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

by W. B. Yeats

  Yet after I had urged it at all seasons,

  I had my way, and all’s forgiven now;

  And you shall speak the welcome and the joy

  That I lack tongue for.

  FIRST MUS. — Yet old men are jealous.

  FERGUS. [going to door], I am Conchubar’s near friend, and that weighed somewhat,

  And it was policy to pardon them.

  The need of some young, famous, popular man

  To lead the troops, the murmur of the crowd,

  And his own natural impulse, urged him to it.

  They have been wandering half-a-dozen years.

  FIRST MUS. And yet old men are jealous.

  FERGUS. [coming from door Sing the more sweetly

  Because, though age is arid as a bone,

  This man has flowered. I’ve need of music, too;

  If this grey head would suffer no reproach,

  I’d dance and sing —

  [Dark-faced men with strange, barbaric dress and arms begin to pass by the doors and windows. They pass one by one and in silence.]

  and dance till the hour ran out,

  Because I have accomplished this good deed.

  FIRST MUS. Look there — there at the window, those dark men,

  With murderous and outlandish-looking arms —

  They’ve been about the house all day.

  FERGUS. [looking after them]. What are you?

  Where do you come from, who is it sent you here?

  FIRST MUS. They will not answer you.

  FERGUS. — They do not hear.

  FIRST MUS. Forgive my open speech, but to these eyes

  That have seen many lands, they are such men

  As kings will gather for a murderous task,

  That neither bribes, commands, nor promises

  Can bring their people to.

  FERGUS. — And that is why

  You harped upon an old man’s jealousy.

  A trifle sets you quaking. Conchubar’s fame

  Brings merchandise on every wind that blows.

  They may have brought him Libyan dragonskin,

  Or the ivory of the fierce unicorn.

  FIRST MUS. If these be merchants, I have seen the goods

  They have brought to Conchubar, and understood

  His murderous purpose.

  FERGUS. — Murderous, you say?

  Why, what new gossip of the roads is this?

  But I’ll not hear.

  FIRST MUS. It may be life or death.

  There is a room in Conchubar’s house, and there —

  FERGUS. Be silent, or I’ll drive you from the door.

  There’s many a one that would do more than that,

  And make it prison, or death, or banishment

  To slander the high King.

  [Suddenly restraining himself and speaking gently.

  He is my friend;

  I have his oath, and I am well content.

  I have known his mind as if it were my own

  These many years, and there is none alive

  Shall buzz against him, and I there to stop it.

  I know myself, and him, and your wild thought

  Fed on extravagant poetry, and lit

  By such a dazzle of old fabulous tales

  That common things are lost, and all that’s strange

  Is true because ‘twere pity if it were not.

  [Going to the door again.

  Quick! quick! your instruments! they are coming now.

  I hear the hoofs a-clatter. Begin that song;

  But what is it to be? I’d have them hear

  A music foaming up out of the house

  Like wine out of a cup. Come now, a verse

  Of some old time not worth remembering,

  And all the lovelier because a bubble.

  Begin, begin, of some old king and queen,

  Of Luhgaidh Redstripe or another; no, not him,

  He and his lady perished wretchedly.

  first musician [singing]

  ‘Why is it,’ Queen Edain said,

  ‘If I do but climb the stair....

  FERGUS. Ah! that is better.... They are alighted now.

  Shake all your cockscombs, children; these are lovers. — [FERGUS goes out.

  FIRST MUSICIAN

  ‘Why is it,’ Queen Edain said,

  ‘If I do but climb the stair

  To the tower overhead,

  When the winds are calling there,

  Or the gannets calling out,

  In waste places of the sky,

  There’s so much to think about,

  That I cry, that I cry?’

  SECOND MUSICIAN

  But her goodman answered her:

  ‘Love would be a thing of nought

  Had not all his limbs a stir

  Born out of immoderate thought;

  Were he anything by half,

  Were his measure running dry.

  Lovers, if they may not laugh,

  Have to cry, have to cry.’

  [DEIRDRE, NAISI, and FERGUS have been seen for a moment through the windows, but now they have entered.

  THE THREE MUSICIANS [together]

  But is Edain worth a song

  Now the hunt begins anew?

  Praise the beautiful and strong;

  Praise the redness of the yew;

  Praise the blossoming apple-stem.

  But our silence had been wise.

  What is all our praise to them,

  That have one another’s eyes?

  DEIRDRE. Silence your music, though I thank you for it;

  But the wind’s blown upon my hair,- and I

  Must set the jewels on my neck and head

  For one that’s coming.

  NAISI. — Your colour has all gone

  As ‘twere with fear, and there’s no cause for that.

