bid them follow.
Can you not hear them breathing upon the stairs?
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.
SECOND MERCHANT.
The green things love unknotted hearts and minds;
And neither one with angels or with us,
Nor risen in arms with evil nor with good,
In laughter roves the litter of the waves.
[A crowd of faces fill up the darkness outside the window. A figure separates from the others and speaks.
THE SPIRIT.
We come unwillingly, for she whose gold
We must now carry to the house in the woods
Is dear to all our race. On the green plain,
Beside the sea, a hundred shepherds live
To mind her sheep; and when the nightfall comes
They leave a hundred pans of white ewes’ milk
Outside their doors, to feed us when the dawn
Has driven us out of Finbar’s ancient house,
And broken the long dance under the hill.
FIRST MERCHANT.
[Making a sign upon the air.]
Obey! I make a sign upon your hearts.
THE SPIRIT.
The sign of evil burns upon our hearts,
And we obey.
[They crowd through the window, and take out of the bags a small bag each. They are dressed in green robes and have ruddy hair. They are a little less than the size of men and women.
FIRST MERCHANT.
And now begone—begone! [They go.
I bid
