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

by W. B. Yeats

  LAME BEGGAR. That’s a strange thing to say, and do you say it as I or another might say it, or as a blind man?

  BLIND BEGGAR. I say it as a blind man, I say it because since I went blind in the tenth year of my age, I have been hearing and remembering the knowledges of the world.

  LAME BEGGAR. And you who are a blind man say that a saint, and he living in a pure well of water, would soonest be talking with a sinful man.

  BLIND BEGGAR. DO you mind what the beggar told you about the holy man in the big house at Laban?

  LAME BEGGAR. Nothing stays in my head, Blind Man.

  BLIND BEGGAR. What does he do but go knocking about the roads with an old lecher from the county of Mayo, and he a womanhater from the day of his birth! And what do they talk of by candie-light and by daylight? The old lecher does be telling over all the sins he committed, or maybe never committed at all, and the man of Laban does be trying to head him off and quiet him down that he may quit telling them.

  LAME BEGGAR. Maybe it is converting him he is.

  BLIND BEGGAR. If you were a blind man you wouldn’t say a foolish thing the like of that. He wouldn’t have him different, no, not if he was to get all Ireland. If he was different, what would they find to talk about, will you answer me that now?

  LAME BEGGAR. We have great wisdom between us, that’s certain.

  BLIND BEGGAR. NOW the Church says that it is a good thought, and a sweet thought, and a comfortable thought, that every man may have a saint to look after him, and I, being blind, give it out to all the world that the bigger the sinner the better pleased is the saint.

  I am sure and certain that Saint Colman would not have us two different from what we are.

  LAME BEGGAR. I’ll not give in to that, for, as I was saying, he has a great liking maybe for the Latin.

  BLIND BEGGAR. IS it contradicting me you are? Are you in reach of my arm?

  [swinging stick].

  LAME BEGGAR. I’m not, Blind Man, you couldn’t touch me at all; but as I was saying —

  FIRST MUSICIAN [speaking]. Will you be cured or will you be blessed?

  LAME BEGGAR. Lord save us, that is the saint’s voice and we not on our knees.

  [They kneel.

  BLIND BEGGAR. Is he standing before us, Lame Man?

  LAME BEGGAR. I cannot see him at all. It is in the ash-tree he is, or up in the air.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Will you be cured or will you be blessed?

  LAME BEGGAR. There he is again.

  BLIND BEGGAR. I’ll be cured of my blindness.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. I am a saint and lonely. Will you become blessed and stay blind and we will be together always?

  BLIND BEGGAR. NO, no, your Reverence, if I have to choose, I’ll have the sight of my two eyes, for those that have their sight are always stealing my things and telling me lies, and some maybe that are near me. So don’t take it bad of me, Holy Man, that I ask the sight of my two eyes.

  LAME BEGGAR. NO one robs him and no one tells him lies; it’s all in his head, it is. He’s had his tongue on me all day because he thinks I stole a sheep of his.

  BLIND BEGGAR. It was the feel of his sheepskin coat put it into my head, but my sheep was black, they say, and he tells me, Holy

  Man, that his sheepskin is of the most lovely white wool so that it is a joy to be looking at it.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Lame Man, will you be cured or will you be blessed?

  LAME BEGGAR. What would it be like to be blessed?

  FIRST MUSICIAN. YOU would be of the kin of the blessed saints and of the martyrs.

  LAME BEGGAR. IS it true now that they have a book and that they write the names of the blessed in that book?

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Many a time I have seen the book, and your name would be in it.

  LAME BEGGAR. It would be a grand thing to have two legs under me, but I have it in my mind that it would be a grander thing to have my name in that book.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. It would be a grander thing.

  LAME BEGGAR. I will stay lame, Holy Man, and I will be blessed.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit I give this Blind Man sight and I make this Lame Man blessed.

  BLIND BEGGAR. I see it all now, the blue sky and the big ash-tree and the well and the flat stone, — all as I have heard the people say — and the things the praying people put on the stone, the beads and the candles and the leaves torn out of prayer-books, and the hairpins and the buttons. It is a great sight and a blessed sight, but I don’t see yourself, Holy Man — is it up in the big tree you are?

  LAME BEGGAR. Why, there he is in front of you and he laughing out of his wrinkled face.

  BLIND BEGGAR. Where, where?

  LAME BEGGAR. Why, there, between you and the ash-tree.

  BLIND BEGGAR. There’s nobody there — you’re at your lies again.

  LAME BEGGAR. I am blessed, and that is why I can see the holy saint.

  BLIND BEGGAR. But if I don’t see the saint, there’s something else I can see.

  LAME BEGGAR. The blue sky and green leaves are a great sight, and a strange sight to one that has been long blind.

  BLIND BEGGAR. There is a stranger sight than that, and that is the skin of my own black sheep on your back.

  LAME BEGGAR. Haven’t I been telling you from the peep o’ day that my sheepskin is that white it would dazzle you?

  BLIND BEGGAR. Are you so swept with the words that you’ve never thought that when I had my own two eyes, I’d see what colour was on it?

