No More Learning

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.

MAIRE BRUIN.

Then I would take and break it in my hands
To see you smile watching it crumble away.

SHAWN BRUIN.

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 sky
With candles burning to your lonely face.

MAIRE BRUIN.

Your looks are all the candles that I need.

SHAWN BRUIN.

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 sacrament
Has mixed your heart that was most proud and cold
With my warm heart for ever; and sun and moon
Must fade and heaven be rolled up like a scroll;
But your white spirit still walk by my spirit.