are too timid,For now you are safe from all the evil times,
There is no evil that can find you here.
Ochone! Ochone! The treasure room is broken in.
The door stands open, and the gold is gone.
(PEASANTS raise a lamentable cry.)
Be silent. (The cry ceases.) Have you seen nobody?
Ochone!
That my good mistress should lose all this money.
Let those among you – not too old to ride —
Get horses and search all the country round,
I'll give a farm to him who finds the thieves.
(A man with keys at his girdle has come in while she speaks. There is a general murmur of "The porter! the porter!")
Demons were here. I sat beside the door
In my stone niche, and two owls passed me by,
Whispering with human voices.
God forsakes us.
Old man, old man, He never closed a door
Unless one opened. I am desolate,
Because of a strange thought that's in my heart;
But I have still my faith; therefore be silent;
For surely He does not forsake the world,
But stands before it modelling in the clay
And moulding there His image. Age by age
The clay wars with His fingers and pleads hard
For its old, heavy, dull and shapeless ease;
But sometimes – though His hand is on it still —
It moves awry and demon hordes are born.
(PEASANTS cross themselves.)
Yet leave me now, for I am desolate,
I hear a whisper from beyond the thunder.
(She comes from the oratory door.)
Yet stay an instant. When we meet again
I may have grown forgetful. Oona, take
These two – the larder and the dairy keys.
(To the PORTER.)
But take you this. It opens the small room
Of herbs for medicine, of hellebore,
Of vervain, monkshood, plantain, and self-heal.
The book of cures is on the upper shelf.
Why do you do this, lady; did you see
Your coffin in a dream?
Ah, no, not that.
But I have come to a strange thought. I have heard
A sound of wailing in unnumbered hovels,
And I must go down, down – I know not where —
Pray for all men and women mad from famine;
Pray, you good neighbours.
(The PEASANTS all kneel. COUNTESS CATHLEEN ascends the steps to the door of the oratory, and turning round stands there motionless for a little, and then cries in a loud voice:)
Mary, Queen of angels,
And all you clouds on clouds of saints, farewell!
SCENE IV
Scene. —A wood near the Castle, as in Scene II. A group of PEASANTS pass.
I have seen silver and copper, but not gold.
It's yellow and it shines.
It's beautiful.
The most beautiful thing under the sun,
That's what I've heard.
I have seen gold enough.
I would not say that it's so beautiful.
But doesn't a gold piece glitter like the sun?
That's what my father, who'd seen better days,
Told me when I was but a little boy —
So high – so high, it's shining like the sun,
Round and shining, that is what he said.
There's nothing in the world it cannot buy.
They've bags and bags of it.
(They go out. The two MERCHANTS follow silently. Then ALEEL passes over the stage singing.)
Impetuous heart be still, be still,
Your sorrowful love can never be told,
Cover it up with a lonely tune.
He who could bend all things to His will
Has covered the door of the infinite fold
With the pale stars and the wandering moon.
SCENE V
Scene. —The house of SHEMUS RUA. There is an alcove at the back with curtains; in it a bed, and on the bed is the body of MARY with candles round it. The two MERCHANTS while they speak put a large book upon a table, arrange money, and so on.
Thanks to that lie I told about her ships
And that about the herdsman lying sick,
We shall be too much thronged with souls to-morrow.
What has she in her coffers now but mice?
When the night fell and I had shaped myself
Into the image of the man-headed owl,
I hurried to the cliffs of Donegal,
And saw with all their canvas full of wind
And rushing through the parti-coloured sea
Those ships that bring the woman grain and meal.
They're but three days from us.
When the dew rose
I hurried in like feathers to the east,
And saw nine hundred oxen driven through Meath
With
