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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’s 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.

When did he sicken?

Is it a fever that is wasting him?

No fever or sickness. He has chosen death:

Refusing to eat or drink, that he may bring

Disgrace upon me; for there is a custom,

An old and foolish custom, that if a man

Be wronged, or think that he is wronged, and starve

Upon another’s threshold till he die,

The common people, for all time to come,

Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold,

Even though it be the King’s.

My head whirls round;

I do not know what I am to think or say.

I owe you all obedience, and yet

How can I give it, when the man I have loved

More than all others, thinks that he is wronged

So bitterly, that he will starve and die

Rather than bear it? Is there any man

Will throw his life away for a light issue?

It is but fitting that you take his side

Until you understand how light an issue

Has put us by the ears. 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 amongst them

At my own table. When the meal was spread,

I ordered Seanchan to a lower table;

And when he pleaded for the poets’ right,

Established at the establishment of the world,

I said that I was King, and that all rights

Had their original fountain in some king,

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.

I can breathe again.

You have taken a great burden from my mind,

For that old custom’s not worth dying for.

Persuade him to eat or drink. 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 all my hope’s in you,

And certain of his neighbours and good friends

That I have sent for. While he is lying there

Perishing, my good name in the world

Is perishing also. I cannot give way,

Because I am King. Because if I gave way,

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

The very throne be shaken.

I will persuade him.

Your words had been enough persuasion, King;

But being lost in sleep or reverie,

He cannot hear them.

Make him eat or drink.

Nor is it all because of my good name

I’d have him do it, for he is 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 overruns the measure,

Making words more than deeds, and his proud will

That would unsettle all, most mischievous,

And he himself a most mischievous man.

Promise a house with grass and tillage land,

An annual payment, jewels and silken ware,

Or anything but that old right of the poets.

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.

I was but now

In 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 stream.

Hunger has made you dream of roasting flesh;

And though I all but weep to think of it,

The hunger of the crane, that starves himself

At the full moon because he is afraid

Of his own shadow and the glittering water,

Seems to me little more fantastical

Than this of yours.

Why, that’s the very truth.

It is as though the moon changed everything —

Myself and all that I can hear and see;

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.

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.

My oldest pupil? No, that cannot be,

For it is some one of the courtly crowds

That have been round about me from sunrise,

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

At Candlemas I bid that pupil tell me

Why poetry is honoured, wishing to know

If he had any weighty argument

For distant countries and strange, churlish kings.

What did he answer?

I said the poets hung

Images of the life that was in Eden

About the child-bed 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?

Tell on, for I begin to know the voice.

What evil thing will come upon the world

If the Arts perish?

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.

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.

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?

At Candlemas you called this poetry

One of the fragile, mighty things of God,

That die at an insult.

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.

O, tell him that the lovers of his music

Have need of him.

But I am labouring

For some that shall be born in the nick o’ time,

And find sweet nurture, that they may have voices,

Even in anger, like the strings of harps;

And how could they be born to majesty

If I had never made the golden cradle?

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?

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.

O master, do not die!

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.

For here are some

To say whatever we could say and more,

And fare as badly. Come, boy, that is 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.

‘Chief Poet,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Townsman,’ ‘Grazing land,’

Those are the words I have to keep in mind —

‘Chief Poet,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Townsman,’ ‘Grazing land.’

I have the words. They are all upon the Ogham.

‘Chief Poet,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Townsman,’ ‘Grazing land.’

But what’s their order?

The King were rightly served

If Seanchan drove his good luck away.

What’s there about a king, that’s in the world

From birth to burial like another man,

That he should change old customs, that were in it

As long as ever the world has been a world?

If I were king I would not meddle with him,

For there is something queer about a poet.

I knew of one that would be making rhyme

Under a thorn at crossing of three roads.

He was as ragged as ourselves, and yet

He was no sooner dead than every thorn tree

From Inchy to Kiltartan withered away.

The King is but a fool!

I am getting ready.

