The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 3 (of 8): The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the StarsYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
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The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 3 (of 8): The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
[_Opening a press and taking out a bag and throwing it
to him._]
There is what is left of your money! The rest of it you have spent on
the coach. If you want to go, go, and I will not have to be annoyed
with you from this out.
ANDREW.
Come now with me, Thomas. The boy is foolish, but it will soon pass
over. He has not my sense to be giving attention to what you will say.
Come along now, leave him for awhile; leave him to me I say, it is I
will get inside his mind.
[_He leads THOMAS out. MARTIN bangs door angrily after
them and sits down, taking up lion and unicorn._
MARTIN.
I think it was some shining thing I saw. What was it?
ANDREW.
[_Opening door and putting in his head._]
Listen to me, Martin.
MARTIN.
Go away, no more talking; leave me alone.
ANDREW.
O, but wait. I understand you. Thomas doesn’t understand your thoughts,
but I understand them. Wasn’t I telling you I was just like you once?
MARTIN.
Like me? Did you ever see the other things, the things beyond?
ANDREW.
I did. It is not the four walls of the house keep me content. Thomas
doesn’t know. Oh, no, he doesn’t know.
MARTIN.
No, he has no vision.
ANDREW.
He has not, nor any sort of a heart for a frolic.
MARTIN.
He has never heard the laughter and the music beyond.
ANDREW.
He has not, nor the music of my own little flute. I have it hidden in
the thatch outside.
MARTIN.
Does the body slip from you as it does from me? They have not shut your
window into eternity?
ANDREW.
Thomas never shut a window I could not get through. I knew you were one
of my own sort. When I am sluggish in the morning, Thomas says, ‘Poor
Andrew is getting old.’ That is all he knows. The way to keep young is
to do the things youngsters do. Twenty years I have been slipping away,
and he never found me out yet!
MARTIN.
That is what they call ecstasy, but there is no word that can tell out
very plain what it means. That freeing of the mind from its thoughts,
those wonders we know when we put them into words; the words seem as
little like them as blackberries are like the moon and sun.
ANDREW.
I found that myself the time they knew me to be wild, and used to be
asking me to say what pleasure did I find in cards, and women, and
drink.
MARTIN.
You might help me to remember that vision I had this morning, to
understand it. The memory of it has slipped from me. Wait, it is coming
back, little by little. I know that I saw the unicorns trampling, and
then a figure, a many-changing figure, holding some bright thing.
I knew something was going to happen or to be said, something that
would make my whole life strong and beautiful like the rushing of the
unicorns, and then, and then—
JOHNNY BACACH’S _voice at window_.
A poor person I am, without food, without a way, without portion,
without costs, without a person or a stranger, without means, without
hope, without health, without warmth—
ANDREW [_looking towards window_].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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