The Complete Works. William Butler Yeats

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СКАЧАТЬ there in this hard way of living,

      Unless we drain more flagons in a year

      And kiss more lips than lasting peaceable men

      In their long lives? If you’ll be of our troop

      You’ll be as good a leader.

      AIBRIC.

      Be of your troop!

      No, nor with a hundred men like you,

      When Forgael’s in the other scale. I’d say it

      Even if Forgael had not been my master

      From earliest childhood, but that being so,

      If you will draw that sword out of its scabbard

      I’ll give my answer.

      FIRST SAILOR.

      You have awaked him.

      [To SECOND SAILOR.

      We’d better go, for we have lost this chance.

      [They go out.

      FORGAEL.

      Have the birds passed us? I could hear your voice.

      But there were others.

      AIBRIC.

      I have seen nothing pass.

      FORGAEL.

      You’re certain of it? I never wake from sleep

      But that I am afraid they may have passed,

      For they’re my only pilots. If I lost them

      Straying too far into the north or south,

      I’d never come upon the happiness

      That has been promised me. I have not seen them

      These many days; and yet there must be many

      Dying at every moment in the world,

      And flying towards their peace.

      AIBRIC.

      Put by these thoughts,

      And listen to me for awhile. The sailors

      Are plotting for your death.

      FORGAEL.

      Have I not given

      More riches than they ever hoped to find?

      And now they will not follow, while I seek

      The only riches that have hit my fancy.

      AIBRIC.

      What riches can you find in this waste sea

      Where no ship sails, where nothing that’s alive

      Has ever come but those man-headed birds,

      Knowing it for the world’s end?

      FORGAEL.

      Where the world ends

      The mind is made unchanging, for it finds

      Miracle, ecstasy, the impossible hope,

      The flagstone under all, the fire of fires,

      The roots of the world.

      AIBRIC.

      Who knows that shadows

      May not have driven you mad for their own sport?

      FORGAEL.

      Do you, too, doubt me? Have you joined their plot?

      AIBRIC.

      No, no, do not say that. You know right well

      That I will never lift a hand against you.

      FORGAEL.

      Why should you be more faithful than the rest,

      Being as doubtful?

      AIBRIC.

      I have called you master

      Too many years to lift a hand against you.

      FORGAEL.

      Maybe it is but natural to doubt me.

      You’ve never known, I’d lay a wager on it,

      A melancholy that a cup of wine,

      A lucky battle, or a woman’s kiss

      Could not amend.

      AIBRIC.

      I have good spirits enough.

      I’ve nothing to complain of but heartburn,

      And that is cured by a boiled liquorice root.

      FORGAEL.

      If you will give me all your mind awhile—

      All, all, the very bottom of the bowl—

      I’ll show you that I am made differently,

      That nothing can amend it but these waters,

      Where I am rid of life—the events of the world—

      What do you call it?—that old promise-breaker,

      The cozening fortune-teller that comes whispering,

      ‘You will have all you have wished for when you have earned

      Land for your children or money in a pot.’

      And when we have it we are no happier,

      Because of that old draught under the door,

      Or creaky shoes. And at the end of all

      We have been no better off than Seaghan the fool,

      That never did a hand’s turn. Aibric! Aibric!

      We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living

      Breathe on the burnished mirror of the world,

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