  LAME BEGGAR [very dejected]. I never thought of that.

  BLIND BEGGAR. Are you that flighty?

  LAME BEGGAR. I am that flighty. [Cheering up.] But am I not blessed, and it’s a sin to speak against the blessed?

  BLIND BEGGAR. Well, I’ll speak against the blessed, and I’ll tell you something more that I’ll do. All the while you were telling me how, if I had my two eyes, I could pick up a chicken here and a goose there, while my neighbours were in bed, do you know what I was thinking?

  LAME BEGGAR. Some wicked blind man’s thought.

  BLIND BEGGAR. It was, and it’s not gone from me yet. I was saying to myself, I have a long arm and a strong arm and a very weighty arm, and when I get my own two eyes I shall know where to hit.

  LAME BEGGAR. Don’t lay a hand on me. Forty years we’ve been knocking about the roads together, and I wouldn’t have you bring your soul into mortal peril.

  BLIND BEGGAR. I have been saying to myself, I shall know where to hit and how to hit and who to hit.

  LAME BEGGAR. DO you not know that I am blessed? Would you be as bad as Caesar and as Herod and Nero and the other wicked emperors of antiquity?

  BLIND BEGGAR. Where’ll I hit him, for the love of God, where’ll I hit him?

  [Blind Beggar beats Lame Beggar. The beating takes the form of a dance and is accompanied on drum and flute. The Blind

  Beggar goes out.

  LAME BEGGAR. That is a soul lost, Holy Man.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Maybe so.

  LAME BEGGAR. I’d better be going, Holy Man, for he’ll rouse the whole country against me.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. He’ll do that.

  LAME BEGGAR. And I have it in my mind not to even myself again with the martyrs, and the holy confessors, till I am more used to being blessed.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Bend down your back.

  LAME BEGGAR. What for, Holy Man?

  FIRST MUSICIAN. That I may get up on it.

  LAME BEGGAR. But my lame legs would never bear the weight of you.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. I’m up now.

  LAME BEGGAR. I don’t feel you at all.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. I don’t weigh more than a grasshopper.

  LAME BEGGAR. You do not.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Are you happy?

  LAME BEGGAR. I would be if I was right sure I was blessed.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Haven’t you got me for a friend?

  LAME BEGGAR. I have so.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Then you’re blessed.
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br />   LAME BEGGAR. Will you see that they put my name in the book?

  FIRST MUSICIAN. I will then.

  LAME BEGGAR. Let us be going, Holy Man.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. But you must bless the road.

  LAME BEGGAR. I haven’t the right words.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. What do you want words for? Bow to what is before you, bow to what is behind you, bow to what is to the left of you, bow to what is to the right of you.

  [The Lame Beggar begins to bow.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. That’s no good.

  LAME BEGGAR. NO good, Holy Man?

  FIRST MUSICIAN. No good at all. You must dance.

  LAME BEGGAR. But how can I dance? Ain’t I a lame man?

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Aren’t you blessed?

  LAME BEGGAR. Maybe so.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Aren’t you a miracle?

  LAME BEGGAR. I am, Holy Man.

  FIRST MUSICIAN. Then dance, and that’ll be a miracle.

  [The Lame Beggar begins to dance, at first clumsily, moving about with his stick, then he throws away the stick and dances more and more quickly. Whenever he strikes the ground strongly with his lame foot the cymbals clash. He goes out dancing, after which follows the First Musician’s song.

  FIRST MUSICIAN [singing],

  Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

  From moonlit place to place.

  The sacred moon overhead

  Has taken a new phase.

  Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils —

  Will pass from change to change,

  And that from round to crescent,

  From crescent to round they range?

  Minnaloushe creeps through the grass

  Alone, important and wise, —

  And lifts to the changing moon

  His changing eyes.

  Curtain

  FIGHTING THE WAVES

  To Hildo Van Krop

  PERSONS IN THE PLAY

  Three Musicians —

  Emer

  Cuchulain —

  Eithne Inguba

  The Ghost of Cuchulain —

  The Figure of Cuchulain

  The Woman of the Sidhe

  FIGHTING THE WAVES

  PROLOGUE

  Musicians and speaker off stage. There is a curtain with a wave pattern. A man wearing the Cuchulain mask enters from one side with sword and shield. He dances a dance which represents a man fighting the waves. The waves may be represented by other dancers: in his frenzy he supposes the waves to be his enemies: gradually he sinks down as if overcome, then fixes his eyes with a cataleptic stare upon some imaginary distant object. The stage becomes dark, and when the light returns it is empty. The Musicians enter. Two stand one on either side of the curtain, singing.

  FIRST MUSICIAN.

  A woman’s beauty is like a white

  Frail bird, like a white sea-bird alone

  At daybreak after stormy night

  Between two furrows upon the ploughed land:

  A sudden storm and it was thrown

  Between dark furrows upon the ploughed land.

  How many centuries spent

  The sedentary soul In toil of measurement

  Beyond eagle or mole,

  Beyond hearing or seeing,

  Or Archimedes’ guess,

  To raise into being

  That loveliness?

