Maurteen (To Shawn)

What are you waiting for?You must not shake it when you draw the cork;It's precious wine, so take your time about it.

There was a Spaniard wrecked at Ocris Head,When I was young, and I have still some bottles.He cannot bear to hear her blamed; the bookHas lain up in the thatch these fifty years;My father told me my grandfather wrote it,And killed a heifer for the binding of it--But supper's spread, and we can talk and eatIt was little good he got out of the book,Because it filled his house with rambling fiddlers,And rambling ballad-makers and the like.The griddle-bread is there in front of you.Colleen, what is the wonder in that book,That you must leave the bread to cool? Had IOr had my father read or written booksThere were no stocking stuffed with yellow guineasTo come when I am dead to Shawn and you.

How a Princess Edane,A daughter of a King of Ireland, heardA voice singing on a May Eve like this,And followed half awake and half asleep,Until she came into the Land of Faery,Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.And she is still there, busied with a danceDeep in the dewy shadow of a wood,Or where stars walk upon a mountain-top.

Persuade the colleen to put down the book;My grandfather would mutter just such things,And he was no judge of a dog or a horse,And any idle boy could blarney him;Just speak your mind.

Put it away, my colleen;God spreads the heavens above us like great wingsAnd gives a little round of deeds and days,And then come the wrecked angels and set snares,And bait them with light hopes and heavy dreams,Until the heart is puffed with pride and goesHalf shuddering and half joyous from God's peace;And it was some wrecked angel, blind with tears,Who flattered Edane's heart with merry words.My colleen, I have seen some other girlsRestless and ill at ease, but years went byAnd they grew like their neighbours and were gladIn minding children, working at the churn,And gossiping of weddings and of wakes;For life moves out of a red flare of dreamsInto a common light of common hours,Until old age bring the red flare again.

I've little blame for her;She's dull when my big son is in the fields,And that and maybe this good woman's tongueHave driven her to hide among her dreamsLike children from the dark under the bed-clothes.

And maybe it is natural upon May EveTo dream of the good people. But tell me, girl,If you've the branch of blessed quicken woodThat women hang upon the post of the doorThat they may send good luck into the house?Remember they may steal new-married bridesAfter the fall of twilight on May Eve,Or what old women mutter at the fireIs but a pack of lies.

It may be truth.We do not know the limit of those powersGod has permitted to the evil spiritsFor some mysterious end. You have done right (to MARY);It's well to keep old innocent customs up.

I had no sooner hung it on the nailBefore a child ran up out of the wind;She has caught it in her hand and fondled it;Her face is pale as water before dawn.

They have taken away the blessed quicken wood,They will not bring good luck into the house;Yet I am glad that I was courteous to them,For are not they, likewise, children of God?

Colleen, they are the children of the fiend,And they have power until the end of Time,When God shall fight with them a great pitched battleAnd hack them into pieces.

Did but the lawless angels see that doorThey would fall, slain by everlasting peace;And when such angels knock upon our doors,Who goes with them must drive through the same storm.

There's somebody out there that beckoned meAnd raised her hand as though it held a cup,And she was drinking from it, so it may beThat she is thirsty.

Come, sit beside me, colleen,And put away your dreams of discontent,For I would have you light up my last days,Like the good glow of the turf; and when I dieYou'll be the wealthiest hereabout, for, colleen,I have a stocking full of yellow guineasHidden away where nobody can find it.

Do not be cross; she is a right good girl!The butter is by your elbow, Father Hart.My colleen, have not Fate and Time and ChangeDone well for me and for old Bridget there?We have a hundred acres of good land,And sit beside each other at the fire.I have this reverend Father for my friend,I look upon your face and my son's face--We've put his plate by yours--and here he comes,And brings with him the only thing we have lacked,Abundance of good wine. (SHAWN comes in.) Stir up the fire,And put new turf upon it till it blaze;To watch the turf-smoke coiling from the fire,And feel content and wisdom in your heart,This is the best of life; when we are youngWe long to tread a way none trod before,But find the excellent old way through love,And through the care of children, to the hourFor bidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye.

(MARY takes a sod of turf from the fire and goes out through the door.SHAWN follows her and meets her coming in.)

You've given milk and fireUpon the unluckiest night of the year and brought,For all you know, evil upon the house.Before you married you were idle and fineAnd went about with ribbons on your head;And now--no, Father, I will speak my mind--She is not a fitting wife for any man----

You know wellHow calling the good people by that name,Or talking of them over much at all,May bring all kinds of evil on the house.

Come, faeries, take me out of this dull house!Let me have all the freedom I have lost;Work when I will and idle when I will!Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,For I would ride with you upon the wind.Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

Father, I am right weary of four tongues:A tongue that is too crafty and too wise,A tongue that is too godly and too grave,A tongue that is more bitter than the tide,And a kind tongue too full of drowsy love,Of drowsy love and my captivity.

Do not blame me; I often lie awakeThinking that all things trouble your bright head.How beautiful it is--your broad pale foreheadUnder a cloudy blossoming of hair!Sit down beside me here--these are too old,And have forgotten they were ever young.

O, you are the great door-post of this house,And I the branch of blessed quicken wood,And if I could I'd hang upon the post,Till I had brought good luck into the house.

My daughter, take his hand--by love aloneGod binds us to Himself and to the hearth,That shuts us from the waste beyond His peace,From maddening freedom and bewildering light.

Would that the world were mine to give it you,And not its quiet hearths alone, but evenAll that bewilderment of light and freedom,If you would have it.

Then I would mould a world of fire and dew,With no one bitter, grave or over wise,And nothing marred or old to do you wrong,And crowd the enraptured quiet of the skyWith candles burning to your lonely face.

Once a fly dancing in a beam of the sun,Or the light wind blowing out of the dawn,Could fill your heart with dreams none other knew,But now the indissoluble sacramentHas mixed your heart that was most proud and coldWith my warm heart for ever; the sun and moonMust fade and heaven be rolled up like a scroll;But your white spirit still walk by my spirit.

There's some one singing. Why, it's but a child.It sang, "The lonely of heart is withered away."A strange song for a child, but she sings sweetly.Listen, listen!