Do not let any woman read this verse;It is for men, and after them their sonsAnd their sons' sons.The time comes when our hearts sink utterly;When we remember Deirdre and her tale,And that her lips are dust.Once she did tread the earth: men took her hand;.They looked into her eyes and said their say,And she replied to them.More than a thousand years it is since sheWas beautiful: she trod the waving grass;She saw the clouds.A thousand years! The grass is still the same,The clouds as lovely as they were that timeWhen Deirdre was alive.But there has never been a woman bornWho was so beautiful, not one so beautifulOf all the women born.Let all men go apart and mourn together;No man can ever love her; not a manCan ever be her lover.No man can bend before her: no man say —What could one say to her? There are no wordsThat one could say to her!Now she is but a story that is toldBeside the fire! No man can ever beThe friend of that poor queen.
Contents/Contents, p. 3
PERSONS
ACT I
Scene: A public-house kitchen. HUFF the Farmer and SOLLERS the Wainwright talking; another man, a stranger, sitting silent.
Huff:
Ay, you may think we're well off —
Sollers:
Now for croaks,Old toad! who's trodden on you now? — Go on;But if you can, croak us a new tune.
Huff:
Ay,You think you're well off — and don't grab my wordsBefore they're spoken — but some folks, I've heard,Pity us, living quiet in the valley.
Sollers:
Well, I suppose 'tis their affair.
Huff:
Is it?But what I mean to say, — if they think smallOf us that live in the valley, mayn't it showThat we aren't all so happy as we think?
MERRICK the Smith comes in.
Merrick:
Quick, cider! I believe I've swallowed a coal.
Sollers:
Good evening. True, the heat's a wonder to-night.
Smith draws himself cider.
Huff:
Haven't you brought your flute? We've all got roomFor music in our minds to-night, I'll swear.Working all day in the sun do seem to pushThe thought out of your brain.
Sollers:
O, 'tis the sunHas trodden on you? That's what makes you croak?Ay, whistle him somewhat: put a tune in his brain;He'll else croak us out of pleasure with drinking.
Merrick:
'Tis quenching, I believe. — A tune? Too hot.You want a fiddler.
Huff:
Nay, I want your flute.I like a piping sound, not scraping o' guts.
Merrick:
This is no weather for a man to playFlutes or music at all that asks him spendHis breath and spittle: you want both yourselfThese oven days. Wait till a fiddler comes.
Huff:
Who ever comes down here?
Sollers:
There's someone come.
Pointing with his pipe to the stranger.
Merrick:
Good evening, mister. Are you a man for tunes?
Stranger:
And if I was I'ld give you none to-night.
Merrick:
Well, no offence: there's no offence, I hope,In taking a dummy for a tuneful man.Is it for can't or won't you are?
Stranger:
You wouldn't, if you carried in your mindWhat I've been carrying all day.
Sollers:
What's that?
Stranger:
You wait; you'll know about it soon; O yes,Soon enough it will find you out and rouse you.
Huff:
Now ain't that just the way we go down here?Here in the valley we're like dogs in a yard,Chained to our kennels and wall'd in all round,And not a sound of the world jumps over our hills.And when there comes a passenger among us,One who has heard what's stirring out beyond,'Tis a grutchy mumchance fellow in the dismals!
Stranger:
News, is it, you want? I could give you news! —I wonder, did you ever hate to feelThe earth so fine and splendid?
Huff:
Oh, you're oneHas stood in the brunt of the world's wickedness,Like me? But listen, and I'll give you a taleOf wicked things done in this little valley,Done against me, will surely make you thinkThe Devil here fetcht up his masterpiece.
Sollers:
Ah, but it's hot enough without you talkingYour old hell fire about that pair of sinners.Leave them alone and drink.
Huff:
I'll smell them grillingOne of these days.
Merrick:
But there'll be nought to drinkWhen that begins! Best keep your skin full now.
Stranger:
What do I care for wickedness? Let thoseWho've played with dirt, and thought the game was bold,Make much of it while they can: there's a big thingComing down to us, ay, well on its road,Will make their ploys seem mighty piddling sport.
Huff:
This is a fool; or else it's what I think, —The world now breeds such crowd that they've no roomFor well-grown sins: they hatch 'em small as flies.But you stay here, out of the world awhile,Here where a man's mind, and a woman's mind,Can fling out large in wickedness: you'll seeSomething monstrous here, something dreadful.
