by W. B. Yeats
SECOND SAILOR. We did not meet with a ship to make a prey of these eight weeks, or any shore or island to plunder or to harry.
It is a hard thing, age to be coming on me, and I not to get the chance of doing a robbery that would enable me to live quiet and honest to the end of my lifetime.
FIRST SAILOR. We are out since the new moon. What is worse again, it is the way we are in a ship, the barrels empty and my throat shrivelled with drought, and nothing to quench it but water only.
FORGAEL [in his sleep]. Yes; there, there; that hair that is the colour of burning.
FIRST SAILOR. Listen to him now, calling out in his sleep.
FORGAEL [in his sleep]. That pale forehead, that hair the colour of burning.
FIRST SAILOR. Some crazy dream he is in, and believe me it is no crazier than the thought he has waking. He is not the first that has had the wits drawn out from him through shadows and fantasies.
SECOND SAILOR. That is what ails him. I have been thinking it this good while.
FIRST SAILOR. Do you remember that galley we sank at the time of the full moon?
SECOND SAILOR. I do. We were becalmed the same night, and he sat up there playing that old harp of his until the moon had set.
FIRST SAILOR. I was sleeping up there by the bulwark, and when I woke in the sound of the harp a change came over my eyes, and I could see very strange things. The dead were floating upon the sea yet, and it seemed as if the life that went out of every one of them had turned to the shape of a manheaded bird — grey they were, and they rose up of a sudden and called out with voices like our own, and flew away singing to the west. Words like this they were singing:
‘Happiness beyond measure, happiness where the sun dies.’
SECOND SAILOR. I understand well what they are doing. My mother used to be talking of birds of the sort. They are sent by the lasting watchers to lead men away from this world and its women to some place of shining women that cast no shadow, having lived before the making of the earth. But I have no mind to go following him to that place.
FIRST SAILOR. Let us creep up to him and kill him in his sleep.
SECOND SAILOR. I would have made an end of him long ago, but that I was in dread of his harp. It is said that when he plays upon it he has power over all the listeners, with or without the body, seen or unseen, and any man that listens grows to be as mad as himself.
FIRST SAILOR. What way can he play it, being in his sleep?
SECOND SAILOR. But who would be our captain then to make out a course from the Bear and the Polestar, and to bring us back home?
FIRST SAILOR. I have that thought out. We must have Aibric with us. He knows the constellations as well as Forgael. He is a good hand with the sword. Join with us; be our captain, Aibric. We are agreed to put an end to Forgael, before he wakes.
There is no man but will be glad of it when it is done. Join with us, and you will have the captain’s share and profit.
AIBRIC. Silence! for you have taken Forgael’s pay.
FIRST SAILOR. Little pay we have had this twelvemonth. We would never have turned against him if he had brought us, as he promised, into seas that would be thick with ships. That was the bargain. What is the use of knocking about and fighting as we do unless we get the chance to drink more wine and kiss more women than lasting peaceable men through their long lifetime? You will be as good a leader as ever he was himself, if you will but join us.
AIBRIC. And do you think that I will join myself
To men like you, and murder him who has been
My master from my earliest childhood up?
No! nor to a world of men like you
When Forgael’s in the other scale. Come! come!
I’ll answer to more purpose when you have drawn
That sword out of its scabbard.
FIRST SAILOR. You have awaked him. We had best go, for we have missed this chance. — [SAILORS go out.
FORGAEL. Have the birds passed us? I could hear your voice. But there were others.
AIBRIC. — I have seen nothing pass.
FORGAEL. You are certain of it? I never wake from sleep
But that I am afraid they may have passed;
For they’re my only pilots. I have not seen them
For many days, and yet there must be many
Dying at every moment in the world.
AIBRIC. They have all but driven you crazy, and already
The sailors have been plotting for your death;
Whatever has been cried into your ears
Has lured you on to death.
FORGAEL. — No; but they promised —
AIBRIC. I know their promises. You have told me all.
They are to bring you to unheard-of passion,
To some strange love the world knows nothing of,
Some Ever-living woman as you think,
One that can cast no shadow, being unearthly.
But that’s all folly. Turn the ship about,
Sail home again, be some fair woman’s friend;
Be satisfied to live like other men,
And drive impossible dreams away. The world
Has beautiful women to please every man.
FORGAEL. But he that gets their love after the fashion
Loves in brief longing and deceiving hope
And bodily tenderness, and finds that even
The bed of love, that in the imagination
Had seemed to be the giver of all peace,
Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting,
And as soon finished.