A poet has power from beyond the world,

That he may set our thoughts upon old times,

And lucky queens and little holy fish

That rise up every seventh year —

Hush! hush!

To cure the crippled.

I am half ready now.

There’s not a mischief I’d begrudge the King

If it were any other —

Hush! I am ready.

That died to get it. I have brought out the food,

And if my master will not eat of it,

I’ll home and get provision for his wake,

For that’s no great way off. Well, have your say,

But don’t be long about it.

Chief Poet of Ireland,

I am the Mayor of your own town Kinvara,

And I am come to tell you that the news

Of this great trouble with the King of Gort

Has plunged us in deep sorrow – part for you,

Our honoured townsman, part for our good town.

But what comes now? Something about the King.

Get on! get on! The food is all set out.

Don’t hurry me.

Give us a taste of it.

He’ll not begrudge it.

Let them that have their limbs

Starve if they will. We have to keep in mind

The stomach God has left us.

Hush! I have it!

The King was said to be most friendly to us,

And we have reason, 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 stones.

Our mowers mow with knives between the stones;

The sea washes the meadows. You know well

We have asked nothing but what’s reasonable.

Reason in plenty. Yellowy white hair,

A hollow face, and not too many teeth.

How comes it he has been so long in the world

And not found Reason out?

What good is there

In telling him what he has heard all day!

I will set food before him.

Don’t hurry me!

It’s small respect you’re showing to the town!

Get farther off! [To SEANCHAN.] 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 that’s 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.

Master, master, eat this! It’s not king’s food,

That’s cooked for everybody and nobody.

Here’s barley-bread out of your father’s oven,

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

It’s wholesome, and has the good taste of the sea.

He has taken it, and there’ll be nothing left!

Nothing at all; he wanted his own sort.

What’s honey to a cat, corn to a dog,

Or a green apple to a ghost in a churchyard?

Eat it yourself, for you have come a journey,

And it may be eat nothing on the way.

How could I eat it, and your honour starving!

It is your father sends it, and he cried

Because the stiffness that is in his bones

Prevented him from coming, and bid me tell you

That he is old, that he has need of 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.

And is that all?

What did my mother say?

She gave no message;

For when they told her you had it in mind to starve,

Or get again the ancient right of the poets,

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 the bed, and turned her face

Out of the light. And thereupon your father

Said: ‘Tell him that his mother sends no message,

Albeit broken down and miserable.’ [A pause.

Here’s a pigeon’s egg from Duras, and these others

Were laid by your own hens.

She has sent no message.

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.

Go quickly! Go

And tell them that my mother was in the right.

There is no answer. Go and tell them that.

Go tell them that she knew me.

What is he saying?

I never understood a poet’s talk

More than the baa of a sheep!

You have not heard,

It may be, having been so much away,

How many of the cattle died last winter

From lacking grass, and that there was much sickness

Because the poor have nothing but salt fish

To live on through the winter?

Get away,

And leave the place to me! It’s my turn now,

For your sack’s empty!

Is it ‘get away’!

Is that the way I’m to be spoken to!

Am I not Mayor? Amn’t I authority?

Amn’t I in the King’s place? Answer me that!

Then show the people what a king is like:

Pull down old merings and root custom up,

Whitewash the dunghills, fatten hogs and geese,

Hang your gold chain about an ass’s neck,

And burn the blessed thorn trees out of the fields,

And drive what’s comely away!

Holy Saint Coleman!

Fine talk! fine talk! What else does the King do?

He fattens hogs and drives the poet away!

He starves the song-maker!

He fattens geese!

How dare you take his name into your mouth!

How dare you lift your voice against the King!

What would we be without him?

Why do you praise him?

I will have nobody speak well of him,

Or any other king that robs my master.

And had he not the right to? and the right

To strike your master’s head off, being the King,

Or yours or mine? I say, ‘Long live the King!

Because he does not take our heads from us.’

Call out, ‘Long life to him!’

Call out for him!

