Who did not understand me when I taught,
Or did not listen.
BRIDGET
It is a hard thing to be married to a man of learning that must always
be having arguments.
[_She goes out._
WISE MAN
Strange that I should be blind to the great secret,
And that so simple a man might write it out
Upon a blade of grass or bit of rush
With naught but berry juice, and laugh to himself
Writing it out, because it was so simple.
[_Enter Bridget followed by the Fool._
FOOL
Give me something; give me a penny to buy bacon in the shops and nuts in
the market, and strong drink for the time when the sun is weak.
BRIDGET
I have no pennies. (_To Wise Man_) Your pupils cannot find anybody to
argue with you. There's nobody in the whole country with belief enough
for a lover's oath. Can't you be quiet now, and not always wanting to
have arguments? It must be terrible to have a mind like that.
WISE MAN
Then I am lost indeed.
BRIDGET
Leave me alone now, I have to make the bread for you and the children.
[_She goes into kitchen._
WISE MAN
Children, children!
BRIDGET
Your father wants you, run to him.
[_Children run in._
WISE MAN
Come to me, children. Do not be afraid.
I want to know if you believe in Heaven,
God or the soul--no, do not tell me yet;
You need not be afraid I shall be angry,
Say what you please--so that it is your thought--
I wanted you to know before you spoke,
That I shall not be angry.
FIRST CHILD
We have not forgotten, Father.
SECOND CHILD
Oh no, Father.
BOTH CHILDREN
(_As if repeating a lesson_) There is nothing we cannot see, nothing we
cannot touch.
FIRST CHILD
Foolish people used to say that there was, but you have taught us better.
WISE MAN
Go to your mother, go--yet do not go.
What can she say? If I am dumb you are lost;
And yet, because the sands are running out,
I have but a moment to show it all in. Children,
The sap would die out of the blades of grass
Had they a doubt. They understand it all,
Being the fingers of God's certainty,
Yet can but make their sign into the air;
But could they find their tongues they'd show it all;
But what am I to say that am but one,
When they are millions and they will not speak--
[_Children have run out._
But they are gone; what made them run away?
[_The Fool comes in with a dandelion._
Look at me, tell me if my face is changed,
Is there a notch of the fiend's nail upon it
Already? Is it terrible to sight?
Because the moment's near.
[_Going to glass._
I dare not look,
I dare not know the moment when they come.
No, no, I dare not. (_Covers glass._)
Will there be a footfall,
Or will there be a sort of rending sound,
Or else a cracking, as though an iron claw
Had gripped the threshold stone?
[_Fool has begun to blow the dandelion._
What are you doing?
FOOL
Wait a minute--four--five--six--
WISE MAN
What are you doing that for?
FOOL
I am blowing the dandelion to find out what hour it is.
WISE MAN
You have heard everything, and that is why
You'd find what hour it is--you'd find that out,
That you may look upon a fleet of devils
Dragging my soul away. You shall not stop,
I will have no one here when they come in,
I will have no one sitting there--no one--
And yet--and yet--there is something strange about you.
I half remember something. What is it?
Do you believe in God and in the soul?
FOOL
So you ask me now. I thought when you were asking your pupils, 'Will he
ask Teigue the Fool? Yes, he will, he will; no, he will not--yes, he
will.' But Teigue will say nothing. Teigue will say nothing.
WISE MAN
Tell me quickly.
FOOL
I said, 'Teigue knows everything, not even the green-eyed cats and the
hares that milk the cows have Teigue's wisdom'; but Teigue will not speak,
he says nothing.
WISE MAN
Speak, speak, for underneath the cover there
The sand is running from the upper glass,
And when the last grain's through, I shall be lost.
FOOL
I will not speak. I will not tell you what is in my mind. I will not
tell you what is in my bag. You might steal away my thoughts. I met a
bodach on the road yesterday, and he said, 'Teigue, tell me how many
pennies are in your bag; I will wager three pennies that there are
not twenty pennies in your bag; let me put in my hand and count them.'
But I gripped the bag the tighter, and when I go to sleep at night I
hide the bag where nobody knows.
WISE MAN
There's but one pinch of sand, and I am lost
If you are not he I seek.
FOOL
O, what a lot the Fool knows, but he says nothing.
