The Unicorn from the Stars and Other PlaysYeats, W. B. (William Butler)
General
The Unicorn from the Stars and Other Plays
Yeats, W. B. (William Butler)
Ireland -- Drama; Irish drama
[THOMAS _tries to stop him, but is prevented by tinkers_.
MARTIN _takes a wisp of straw and lights it._]
We will destroy all that can perish! It is only the soul that can
suffer no injury. The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of
the stars!
[_He throws his wisp into the heap. It blazes up._]
ACT III
SCENE: _Before dawn a few hours later. A wild, rocky place._ NANNY
_and_ BIDDY LALLY _squatting by fire. Rich stuffs, etc., strewn about._
PAUDEEN _sitting, watching by_ MARTIN, _who is lying, as if dead, a
sack over him._
NANNY [_to_ PAUDEEN]. Well, you are great heroes and great warriors
and great lads altogether to have put down the Browns the way you did,
yourselves and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the house
and have plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and the
grandeurs I brought away! Look at that now! [_Holds up a velvet
cloak._] It's a good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It's
the singers will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning from
their cattle in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it and
the buttons! It's my far-off cousins will be drawing from far and near!
BIDDY. There was not so much gold in it all as what they were saying
there was. Or maybe that fleet of Whiteboys had the place ransacked
before we ourselves came in. Bad cess to them that put it in my mind to
go gather up the full of my bag of horseshoes out of the forge. Silver
they were saying they were, pure white silver; and what are they in the
end but only hardened iron! A bad end to them! [_Flings away
horseshoes._] The time I will go robbing big houses again it will not
be in the light of the full moon I will go doing it, that does be
causing every common thing to shine out as if for a deceit and a
mockery. It's not shining at all they are at this time, but duck yellow
and dark.
NANNY. To leave the big house blazing after us, it was that crowned
all! Two houses to be burned to ashes in the one night. It is likely
the servant-girls were rising from the feathers, and the cocks crowing
from the rafters for seven miles around, taking the flames to be the
whitening of the dawn.
BIDDY. It is the lad is stretched beyond you have to be thankful to for
that. There was never seen a leader was his equal for spirit and for
daring! Making a great scatter of the guards the way he did! Running up
roofs and ladders, the fire in his hand, till you'd think he would be
apt to strike his head against the stars.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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