There’s nobody’ll call out for him,

But smiths will turn their anvils,

The millers turn their wheels,

The farmers turn their churns,

The witches turn their thumbs,

’Till he be broken and splintered into pieces.

He might, if he’d a mind to it,

Be digging out our tongues,

Or dragging out our hair,

Or bleaching us like calves,

Or weaning us like lambs,

But for the kindness and the softness that is in him.

I’ll curse him till I drop!

The curse of the poor be upon him,

The curse of the widows upon him,

The curse of the children upon him,

The curse of the bishops upon him,

Until he be as rotten as an old mushroom!

The curse of wrinkles be upon him!

Wrinkles where his eyes are,

Wrinkles where his nose is,

Wrinkles where his mouth is,

And a little old devil looking out of every wrinkle!

And nobody will sing for him,

And nobody will hunt for him,

And nobody will fish for him,

And nobody will pray for him,

But ever and always curse him and abuse him.

What good is in a poet?

Has he money in a stocking,

Or cider in the cellar,

Or flitches in the chimney,

Or anything anywhere but his own idleness?

Help! help! Am I not in authority?

That’s how I’ll shout for the King!

Help! help! Am I not in the King’s place?

I’ll teach him to be kind to the poor!

Help! help! Wait till we are in Kinvara!

I’ll shake the royalty out of his legs!

I’ll scrumble the ermine out of his skin!

How dare you make this uproar at the doors,

Deafening the very greatest in the land,

As if the farmyards and the rookeries

Had all been emptied!

It is the Chamberlain.

Pick up the litter there, and get you gone!

Be quick about it! Have you no respect

For this worn stair, this all but sacred door,

Where suppliants and tributary kings

Have passed, and the world’s glory knelt in silence?

Have you no reverence for what all other men

Hold honourable?

If I might speak my mind,

I’d say the King would have his luck again

If he would let my master have his rights.

Pick up your litter! Take your noise away!

Make haste, and get the clapper from the bell!

What do the great and powerful care for rights

That have no armies!

My lord, I am not to blame.

I’m the King’s man, and they attacked me for it.

We have our prayers, our curses and our prayers,

And we can give a great name or a bad one.

We could not make the poet eat, my lord.

Much honoured [is shoved again] – honoured to speak with you, my lord;

But I’ll go find the girl that he’s to marry.

She’s coming, but I’ll hurry her, my lord.

Between ourselves, my lord [is shoved again], she is a great coaxer.

Much honoured, my lord. O, she’s the girl to do it;

For when the intellect is out, my lord,

Nobody but a woman’s any good.

Much honoured, my lord [is shoved again], much honoured, much honoured!

Well, you must be contented, for your work

Has roused the common sort against the King,

And stolen his authority. The State

Is like some orderly and reverend house,

Wherein the master, being dead of a sudden,

The servants quarrel where they have a mind to,

And pilfer here and there.

How many days

Will you keep up this quarrel with the King,

And the King’s nobles, and myself, and all,

Who’d gladly be your friends, if you would let them?

If you would try, you might persuade him, father.

I cannot make him answer me, and yet

If fitting hands would offer him the food,

He might accept it.

Certainly I will not.

I’ve made too many homilies, wherein

The wanton imagination of the poets

Has been condemned, to be his flatterer.

If pride and disobedience are unpunished

Who will obey?

If you would speak to him,

You might not find persuasion difficult,

With all the devils of hunger helping you.

I will not interfere, and if he starve

For being obstinate and stiff in the neck,

’Tis but good riddance.

One of us must do it.

It might be, if you’d reason with him, ladies,

He would eat something, for I have a notion

That if he brought misfortune on the King,

Or the King’s house, we’d be as little thought of

As summer linen when the winter’s come.

But it would be the greater compliment

If Peter’d do it.

Reason with him, Peter.

Persuade him to eat; he’s such a bag of bones!

I’ll never trust a woman’s word again!

