takes her in her arms. A woman begins to wail.
A PEASANT.
Hush.
ANOTHER PEASANT.
Hush.
A PEASANT WOMAN.
Hush.
ANOTHER PEASANT WOMAN.
Hush.
CATHLEEN [half rising].
Lay all the bags of money at my feet.
[They lay the bags at her feet.
And send and bring old Neal when I am dead,
And bid him hear each man and judge and give:
He doctors you with herbs, and can best say
Who has the less and who the greater need.
A PEASANT WOMAN.
[At the back of the crowd.]
And will he give enough out of the bags
To keep my children till the dearth go by?
ANOTHER PEASANT WOMAN.
O Queen of Heaven and all you blessed Saints,
Let us and ours be lost, so she be shriven.
CATHLEEN.
Bend down your faces, Oona and Aleel:
I gaze upon them as the swallow gazes
Upon the nest under the eave, before
He wander the loud waters: do not weep
Too great a while, for there is many a candle
On the high altar though one fall. Aleel,
Who sang about the people of the raths,
That know not the hard burden of the world,
Having but breath in their kind bodies, farewell!
And farewell, Oona, who spun flax with me
Soft as their sleep when every dance is done:
The storm is in my hair and I must go.
[She dies.
OONA.
Bring me the looking-glass.
[A woman brings it to her out of the inner room. OONA holds the glass over the lips of the COUNTESS CATHLEEN. All is silent for a moment; and then she speaks in a half scream.]
O, she is dead!
A PEASANT WOMAN.
She was the great white lily of the world.
ANOTHER PEASANT WOMAN.
She was more beautiful than the pale stars.
AN OLD PEASANT WOMAN.
The little plant I loved is broken in two.
[ALEEL takes the looking-glass from OONA and flings it upon the floor so that it is broken in many pieces.
ALEEL.
I shatter you in fragments, for the face
That brimmed you up with beauty is no more:
And die, dull heart, for she whose mournful words
Made you a living spirit has passed away
And left you but a ball of passionate dust;
And you, proud earth and plumy sea, fade out,
For you may hear no more her faltering feet,
But are left lonely amid the clamorous war
Of angels upon devils.
[He stands up; almost everyone is kneeling, but it has grown so dark that only confused forms can be seen.]
And I who weep
Call curses on you, Time and Fate and Change,
And have no excellent hope but the great hour
When you shall plunge headlong through bottomless space.
[A flash of lightning followed immediately by thunder.
A PEASANT WOMAN.
Pull him upon his knees before his curses
Have plucked thunder and lightning on our heads.
ALEEL.
Angels and devils clash in the middle air,
And brazen swords clang upon brazen helms:
[A flash of lightning followed immediately by thunder.]
Yonder a bright spear, cast out of a sling,
Has torn through Balor’s eye, and the dark clans
Fly screaming as they fled Moytura of old.
[Everything is lost in darkness.
AN OLD MAN.
The Almighty, wrath at our great weakness and sin,
Has blotted out the world and we must die.
[The darkness is broken by a visionary light. The peasants seem to be kneeling upon the rocky slope of a mountain, and vapour full of storm and ever-changing light is sweeping above them and behind them. Half in the light, half in the shadow, stand armed Angels. Their armour is old and worn, and their drawn swords dim and dinted. They stand as if upon the air in formation of battle and look downward with stern faces. The peasants cast themselves on the ground.
ALEEL.
Look no more on the half-closed gates of Hell,
But speak to me, whose mind is smitten of God,
That it may be no more with mortal things;
And tell of her who lies here.
[He seizes one of the Angels.] Till you speak
You shall not drift into eternity.
THE ANGEL.
The
