No More Learning

What were one knife
Among a hundred?

DEIRDRE [_going towards them_].

Women, if I die,
If Naisi die this night, how will you praise?
What words seek out? for that will stand to you;
For being but dead we shall have many friends.
All through your wanderings, the doors of kings
Shall be thrown wider open, the poor man's hearth
Heaped with new turf, because you are wearing this
[_Gives MUSICIAN a bracelet. _
To show that you have Deirdre's story right.

MUSICIAN.

Have you not been paid servants in love's house
To sweep the ashes out and keep the doors?
And though you have suffered all for mere love's sake
You'd live your lives again.

DEIRDRE.

Even this last hour.

[_CONCHUBAR enters with dark-faced men. _]

CONCHUBAR.

One woman and two men; that is a quarrel
That knows no mending.
Bring the man she chose
Because of his beauty and the strength of his youth.

[_The dark-faced men drag in NAISI entangled in a net. _

NAISI.

I have been taken like a bird or a fish.

CONCHUBAR.

He cried 'Beast, beast! ' and in a blind-beast rage
He ran at me and fell into the nets,
But we were careful for your sake, and took him
With all the comeliness that woke desire
Unbroken in him. I being old and lenient--
I would not hurt a hair upon his head.

DEIRDRE.

What do you say? Have you forgiven him?

NAISI.

He is but mocking us. What's left to say
Now that the seven years' hunt is at an end?

DEIRDRE.

He never doubted you until I made him,
And therefore all the blame for what he says
Should fall on me.