The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 4 (of 8): The Hour-glass. Cathleen ni Houlihan. The Golden Helmet. The Irish Dramatic MovementYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
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The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 4 (of 8): The Hour-glass. Cathleen ni Houlihan. The Golden Helmet. The Irish Dramatic Movement
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
And what happens then?
FOOL.
Then all in a minute one smells summer flowers, and tall people go by,
happy and laughing, and their clothes are the colour of burning sods.
WISE MAN.
Is it long since you have seen them, Teig the Fool?
FOOL.
Not long, glory be to God! I saw one coming behind me just now. It was
not laughing, but it had clothes the colour of burning sods, and there
was something shining about its head.
WISE MAN.
Well, there are your four pennies. You, a fool, say ‘Glory be to God,’
but before I came the wise men said it.
FOOL.
Four pennies! That means a great deal of luck. Great teacher, I have
brought you plenty of luck! [_He goes out shaking the bag._
WISE MAN.
Though they call him Teig the Fool, he is not more foolish than
everybody used to be, with their dreams and their preachings and
their three worlds; but I have overthrown their three worlds with the
seven sciences. With Philosophy that was made from the lonely star, I
have taught them to forget Theology; with Architecture, I have hidden
the ramparts of their cloudy heaven; with Music, the fierce planets’
daughter whose hair is always on fire, and with Grammar that is the
moon’s daughter, I have shut their ears to the imaginary harpings
and speech of the angels; and I have made formations of battle with
Arithmetic that have put the hosts of heaven to the rout. But, Rhetoric
and Dialectic, that have been born out of the light star and out of
the amorous star, you have been my spearman and my catapult! Oh! my
swift horsemen! Oh! my keen darting arguments, it is because of you
that I have overthrown the hosts of foolishness! [_An ANGEL, in a dress
the colour of embers, and carrying a blossoming apple-bough in her
hand and a gilded halo about her head, stands upon the threshold._]
Before I came, men’s minds were stuffed with folly about a heaven
where birds sang the hours, and about angels that came and stood upon
men’s thresholds. But I have locked the visions into heaven and turned
the key upon them. Well, I must consider this passage about the two
countries. My mother used to say something of the kind. She would
say that when our bodies sleep our souls awake, and that whatever
withers here ripens yonder, and that harvests are snatched from us
that they may feed invisible people. But the meaning of the book may
be different, for only fools and women have thoughts like that; their
thoughts were never written upon the walls of Babylon. I must ring
the bell for my pupils. [_He sees the ANGEL._] What are you? Who are
you? I think I saw some that were like you in my dreams when I was a
child—that bright thing, that dress that is the colour of embers! But I
have done with dreams, I have done with dreams.
ANGEL.
I am the Angel of the Most High God.
WISE MAN.
Why have you come to me?
ANGEL.
I have brought you a message.
WISE MAN.
What message have you got for me?
ANGEL.
You will die within the hour. You will die when the last grains have
fallen in this glass.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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