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
I partly guessed death was near him, and the queer shining look he
had in his two eyes, and he throwing sparks east and west through the
beams. I wonder now was it some inward wound he got, or did some hardy
lad of the Brownes give him a tip on the skull unknownst in the fight?
It was I myself found him, and the troop of the Whiteboys gone, and he
lying by the side of a wall as weak as if he had knocked a mountain. I
failed to waken him trying him with the sharpness of my nails, and his
head fell back when I moved it, and I knew him to be spent and gone.
BIDDY.
It’s a pity you not to have left him where he was lying and said no
word at all to Paudeen or to that son you have, that kept us back from
following on, bringing him here to this shelter on sacks and upon poles.
NANNY.
What way could I help letting a screech out of myself, and the life but
just gone out of him in the darkness, and not a living Christian by his
side but myself and the great God?
BIDDY.
It’s on ourselves the vengeance of the red soldiers will fall, they to
find us sitting here the same as hares in a tuft. It would be best for
us follow after the rest of the army of the Whiteboys.
NANNY.
Whisht! I tell you. The lads are cracked about him. To get but the wind
of the word of leaving him, it’s little but they’d knock the head off
the two of us. Whisht!
_Enter JOHNNY BACACH with candles._
JOHNNY [_standing over MARTIN_].
Wouldn’t you say now there was some malice or some venom in the air,
that is striking down one after another the whole of the heroes of the
Gael?
PAUDEEN.
It makes a person be thinking of the four last ends, death and
judgment, heaven and hell. Indeed and indeed my heart lies with him. It
is well I knew what man he was under his by-name and his disguise.
[_Sings._] Oh, Johnny Gibbons, it’s you were the prop to us.
You to have left us, we are put astray!
JOHNNY.
It is lost we are now and broken to the end of our days. There is no
satisfaction at all but to be destroying the English, and where now
will we get so good a leader again? Lay him out fair and straight upon
a stone, till I will let loose the secret of my heart keening him!
[_Sets out candles on a rock, propping them up with
stones._
NANNY.
Is it mould candles you have brought to set around him, Johnny Bacach?
It is great riches you should have in your pocket to be going to those
lengths and not to be content with dips.
JOHNNY.
It is lengths I will not be going to the time the life will be gone out
of your own body. It is not your corpse I will be wishful to hold in
honour the way I hold this corpse in honour.
NANNY.
That’s the way always, there will be grief and quietness in the house
if it is a young person has died, but funning and springing and
tricking one another if it is an old person’s corpse is in it. There is
no compassion at all for the old.
PAUDEEN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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