR-GLASS 159

WISE MAN
Yes, yes. Find me but one that still

believes
The things that we were told when

we were children.

THIRD PUPIL
He'll mock and maul him.

FOURTH PUPIL

From the first I knew
He wanted somebody to argue with.

[They go.

WISE MAN

I have no reason left. All dark, all
dark!

[Pupils return laughing. They
push forward fourth pupil.

FIRST PUPIL

Here, Master, is the very man you
want.

160 THE HOUR-GLASS

He said, when we were studying the

book,
That maybe after all the monks were

right,
And you mistaken, and if we but gave

him time,
He'd prove that it was so.

FOURTH PUPIL

I never said it.

WISE MAN

Dear friend, dear friend, do you be-
lieve in God?

FOURTH PUPIL

Master, they have invented this to
mock me.

WISE MAN
You are afraid of me.

THE HOUR-GLASS 161

FOURTH PUPIL

They know well, Master,
That all I said was but to make them

argue.
They've pushed me in to make a mock

of me,
Because they knew I could take either

side
And beat them at it.

WISE MAN

If you believe in God,
You are my soul's one friend.

[Pupils laugh.
Mistress or wife

Can give us but our good or evil luck
Amid the howling world, but you shall

give
Eternity, and those sweet-throated

things
That drift above the moon.

[The pupils look at one another
and are silent.

162 THE HOUR-GLASS

SECOND PUPIL

How strange he is.

WISE MAN
The angel that stood there upon that

spot,
Said that my soul was lost unless I

found out
One that believed.

FOURTH PUPIL

Cease mocking at me, Master,
For I am certain that there is no God
Nor immortality, and they that said it
Made a fantastic tale from a starved

dream

To plague our hearts. Will that con-
tent you, Master?

WISE MAN

The giddy glass is emptier every
moment,

And you stand there, debating, laugh-
ing and wrangling.

THE HOUR-GLASS 163

Out of my sight! Out of my sight, I

say. [He drives them out.

I'll call my wife, for what can women

do,
That carry us in the darkness of their

bodies,
But mock the reason that lets nothing

grow
Unless it grow in light. Bridget,

Bridget.

A woman never ceases to believe,
Say what we will. Bridget, come

quickly, Bridget.

[Bridget comes in wearing her

apron. Her sleeves turned up

from her armst which are

covered with flour.

Wife, what do you believe in? Tell

me the truth,
And not — as is the habit with you

all-
Something you think will please me.

Do you pray?

164 THE HOUR-GLASS

Sometimes when you're alone in the
house, do you pray?

BRIDGET

Prayers — no, you taught me to leave
them off long ago. At first I was sorry,
but I am glad now, for I am sleepy in
the evenings.

WISE MAN
Do you believe in God?

BRIDGET

Oh, a good wife only believes in
what her husband tells her.

WISE MAN
But sometimes, when the children are

asleep
And I am in the school, do you not

think
About the Martyrs and the saints and

the angels,

THE HOUR-GLASS 165

And all the things that you believed
in once?

BRIDGET

I think about nothing — sometimes
I wonder if the linen is bleaching
white, or I go out to see if the crows
are picking up the chickens' food.

WISE MAN
My God, — my God! I will go out

myself.
My pupils said that they would find a

man
Whose faith I never shook — they may

have found him.

Therefore I will go out — but if I go,
The glass will let the sands run out

unseen.

I cannot go — I cannot leave the glass.
Go call my pupils — I can explain all

now,
Only when all our hold on life is

troubled,

166 THE HOUR-GLASS

Only in spiritual terror can the Truth
Come through the broken mind — as

the pease burst
Out of a broken pease-cod.

[He clutches Bridget as she is going.

Say to them,

That Nature would lack all in her

most need,
Could not the soul find truth as in a

flash,

Upon the battle-field, or in the midst
Of overwhelming waves, and say to

them —
But no, they would but answer as I bid.

BRIDGET

You want somebody to get up an
argument with.

WISE MAN

Look out and see if there is any one
There in the street — I cannot leave the
glass,

THE HOUR-GLASS 167

For somebody might shake it, and the

sand
If it were shaken might run down on

the instant.

BRIDGET

I don't understand a word you are
saying. There's a crowd of people
talking to your pupils.

WISE MAN

Go out and find if they have found a

man
Who did not understand me when I

taught,
Or did not listen.

BRIDGET

It is a hard thing to be married to
a man of learning that must always be
having arguments. [She goes out.