There’s nobody that was so loud against him

When he was at the table; now the wind’s changed,

And you that could not bear his speech or his silence,

Would have him there in his old place again;

I do believe you would, but I won’t help you.

Why will you be so hard upon us, Peter?

You know we have turned the common sort against us,

And he looks miserable.

We cannot dance,

Because no harper will pluck a string for us.

I cannot sleep with thinking of his face.

And I love dancing more than anything.

Do not be hard on us; but yesterday

A woman in the road threw stones at me.

You would not have me stoned?

May I not dance?

I will do nothing. You have put him out,

And now that he is out – well, leave him out.

Do it for my sake, Peter.

And for mine.

Well, well; but not your way. [To SEANCHAN.] Here’s meat for you.

It has been carried from too good a table

For men like you, and I am offering it

Because these women have made a fool of me.

You mean to starve? You will have none of it?

I’ll leave it there, where you can sniff the savour.

Snuff it, old hedgehog, and unroll yourself!

But if I were the King, I’d make you do it

With wisps of lighted straw.

You have rightly named me.

I lie rolled up under the ragged thorns

That are upon the edge of those great waters

Where all things vanish away, and I have heard

Murmurs that are the ending of all sound.

I am out of life; I am rolled up, and yet,

Hedgehog although I am, I’ll not unroll

For you, King’s dog! Go to the King, your master.

Crouch down and wag your tail, for it may be

He has nothing now against you, and I think

The stripes of your last beating are all healed.

Put up your sword, sir; put it up, I say!

The common sort would tear you into pieces

If you but touched him.

If he’s to be flattered,

Petted, cajoled, and dandled into humour,

We might as well have left him at the table.

You must need keep your patience yet awhile,

For I have some few mouthfuls of sweet air

To swallow before I have grown to be as civil

As any other dust.

You wrong us, Seanchan.

There is none here but holds you in respect;

And if you’d only eat out of this dish,

The King would show how much he honours you.

Who could imagine you’d so take to heart

Being put from the high table? I am certain

That you, if you will only think it over,

Will understand that it is men of law,

Leaders of the King’s armies, and the like,

That should sit there.

Somebody has deceived you,

Or maybe it was your own eyes that lied,

In making it appear that I was driven

From the King’s table. You have driven away

The images of them that weave a dance

By the four rivers in the mountain garden.

You mean we have driven poetry away.

But that’s not altogether true, for I,

As you should know, have written poetry.

And often when the table has been cleared,

And candles lighted, the King calls for me,

And I repeat it him. My poetry

Is not to be compared with yours; but still,

Where I am honoured, poetry is honoured —

In some measure.

If you are a poet,

Cry out that the King’s money would not buy,

Nor the high circle consecrate his head,

If poets had never christened gold, and even

The moon’s poor daughter, that most whey-faced metal,

Precious; and cry out that none alive

Would ride among the arrows with high heart,

Or scatter with an open hand, had not

Our heady craft commended wasteful virtues.

And when that story’s finished, shake your coat

Where little jewels gleam on it, and say,

A herdsman, sitting where the pigs had trampled,

Made up a song about enchanted kings,

Who were so finely dressed, one fancied them

All fiery, and women by the churn

And children by the hearth caught up the song

And murmured it, until the tailors heard it.

If you would but eat something you’d find out

That you have had these thoughts from lack of food,

For hunger makes us feverish.

Cry aloud,

That when we are driven out we come again

Like a great wind that runs out of the waste

To blow the tables flat; and thereupon

Lie down upon the threshold till the King

Restore to us the ancient right of the poets.

You cannot shake him. I will to the King,

And offer him consolation in his trouble,

For that man there has set his teeth to die.

And being one that hates obedience,

Discipline, and orderliness of life,

I cannot mourn him.

’Twas you that stirred it up.

You stirred it up that you might spoil our dancing.

Why shouldn’t we have dancing? We’re not in Lent.

Yet nobody will pipe or play to us;

And they will never do it if he die.

And that is why you are going.

What folly’s this?

