No More Learning

I have sat this hour under the elder-tree.

SECOND MERCHANT.

I had bid you rob her treasury, and yet
I found you sitting drowsed and motionless,
Your chin bowed to your knees, while on all sides,
Bat-like from bough and roof and window-ledge,
Clung evil souls of men, and in the woods,
Like streaming flames, floated upon the winds
The elemental creatures.

FIRST MERCHANT.

I have fared ill;
She prayed so hard I could not cross the threshold
Till this young man had turned her prayer to dreams.
You have had a man to kill: how have you fared?

SECOND MERCHANT.

I lay in the image of a nine-monthed bonyeen,
By Tubber-vanach cross-roads: Father John
Came, sad and moody, murmuring many prayers;
I seemed as though I came from his own sty;
He saw the one brown ear; the breviary dropped;
He ran; I ran, I ran into the quarry;
He fell a score of yards.

FIRST MERCHANT.

Now that he is dead
We shall be too much thronged with souls to-morrow.
Did his soul escape you?

SECOND MERCHANT.

I thrust it in the bag.
But the hand that blessed the poor and raised the Host
Tore through the leather with sharp piety.

FIRST MERCHANT.
Well, well, to labour--here is the treasury door.

[_They go out by the left-hand door, and enter again
in a little while, carrying full bags upon their
shoulders. _

FIRST MERCHANT.

Brave thought, brave thought--a shining thought of mine!
She now no more may bribe the poor--no more
Cheat our great master of his merchandise,
While our heels dangle at the house in the woods,
And grass grows on the threshold, and snails crawl
Along the window-pane and the mud floor.
Brother, where wander all these dwarfish folk,
Hostile to men, the people of the tides?

SECOND MERCHANT.

[_Going to the door. _]

They are gone. They have already wandered away,
Unwilling labourers.

FIRST MERCHANT.

I will call them hither.

[_He opens the window. _

Come hither, hither, hither, water-folk:
Come, all you elemental populace;
Leave lonely the long-hoarding surges: leave
The cymbals of the waves to clash alone,
And, shaking the sea-tangles from your hair,
Gather about us. [_After a pause. _
I can hear a sound
As from waves beating upon distant strands;
And the sea-creatures, like a surf of light,
Pour eddying through the pathways of the oaks;
And as they come, the sentient grass and leaves
Bow towards them, and the tall, drouth-jaded oaks
Fondle the murmur of their flying feet.