Читать книгу The King's Threshold; and On Baile's Strand - Yeats William Butler, William Butler Yeats - Страница 3

King.

I welcome you that have the mastery

Of the two kinds of music; the one kind

Being like a woman, the other like a man;

Both you that understand stringed instruments,

And how to mingle words and notes together

So artfully, that all the art is but speech

Delighted with its own music; and you that carry

The long twisted horn and understand

The heady notes that being without words

Can hurry beyond time and fate and change;

For the high angels that drive the horse of time,

The golden one by day, by night the silver,

Are not more welcome to one that loves the world

For some fair woman’s sake.

I have called you hither

To save the life of your great master, Seanchan,

For all day long it has flamed up or flickered

To the fast-cooling hearth.

Senias.

When did he sicken?

Is it a fever that is wasting him?

King.

He did not sicken, but three days ago

He said he would not eat, and lay down there

And has not eaten since. Till yesterday

I thought that hunger and weakness had been enough,

But finding them too trifling and too light

To hold his mouth from biting at the grave

I called you hither, and have called others yet.

The girl he is to wed at harvest-time,

That should be of all living the most dear,

Is coming from the South, and had I known

Of any other neighbours or good friends

That might persuade him, I had brought them hither,

Even though I’d to ransack the world for them.

Senias.

What was it put him to this work, High King?

King.

You will call it no great matter. Three days ago

I yielded to the outcry of my courtiers,

Bishops, soldiers, and makers of the law,

Who long had thought it against their dignity

For a mere man of words to sit among them

At my own table; and when the meal was spread

I ordered Seanchan to good company,

But to a lower table; and when he pleaded

The poet’s right, established when the world

Was first established, I said that I was King

And made and unmade rights at my own pleasure.

And that it was the men who ruled the world,

And not the men who sang to it, who should sit

Where there was the most honour. My courtiers,

Bishops, soldiers, and makers of the law

Shouted approval, and amid that noise

Seanchan went out, and from that hour to this,

Although there is good food and drink beside him,

Has eaten nothing. If a man is wronged,

Or thinks that he is wronged, and will lie down

Upon another’s threshold until he dies,

The common people for all time to come

Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold,

Even though it is the King’s. He lies there now

Perishing; he is calling against my majesty,

That old custom that has no meaning in it,

And as he perishes, my name in the world

Is perishing also. I cannot give way

Because I am King, because if I give way

My nobles would call me a weakling, and it may be

The very throne be shaken; but should you

That are his friends speak to him and persuade him

To turn his mouth from the ill-savouring grave

And eat good food, he shall not lack my favour;

For I will give plough-land and grazing-land,

Or all but anything he has set his heart on.

It is not all because of my good name

I’d have him live, for I have found him a man

That might well hit the fancy of a king

Banished out of his country, or a woman’s,

Or any other’s that can judge a man

For what he is. But I that sit a throne,

And take my measure from the needs of the state,

Call his wild thought that over-runs the measure,

Making words more than deeds, and his proud will

That would unsettle all, most mischievous,

And he himself a most mischievous man.

Senias.

King, whether you did right or wrong in this

Let the King say, for all that I need say

Is that there’s nothing that cries out for death

In the withholding of that ancient right,

And that I will persuade him. Your own words

Had been enough persuasion were it not

That he is lost in dreams that hunger makes,

And therefore heedless, or lost in heedless sleep.

King.

I leave him to your love, that it may promise

Plough-lands and grass-lands, jewels and silken wear,

Or anything but that old right of the poets.

Senias.

The King did wrong to abrogate our right,

But Seanchan, who talks of dying for it,

Talks foolishly. Look at us, Seanchan,

Waken out of your dream and look at us,

Who have ridden under the moon and all the day,

Until the moon has all but come again,

That we might be beside you.

Seanchan.

I was but now

At Almhuin, in a great high-raftered house,

With Finn and Osgar. Odours of roast flesh

Rose round me and I saw the roasting spits,

And then the dream was broken, and I saw

Grania dividing salmon by a pool,

And then I was awakened by your voice.

Senias.

It is your hunger that makes you dream of flesh

Roasting, and for your hunger I could weep;

And yet the hunger of the crane that starves

Because the moonlight glittering on the pool

And flinging a pale shadow has made it shy,

Seems to me little more fantastical

Than this that’s blown into so great a trouble.

Seanchan.

[Who has turned away again.]