AIBRIC. — All that ever loved
Have loved that way — there is no other way.
FORGAEL. Yet never have two lovers kissed but they
Believed there was some other near at hand,
And almost wept because they could not find it.
AIBRIC. When they have twenty years; in middle life
They take a kiss for what a kiss is worth,
And let the dream go by.
FORGAEL. — It’s not a dream,
But the reality that makes our passion
As a lamp shadow — no — no lamp, the sun.
What the world’s million lips are thirsting for,
Must be substantial somewhere.
AIBRIC. — I have heard the Druids
Mutter such things as they awake from trance.
It may be that the dead have lit upon it,
Or those that never lived; no mortal can.
FORGAEL. I only of all living men shall find it.
AIBRIC. Then seek it in the habitable world.
Or leap into that sea and end a journey
That has no other end.
FORGAEL. — I cannot answer.
I can see nothing plain; all’s mystery.
Yet, sometimes there’s a torch inside my head
That makes all clear, but when the light is gone
I have but images, analogies,
The mystic bread, the sacramental wine,
The red rose where the two shafts of the cross,
Body and soul, waking and sleep, death, life,
Whatever meaning ancient allegorists
Have settled on, are mixed into one joy.
For what’s the rose but that? miraculous cries,
Old stories about mystic marriages,
Impossible truths? But when the torch is lit
All that is impossible is certain,
I plunge in the abyss. [SAILORS come in.
FIRST SAILOR. Look there! there in the mist! A ship of spices.
SECOND SAILOR. We would not have noticed her but for the sweet smell through the air.
Ambergris and sandalwood, and all the herbs the witches bring from the sunrise.
FIRST SAILOR. No; but opoponax and cinnamon.
FORGAEL [taking the tiller from AIBRIC]. The
Ever-living have kept my bargain; they have paid you on the nail.
AIBRIC. Take up that rope to make her fast while we are plundering
her.
FIRST SAILOR. There is a king on her deck and a queen. Where there is one woman it is certain there will be others.
AIBRIC. Speak lower or they’ll hear.
FIRST SAILOR. They cannot hear; they are too much taken up with one another. Look!
he has stooped down and kissed her on the lips.
SECOND SAILOR. When she finds out we have as good men aboard she may not be too sorry in the end.
FIRST SAILOR. She will be as dangerous as a wild cat. These queens think more of the riches and the great name they get by marriage than of a ready hand and a strong body.
SECOND SAILOR. There is nobody is natural but a robber. That is the reason the whole world goes tottering about upon its bandy legs.
AIBRIC. Run upon them now, and overpower the crew while yet asleep.
[SAILORS and AIBRIC go out. The clashing of swords and confused voices are heard from the other ship, which cannot be seen because of the sail.
FORGAEL [who has remained at the tiller]
There! there! They come! Gull, gannet, or diver,
But with a man’s head, or a fair woman’s.
They hover over the masthead awhile
To wait their friends, but when their friends have come
They’ll fly upon that secret way of theirs,
One — and one — a couple — five together.
And now they all wheel suddenly and fly
To the other side, and higher in the air,
They’ve gone up thither, friend’s run up by friend;
They’ve gone to their beloved ones in the air,
In the waste of the high air, that they may wander
Among the windy meadows of the dawn.
But why are they still waiting? Why are they
Circling and circling over the masthead?
Ah! now they all look down — they’ll speak of me
What the Ever-living put into their minds,
And of that shadowless unearthly woman
At the world’s end. I hear the message now.
But it’s all mystery. There’s one that cries,
‘From love and hate.’ Before the sentence ends
Another breaks upon it with a cry,
‘From love and death and out of sleep and waking.’
And with the cry another cry is mixed,
‘What can we do, being shadows? ‘All mystery,
And I am drunken with a dizzy light.
But why do they still hover overhead?
Why are you circling there? Why do you linger?
Why do you not run to your desire,
Now that you have happy winged bodies?
Being too busy in the air, and the high air,
They cannot hear my voice. But why that circling?
[ The SAILORS have returned. DECTORA is with them.
[ Turning and seeing her.] Why are you standing with your eyes upon me?
You are not the world’s core. Oh no, no, no!
That cannot be the meaning of the birds.
You are not its core. My teeth are in the world,
But have not bitten yet.
DECTORA. — I am a queen,
And ask for satisfaction upon these
Who have slain my husband and laid hands upon me.
FORGAEL. I’d set my hopes on one that had no shadow: —
Where do you come from? who brought you to this place?