WISE MAN
Yes, I remember now. You spoke of angels.
You said but now that you had seen an angel.
You are the one I seek, and I am saved.
FOOL
Oh no. How could poor Teigue see angels? Oh, Teigue tells one tale here,
another there, and everybody gives him pennies. If Teigue had not his
tales he would starve.
[_He breaks away and goes out._
WISE MAN
The last hope is gone,
And now that it's too late I see it all,
We perish into God and sink away
Into reality--the rest's a dream.
[_The Fool comes back._
FOOL
There was one there--there by the threshold stone, waiting there; and he
said, 'Go in, Teigue, and tell him everything that he asks you. He will
give you a penny if you tell him.'
WISE MAN
I know enough, that know God's will prevails.
FOOL
Waiting till the moment had come--That is what the one out there was
saying, but I might tell you what you asked. That is what he was saying.
WISE MAN
Be silent. May God's will prevail on the instant,
Although His will be my eternal pain.
I have no question:
It is enough, I know what fixed the station
Of star and cloud.
And knowing all, I cry
That what so God has willed
On the instant be fulfilled,
Though that be my damnation.
The stream of the world has changed its course,
And with the stream my thoughts have run
Into some cloudy thunderous spring
That is its mountain source--
Aye, to some frenzy of the mind,
For all that we have done's undone,
Our speculation but as the wind.
[_He dies._
FOOL
Wise man--Wise man, wake up and I will tell you everything for a penny.
It is I, poor Teigue the Fool. Why don't you wake up, and say, 'There
is a penny for you, Teigue'? No, no, you will say nothing. You and I,
we are the two fools, we know everything, but we will not speak.
[_Angel enters holding a casket._
O, look what has come from his mouth! O, look what has come from his
mouth--the white butterfly! He is dead, and I have taken his soul in my
hands; but I know why you open the lid of that golden box. I must give
it to you. There then, (_he puts butterfly in casket_) he has gone
through his pains, and you will open the lid in the Garden of Paradise.
(_He closes curtain and remains outside it._) He is gone, he is gone,
he is gone, but come in, everybody in the world, and look at me.
'I hear the wind a blow
I hear the grass a grow,
And all that I know, I know.'
But I will not speak, I will run away.
[_He goes out._
* * * * *
NOTES
PREFATORY POEM
'Free of the ten and four' is an error I cannot now correct, without
more rewriting than I have a mind for. Some merchant in Villon, I forget
the reference, was 'free of the ten and four.' Irish merchants exempted
from certain duties by the Irish Parliament were, unless memory deceives
me again for I am writing away from books, 'free of the eight and six.'
POEMS BEGINNING WITH THAT 'TO A WEALTHY MAN' AND ENDING WITH THAT
'TO A SHADE'
During the thirty years or so during which I have been reading Irish
newspapers, three public controversies have stirred my imagination. The
first was the Parnell controversy. There were reasons to justify a man's
joining either party, but there were none to justify, on one side or
on the other, lying accusations forgetful of past service, a frenzy of
detraction. And another was the dispute over 'The Playboy.' There were
reasons for opposing as for supporting that violent, laughing thing,
but none for the lies, for the unscrupulous rhetoric spread against
it in Ireland, and from Ireland to America. The third prepared for the
Corporation's refusal of a building for Sir Hugh Lane's famous collection
of pictures.
One could respect the argument that Dublin, with much poverty and many
slums, could not afford the L22,000 the building was to cost the city,
but not the minds that used it. One frenzied man compared the pictures
to Troy horse which 'destroyed a city,' and innumerable correspondents
described Sir Hugh Lane and those who had subscribed many thousands to
give Dublin paintings by Corot, Manet, Monet, Degas, and Renoir, as
'self-seekers,' 'self-advertisers,' 'picture-dealers,' 'log-rolling
cranks and faddists,' and one clerical paper told 'picture-dealer Lane'
to take himself and his pictures out of that. A member of the Corporation
said there were Irish artists who could paint as good if they had a
mind to, and another described a half-hour in the temporary gallery in
Harcourt Street as the most dismal of his life. Some one else asked
instead of these eccentric pictures to be given pictures 'like those
beautiful productions displayed in the windows of our city picture
shops.' Another thought that we would all be more patriotic if we
devoted our energy to fighting the Insurance Act. Another would not
hang them in his kitchen, while yet another described the vogue of
French impressionist painting as having gone to such a length among
'log-rolling enthusiasts' that they even admired 'works that were
rejected from the Salon forty years ago by the finest critics in the
world.'