There is much truth in that, for all things change

At times, as if the moonlight altered them,

And my mind alters as if it were the crane’s;

For when the heavy body has grown weak

There’s nothing that can tether the wild mind

That being moonstruck and fantastical

Goes where it fancies. I had even thought

I knew your voice and face, but now the words

Are so unlikely that I needs must ask

Who is it that bids me put my hunger by?

Senias.

I am your oldest pupil, Seanchan;

The one that has been with you many years,

So many that you said at Candlemas

That I had almost done with school, and knew

All but all that poets understand.

Seanchan.

My oldest pupil. No, that cannot be;

For it is someone of the courtly crowds

That have been round about me from sunrise

And I am tricked by dreams, but I’ll refute them.

I asked the pupil that I loved the best,

At Candlemas, why poetry is honoured,

Wishing to know how he’d defend our craft

In distant lands among strange churlish Kings.

And he’d an answer.

Senias.

I said the poets hung

Images of the life that was in Eden

About the childbed of the world, that it,

Looking upon those images, might bear

Triumphant children; but why must I stand here

Repeating an old lesson while you starve?

Seanchan.

Tell on, for I begin to know the voice;

What evil thing will come upon the world

If the arts perish?

Senias.

If the arts should perish

The world that lacked them would be like a woman

That looking on the cloven lips of a hare

Brings forth a hare-lipped child.

Seanchan.

But that’s not all.

For when I asked you how a man should guard

Those images you had an answer also,

If you’re the man that you have claimed to be,

Comparing them to venerable things

God gave to men before he gave them wheat.

Senias.

I answered, and the word was half your own,

That he should guard them, as the men of Dea

Guard their four treasures, as the Grail King guards

His holy cup, or the pale righteous horse

The jewel that is underneath his horn,

Pouring out life for it, as one pours out

Sweet heady wine – but now I understand

You would refute me out of my own mouth;

And yet a place at table near the King

Is nothing of great moment, Seanchan.

How does so light a thing touch poetry?

Seanchan.

At Candlemas you called this poetry

One of the fragile mighty things of God

That die at an insult.

Senias.

[To other Pupils.] Give me some true answer.

For on that day we spoke about the court

And said that all that was insulted there

The world insulted, for the courtly life,

Being the first comely child of the world,

Is the world’s model. How shall I answer him?

Can you not give me some true argument?

I will not tempt him with a lying one.

Arias.

[Throwing himself at Seanchan’s feet.]

Why did you take me from my father’s fields?

If you would leave me now, what shall I love?

Where shall I go, what shall I set my hand to?

And why have you put music in my ears

If you would send me to the clattering houses?

I will throw down the trumpet and the harp,

For how could I sing verses or make music

With none to praise me and a broken heart?

Seanchan.

What was it that the poets promised you

If it was not their sorrow? Do not speak.

Have I not opened school on these bare steps,

And are not you the youngest of my scholars?

And I would have all know that when all falls

In ruin, poetry calls out in joy,

Being the scattering hand, the bursting pod,

The victim’s joy among the holy flame,

God’s laughter at the shattering of the world,

And now that joy laughs out and weeps and burns

On these bare steps.

Arias.

O Master, do not die.

Senias.

Trouble him with no useless argument.

Be silent; there is nothing we can do

Except find out the King and kneel to him

And beg our ancient right. These three have come

To say whatever we could say and more,

And fare as badly. Come, boy, that’s no use;

If it seem well that we beseech the King,

Lay down your harps and trumpets on the stones

In silence and come with me silently.

Come with slow footfalls and bow all your heads,

For a bowed head becomes a mourner best.

Cian.

Let’s show the food that’s in the basket.

Mayor.

[Who carries an Ogham stick.] No,

I must get through my speech or I’ll forget it;

Besides, there is no reason why he’d eat

Till he has heard my reasons.

Cian.

It were better

To show what we have brought him in the basket,

For we have nothing that he has not liked

From boyhood.

Brian.

For we have not brought kings’ food

That’s cooked for everybody and nobody.

Mayor.

You are not showing right respect to me,

Or to the people of Kinvara, when you wish

That something else should come before my message.

Seanchan.

What brings you here? I never sent for you.

Cian.

He must be famishing, he looks so pale.

We had better get the food out first. I tell you,

That we have brought the things he likes the best.

Mayor.

No, no; I lost a word at every cross road

And maybe if I do not speak it now

I’ll have forgot it.

Cian.

Well, out with it quickly.

Seanchan.