  A strange, unserviceable thing,

  A fragile, exquisite, pale shell,

  That the vast troubled waters bring

  To the loud sands before day has broken.

  The storm arose and suddenly fell

  Amid the dark before day had broken.

  What death? What discipline?

  What bonds no man could unbind,

  Being imagined within

  The labyrinth of the mind,

  What pursuing or fleeing,

  What wounds, what bloody press

  Dragged into being

  This loveliness?

  [When the curtain is drawn the Musicians take their place against the wall. One sees a bed with curtains: the man lying on the bed is Cuchulain; the part is taken, however, by a different actor, who has a mask similar to that of the dancer — the Cuchulain mask. Emer stands beside the bed. The Ghost of Cuchulain crouches near the foot of the bed.

  FIRST MUSICIAN [speaking], I call before your eyes some poor fisherman’s house dark with smoke, nets hanging from the rafters, here and there an oar perhaps, and in the midst upon a bed a man dead or swooning. It is that famous man Cuchulain, the best man with every sort of weapon, the best man to gain the love of a woman; his wife Queen Emer is at his side; there is no one with her, for she has sent everyone away, but yonder at the door someone stands and hesitates, wishes to come into the room and is afraid to do so; it is young Eithne Inguba, Cuchulain’s mistress. Beyond her, through the open door, the stormy sea. Beyond the foot of the bed, dressed in grave-clothes, the ghost of Cuchulain is kneeling.

  FIRST MUSICIAN [singing]

  White shell, white wing!

  I will not choose for my friend

  A frail, unserviceable thing

  That drifts and dreams, and but knows

  That waters are without end

  And that wind blows.

  EMER. Come hither, come sit beside the bed; do not be afraid, it was I that sent for you.

  EITHNE INGUBA. No, madam, I have wronged you too deeply to sit there.

  EMER. We two alone of all the people in the world have the right to watch together here, because we have loved him best.

  EITHNE INGUBA [coming nearer]. Is he dead?

  EMER. The fishermen think him dead, it was they that put the graveclothes upon him.

  EITHNE INGUBA [feeling the body]. He is cold. There is no breath upon his lips.

  EMER. Those who win the terrible friendship of the gods sometimes lie a long time as if dead.

  EITHNE INGUBA. I have heard of such things; the very heart stops and yet they live after. What happened?

  EMER. He fought and killed an unknown man, and found after that it was his own son that he had killed.

  EITHNE INGUBA. A son of yours and his?

  EMER. So that is your first thought! His son and mine. [She laughs-]

  Did you think that he belonged to you and me alone? He loved women before he heard our names, and he will love women after he has forgotten us both. The man he killed was the son of some woman he loved long ago, and I think he loved her better than he has loved you or me.

  EITHNE INGUBA. That is natural, he must have been young in those days and loved as you and I love.

  EMER. I think he loved her as no man ever loved, for when he heard the name of the man he had killed, and the name of that man’s mother, he went out of his senses utterly. He ran into the sea, and with shield before him and sword in hand he fought the deathless sea. Of all the many men who had stood there to look at the fight not one dared stop him or even call his name; they stood in a kind of stupor, collected together in a bunch like cattle in a storm, until, fixing his eyes as it seemed upon some new enemy, he waded out further still and the waves swept over him.

  EITHNE INGUBA. He is dead indeed, and he has been drowned in the sea.

  EMER. He is not dead.

  EITHNE INGUBA. He is dead, and you have not kissed his lips nor laid your head upon his breast.

  EMER. That is some changeling they have put there, some image of somebody or something bewitched in his likeness, a sea-washed log, it may be, or some old spirit. I would throw it into the fire, but I dare not. They have Cuchulain for a hostage.

  EITHNE INGUBA. I have heard of such changelings.

  EMER. Before you came I called his name again and again. I told him that Queen Maeve and all her Connacht men are marching north and east, and that there is none but he to make a stand against them, but he would not hear me. I am but his wife, and a man grows tired of a wife. But if you call upon him with that sweet voice, that voice that is so dear to him, he cannot help but listen.
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br />   EITHNE INGUBA. I am but his newest love, and in the end he will turn to the woman who has loved him longest, who has kept the house for him no matter where he strayed or to whom.

  EMER. I have indeed that hope, the hope that some day he and I will sit together at the fire as when we were first married.

  EITHNE INGUBA. Women like me awake a violent love for a while, and when the time is over are flung into some corner like an old eggshell. Cuchulain, listen!

  EMER. No, not yet; for first I must cover up his face, I must hide him from the sea. I must throw new logs upon the fire and stir the halfburnt logs into a flame. The sea is full of enchantment, whatever lies on that bed is from the sea, but all enchantments dread the hearth-fire. [She pulls the curtains of the bed so as to hide the sick man’s face, that the actor may change his mask unseen. She goes to one side of the stage and moves her hand as though putting logs on a fire and stirring it into a blaze. While she makes these movements the Musicians play, marking the movements with drum and flute perhaps. Having finished she stands beside the imaginary fire at a distance from Cuchulain and Eithne Inguba.