Stranger:
I've seen enough of that. Though it was onlyFancying made me see it, it was enough:I've seen the folk of the world yelling aghast,Scurrying to hide themselves. I want nought elseMonstrous and dreadful. —
Merrick:
What had roused 'em so?Some house afire?
Huff:
A huzzy flogged to deathFor her hard-faced adultery?
Stranger (too intent to hear them):
Oh to think of it!Talk, do, chatter some nonsense, else I'll think:And then I'm feeling like a grub that crawlsAll abroad in a dusty road; and highAbove me, and shaking the ground beneath me, comeWheels of a thundering wain, right where I'm plodding.
Sollers:
Queer thinking, that.
Stranger:
And here's a queerer thing.I have a sort of lust in me, pushing me stillInto that terrible way of thinking, likeBlack men in India lie them down and longTo feel their holy wagon crack their spines.
Merrick:
Do you mean beetles? I've driven over scores,They sprawling on their backs, or standing mazed.I never knew they liked it.
Sollers:
He means frogs.I know what's in his mind. When I was youngMy mother would catch us frogs and set them down,Lapt in a screw of paper, in the ruts,And carts going by would quash 'em; and I'ld laugh,And yet be thinking, 'Suppose it was myselfTwisted stiff in huge paper, and wheelsBig as the wall of a barn treading me flat!'
Huff:
I know what's in his mind: just madness it is.He's lookt too hard at his fellows in the world;Sight of their monstrous hearts, like devils in cages,Has jolted all the gearing of his wits.It needs a tough brain, ay, a brain like mine,To pore on ugly sin and not go mad.
Stranger:
Madness! You're not far out. — I came up hereTo be alone and quiet in my thoughts,Alone in my own dreadful mind. The path,Of red sand trodden hard, went up betweenHigh hedges overgrown of hawthorn blowingWhite as clouds; ay it seemed burrowed throughA white sweet-smelling cloud, — I walking thereSmall as a hare that runs its tunnelled droveThro' the close heather. And beside my feetBlue greygles drifted gleaming over the grass;And up I climbed to sunlight green in birches,And the path turned to daisies among grassWith bonfires of the broom beside, like flameOf burning straw: and I lookt into your valley.I could scarce look.Anger was smarting in my eyes like grit.O the fine earth and fine all for nothing!Mazed I walkt, seeing and smelling and hearing:The meadow lands all shining fearfully gold, —Cruel as fire the sight of them toucht my mind;Breathing was all a honey taste of cloverAnd bean flowers: I would have rather had itCarrion, or the stink of smouldering brimstone.And larks aloft, the happy piping fools,And squealing swifts that slid on hissing wings,And yellowhammers playing spry in hedges.I never noted them before; but now —Yes, I was mad, and crying mad, to seeThe earth so fine, fine all for nothing!
Sollers (spits):
Pst! yellowhammers! He talks gentry talk.That's worse than being mad.
Stranger:
I tell you, you'll be feeling them to-mornAnd hating them to be so wonderful.
Merrick:
Let's have some sense. Where do you live?
Stranger:
Nowhere.I'm always travelling.
Huff:
Why, what's your trade?
Stranger:
A dowser.
Huff:
You're the man for me!
Stranger:
Not I.
Huff:
Ho, this is better than a fiddler now!One of those fellows who have nerves so cleverThat they can feel the waters of undergroundTingling in their fingers.You find me a spring in my high grazing-field,I'll give you what I save in trundling water.
Stranger:
I find you water now! — -No, but I'll find youFire and fear and unbelievable death.
VINE the Publican comes in.
Vine:
Are ye all served? Ay, seems so; what's your score?
Merrick:
Two ciders.
Huff:
Three.
Sollers:
And two for me.
Vine (to Dowser):
And you?
Dowser:
Naught. I was waiting on you.
Vine:
Will you drink?
Dowser:
Ay! Drink! what else is left for a man to doWho knows what I know?
Vine:
Good. What is't you know?You tell it out and set my trade a-buzzing.
Sollers:
He's queer. Give him his mug and ease his tongue.
Vine:
I had to swill the pigs: else I'd been here;But we've the old fashion in this house; you draw,I keep the score. Well, what's the worry on you?
