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
Are you drunk too? You are worse than Martin. You are a disgrace!
ANDREW.
Disgrace yourself! Coming here to be making an attack on me and
badgering me and disparaging me! And what about yourself that turned me
to be a hypocrite?
THOMAS.
What are you saying?
ANDREW.
You did, I tell you! Weren’t you always at me to be regular and to be
working and to be going through the day and the night without company
and to be thinking of nothing but the trade? What did I want with a
trade? I got a sight of the fairy gold one time in the mountains.
I would have found it again and brought riches from it but for you
keeping me so close to the work.
THOMAS.
Oh, of all the ungrateful creatures! You know well that I cherished
you, leading you to live a decent, respectable life.
ANDREW.
You never had respect for the ancient ways. It is after the mother you
take it, that was too soft and too lumpish, having too much of the
English in her blood. Martin is a Hearne like myself. It is he has the
generous heart! It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of me and force
me to do night-walking secretly, watching to be back by the setting of
the seven stars!
[_He begins to play his flute._
THOMAS.
I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! I will
have them lodged in gaol.
JOHNNY.
Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming. The pikes
will be up and the traders will go down!
_All_ seize THOMAS and sing._
When the Lion will lose his strength,
And the braket-thistle begin to pine,
The harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length,
Between the eight and the nine!
THOMAS.
Let me out of this, you villains!
NANNY.
We’ll make a sieve of holes of you, you old bag of treachery!
BIDDY.
How well you threatened us with gaol, you skim of a weasel’s milk!
JOHNNY.
You heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you may never die
till you’ll get a blue hag for a wife!
[_MARTIN comes back with lighted lamp._
MARTIN.
Let him go. [_They let THOMAS go, and fall back._] Spread out the
banner. The moment has come to begin the war.
JOHNNY.
Up with the Unicorn and destroy the Lion! Success to Johnny Gibbons and
all good men!
MARTIN.
Heap all those things together there. Heap those pieces of the coach
one upon another. Put that straw under them. It is with this flame I
will begin the work of destruction. All nature destroys and laughs.
THOMAS.
Destroy your own golden coach!
MARTIN [_kneeling before THOMAS_].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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