Why do you cast a shadow? Answer me that.
DECTORA. Would that the storm that overthrew my ships,
And drowned the treasures of nine conquered nations,
And blew me hither to my lasting sorrow,
Had drowned me also. But, being yet alive,
I ask a fitting punishment for all
That raised their hands against him.
FORGAEL. — There are some
That weigh and measure all in these waste seas —
They that have all the wisdom that’s in life,
And all that prophesying images
Made of dim gold rave out in secret tombs;
They have it that the plans of kings and queens
Are dust on the moth’s wing; that nothing matters
But laughter and tears — laughter, laughter and tears —
That every man should carry his own soul
Upon his shoulders.
DECTORA. You’ve nothing but wild words,
And I would know if you would give me vengeance.
FORGAEL. When she finds out that I’ll not let her go —
When she knows that.
DECTORA. What is that you are muttering?
That you’ll not let me go? I am a queen.
FORGAEL. Although you are more beautiful than any,
I almost long that it were possible;
But if I were to put you on that ship,
With sailors that were sworn to do your will,
And you had spread a sail for home, a wind
Would rise of a sudden, or a wave so huge,
It had washed among the stars and put them out,
And beat the bulwark of your ship on mine,
Until you stood before me on the deck —
As now.
DECTORA. Does wandering in these desolate seas
And listening to the cry of wind and wave
Bring madness?
FORGAEL. — Queen, I am not mad.
DECTORA. And yet you say the water and the wind
Would rise against me.
FORGAEL. — NO, I am not mad —
If it be not that hearing messages
From lasting watchers that outlive the moon
At the most quiet midnight is to be stricken.
DECTORA. And did those watchers bid you take me captive?
FORGAEL. Both you and I are taken in the net.
It was their hands that plucked the winds awake
And blew you hither; and their mouths have promised
I shall have love in their immortal fashion.
They gave me that old harp of the nine spells
That is more mighty than the sun and moon,
Or than the shivering casting-net of the stars,
That none might take you from me.
DECTORA [first trembling back from the mast where the harp is, and then laughing].
For a moment
Your raving of a message and a harp
More mighty than the stars half troubled me.
But all that’s raving. Who is there can compel
The daughter and granddaughter of a king
To be his bedfellow?
FORGAEL. — Until your lips
Have called me their beloved, I’ll not kiss them.
DECTORA. My husband and my king died at my feet,
And yet you talk of love.
FORGAEL. — The movement of time
Is shaken in these seas, and what one does
One moment has no might upon the moment
That follows after.
DECTORA. — I understand you now.
You have a Druid craft of wicked sound,
Wrung from the cold women of the sea —
A magic that can call a demon up,
Until my body give you kiss for kiss.
FORGAEL. Your soul shall give the kiss.
DECTORA. — I am not afraid,
While there’s a rope to run into a noose
Or wave to drown. But I have done with words,
And I would have you look into my face
And know that it is fearless.
FORGAEL. — Do what you will,
For neither I nor you can break a mesh
Of the great golden net that is about us.
DECTORA. There’s nothing in the world that’s worth a fear.
[She passes FORGAEL and stands for a moment looking into his face.
I have good reason for that thought.
[She runs suddenly on to the raised part of the poop.
And now
&nbs
p; I can put fear away as a queen should.
[She mounts on the bulwark, and turns towards FORGAEL.
Fool, fool! Although you have looked into my face
You did not see my purpose. I shall have gone
Before a hand can touch me.
FORGAEL [folding his arms’]. My hands are still;
The Ever-living hold us. Do what you will,
You cannot leap out of the golden net.
FIRST SAILOR. There is no need for you to drown. Give us our pardon and we will bring you home on your own ship, and make an end of this man that is leading us to death.
DECTORA. I promise it.
AIBRIC. — I am on his side.
I’d strike a blow for him to give him time
To cast his dreams away.
FIRST SAILOR. He has put a sudden darkness over the moon.
DECTORA. Nine swords with handles of rhinoceros horn
To him that strikes him first!
FIRST SAILOR. I will strike him first. No!
for that music of his might put a beast’s head
upon my shoulders, or it may be two heads and they devouring one another.
DECTORA. I’ll give a golden galley full of fruit
That has the heady flavour of new wine
To him that wounds him to the death.
FIRST SAILOR. I’ll strike at him. His spells, when he dies, will die with him and vanish away.
SECOND SAILOR. I’ll strike at him.
THE OTHERS. And I! And I! And I!
[FORGAEL plays upon the harp.
