Two plays for dancers

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.

YOUNG GIRL

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.

YOUNG MAN

I have heard that there are souls
Who, having sinned after a monstrous fashion
Take on them, being dead, a monstrous image
To drive the living, should they meet its face,
Crazy, and be a terror to the dead.

YOUNG GIRL

But these
Were comely even in their middle life
And carry, now that they are dead, the image
Of their first youth, for it was in that youth
Their sin began.

YOUNG MAN

I have heard of angry ghosts
Who wander in a wilful solitude.

THE GIRL

These have no thought but love; nor joy
But that upon the instant when their penance
Draws to its height and when two hearts are wrung
Nearest to breaking, if hearts of shadows break,
His eyes can mix with hers; nor any pang
That is so bitter as that double glance,
Being accursed.

YOUNG MAN

But what is this strange penance —
That when their eyes have met can wring them most?

THE GIRL

Though eyes can meet, their lips can never meet.

YOUNG MAN

And yet it seems they wander side by side.
But doubtless you would say that when lips meet
And have not living nerves, it is no meeting.

THE GIRL

Although they have no blood or living nerves
Who once lay warm and live the live-long night
In one another's arms, and know their part
In life, being now but of the people of dreams,
Is a dreams part; although they are but shadows
Hovering between a thorn tree and a stone
Who have heaped up night on winged night; although
No shade however harried and consumed
Would change his own calamity for theirs,
Their manner of life were blessed could their lips
A moment meet; but when he has bent his head
Close to her head or hand would slip in hand
The memory of their crime flows up between
And drives them apart.

YOUNG MAN

The memory of a crime —
He took her from a husband's house it may be,
But does the penance for a passionate sin
Last for so many centuries?

THE GIRL

No, no,
The man she chose, the man she was chosen by
Cared little and cares little from whose house
They fled towards dawn amid the flights of arrows
Or that it was a husband's and a king's;
And how if that were all could she lack friends
On crowded roads or on the unpeopled hill?
Helen herself had opened wide the door
Where night by night she dreams herself awake
And gathers to her breast a dreaming man.

YOUNG MAN

What crime can stay so in the memory?
What crime can keep apart the lips of lovers