The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 2 of 8

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.

OLDEST PUPIL

I can breathe again.
You have taken a great burden from my mind,
For that old custom’s not worth dying for.

KING

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.

OLDEST PUPIL

I will persuade him.
Your words had been enough persuasion, King;
But being lost in sleep or reverie,
He cannot hear them.

KING

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.

    [He turns to go, and then returns again.
Promise a house with grass and tillage land,
An annual payment, jewels and silken ware,
Or anything but that old right of the poets.

    [He goes into palace.

OLDEST PUPIL

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

[Half turning round, leaning on his elbow, andspeaking as if in a dream.]

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.

OLDEST PUPIL

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