The first serious opposition began in the _Irish Catholic_, the chief
Dublin clerical paper, and Mr. William Murphy, the organiser of the
recent lock-out and Mr. Healy's financial supporter in his attack upon
Parnell, a man of great influence, brought to its support a few days
later his newspapers _The Evening Herald_ and _The Irish Independent_,
the most popular of Irish daily papers. He replied to my poem 'To a
Wealthy Man' (I was thinking of a very different wealthy man) from what
he described as 'Paudeen's point of view,' and 'Paudeen's point of view'
it was. The enthusiasm for 'Sir Hugh Lane's Corots'--one paper spelled
the name repeatedly 'Crot'--being but 'an exotic fashion,' waited 'some
satirist like Gilbert' who 'killed the aesthetic craze,' and as for the
rest 'there were no greater humbugs in the world than art critics and
so-called experts.' As the first avowed reason for opposition, the
necessities of the poor got but a few lines, not so many certainly as the
objection of various persons to supply Sir Hugh Lane with 'a monument
at the city's expense,' and as the gallery was supported by Mr. James
Larkin, the chief Labour leader, and important slum workers, I assume
that the purpose of the opposition was not exclusively charitable.
These controversies, political, literary, and artistic, have showed that
neither religion nor politics can of itself create minds with enough
receptivity to become wise, or just and generous enough to make a
nation. Other cities have been as stupid--Samuel Butler laughs at
shocked Montreal for hiding the Discobolus in a cellar--but Dublin is
the capital of a nation, and an ancient race has nowhere else to look
for an education. Goethe in _Wilhelm Meister_ describes a saintly and
naturally gracious woman, who getting into a quarrel over some trumpery
detail of religious observance, grows--she and all her little religious
community--angry and vindictive. In Ireland I am constantly reminded of
that fable of the futility of all discipline that is not of the whole
being. Religious Ireland--and the pious Protestants of my childhood were
signal examples--thinks of divine things as a round of duties separated
from life and not as an element that may be discovered in all circumstance
and emotion, while political Ireland sees the good citizen but as a man
who holds to certain opinions and not as a man of good will. Against all
this we have but a few educated men and the remnants of an old traditional
culture among the poor. Both were stronger forty years ago, before the
rise of our new middle class which showed as its first public event,
during the nine years of the Parnellite split, how base at moments of
excitement are minds without culture. 1914.
'Romantic Ireland's dead and gone' sounds old-fashioned now. It seemed
true in 1913, but I did not foresee 1916. The late Dublin Rebellion,
whatever one can say of its wisdom, will long be remembered for its
heroism. 'They weighed so lightly what they gave,' and gave too in some
cases without hope of success. July 1916.
THE DOLLS
The fable for this poem came into my head while I was giving some
lectures in Dublin. I had noticed once again how all thought among us is
frozen into 'something other than human life.' After I had made the poem,
I looked up one day into the blue of the sky, and suddenly imagined, as
if lost in the blue of the sky, stiff figures in procession. I remembered
that they were the habitual image suggested by blue sky, and looking for
a second fable called them 'The Magi', complimentary forms to those
enraged dolls.
THE HOUR-GLASS
A friend suggested to me the subject of this play, an Irish folk-tale
from Lady Wilde's _Ancient Legends_. I have for years struggled with
something which is charming in the naive legend but a platitude on the
stage. I did not discover till a year ago that if the wise man humbled
himself to the fool and received salvation as his reward, so much more
powerful are pictures than words, no explanatory dialogue could set the
matter right. I was faintly pleased when I converted a music-hall singer
and kept him going to Mass for six weeks, so little responsibility does
one feel for those to whom one has never been introduced; but I was
always ashamed when I saw any friend of my own in the theatre. Now I
have made my philosopher accept God's will, whatever it is, and find his
courage again, and helped by the elaboration of verse, have so changed
the fable that it is not false to my own thoughts of the world.
* * * * *
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End of Project Gutenberg's Responsibilities, by William Butler Yeats