  DEIRDRE. These women have the raddle that they use

  To make them brave and confident, although

  Dread, toil, or cold may chill the blood o’ their cheeks.

  You’ll help me, women. It is my husband’s will

  I show my trust in one, that may be here

  Before the mind can call the colour up.

  My husband took these rubies from a king

  Of Surracha that was so murderous

  He seemed all glittering dragon. Now wearing them

  Myself wars on myself, for I myself —

  That do my husband’s will, yet fear to do it —

  Grow dragonish to myself.

  [The women have gathered about her.

  NAISI has stood looking at her, but

  FERGUS. brings him to the chess table.

  NAISI. — No messenger!

  It’s strange that there is none to welcome us.

  FERGUS. King Conchubar has sent no messenger

  That he may come himself.

  NAISI. — And being himself,

  Being High King, he cannot break his faith.

  I have his word and I must take that word,

  Or prove myself unworthy of my nurture

  Under a great man’s roof.

  FERGUS. — We’ll play at chess

  Till the king comes. It is but natural

  That she should doubt him, for her house has been

  The hole of the badger and the den of the fox.

  NAISI. If I were childish and had faith in omens,

  I’d rather not have lit on that old chessboard

  At my home-coming.

  FERGUS. — There’s a tale about it —

  It has been lying there these many years —

  Some wild old sorrowful tale.

  NAISI. — It is the board

  Where Lughaidh Redstripe and that wife of his,

  Who had a seamew’s body half the year,

  Played at the chess upon the night they died.

  FERGUS. I can remember now, a tale of treachery,

  A broken promise and a journey’s end —

  But i
t were best forgot.

  [DEIRDRE has been standing with the women about her. They have been helping her to put on her jewels and to put the pigment on her cheeks and arrange her hair. She has gradually grown attentive to what Fergus is saying.

  NAISI. — If the tale’s true,

  When it was plain that they had been betrayed,

  They moved the men and waited for the end

  As it were bedtime, and had so quiet minds

  They hardly winked their eyes when the sword flashed.

  FERGUS. She never could have played so, being a woman,

  If she had not the cold sea’s blood in her.

  DEIRDRE. I have heard the Ever-living warn mankind

  By changing clouds, and casual accidents

  Or what seem so.

  NAISI. — It would but ill become us,

  Now that King Conchubar has pledged his word,

  Should we be startled by a cloud or a shadow.

  DEIRDRE. There’s none to welcome us.

  NAISI. — Being his guest,

  Words that would wrong him can but wrong ourselves.

  DEIRDRE. An empty house upon the journey’s end!

  Is that the way a king that means no mischief

  Honours a guest?

  FERGUS. — He is but making ready

  A welcome in his house, arranging where

  The moorhen and the mallard go, and where

  The speckled heathcock on a golden dish.

  DEIRDRE. Had he no messenger?

  NAISI. — Such words and fears

  Wrong this old man who’s pledged his word to us.

  We must not speak or think as women do,

  That when the house is all a-bed sit up

  Marking among the ashes with a stick

  Till they are terrified. — Being what we are

  You should have too calm thought to start at shadows.

  [To Fergus.] Come, let us look if there’s a messenger

  From Conchubar. We cannot see from this

  Because we are blinded by the leaves and twigs,

  But it may be the wood will thin again.

  It is but kind that when the lips we love

  Speak words that are unfitting for kings’ ears

  Our ears be deaf.

  FERGUS. — But now I had to threaten

  These wanderers because they would have weighed

  Some crazy phantasy of their own brain

  Or gossip of the road with Conchubar’s word.

  If I had thought so little of mankind

  I never could have moved him to this pardon.

  I have believed the best of every man,

  And find that to believe it is enough

  To make a bad man show him at his best,

  Or even a good man swing his lantern higher.

  [NAISI and Fergus go out. The last words are spoken as they go through the door. One can see them through part of what follows either through door or window. They move about, talking or looking along the road towards CONCHUBAR’s house.

  FIRST MUS. If anything lies heavy on your heart,

  Speak freely of it, knowing it is certain

  That you will never see my face again.

  DEIRDRE. You’ve been in love?

  FIRST MUS. If you would speak of love,

  Speak freely. There is nothing in the world

  That has been friendly to us but the kisses

  That were upon our lips, and when we are old

  Their memory will be all the life we have.

  DEIRDRE. There was a man that loved me.

  He was old;

  I could not love him. Now I can but fear.

  He has made promises, and brought me home;

  But though I turn it over in my thoughts,

  I cannot tell if they are sound and wholesome,

  Or hackles on the hook.

