The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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      [He begins breaking the chair.

      My master will break up the sun and moon

      And quench the stars in the ancestral night

      And overturn the thrones of God and the angels.

ACT II.

       Table of Contents

      A great hall in the castle of the COUNTESS CATHLEEN. There is a large window at the farther end, through which the forest is visible. The wall to the right juts out slightly, cutting off an angle of the room. A flight of stone steps leads up to a small arched door in the jutting wall. Through the door can be seen a little oratory. The hall is hung with ancient tapestry, representing the loves and wars and huntings of the Fenian and Red Branch heroes. There are doors to the right and left. On the left side OONA sits, as if asleep, beside a spinning-wheel. The COUNTESS CATHLEEN stands farther back and more to the right, close to a group of the musicians, still in their fantastic dresses, who are playing a merry tune.

      CATHLEEN.

      Be silent, I am tired of tympan and harp,

      And tired of music that but cries ‘Sleep, sleep,’

      Till joy and sorrow and hope and terror are gone.

      [The COUNTESS CATHLEEN goes over to OONA.

      You were asleep?

      OONA.

      No, child, I was but thinking

      Why you have grown so sad.

      CATHLEEN.

      The famine frets me.

      OONA.

      I have lived now near ninety winters, child,

      And I have known three things no doctor cures—

      Love, loneliness, and famine; nor found refuge

      Other than growing old and full of sleep.

      See you where Oisin and young Niamh ride

      Wrapped in each other’s arms, and where the Fenians

      Follow their hounds along the fields of tapestry;

      How merry they lived once, yet men died then.

      Sit down by me, and I will chaunt the song

      About the Danaan nations in their raths

      That Aleel sang for you by the great door

      Before we lost him in the shadow of leaves.

      CATHLEEN.

      No, sing the song he sang in the dim light,

      When we first found him in the shadow of leaves,

      About King Fergus in his brazen car

      Driving with troops of dancers through the woods.

      [She crouches down on the floor, and lays her head on OONA’S knees.

      OONA.

      Dear heart, make a soft cradle of old tales,

      And songs, and music: wherefore should you sadden

      For wrongs you cannot hinder? The great God

      Smiling condemns the lost: be mirthful: He

      Bids youth be merry and old age be wise.

      CATHLEEN.

      Tympan and harp awaken wandering dreams.

      A VOICE [without].

      You may not see the Countess.

      ANOTHER VOICE.

      I must see her.

      [Sound of a short struggle. A SERVANT enters from door to R.

      SERVANT.

      The gardener is resolved to speak with you.

      I cannot stay him.

      CATHLEEN.

      You may come, Maurteen.

      [The GARDENER, an old man, comes in from the R., and the SERVANT goes out.

      GARDENER.

      Forgive my working clothes and the dirt on me.

      I bring ill words, your ladyship—too bad

      To send with any other.

      CATHLEEN.

      These bad times,

      Can any news be bad or any good?

      GARDENER.

      A crowd of ugly lean-faced rogues last night—

      And may God curse them!—climbed the garden wall.

      There is scarce an apple now on twenty trees,

      And my asparagus and strawberry beds

      Are trampled into clauber, and the boughs

      Of peach and plum-trees broken and torn down

      For some last fruit that hung there. My dog, too,

      My old blind Simon, him who had no tail,

      They murdered—God’s red anger seize them!

      CATHLEEN.

      I know how pears and all the tribe of apples

      Are daily in your love—how this ill chance

      Is sudden doomsday fallen on your year;

      So do not say no matter. I but say

      I blame the famished season, and not you.

      Then be not troubled.

      GARDENER.

      I thank your ladyship.

      CATHLEEN.

      What rumours and what portents of the famine?

      GARDENER.

      The yellow vapour, in whose folds it came,

      That СКАЧАТЬ