168 THE HOUR-GLASS

WISE MAN
Strange that I should be blind to the

great secret,
And that so simple a man might write

it out

Upon a blade of grass or bit of rush
With naught but berry juice, and

laugh to himself
Writing it out, because it was so

simple.

[Enter Bridget followed by the Fool.

FOOL

Give me something; give me a
penny to buy bacon in the shops and
nuts in the market, and strong drink
for the time when the sun is weak.

BRIDGET

I have no pennies. (To Wise Man)
Your pupils cannot find anybody to
argue with you. There's nobody in

THE HOUR-GLASS 169

the whole country with belief enough
for a lover's oath. Can't you be quiet
now, and not always wanting to have
arguments? It must be terrible to
have a mind like that.

WISE MAN
Then I am lost indeed.

BRIDGET

Leave me alone now, I have to
make the bread for you and the
children. [She goes into kitchen.

WISE MAN
Children, children!

BRIDGET

Your father wants you, run to him.
[Children run in.

WISE MAN

Come to me, children. Do not be
afraid.

170 THE HOUR-GLASS

I want to know if you believe in

Heaven,
God or the soul — no, do not tell me

yet;
You need not be afraid I shall be,

angry,
Say what you please — so that it is

your thought —
I wanted you to know before you

spoke,
That I shall not be angry.

FIRST CHILD
We have not forgotten, Father.

SECOND CHILD
Oh no, Father.

BOTH CHILDREN

(As if repeating a lesson) There is
nothing we cannot see, nothing we
cannot touch.

THE HOUR-GLASS 171

FIRST CHILD

Foolish people used to say that
there was, but you have taught us
better.

WISE MAN

Go to your mother, go — yet do not go.
What can she say? If I am dumb you

are lost;

And yet, because the sands are run-
ning out,
I have but a moment to show it all

in. Children,
The sap would die out of the blades of

grass
Had they a doubt. They understand

it all,

Being the fingers of God's certainty,
Yet can but make their sign into the

air;
But could they find their tongues

they'd show it all;
But what am I to say that am but one,

172 THE HOUR-GLASS

When they are millions and they will

not speak —

[Children have run out.
But they are gone; what made them

run away?

[The Fool comes in with a dan-
delion
Look at me, tell me if my face is

changed,
Is there a notch of the fiend's nail

upon it

Already? Is it terrible to sight?
Because the moment's near.

[Going to glass.

I dare not look,

I dare not know the moment when

they come.
No, no, I dare not. (Covers glass.)

Will there be a footfall,
Or will there be a sort of rending

sound,
Or else a cracking, as though an iron

claw

THE HOUR-GLASS 173

Had gripped the threshold stone?

[Fool has begun to blow the dan-
delion.

What are you doing?

FOOL
Wait a minute — four — five — six —

WISE MAN
What are you doing that for?

FOOL

I am blowing the dandelion to find
out what hour it is.

WISE MAN
You have heard everything, and that

is why
You'd find what hour it is — you'd find

that out,
That you may look upon a fleet of

devils
Dragging my soul away. You shall

not stop,

174 THE HOUR-GLASS

I will have no one here when they
come in,

I will have no one sitting there — no
one —

And yet — and yet — there is some-
thing strange about you.

I hah* remember something. What
is it?

Do you believe in God and in the soul?

FOOL

So you ask me now. I thought
when you were asking your pupils,
'Will he ask Teigue the Fool? Yes,
he will, he will; no, he will not — yes,
he will.' But Teigue will say nothing.
Teigue will say nothing.

WISE MAN
Tell me quickly.

FOOL
I said, 'Teigue knows everything, not

THE HOUR-GLASS 175

even the green-eyed cats and the hares
that milk the cows have Teigue's wis-
dom'; but Teigue will not speak, he
says nothing.

WISE MAN

Speak, speak, for underneath the cover

there
The sand is running from the upper

glass,
And when the last grain's through, I

shall be lost.

FOOL

I will not speak. I will not tell
you what is in my mind. I will not
tell you what is in my bag. You
might steal away my thoughts. I
met a bodach on the road yesterday,
and he said, 'Teigue, tell me how
many pennies are in your bag; I
will wager three pennies that there are

176 THE HOUR-GLASS

not twenty pennies in your bag; let
me put in my hand and count them.'
But I gripped the bag the tighter, and
when I go to sleep at night I hide the
bag where nobody knows.

WISE MAN

There's but one pinch of sand, and I

am lost
If you are not he I seek.