Well, if you did not do it, speak to him —

Use your authority; make him obey you.

What harm is there in dancing?

Hush! begone!

Go to the fields and watch the hurley players,

Or any other place you have a mind to.

This is not woman’s work.

Come! let’s away!

We can do nothing here.

The pride of the poets!

Dancing, hurling, the country full of noise,

And King and Church neglected. Seanchan,

I’ll take my leave, for you are perishing

Like all that let the wanton imagination

Carry them where it will, and it’s not likely

I’ll look upon your living face again.

Come nearer, nearer!

Have you some last wish?

Stoop down, for I would whisper it in your ear.

Has that wild God of yours, that was so wild

When you’d but lately taken the King’s pay,

Grown any tamer? He gave you all much trouble.

Let go my habit!

Have you persuaded him

To chirp between two dishes when the King

Sits down to table?

Let go my habit, sir!

And maybe he has learnt to sing quite softly

Because loud singing would disturb the King,

Who is sitting drowsily among his friends

After the table has been cleared. Not yet!

You did not think that hands so full of hunger

Could hold you tightly. They are not civil yet.

I’d know if you have taught him to eat bread

From the King’s hand, and perch upon his finger.

I think he perches on the King’s strong hand.

But it may be that he is still too wild.

You must not weary in your work; a king

Is often weary, and he needs a God

To be a comfort to him.

A little God,

With comfortable feathers, and bright eyes.

There will be no more dancing in our time,

For nobody will play the harp or the fiddle.

Let us away, for we cannot amend it,

And watch the hurley.

Hush! he is looking at us.

Yes, yes, go to the hurley, go to the hurley,

Go to the hurley! Gather up your skirts —

Run quickly! You can remember many love songs;

I know it by the light that’s in your eyes —

But you’ll forget them. You’re fair to look upon.

Your feet delight in dancing, and your mouths

In the slow smiling that awakens love.

The mothers that have borne you mated rightly.

They’d little ears as thirsty as your ears

For many love songs. Go to the young men.

Are not the ruddy flesh and the thin flanks

And the broad shoulders worthy of desire?

Go from me! Here is nothing for your eyes.

But it is I that am singing you away —

Singing you to the young men.

Be quiet!

Look who it is has come out of the house.

Princesses, we are for the hurling field.

Will you go there?

We will go with you, Aileen.

But we must have some words with Seanchan,

For we have come to make him eat and drink.

I will hold out the dish and cup for him

While you are speaking to him of his folly,

If you desire it, Princess.

No, Finula

Will carry him the dish and I the cup.

We’ll offer them ourselves.

They are so gracious;

The dear little Princesses are so gracious.

Although she is holding out her hand to him,

He will not kiss it.

My father bids us say

That, though he cannot have you at his table,

You may ask any other thing you like

And he will give it you. We carry you

With our own hands a dish and cup of wine.

O, look! he has taken it! He has taken it!

The dear Princesses! I have always said

That nobody could refuse them anything.

O long, soft fingers and pale finger-tips,

Well worthy to be laid in a king’s hand!

O, you have fair white hands, for it is certain

There is uncommon whiteness in these hands.

But there is something comes into my mind,

Princess. A little while before your birth,

I saw your mother sitting by the road

In a high chair; and when a leper passed,

She pointed him the way into the town.

He lifted up his hand and blessed her hand —

I saw it with my own eyes. Hold out your hands;

I will find out if they are contaminated,

For it has come into my thoughts that maybe

The King has sent me food and drink by hands

That are contaminated. I would see all your hands.

You’ve eyes of dancers; but hold out your hands,

For it may be there are none sound among you.

He has called us lepers.

He’s out of his mind,

And does not know the meaning of what he said.

There’s no sound hand among you – no sound hand.

Away with you! away with all of you!

You are all lepers! There is leprosy

Among the plates and dishes that you have carried.

And wherefore have you brought me leper’s wine?

There, there! I have given it to you again. And now

Begone, or I will give my curse to you.