Why, what’s this foolery?

Mayor.

No foolery;

A message from the richest, best born townsman

Of your own town, and from your aged father.

Cian.

Run through it while I am getting out the food.

Mayor.

How was I to begin? What was the word

That was to keep it in my memory?

Wait, I have notched it on this Ogham stick.

“Chief poet,” “Ireland,” “Townsman”; that is it.

Chief poet of Ireland, when we heard that trouble

Had come between you and the King of Ireland

It plunged us in deep sorrow, part for you,

Our honoured townsman, part for our good town.

The King was said to be most friendly to us,

And we had reasons, as you’ll recollect,

For thinking that he was about to give

Those grazing lands inland we so much need,

Being pinched between the water and the rocks.

But now his friendliness being ill repaid

Will be turned from us and our town get nothing.

But there was something else – I’ll find the word

That was to keep it in my memory.

“Pride” – that’s the word, – we would not have you think,

Weighty as these considerations are,

That they have been as weighty in our minds

As our desire that one we take much pride in,

A man who has been an honour to our town,

Should live and prosper, therefore we beseech you

To give way in a matter of no moment,

A matter of mere sentiment, a trifle,

That we may always keep our pride in you.

Seanchan.

Their pride, their pride, what do they know of pride?

My pupils do not know it, for they beg

From the King’s favour what is theirs by right,

And how can men, that God has made so weak

They need a rich man’s favour every day,

Know anything of pride?

Cian.

[To Mayor.] You have spoken it wrongly.

You have forgotten something out of it about the cattle dying.

Mayor.

Maybe you do not know, being much away,

How many of our cattle died last winter

From lacking grass, and that there was much sickness

Because the poor had nothing but salt fish

To live upon. The people all came out

And stood about the doors as I went by.

Seanchan.

What would you have of me?

For there are men that shall be born at last

And find sweet nurture that they may have voices

Even in anger like the strings of harps.

Yet how could they be born to majesty

If I had never made the golden cradle?

Mayor.

What is it? “Father” – “Mother”; that is it;

Your father sends this message.

Cian.

He is listening.

Mayor.

He says that he is old and that he needs you,

And that the people will be pointing at him

And he not able to lift up his head

If you should turn the King’s favour away.

And he adds to it, that he cared you well,

And you in your young age, and that it’s right

That you should care him now.

Cian.

And when he spoke

He cried because the stiffness of his bones

Prevented him from coming.

Mayor.

But your mother

Has sent no message, for when they had told her

The way it is between you and the King

She said, “No message can do any good,

He will not send the answer that you want;

We cannot change him,” and she went indoors,

Lay down upon her bed and turned her face

Out of the light. And thereupon your father

Said, “Tell him how she is, and that she sends

No message.” I have nothing more to say.

Cian and Brian, you can set out the food.

Mayor.

I have a horse waiting outside the town

To bring me home, and all the neighbours wait

Your answer. What answer am I to bring?

Seanchan.

Give them my answer – no, I have no answer:

My mother knew it.

Mayor.

Maybe you have forgotten

That all our fields are so heaped up with stones

That the goats famish, and the mowers mow

With knives, and that the King half promised us —

Seanchan.

Thrust that old cloak of yours into your mouth

Till it’s done gabbling.

Mayor.

But —

Cian.

You have said enough;

I knew that you would never speak it right.

Seanchan.

Our mothers know us, they know us to the bone,

They knew us before birth, and that is why

They know us even better than the sweethearts

Upon whose breasts we have lain.

Brian.

We have brought your honour

The food that you have always liked the best,

Young pigeons from Kinvara, and watercress

Out of the stream that’s by the blessed well,

And dulse from Duras. Here is the dulse, your honour,

It is wholesome, and has the good taste of the sea.

Seanchan.

O Brian, you would spread the table for me

As you would spread it when I was in my childhood;

But all that’s finished.

Mayor.

I knew he would not care

For country things now that he’s grown accustomed

To the King’s dishes. I told Brian too

He’d have his pains for nothing. But he’s old.

And what dishes! Venison from Slieve Echtge

Fattened with poor men’s crops; flesh of wild pig;

Not fat nor lean, but streaky and right well cured;

Bread that’s the whitest that I’ve ever seen.

Cian.

You’re in the right, you’re in the right, he will not eat.

Mayor.

Bring him some wine, it will give him strength to eat.

No wonder if the King is proud and merry,

And keeps all day in the saddle, when even I