FOOL

O, what a lot the Fool knows, but
he says nothing.

WISE MAN

Yes, I remember now. You spoke of

angels.
You said but now that you had seen

an angel.
You are the one I seek, and I am saved.

THE HOUR-GLASS 177

FOOL

Oh no. How could poor Teigue
see angels? Oh, Teigue tells one tale
here, another there, and everybody
gives him pennies. If Teigue had not
his tales he would starve.

[He breaks away and goes out.

WISE MAN

The last hope is gone,
And now that it's too late I see it all,
We perish into God and sink away
Into reality — the rest's a dream.

[The Fool comes back.

FOOL

There was one there — there by the
threshold stone, waiting there; and he
said, 'Go in, Teigue, and tell him
everything that he asks you. He will
give you a penny if you tell him.'

178 THE HOUR-GLASS
WISE MAN

I know enough, that know God's will
prevails.

FOOL

Waiting till the moment had come
— That is what the one out there was
saying, but I might tell you what you
asked. That is what he was saying.

WISE MAN

Be silent. May God's will prevail on

the instant,

Although His will be my eternal pain.
I have no question:
It is enough, I know what fixed the

station

Of star and cloud.
And knowing all, I cry
That what so God has willed
On the instant be fulfilled,
Though that be my damnation.

THE HOUR-GLASS 179

The stream of the world has changed

its course,
And with the stream my thoughts

have run

Into some cloudy thunderous spring
That is its mountain source —
Aye, to some frenzy of the mind,
For all that we have done's undone,
Our speculation but as the wind.

[He dies.
FOOL

Wise man — Wise man, wake up
and I will tell you everything for a
penny. It is I, poor Teigue the Fool.
Why don't you wake up, and say,
'There is a penny for you, Teigue'?
No, no, you will say nothing. You
and I, we are the two fools, we know
everything, but we will not speak.

[Angel enters holding a casket.

O, look what has come from his
mouth! O, look what has come from
his mouth — the white butterfly! He

180 THE HOUR-GLASS

is dead, and I have taken his soul in
my hands; but I know why you open
the lid of that golden box. I must
give it to you. There then, (he puts
butterfly in casket) he has gone through
his pains, and you will open the lid
in the Garden of Paradise. (He closes
curtain and remains outside it.) He is
gone, he is gone, he is gone, but come
in, everybody in the world, and look
at me.

*I hear the wind a blow
I hear the grass a grow,
And all that I know, I know.'
But I will not speak, I will run away.

[He goes out.

NOTES

181

NOTES

PREFATORY POEM

'FREE of the ten and four' is an error I cannot
now correct, without more rewriting than I
have a mind for. Some merchant in Villon, I
forget the reference, was 'free of the ten and
four.' Irish merchants exempted from certain
duties by the Irish Parliament were, unless
memory deceives me again for I am writing
away from books, 'free of the eight and six.'

POEMS BEGINNING WITH THAT 'To A WEALTHY
MAN' AND ENDING WITH THAT 'To A

SHADE'

During the thirty years or so during which
I have been reading Irish newspapers, three
public controversies have stirred my imagina-
tion. The first was the Parnell controversy.
There were reasons to justify a man's joining
either party, but there were none to justify,
on one side or on the other, lying accusations
forgetful of past service, a frenzy of detraction.
And another was the dispute over 'The
Playboy.' There were reasons for opposing
as for supporting that violent, laughing thing,
183

184 NOTES

but none for the lies, for the unscrupulous
rhetoric spread against it in Ireland, and from
Ireland to America. The third prepared for
the Corporation's refusal of a building for Sir
Hugh Lane's famous collection of pictures.

One could respect the argument that Dublin,
with much poverty and many slums, could not
afford the £22,000 the building was to cost
the city, but not the minds that used it. One
frenzied man compared the pictures to Troy
horse which 'destroyed a city,' and innumer-
able correspondents described Sir Hugh Lane
and those who had subscribed many thousands
to give Dublin paintings by Corot, Manet,
Monet, Degas, and Renoir, as 'self -seekers,'
'self -advertisers,' 'picture-dealers,' 'log-roll-
ing cranks and faddists,' and one clerical
paper told 'picture-dealer Lane' to take
himself and his pictures out of that. A
member of the Corporation said there were
Irish artists who could paint as good if they
had a mind to, and another described a half-
hour in the temporary gallery in Harcourt
Street as the most dismal of his life. Some
one else asked instead of these eccentric
pictures to be given pictures ' like those beauti-
ful productions displayed in the windows of
our city picture shops.' Another thought
that we would all be more patriotic if we

NOTES 185

devoted our energy to fighting the Insurance
Act. Another would not hang them in his
kitchen, while yet another described the vogue
of French impressionist painting as having
gone to such a length among 'log-rolling
enthusiasts' that they even admired 'works
that were rejected from the Salon forty years
ago by the finest critics in the world.'

