Two Plays for Dancers (The Best of Yeats) by W.B. Yeats

Author:W.B. Yeats [Yeats, W.B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, novel, book, bestseller, top10, interactive media, urban romantics
Publisher: Sovereign Classic
Published: 2019-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

EMER

Of all the people in the world we two,

And we alone, may watch together here,

Because we have loved him best.

EITHNE INGUBA

And is he dead?

EMER

Although they have dressed him out in his grave-clothes

And stretched his limbs, Cuchulain is not dead;

The very heavens when that day’s at hand,

So that his death may not lack ceremony,

Will throw out fires, and the earth grow red with blood.

There shall not be a scullion but foreknows it

Like the world’s end.

EITHNE INGUBA

How did he come to this?

EMER

Towards noon in the assembly of the kings

He met with one who seemed a while most dear.

The kings stood round; some quarrel was blown up;

He drove him out and killed him on the shore

At Baile’s tree, and he who was so killed

Was his own son begot on some wild woman

When he was young, or so I have heard it said;

And thereupon, knowing what man he had killed,

And being mad with sorrow, he ran out;

And after to his middle in the foam

With shield before him and with sword in hand,

He fought the deathless sea. The kings looked on

And not a king dared stretch an arm, or even

Dared call his name, but all stood wondering

In that dumb stupor like cattle in a gale,

Until at last, as though he had fixed his eyes

On a new enemy, he waded out

Until the water had swept over him;

But the waves washed his senseless image up

And laid it at this door.

EITHNE INGUBA

How pale he looks!

EMER

He is not dead.

EITHNE INGUBA

You have not kissed his lips

Nor laid his head upon your breast.

EMER

It may be

An image has been put into his place,

A sea-born log bewitched into his likeness,

Or some stark horseman grown too old to ride

Among the troops of Mananan, Son of the Sea,

Now that his joints are stiff.

EITHNE INGUBA

Cry out his name.

All that are taken from our sight, they say,

Loiter amid the scenery of their lives

For certain hours or days, and should he hear

He might, being angry drive the changeling out.

EMER

It is hard to make them hear amid their darkness,

And it is long since I could call him home;

I am but his wife, but if you cry aloud

With that sweet voice that is so dear to him

He cannot help but listen.

EITHNE INGUBA

He loves me best,

Being his newest love, but in the end

Will love the woman best who loved him first

And loved him through the years when love seemed lost.

EMER

I have that hope, the hope that some day and somewhere

We’ll sit together at the hearth again.

EITHNE INGUBA

Women like me when the violent hour is over

Are flung into some corner like old nut shells.

Cuchulain, listen.

EMER

No, not yet for first

I’ll cover up his face to hide the sea;

And throw new logs upon the hearth and stir

The half burnt logs until they break in flame.

Old Mananan’s unbridled horses come

Out of the sea and on their backs his horsemen

But all the enchantments of the dreaming foam

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 platform and moves her hand as though putting logs on a fire and stirring it into a blaze.

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