William Yeats - The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 3 of 8. The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

What think you of the master whom we serve?

I have grown weary of my days in the world
Because I do not serve him.

More of this
When we have eaten, for we love right well
A merry meal, a warm and leaping fire
And easy hearts.

Come, Maire, and cook the wolf.

I will not cook for you.

Maire is mad.

That wine is the suddenest wine man ever tasted.

I will not cook for you: you are not human:
Before you came two horned owls looked at us;
The dog bayed, and the tongue of Shemus maddened.
When you came in the Virgin’s blessed shrine
Fell from its nail, and when you sat down here
You poured out wine as the wood sidheogs do
When they’d entice a soul out of the world.
Why did you come to us? Was not death near?

We are two merchants.

If you be not demons,
Go and give alms among the starving poor,
You seem more rich than any under the moon.

If we knew where to find deserving poor,
We would give alms.

Then ask of Father John.

We know the evils of mere charity,
And have been planning out a wiser way.
Let each man bring one piece of merchandise.

And have the starving any merchandise?

We do but ask what each man has.

Merchants,
Their swine and cattle, fields and implements,
Are sold and gone.

They have not sold all yet.

What have they?

They have still their souls.

Come hither.
See you these little golden heaps? Each one
Is payment for a soul. From charity
We give so great a price for those poor flames.
Say to all men we buy men’s souls – away.

This pile is for you and this one here for you.

Shemus and Teig, Teig —

Out of the way.

Cry out at cross-roads and at chapel doors
And market-places that we buy men’s souls,
Giving so great a price that men may live
In mirth and ease until the famine ends.

Destroyers of souls, may God destroy you quickly!

No curse can overthrow the immortal demons.

You shall at last dry like dry leaves, and hang
Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God.

You shall be ours. This famine shall not cease.
You shall eat grass, and dock, and dandelion,
And fail till this stone threshold seem a wall,
And when your hands can scarcely drag your body
We shall be near you.

Bring the meal out.

Burn it. [MAIRE faints.
Now she has swooned, our faces go unscratched;
Bring me the gray hen, too.

These need much burning.
This stool and this chair here will make good fuel.

My master will break up the sun and moon
And quench the stars in the ancestral night
And overturn the thrones of God and the angels.

Be silent, I am tired of tympan and harp,
And tired of music that but cries ‘Sleep, sleep,’
Till joy and sorrow and hope and terror are gone.

You were asleep?

No, child, I was but thinking
Why you have grown so sad.

The famine frets me.

I have lived now near ninety winters, child,
And I have known three things no doctor cures —
Love, loneliness, and famine; nor found refuge
Other than growing old and full of sleep.
See you where Oisin and young Niamh ride
Wrapped in each other’s arms, and where the Fenians
Follow their hounds along the fields of tapestry;
How merry they lived once, yet men died then.
Sit down by me, and I will chaunt the song
About the Danaan nations in their raths
That Aleel sang for you by the great door
Before we lost him in the shadow of leaves.

No, sing the song he sang in the dim light,
When we first found him in the shadow of leaves,
About King Fergus in his brazen car
Driving with troops of dancers through the woods.

Dear heart, make a soft cradle of old tales,
And songs, and music: wherefore should you sadden
For wrongs you cannot hinder? The great God
Smiling condemns the lost: be mirthful: He
Bids youth be merry and old age be wise.