You have the leper’s blessing, but you think

Maybe the bread will something lack in savour

Unless you mix my curse into the dough.

Where did I say the leprosy had come from?

I said it came out of a leper’s hand,

And that he walked the highway. But that’s folly,

For he was walking up there in the sky.

And there he is even now, with his white hand

Thrust out of the blue air, and blessing them

With leprosy.

He’s pointing at the moon

That’s coming out up yonder, and he calls it

Leprous, because the daylight whitens it.

He’s holding up his hand above them all —

King, noblemen, princesses – blessing all.

Who could imagine he’d have so much patience?

Come out of this!

If you don’t need it, sir,

May we not carry some of it away?

Who’s speaking? Who are you?

Come out of this!

Have pity on us, that must beg our bread

From table to table throughout the entire world,

And yet be hungry.

But why were you born crooked?

What bad poet did your mothers listen to

That you were born so crooked?

Come away!

Maybe he’s cursed the food, and it might kill us.

Yes, better come away.

He has great strength

And great patience to hold his right hand there,

Uplifted, and not wavering about.

He is much stronger than I am, much stronger.

Say nothing! I will get him out of this

Before I have said a word of food and drink;

For while he is on this threshold and can hear,

It may be, the voices that made mock of him,

He would not listen. I’d be alone with him.

Seanchan! Seanchan!

Can you not hear me, Seanchan?

It is myself.

Is this your hand, Fedelm?

I have been looking at another hand

That is up yonder.

I have come for you.

Fedelm, I did not know that you were here.

And can you not remember that I promised

That I would come and take you home with me

When I’d the harvest in? And now I’ve come,

And you must come away, and come on the instant.

Yes, I will come. But is the harvest in?

This air has got a summer taste in it.

But is not the wild middle of the summer

A better time to marry? Come with me now!

Who taught you that? For it’s a certainty,

Although I never knew it till last night,

That marriage, because it is the height of life,

Can only be accomplished to the full

In the high days of the year. I lay awake:

There had come a frenzy into the light of the stars,

And they were coming nearer, and I knew

All in a minute they were about to marry

Clods out upon the ploughlands, to beget

A mightier race than any that has been.

But some that are within there made a noise,

And frighted them away.

Come with me now!

We have far to go, and daylight’s running out.

The stars had come so near me that I caught

Their singing. It was praise of that great race

That would be haughty, mirthful, and white-bodied,

With a high head, and open hand, and how,

Laughing, it would take the mastery of the world.

But you will tell me all about their songs

When we’re at home. You have need of rest and care,

And I can give them you when we’re at home.

And therefore let us hurry, and get us home.

It’s certain that there is some trouble here,

Although it’s gone out of my memory.

And I would get away from it. Give me your help. [Trying to rise.

But why are not my pupils here to help me?

Go, call my pupils, for I need their help.

Come with me now, and I will send for them,

For I have a great room that’s full of beds

I can make ready; and there is a smooth lawn

Where they can play at hurley and sing poems

Under an apple-tree.

I know that place:

An apple-tree, and a smooth level lawn

Where the young men can sway their hurley sticks.

The four rivers that run there,

Through well-mown level ground,

Have come out of a blessed well

That is all bound and wound

By the great roots of an apple,

And all the fowl of the air

Have gathered in the wide branches

And keep singing there.

No, there are not four rivers, and those rhymes

Praise Adam’s paradise.

I can remember now,

It’s out of a poem I made long ago

About the Garden in the East of the World,

And how spirits in the images of birds

Crowd in the branches of old Adam’s crabtree.

They come before me now, and dig in the fruit

With so much gluttony, and are so drunk

With that harsh wholesome savour, that their feathers

Are clinging one to another with the juice.

But you would lead me to some friendly place,

And I would go there quickly.

Come with me.

But why am I so weak? Have I been ill?

Sweetheart, why is it that I am so weak?

I’ll dip this piece of bread into the wine,

For that will make you stronger for the journey.

