Shemus, you are late home: you have been lounging
And
chattering
with some one: you know well
How the dreams trouble me, and how I pray,
Yet you lie sweating on the hill from morn,
Or linger at the crossways with all comers,
Telling or gathering up calamity.
Yeats
TEIG.
By Carrick-orus churchyard,
A herdsman met a man who had no mouth,
Nor ears, nor eyes: his face a wall of flesh;
He saw him plainly by the moon.
MAIRE.
[_Going over to the little shrine._]
White Mary,
Bring Shemus home out of the wicked woods;
Save Shemus from the wolves; Shemus is daring;
And save him from the demons of the woods,
Who have crept out and wander on the roads,
Deluding dim-eyed souls now newly dead,
And those alive who have gone crazed with famine.
Save him, White Mary Virgin.
TEIG.
And but now
I thought I heard far-off tympans and harps.
[_Knocking at the door._
MAIRE.
Shemus has come.
TEIG.
May he bring better food
Than the lean crow he brought us yesterday.
[_MAIRE opens the door, and SHEMUS comes in with a dead
wolf on his shoulder._
MAIRE.
Shemus, you are late home: you have been lounging
And
chattering
with some one: you know well
How the dreams trouble me, and how I pray,
Yet you lie sweating on the hill from morn,
Or linger at the crossways with all comers,
Telling or gathering up calamity.
SHEMUS.
You would rail my head off. Here is a good dinner.
[_He throws the wolf on the table._
A wolf is better than a carrion crow.
I searched all day: the mice and rats and hedgehogs
Seemed to be dead, and I could hardly hear
A wing moving in all the famished woods,
Though the dead leaves and clauber of four forests
Cling to my footsole. I turned home but now,
And saw, sniffing the floor in a bare cow-house,
This young wolf here: the crossbow brought him down.
MAIRE.
Praise be the saints! [_After a pause._
Why did the house dog bay?