Sollers:
Oh he's in love.
Dowser:
You fleering grinning louts,I'll give it you now; now have it in your faces!
Sollers:
Crimini, he's going to fight!
Dowser:
You try and fight with the thing that's on my side!
Merrick:
A ranter!
Huff:
A boozy one then.
Dowser:
Open yon door;'Tis dark enough by now. Open it, you.
Vine:
Hold on. Have you got something fierce outside?
Merrick:
A Russian bear?
Sollers:
Dowsers can play strange games.
Huff:
No tricks!
Dowser:
This is a trick to rouse the world.
He opens the door.
Look out! Between the elms! There's my fierce thing.
Merrick:
He means the star with the tail like a feather of fire.
Sollers:
Comet, it's called.
Huff:
Do you mean the comet, mister?
Dowser:
What do you think of it?
Huff:
Pretty enough.But I saw a man loose off a rocket once;It made more stir and flare of itself; though yonDoes better at steady burning.
Dowser:
Stir and flare!You'll soon forget your rocket.
Merrick:
Tell you whatI thought last night, now, going home. Says I,'Tis just like the look of a tadpole: if I sawA tadpole silver as a dace that swamUpside-down towards me through black water,I'ld see the plain spit of that star and his tail.
Sollers:
And how does your thought go?
Dowser:
It's what I know! —A tadpole and a rocket! — My dear God,And I can still laugh out! — What do you thinkYour tadpole's made of? What lets your rocket flingThose streaming sparks across the half of night,Splashing the burning spray of its haste amongThe quiet business of the other stars?Ay, that's a fiery jet it leaves behindIn such enormous drift! What sort of fireIs spouted so, spouted and never quenching? —There is no name for that star's fire: it isThe fire that was before the world was made,The fire that all the things we live amongRemember being; and whitest fire we knowIs its poor copy in their dreaming trance!
Huff:
That would be hell fire.
Dowser:
Ay, if you like, hell fire,Hell fire flying through the night! 'Twould beA thing to blink about, a blast of itSwept in your face, eh? and a thing to setThe whole stuff of the earth smoking rarely?Which of you said 'the heat's a wonder to-night'?You have not done with marvelling. There'll comeA night when all your clothes are a pickle of sweat,And, for all that, the sweat on your salty skinShall dry and crack, in the breathing of a windThat's like a draught come through an open'd furnace.The leafage of the trees shall brown and faint,All sappy growth turning to brittle rubbishAs the near heat of the star strokes the green earth;And time shall brush the fields as visiblyAs a rough hand brushes against the napOf gleaming cloth — killing the season's colour,Each hour charged with the wasting of a year;And sailors panting on their warping decksWill watch the sea steam like broth about them.You'll know what I know then! — That towering starHangs like a fiery buzzard in the nightIntent over our earth — Ay, now his journeyPoints, straight as a plummet's drop, down to us!
Huff:
Why, that's the end of the world!
Dowser:
You've said it now.
Sollers:
What, soon? In a day or two?
Merrick:
You can't mean that!
Vine:
End of the World! Well now, I never thoughtTo hear the news of that. If you've the truthIn what you say, likely this is an eveningThat we'll be talking over often and often.'How was it, Sellers?' I'll say; 'or you, Merrick,Do you mind clearly how he lookt?' — And then —"End of the world" he said, and drank — like that,Solemn!' — And right he was: he had it allAs sure as I have when my sow's to farrow.
Dowser:
Are you making a joke of me? Keep your mindFor tippling while you can.
Vine:
Was that a joke?I'm always bad at seeing 'em, even my own.
Dowser:
A fool's! 'Twill cheer you when the earth blows up.Like as it were all gunpowder.
Vine:
You meanThe star will butt his burning head against us?'Twill knock the world to flinders, I suppose?
Dowser:
Ay, or with that wild, monstrous tail of hisSmash down upon the air, and make it bounceLike water under the flukes of a harpooned whale,And thrash it to a poisonous fire; and weAnd all the life of the world drowned in blazing!
Vine:
'Twill be a handsome sight. If my old wifeWere with me now! This would have suited her.'I do like things to happen!' she would say;Never shindy enough for her; and nowShe's gone, and can't be seeing this!