The first serious opposition began in the
Irish Catholic, the chief Dublin clerical paper,
and Mr. William Murphy, the organiser of the
recent lock-out and Mr. Healy's financial
supporter in his attack upon Parnell, a man
of great influence, brought to its support a
few days later his newspapers The Evening
Herald and The Irish Independent, the most
popular of Irish daily papers. He replied to
my poem 'To a Wealthy Man' (I was thinking
of a very different wealthy man) from what he
described as 'Paudeen's point of view,' and
'Paudeen's point of view' it was. The en-
thusiasm for 'Sir Hugh Lane's Corots' — one
paper spelled the name repeatedly 'Crot'
— being but 'an exotic fashion,' waited 'some
satirist like Gilbert' who 'killed the aesthetic
craze,' and as for the rest 'there were no greater
humbugs in the world than art critics and so-
called experts.' As the first avowed reason
for opposition, the necessities of the poor got

186 NOTES

but a few lines, not so many certainly as the
objection of various persons to supply Sir Hugh
Lane with 'a monument at the city's expense,'
and as the gallery was supported by Mr.
James Larkin, the chief Labour leader, and
important slum workers, I assume that the
purpose of the opposition was not exclusively
charitable.

These controversies, political, literary, and
artistic, have showed that neither religion nor
politics can of itself create minds with enough
receptivity to become wise, or just and generous
enough to make a nation. Other cities have
been as stupid — Samuel Butler laughs at
shocked Montreal for hiding the Discobolus
in a cellar — but Dublin is the capital of a
nation, and an ancient race has nowhere else
to look for an education. Goethe in Wilhelm
Meister describes a saintly and naturally
gracious woman, who getting into a quarrel
over some trumpery detail of religious observ-
ance, grows — she and all her little religious
community — angry and vindictive. In Ireland
I am constantly reminded of that fable of
the futility of all discipline that is not of
the whole being. Religious Ireland — and the
pious Protestants of my childhood were signal
examples — thinks of divine things as a round
of duties separated from life and not as an

NOTES 187

element that may be discovered in all circum-
stance and emotion, while political Ireland
sees the good citizen but as a man who holds
to certain opinions and not as a man of good
will. Against all this we have but a few
educated men and the remnants of an old
traditional culture among the poor. Both
were stronger forty years ago, before the rise
of our new middle class which showed as its
first public event, during the nine years of the
Parnellite split, how base at moments of excite-
ment are minds without culture. 1914.

'Romantic Ireland's dead and gone' sounds
old-fashioned now. It seemed true in 1913,
but I did not foresee 1916. The late Dublin
Rebellion, whatever one can say of its wisdom,
will long be remembered for its heroism. ' They
weighed so lightly what they gave,' and gave
too in some cases without hope of success.
July 1916.

THE DOLLS

The fable for this poem came into my head
while I was giving some lectures in Dublin. I
had noticed once again how all thought among
us is frozen into 'something other than human
life.' After I had made the poem, I looked up
one day into the blue of the sky, and suddenly
imagined, as if lost in the blue of the sky, stiff

188 NOTES

figures in procession. I remembered that they
were the habitual image suggested by blue
sky, and looking for a second fable called them
"The Magi', complimentary forms to those
enraged dolls.

THE HOUR-GLASS

A friend suggested to me the subject of this
play, an Irish folk-tale from Lady Wilde's
Ancient Legends. I have for years struggled
with something which is charming in the naive
legend but a platitude on the stage. I did
not discover till a year ago that if the wise
man humbled himself to the fool and received
salvation as his reward, so much more powerful
are pictures than words, no explanatory
dialogue could set the matter right. I was
faintly pleased when I converted a music-hall
singer and kept him going to Mass for six
weeks, so little responsibility does one feel
for those to whom one has never been intro-
duced; but I was always ashamed when I saw
any friend of my own in the theatre. Now I
have made my philosopher accept God's will,
whatever it is, and find his courage again, and
helped by the elaboration of verse, have so
changed the fable that it is not false to my
own thoughts of the world.

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