The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume II by William Butler Yeats

Author:William Butler Yeats
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: SOC035000
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

PURGATORY

1939

PERSONS IN THE PLAY

A Boy

An Old Man

A ruined house and a bare tree in the background.

BOY. Half door, hall door Hither and thither, day and night,

Hill or hollow, shouldering this pack,

Hearing you talk.

OLD MAM. Study that house.

I think about its jokes and stories;

I try to remember what the butler

Said to a drunken gamekeeper

In mid-October, but I cannot.

If I cannot, none living can.

Where are the jokes and stories of a house,

Its threshold gone to patch a pig-sty?

BOY. So you have come this path before?

OLD MAM. The moonlight falls upon the path,

The shadow of a cloud upon the house

And that’s symbolical; study that tree,

What is it like?537

BOY. A silly old man.

OLD MAM. It’s like—no matter what it’s like.

I saw it a year ago stripped bare as now,

I saw it fifty years ago

Before the thunder-bolt had riven it,

Green leaves, ripe leaves, leaves thick as butter,

Fat greasy life. Stand there and look,

Because there is somebody in that house.

[The Boy puts down pack and stands in the doorway.

BOY. There’s nobody here.

OLD MAM. There’s somebody there.

BOY. The floor is gone, the windows gone,

And where there should be roof there’s sky,

And here’s a bit of an egg-shell thrown

Out of a jackdaw’s nest.

OLD MAM. But there are some

That do not care what’s gone, what’s left, The souls in Purgatory that come back

To habitations and familiar spots.

BOY. Your wits are out again.

OLD MAM. Re-live

Their transgressions, and that not once

But many times; they know at last

The consequence of those transgressions

Whether upon others, or upon themselves;

Upon others, others may bring help

For when the consequence is at an end

The dream must end; upon themselves,

There is no help but in themselves

And in the mercy of God.

BOY. I have had enough!

Talk to the jackdaws, if talk you must.

OLD MAM. Stop! Sit there upon that stone.

That is the house where I was born.

BOY. The big old house that was burnt down?538

OLD MAM. My mother that was your grand-dam owned it,

This scenery and this countryside,

Kennel and stable, horse and hound—

She had a horse at the Curragh, and there met

My father, a groom in a training stable;

Looked at him and married him.

Her mother never spoke to her again,

And she did right.

BOY. What’s right and wrong?

My grand-dad got the girl and the money.

OLD MAM. Looked at him and married him,

And he squandered everything she had.

She never knew the worst, because

She died in giving birth to me,

But now she knows it all, being dead.

Great people lived and died in this house;

Magistrates, colonels, members of Parliament,

Captains and governors, and long ago

Men that had fought at Aughrim and the Boyne.

Some that had gone on government work

To London or to India came home to die,

Or came from London every spring

To look at the may-blossom in the park.

They had loved the trees that he cut down

To pay what he had lost at cards

Or spent on horses, drink and women;

Had loved the house, had loved all

The intricate passages of the house,

But he killed the house; to kill a house

Where great men grew up, married, died,

I here declare a capital offence.

BOY. My God, but you had luck.

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