Yes, give me bread and wine; that’s what I want,

For it is hunger that is gnawing me.

But, no; I must not eat it.

Eat, Seanchan.

For if you do not eat it you will die.

Why did you give me food? Why did you come?

For had I not enough to fight against

Without your coming?

Eat this little crust,

Seanchan, if you have any love for me.

I must not eat it – but that’s beyond your wit.

Child! child! I must not eat it, though I die.

You do not know what love is; for if you loved,

You would put every other thought away.

But you have never loved me.

You, a child,

Who have but seen a man out of the window,

Tell me that I know nothing about love,

And that I do not love you! Did I not say

There was a frenzy in the light of the stars

All through the livelong night, and that the night

Was full of marriages? But that fight’s over,

And all that’s done with, and I have to die.

I will not be put from you, although I think

I had not grudged it you if some great lady,

If the King’s daughter, had set out your bed.

I will not give you up to death; no, no!

And are not these white arms and this soft neck

Better than the brown earth?

Begone from me!

There’s treachery in those arms and in that voice.

They’re all against me. Why do you linger there?

How long must I endure the sight of you?

O, Seanchan! Seanchan!

Go where you will,

So it be out of sight and out of mind.

I cast you from me like an old torn cap,

A broken shoe, a glove without a finger,

A crooked penny; whatever is most worthless.

O, do not drive me from you!

What did I say,

My dove of the woods? I was about to curse you.

It was a frenzy. I’ll unsay it all.

But you must go away.

Let me be near you.

I will obey like any married wife.

Let me but lie before your feet.

Come nearer.

If I had eaten when you bid me, sweetheart,

The kiss of multitudes in times to come

Had been the poorer.

Has he eaten yet?

No, King, and will not till you have restored

The right of the poets.

Seanchan, you have refused

Everybody that I have sent, and now

I come to you myself; and I have come

To bid you put your pride as far away

As I have put my pride. I had your love

Not a great while ago, and now you have planned

To put a voice by every cottage fire,

And in the night when no one sees who cries,

To cry against me till my throne has crumbled.

And yet if I give way I must offend

My courtiers and nobles till they, too,

Strike at the crown. What would you have of me?

When did the poets promise safety, King?

Seanchan, I bring you bread in my own hands,

And bid you eat because of all these reasons,

And for this further reason, that I love you.

You have refused it, Seanchan?

We have refused it.

I have been patient, though I am a king,

And have the means to force you. But that’s ended,

And I am but a king, and you a subject.

Nobles and courtiers, bring the poets hither;

For you can have your way. I that was man,

With a man’s heart, am now all king again,

Remembering that the seed I come of, though

A hundred kings have sown it and resown it,

Has neither trembled nor shrunk backward yet

Because of the hard business of a king.

Speak to your master; beg your life of him;

Show him the halter that is round your necks.

If his heart’s set upon it, he may die;

But you shall all die with him.          [Goes up steps.

Beg your lives!

Begin, for you have little time to lose.

Begin it, you that are the oldest pupil.

Die, Seanchan, and proclaim the right of the poets.

Silence! you are as crazy as your master.

But that young boy, that seems the youngest of you,

I’d have him speak. Kneel down before him, boy;

Hold up your hands to him, that you may pluck

That milky-coloured neck out of the noose.

Die, Seanchan, and proclaim the right of the poets.

Gather the halters up into your hands

And drive us where you will, for in all things,

But in our Art, we are obedient.

Kneel down, kneel down; he has the greater power.

There is no power but has its root in his —

I understand it now. There is no power

But his that can withhold the crown or give it,

Or make it reverend in the eyes of men,

And therefore I have laid it in his hands,

And I will do his will.

O crown! O crown!

It is but right the hands that made the crown

In the old time should give it where they please.

O silver trumpets! Be you lifted up,

And cry to the great race that is to come.

Long-throated swans, amid the waves of Time,

Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the world

It waits, and it may hear and come to us.