Poems. W. B. Yeats

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      My curse upon the beggars, my curse upon them!

      TEIG

      And the last penny gone.

      SHEMUS

      When the hen's gone,

       What can we do but live on sorrel and dock,

       And dandelion, till our mouths are green?

      MARY

      God, that to this hour's found bit and sup,

       Will cater for us still.

      SHEMUS

      His kitchen's bare.

       There were five doors that I looked through this day

       And saw the dead and not a soul to wake them.

      MARY

      Maybe He'd have us die because He knows,

       When the ear is stopped and when the eye is stopped,

       That every wicked sight is hid from the eye,

       And all fool talk from the ear.

      SHEMUS

      Who's passing there?

       And mocking us with music?

      (A stringed instrument without.)

      TEIG

      A young man plays it,

       There's an old woman and a lady with him.

      SHEMUS

      What is the trouble of the poor to her?

       Nothing at all or a harsh radishy sauce

       For the day's meat.

      MARY

      God's pity on the rich.

       Had we been through as many doors, and seen

       The dishes standing on the polished wood

       In the wax candle light, we'd be as hard,

       And there's the needle's eye at the end of all.

      SHEMUS

      My curse upon the rich.

      TEIG

      They're coming here.

      SHEMUS

      Then down upon that stool, down quick, I say,

       And call up a whey face and a whining voice,

       And let your head be bowed upon your knees.

      MARY

      Had I but time to put the place to rights.

      (CATHLEEN, OONA, and ALEEL enter.)

      CATHLEEN

      God save all here. There is a certain house,

       An old grey castle with a kitchen garden,

       A cider orchard and a plot for flowers,

       Somewhere among these woods.

      MARY

      We know it, lady.

       A place that's set among impassable walls

       As though world's trouble could not find it out.

      CATHLEEN

      It may be that we are that trouble, for we—

       Although we've wandered in the wood this hour—

       Have lost it too, yet I should know my way,

       For I lived all my childhood in that house.

      MARY

      Then you are Countess Cathleen?

      CATHLEEN

      And this woman,

       Oona, my nurse, should have remembered it,

       For we were happy for a long time there.

      OONA

      The paths are overgrown with thickets now,

       Or else some change has come upon my sight.

      CATHLEEN

      And this young man, that should have known the woods—

       Because we met him on their border but now,

       Wandering and singing like a wave of the sea—

       Is so wrapped up in dreams of terrors to come

       That he can give no help.

      MARY

      You have still some way,

       But I can put you on the trodden path

       Your servants take when they are marketing.

       But first sit down and rest yourself awhile,

       For my old fathers served your fathers, lady,

       Longer than books can tell—and it were strange

       If you and yours should not be welcome here.

      CATHLEEN

      And it were stranger still were I ungrateful

       For such kind welcome—but I must be gone,

       For the night's gathering in.

      SHEMUS

      It is a long while

       Since I've set eyes on bread or on what buys it.

      CATHLEEN

      So you are starving even in this wood,

       Where I had thought I would find nothing changed.

       But that's a dream, for the old worm o' the world

       Can eat its way into what place it pleases.

      (She gives money.)

      TEIG

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