The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats. Volume 3 of 8. The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

Give me the lamp. The lamp has not yet been lighted and the world is to be consumed!

    [Goes into inner room.

THOMAS [seeing ANDREW]

Is it here you are, Andrew? What are these beggars doing? Was this door thrown open too? Why did you not keep order? I will go for the constables to help us!

ANDREW

You will not find them to help you. They were scattering themselves through the drinking-houses of the town, and why wouldn’t they?

THOMAS

Are you drunk too? You are worse than Martin. You are a disgrace!

ANDREW

Disgrace yourself! Coming here to be making an attack on me and badgering me and disparaging me! And what about yourself that turned me to be a hypocrite?

THOMAS

What are you saying?

ANDREW

You did, I tell you! Weren’t you always at me to be regular and to be working and to be going through the day and the night without company and to be thinking of nothing but the trade? What did I want with a trade? I got a sight of the fairy gold one time in the mountains. I would have found it again and brought riches from it but for you keeping me so close to the work.

THOMAS

Oh, of all the ungrateful creatures! You know well that I cherished you, leading you to live a decent, respectable life.

ANDREW

You never had respect for the ancient ways. It is after the mother you take it, that was too soft and too lumpish, having too much of the English in her blood. Martin is a Hearne like myself. It is he has the generous heart! It is not Martin would make a hypocrite of me and force me to do night-walking secretly, watching to be back by the setting of the seven stars!

    [He begins to play his flute.

THOMAS

I will turn you out of this, yourself and this filthy troop! I will have them lodged in gaol.

JOHNNY

Filthy troop, is it? Mind yourself! The change is coming. The pikes will be up and the traders will go down!

All seize THOMAS and sing

When the Lion will lose his strength,
And the braket-thistle begin to pine,
The harp shall sound sweet, sweet at length,
Between the eight and the nine!

THOMAS

Let me out of this, you villains!

NANNY

We’ll make a sieve of holes of you, you old bag of treachery!

BIDDY

How well you threatened us with gaol, you skim of a weasel’s milk!

JOHNNY

You heap of sicknesses! You blinking hangman! That you may never die till you’ll get a blue hag for a wife!

    [MARTIN comes back with lighted lamp.

MARTIN

Let him go. [They let THOMAS go, and fall back.] Spread out the banner. The moment has come to begin the war.

JOHNNY

Up with the Unicorn and destroy the Lion! Success to Johnny Gibbons and all good men!

MARTIN

Heap all those things together there. Heap those pieces of the coach one upon another. Put that straw under them. It is with this flame I will begin the work of destruction. All nature destroys and laughs.

THOMAS

Destroy your own golden coach!

MARTIN [kneeling before THOMAS]

I am sorry to go a way that you do not like and to do a thing that will vex you. I have been a great trouble to you since I was a child in the house, and I am a great trouble to you yet. It is not my fault. I have been chosen for what I have to do. [Stands up.] I have to free myself first and those that are near me. The love of God is a very terrible thing! [THOMAS tries to stop him, but is prevented by Beggars. MARTIN takes a wisp of straw and lights it.] We will destroy all that can perish! It is only the soul that can suffer no injury. The soul of man is of the imperishable substance of the stars!

    [He throws wisp into heap – it blazes up.

ACT III

Before dawn. A wild rocky place, NANNY and BIDDY LALLY squatting by a fire. Rich stuffs, etc., strewn about. PAUDEEN watching by MARTIN, who is lying as if dead, a sack over him.

NANNY [to PAUDEEN]

Well, you are great heroes and great warriors and great lads altogether, to have put down the Brownes the way you did, yourselves and the Whiteboys of the quarry. To have ransacked the house and have plundered it! Look at the silks and the satins and the grandeurs I brought away! Look at that now! [Holds up a velvet cloak.] It’s a good little jacket for myself will come out of it. It’s the singers will be stopping their songs and the jobbers turning from their cattle in the fairs to be taking a view of the laces of it and the buttons! It’s my far-off cousins will be drawing from far and near!