Читать книгу Two plays for dancers - Yeats William Butler, William Butler Yeats - Страница 2

Why does my heart beat so?

Did not a shadow pass?

It passed but a moment ago.

Who can have trod in the grass?

What rogue is night-wandering?

Have not old writers said

That dizzy dreams can spring

From the dry bones of the dead?

And many a night it seems

That all the valley fills

With those fantastic dreams.

They overflow the hills,

So passionate is a shade,

Like wine that fills to the top

A grey-green cup of jade,

Or maybe an agate cup.

(speaking) The hour before dawn and the moon covered up.

The little village of Abbey is covered up;

The little narrow trodden way that runs

From the white road to the Abbey of Corcomroe

Is covered up; and all about the hills

Are like a circle of Agate or of Jade.

Somewhere among great rocks on the scarce grass

Birds cry, they cry their loneliness.

Even the sunlight can be lonely here,

Even hot noon is lonely. I hear a footfall —

A young man with a lantern comes this way.

He seems an Aran fisher, for he wears

The flannel bawneen and the cow-hide shoe.

He stumbles wearily, and stumbling prays.

(A young man enters, praying in Irish)

Once more the birds cry in their loneliness,

But now they wheel about our heads; and now

They have dropped on the grey stone to the north-east.

(A man and a girl both in the costume of a past time, come in. They wear heroic masks)

(raising his lantern)

Who is there? I cannot see what you are like,

Come to the light.

But what have you to fear?

And why have you come creeping through the dark.

(The Girl blows out lantern)

The wind has blown my lantern out. Where are you?

I saw a pair of heads against the sky

And lost them after, but you are in the right

I should not be afraid in County Clare;

And should be or should not be have no choice,

I have to put myself into your hands,

Now that my candle's out.

You have fought in Dublin?

I was in the Post Office, and if taken

I shall be put against a wall and shot.

You know some place of refuge, have some plan

Or friend who will come to meet you?

I am to lie

At daybreak on the mountain and keep watch

Until an Aran coracle puts in

At Muckanish or at the rocky shore

Under Finvarra, but would break my neck

If I went stumbling there alone in the dark.

We know the pathways that the sheep tread out,

And all the hiding-places of the hills,

And that they had better hiding-places once.

You'd say they had better before English robbers

Cut down the trees or set them upon fire

For fear their owners might find shelter there.

What is that sound?

An old horse gone astray

He has been wandering on the road all night.

I took him for a man and horse. Police

Are out upon the roads. In the late Rising

I think there was no man of us but hated

To fire at soldiers who but did their duty

And were not of our race, but when a man

Is born in Ireland and of Irish stock

When he takes part against us —

I will put you safe,

No living man shall set his eyes upon you.

I will not answer for the dead.

The dead?

For certain days the stones where you must lie

Have in the hour before the break of day

Been haunted.

But I was not born at midnight.

Many a man born in the full daylight

Can see them plain, will pass them on the high-road

Or in the crowded market-place of the town,

And never know that they have passed.

My Grandam

Would have it they did penance everywhere

Or lived through their old lives again.

In a dream;

And some for an old scruple must hang spitted

Upon the swaying tops of lofty trees;

Some are consumed in fire, some withered up

By hail and sleet out of the wintry North,

And some but live through their old lives again.

Well, let them dream into what shape they please

And fill waste mountains with the invisible tumult

Of the fantastic conscience. I have no dread;

They cannot put me into jail or shoot me,

And seeing that their blood has returned to fields

That have grown red from drinking blood like mine

They would not if they could betray.

This pathway

Runs to the ruined Abbey of Corcomroe;

The Abbey passed, we are soon among the stone

And shall be at the ridge before the cocks

Of Aughanish or Bailevlehan

Or grey Aughtmana shake their wings and cry.

(They go round the stage once)

(speaking) They've passed the shallow well and the flat stone

Fouled by the drinking cattle, the narrow lane

Where mourners for five centuries have carried

Noble or peasant to his burial.

An owl is crying out above their heads.

(singing) Why should the heart take fright

What sets it beating so?

The bitter sweetness of the night

Has made it but a lonely thing.

Red bird of March, begin to crow,

Up with the neck and clap the wing,

Red cock, and crow.

(They go once round the stage. The first musician speaks.)

And now they have climbed through the long grassy field

And passed the ragged thorn trees and the gap

In the ancient hedge; and the tomb-nested owl

At the foot's level beats with a vague wing.

(singing) My head is in a cloud;

I'd let the whole world go.

My rascal heart is proud

Remembering and remembering.

Red bird of March, begin to crow,

Up with the neck and clap the wing

Red cock and crow.

(They go round the stage. The first musician speaks.)

They are among the stones above the ash

Above the briar and thorn and the scarce grass;

Hidden amid the shadow far below them

The cat-headed bird is crying out.

(singing) The dreaming bones cry out

Because the night winds blow

And heaven's a cloudy blot;

Calamity can have its fling.

Red bird of March begin to crow,

Up with the neck and clap the wing

Red cock and crow.

We're almost at the summit and can rest.

The road is a faint shadow there; and there

The abbey lies amid its broken tombs.

In the old days we should have heard a bell

Calling the monks before day broke to pray;

And when the day has broken on the ridge,

The crowing of its cocks.

Is there no house

Famous for sanctity or architectural beauty

In Clare or Kerry, or in all wide Connacht

The enemy has not unroofed?

Close to the altar

Broken by wind and frost and worn by time

Donogh O'Brien has a tomb, a name in Latin.

He wore fine clothes and knew the secrets of women

But he rebelled against the King of Thomond

And died in his youth.

And why should he rebel?

The King of Thomond was his rightful master.

It was men like Donogh who made Ireland weak —

My curse on all that troop, and when I die

I'll leave my body, if I have any choice,

Far from his ivy tod and his owl; have those

Who, if your tale is true, work out a penance

Upon the mountain-top where I am to hide,

Come from the Abbey graveyard?

They have not that luck,

But are more lonely, those that are buried there,

Warred in the heat of the blood; if they were rebels

Some momentary impulse made them rebels

Or the comandment of some petty king

Who hated Thomond. Being but common sinners,

No callers in of the alien from oversea

They and their enemies of Thomond's party

Mix in a brief dream battle above their bones,

Or make one drove or drift in amity,

Or in the hurry of the heavenly round

Forget their earthly names; these are alone

Being accursed.

And if what seems is true

And there are more upon the other side

Than on this side of death, many a ghost

Must meet them face to face and pass the word

Even upon this grey and desolate hill.

Until this hour no ghost or living man

Has spoken though seven centuries have run

Since they, weary of life and of men's eyes,

Flung down their bones in some forgotten place

Being accursed.

I have heard that there are souls

Who, having sinned after a monstrous fashion

Take on them, being dead, a monstrous image