The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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      I have grown weary of my days in the world

      Because I do not serve him.

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      More of this

      When we have eaten, for we love right well

      A merry meal, a warm and leaping fire

      And easy hearts.

      SHEMUS.

      Come, Maire, and cook the wolf.

      MAIRE.

      I will not cook for you.

      SHEMUS.

      Maire is mad.

      [TEIG and SHEMUS stand up and stagger about.

      SHEMUS.

      That wine is the suddenest wine man ever tasted.

      MAIRE.

      I will not cook for you: you are not human:

      Before you came two horned owls looked at us;

      The dog bayed, and the tongue of Shemus maddened.

      When you came in the Virgin’s blessed shrine

      Fell from its nail, and when you sat down here

      You poured out wine as the wood sidheogs do

      When they’d entice a soul out of the world.

      Why did you come to us? Was not death near?

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      We are two merchants.

      MAIRE.

      If you be not demons,

      Go and give alms among the starving poor,

      You seem more rich than any under the moon.

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      If we knew where to find deserving poor,

      We would give alms.

      MAIRE.

      Then ask of Father John.

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      We know the evils of mere charity,

      And have been planning out a wiser way.

      Let each man bring one piece of merchandise.

      MAIRE.

      And have the starving any merchandise?

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      We do but ask what each man has.

      MAIRE.

      Merchants,

      Their swine and cattle, fields and implements,

      Are sold and gone.

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      They have not sold all yet.

      MAIRE.

      What have they?

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      They have still their souls.

      [MAIRE shrieks. He beckons to TEIG and SHEMUS.

      Come hither.

      See you these little golden heaps? Each one

      Is payment for a soul. From charity

      We give so great a price for those poor flames.

      Say to all men we buy men’s souls—away.

      [They do not stir.

      This pile is for you and this one here for you.

      MAIRE.

      Shemus and Teig, Teig—

      TEIG.

      Out of the way.

      [SHEMUS and TEIG take the money.

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      Cry out at cross-roads and at chapel doors

      And market-places that we buy men’s souls,

      Giving so great a price that men may live

      In mirth and ease until the famine ends.

      [TEIG and SHEMUS go out.

      MAIRE [kneeling].

      Destroyers of souls, may God destroy you quickly!

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      No curse can overthrow the immortal demons.

      MAIRE.

      You shall at last dry like dry leaves, and hang

      Nailed like dead vermin to the doors of God.

      FIRST MERCHANT.

      You shall be ours. This famine shall not cease.

      You shall eat grass, and dock, and dandelion,

      And fail till this stone threshold seem a wall,

      And when your hands can scarcely drag your body

      We shall be near you.

      [To SECOND MERCHANT.

      Bring the meal out.

      [The SECOND MERCHANT brings the bag of meal from the pantry.

      Burn it. [MAIRE faints.

      Now she has swooned, our faces go unscratched;

      Bring me the gray hen, too.

      The SECOND MERCHANT goes out through the door and returns with the hen strangled. He flings it on the floor. While he is away the FIRST MERCHANT makes up the fire. The FIRST MERCHANT then fetches the pan of milk from the pantry, and spills it on the ground. He returns, and brings out the wolf, and throws it down by the hen.

      These need much burning.

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