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

It is God has him in His care. It is He is awaking him. [MARTIN has risen to his elbow.] Do not touch him, do not speak to him, he may be hearing great secrets.

MARTIN

That music, I must go nearer – sweet marvellous music – louder than the trampling of the unicorns; far louder, though the mountain is shaking with their feet – high joyous music.

FATHER JOHN

Hush, he is listening to the music of Heaven!

MARTIN

Take me to you, musicians, wherever you are! I will go nearer to you; I hear you better now, more and more joyful; that is strange, it is strange.

FATHER JOHN

He is getting some secret.

MARTIN

It is the music of Paradise, that is certain, somebody said that. It is certainly the music of Paradise. Ah, now I hear, now I understand. It is made of the continual clashing of swords!

JOHNNY

That is the best music. We will clash them sure enough. We will clash our swords and our pikes on the bayonets of the red soldiers. It is well you rose up from the dead to lead us! Come on, now, come on!

MARTIN

Who are you? Ah, I remember – where are you asking me to come to?

PAUDEEN

To come on, to be sure, to the attack on the barracks at Aughanish. To carry on the work you took in hand last night.

MARTIN

What work did I take in hand last night? Oh, yes, I remember – some big house – we burned it down – but I had not understood the vision when I did that. I had not heard the command right. That was not the work I was sent to do.

PAUDEEN

Rise up now and bid us what to do. Your great name itself will clear the road before you. It is you yourself will have freed all Ireland before the stooks will be in stacks!

MARTIN

Listen, I will explain – I have misled you. It is only now I have the whole vision plain. As I lay there I saw through everything, I know all. It was but a frenzy that going out to burn and to destroy. What have I to do with the foreign army? What I have to pierce is the wild heart of time. My business is not reformation but revelation.

JOHNNY

If you are going to turn back now from leading us, you are no better than any other traitor that ever gave up the work he took in hand. Let you come and face now the two hundred men you brought out daring the power of the law last night, and give them your reason for failing them.

MARTIN

I was mistaken when I set out to destroy Church and Law. The battle we have to fight is fought out in our own mind. There is a fiery moment, perhaps once in a lifetime, and in that moment we see the only thing that matters. It is in that moment the great battles are lost and won, for in that moment we are a part of the host of heaven.

PAUDEEN

Have you betrayed us to the naked hangman with your promises and with your drink? If you brought us out here to fail us and to ridicule us, it is the last day you will live!

JOHNNY

The curse of my heart on you! It would be right to send you to your own place on the flagstone of the traitors in hell. When once I have made an end of you I will be as well satisfied to be going to my death for it as if I was going home!

MARTIN

Father John, Father John, can you not hear? Can you not see? Are you blind? Are you deaf?

FATHER JOHN

What is it? What is it?

MARTIN

There on the mountain, a thousand white unicorns trampling; a thousand riders with their swords drawn – the swords clashing! Oh, the sound of the swords, the sound of the clashing of the swords!

[He goes slowly off stage. JOHNNY takes up a stone to throw at him.

FATHER JOHN [seizing his arm]

Stop – do you not see he is beyond the world?

BIDDY

Keep your hand off him, Johnny Bacach. If he is gone wild and cracked, that’s natural. Those that have been wakened from a trance on a sudden are apt to go bad and light in the head.

PAUDEEN

If it is madness is on him, it is not he himself should pay the penalty.

BIDDY

To prey on the mind it does, and rises into the head. There are some would go over any height and would have great power in their madness. It is maybe to some secret cleft he is going, to get knowledge of the great cure for all things, or of the Plough that was hidden in the old times, the Golden Plough.

PAUDEEN

It seemed as if he was talking through honey. He had the look of one that had seen great wonders. It is maybe among the old heroes of Ireland he went raising armies for our help.

FATHER JOHN

God take him in his care and keep him from lying spirits and from all delusions!