The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 7 (of 8): The Secret Rose. Rosa Alchemica. The Tables of the Law. The Adoration of the Magi. John Sherman and DhoyaYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 7 (of 8): The Secret Rose. Rosa Alchemica. The Tables of the Law. The Adoration of the Magi. John Sherman and Dhoya
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
English literature -- Irish authors
Costello went on towards the head of the procession, passing men who
looked at him with fierce eyes, and only vaguely understanding what
he had heard, for now that he had lost the understanding that belongs
to good health, it seemed impossible that a gentleness and a beauty
which had been so long the world’s heart could pass away. Presently he
stopped and asked again whose burying it was, and a man answered: ‘We
are carrying Dermott’s daughter Winny whom you murdered, to be buried
in the island of the Holy Trinity,’ and the man stooped and picked up
a stone and cast it at Costello, striking him on the cheek and making
the blood flow out over his face. Costello went on scarcely feeling the
blow, and coming to those about the coffin, shouldered his way into the
midst of them, and laying his hand upon the coffin, asked in a loud
voice: ‘Who is in this coffin?’
The three old Dermotts from the Ox Mountains caught up stones and bid
those about them do the same; and he was driven from the road, covered
with wounds, and but for the priests would surely have been killed.
When the procession had passed on, Costello began to follow again, and
saw from a distance the coffin laid upon a large boat, and those about
it get into other boats, and the boats move slowly over the water to
Insula Trinitatis; and after a time he saw the boats return and their
passengers mingle with the crowd upon the bank, and all disperse by
many roads and boreens. It seemed to him that Winny was somewhere on
the island smiling gently as of old, and when all had gone he swam
in the way the boats had been rowed and found the new-made grave
beside the ruined Abbey of the Holy Trinity, and threw himself upon
it, calling to Oona to come to him. Above him the square ivy leaves
trembled, and all about him white moths moved over white flowers, and
sweet odours drifted through the dim air.
He lay there all that night and through the day after, from time to
time calling her to come to him, but when the third night came he had
forgotten, worn out with hunger and sorrow, that her body lay in the
earth beneath; but only knew she was somewhere near and would not come
to him.
Just before dawn, the hour when the peasants hear his ghostly voice
crying out, his pride awoke and he called loudly: ‘Winny, daughter of
Dermott of the Sheep, if you do not come to me I will go and never
return to the island of the Holy Trinity,’ and before his voice had
died away a cold and whirling wind had swept over the island and he saw
many figures rushing past, women of the Sidhe with crowns of silver and
dim floating drapery; and then Oona, but no longer smiling gently, for
she passed him swiftly and angrily, and as she passed struck him upon
the face crying: ‘Then go and never return.’
He would have followed, and was calling out her name, when the whole
glimmering company rose up into the air, and, rushing together in the
shape of a great silvery rose, faded into the ashen dawn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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