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!
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!
Yeats
A little queer old man in a green coat,
Who asked a burning sod to light his pipe.
BRIDGET BRUIN.
You have now given milk and fire, and brought,
For all you know, evil upon the house.
Before you married you were idle and fine,
And went about with ribbons on your head;
And now you are a good-for-nothing wife.
SHAWN BRUIN.
Be quiet, mother!
MAURTEEN BRUIN.
You are much too cross!
MAIRE BRUIN.
What do I care if I have given this house,
Where I must hear all day a bitter tongue,
Into the power of faeries!
BRIDGET BRUIN.
You know well
How calling the good people by that name
Or talking of them over-much at all
May bring all kinds of evil on the house.
MAIRE BRUIN.
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 HART.
You cannot know the meaning of your words.
MAIRE BRUIN.
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.
[_SHAWN BRUIN comes over to her and leads her to the
settle. _
SHAWN BRUIN.
Do not blame me; I often lie awake
Thinking that all things trouble your bright head--
How beautiful it is--such broad pale brows
Under a cloudy blossoming of hair!
Sit down beside me here--these are too old,
And have forgotten they were ever young.
MAIRE BRUIN.
O, you are the great door-post of this house,
And I, the red nasturtium, climbing up.
[_She takes SHAWN'S hand, but looks shyly at the priest
and lets it go. _
FATHER HART.
Good daughter, take his hand--by love alone
God binds us to Himself and to the hearth
And shuts us from the waste beyond His peace,
From maddening freedom and bewildering light.
SHAWN BRUIN.
Would that the world were mine to give it you
With every quiet hearth and barren waste,
The maddening freedom of its woods and tides,
And the bewildering light upon its hills.