  FIRST MUS. I have heard he loved you,

  As some old miser loves the dragon-stone

  He hides among the cobwebs near the roof.

  DEIRDRE. You mean that when a man who has loved like that

  Is after crossed, love drowns in its own flood,

  And that love drowned and floating is but hate;

  And that a king who hates, sleeps ill at night,

  Till he has killed; and that, though the day laughs,

  We shall be dead at cock-crow.

  FIRST MUS. You have not my thought.

  When I lost one I loved distractedly,

  I blamed my crafty rival and not him,

  And fancied, till my passion had run out,

  That could I carry him away with me,

  And tell him all my love, I’d keep him yet.

  DEIRDRE. Ah! now I catch your meaning, that this king

  Will murder Naisi, and keep me alive.

  FIRST MUS. ‘Tis you that put that meaning

  upon words

  Spoken at random.

  DEIRDRE. — Wanderers like you,

  Who have their wit alone to keep their lives,

  Speak nothing that is bitter to the ear

  At random; if they hint at it at all

  Their eyes and ears have gathered it so lately

  That it is crying out in them for speech.

  FIRST MUS. We have little that is certain.

  DEIRDRE. — Certain or not.

  Speak it out quickly, I beseech you to it;

  I never have met any of your kind,

  But that I gave them money, food, and fire.

  FIRST MUS. There are strange, miracleworking, wicked stones,

  Men tear out of the heart and the hot brain

  Of Libyan dragons.

  DEIRDRE. — The hot Istain stone,

  And the cold stone of Fanes, that have power

  To stir even those at enmity to love.

  FIRST MUS. They have so great an influence, if but sewn

  In the embroideries that curtain in

  The bridal bed.

  DEIRDRE. O Mover of the stars

  That made this delicate house of ivory,

  And made my soul its mistress, keep it safe!

  FIRST MUS. I have seen a bridal bed, so curtained in,

  So decked for miracle in Conchubar’s house,

  And learned that a bride’s coming.

  DEIRDRE. — And I the bride?

  Here is worse treachery than the seamew suffered,

  For she but died and mixed into the dust

  Of her dear comrade, but I am to live

  And lie in the one bed with him I hate.

  Where is Naisi? I was not alone like this

  When Conchubar first chose me for his wife;

  I cried in sleeping or waking and he came,

  But now there is worse need.

  NAISI [entering with Fergus]. Why have you called?

  I was but standing there, without the door.

  DEIRDRE. I have heard terrible mysterious things,

  Magical horrors and the spells of wizards.

  FERGUS. Why, that’s no wonder. You have been listening

  To singers of the roads that gather up

  The stories of the world.

  DEIRDRE. — But I have one

  To make the stories of the world but nothing.

  NAISI. Be silent if it is against the king

  Whose guest you are.

  FERGUS. — No, let her speak it out,

  I know the High King’s heart as it were my own,

  And can refute a slander, but already

  I have warned these women that it may be death.

  NAISI. I will not weigh the gossip of the roads

  With the king’s word. I ask your pardon for her:

  She has the heart of the wild birds that fear

  The net of the fowler or the wicker cage.

  DEIRDRE. Am I to see the fowler and the cage

  And speak no word at all?

  NAISI. — You would have known,

  Had they not bred you in that mountainous place,


  That when we give a word and take a word

  Sorrow is put away, past wrong forgotten.

  DEIRDRE. Though death may come of it?

  NAISI. — Though death may come.

  DEIRDRE. When first we came into this empty house

  You had foreknowledge of our death, and even

  When speaking of the paleness of my cheek

  Your own cheek blanched.

  NAISI. — Listen to this old man.

  He can remember all the promises

  We trusted to.

  DEIRDRE. You speak from the lips out

  And I am pleading for your life and mine.

  NAISI. Listen to this old man, for many think

  He has a golden tongue.

  DEIRDRE. — Then I will say

  What it were best to carry to the grave.

  Look at my face where the leaf raddled it

  And at these rubies on my hair and breast.

  It was for him, to stir him to desire,

  I put on beauty; yes, for Conchubar.

  NAISI. What frenzy put these words into your mouth?

  DEIRDRE. No frenzy, for what need is there for frenzy

  To change what shifts with every change of the wind,

  Or else there is no truth in men’s old sayings?

  Was I not born a woman?

  NAISI. — You’re mocking me.

  DEIRDRE. And is there mockery in this face and eyes,

  Or in this body, in these limbs that brought

  So many mischiefs? Look at me and say

  If that that shakes my limbs be mockery.

  NAISI. What woman is there that a man can trust

  But at the moment when he kisses her

  At the first midnight?