Dowser:
You poor fool.How will it be a sight to you, when your eyesAre scorcht to little cinders in your head?
Vine:
Whether or no, there must be folks outsideWilling to know of this. I'll scatter your news.
He goes.
A short-pause: then SOLLERS breaks out.
Sollers:
No, no; it wouldn't do for me at all;Nor for you neither, Merrick? End of the World?Bogy! A parson's tale or a bairn's!
Merrick:
That's it.Your trade's a gift, easy as playing tunes.But Sollers here and I, we've had to drillSinew and muscle into their hard lesson,Until they work in timber and glowing ironAs kindly as I pick up my pint: your workGrows in your nature, like plain speech in a child,But we have learnt to think in a foreign tongue;And something must come out of all our skill!We shan't go sliding down as glib as youInto notions of the End of the World.
Sollers:
Give me a tree, you may say, and give me steel,And I'll put forth my shapely mind; I'll make,Out of my head like telling a well-known tale,A wain that goes as comely on the roadsAs a ship sailing, the lines of it true as gospel.Have I learnt that all for nothing? — O no!End of the World? It wouldn't do at all.No more making of wains, after I've spentMy time in getting the right skill in my hands?
Dowser:
Ay, you begin to feel it now, I think;But you complain like boys for a game spoilt:Shaping your carts, forging your iron! But Life,Life, the mother who lets her children playSo seriously busy, trade and craft, —Life with her skill of a million years' perfectionTo make her heart's delighted gloryingOf sunlight, and of clouds about the moon,Spring lighting her daffodils, and cornRipening gold to ruddy, and giant seas,And mountains sitting in their purple clothes —Life I am thinking of, life the wonder,All blotcht out by a brutal thrust of fireLike a midge that a clumsy thumb squashes and smears.
Huff:
Let me but see the show beginning, though!You'ld mind me then! O I would like you allTo watch how I should figure, when the starBrandishes over the whole air its flameOf thundering fire; and naught but yellow rubbishParcht on the perishing ground, and there are tonguesChapt with thirst, glad to lap stinking ponds,And pale glaring faces spying aboutOn the earth withering, terror the only speech!Look for me then, and see me stand aloneEasy and pleasant in the midst of it all.Did you not make your merry scoff of me?Was it your talk, that when yon shameless pairThrew their wantoning in my face like dirt,I had no heart against them but to grumble?You would be saying that, I know! But now,Now I believe it's time for you to seeMy patient heart at last taking its wages.
Sollers:
Pull up, man! Screw the brake on your running tongue,Else it will rattle you down the tumbling wayThis fellow's gone.
Merrick:
And one man's enoughWith brain quagged axle-deep in crazy mire.We won't have you beside him in his puddles,And calling out with him on the End of the WorldTo heave you out with a vengeance.
Huff:
What you want!Have I not borne enough to make me knowI must be righted sometime? — And what elseWould break the hardy sin in them, which letsTheir souls parade so daring and so tallUnder God's hate and mine? What else could payFor all my wrong but a blow of blazing angerStriking down to shiver the earth, and changeTheir strutting wickedness to horror and crying?
Merrick:
Be quiet, Huff! If you mean to believeThis dowser's stuff, and join him in his bedlam,By God, you'll have to reckon with my fist.
SHALE comes in. HUFF glares at him speechless, but with wrath evidently working.
Shale:
Where's the joker? You, is it? Here's hot newsYou've brought us; all the valley's hissing aloud,And makes as much of you falling into itAs a pail of water would of a glowing coal.
Sollers:
Don't you start burbling too, Shale.
Shale:
That's the word!Burbling, simmering, ay and bumpy-boiling:All the women are mobbed together closeUnder the witan-trees, and their full mindsBoil like so many pans slung on a fire.Why, starlings trooping in a copse in fallCould make no scandal like it.
Merrick:
What is it, man?
Shale:
End of the World! The flying star! End of the World!
Sollers:
They don't believe it though?
Shale:
What? the whole placeHas gone just randy over it!
Merrick:
Hold your noise!
Sollers:
I shall be daft if this goes on.
Shale:
Ay, so?The End of the World's been here? You look as thoughYou'd startled lately. And there's the virtuous man!How would End of the World suit our good Huff,Our old crab-verjuice Huff?