The Collected Works in Verse and Prose of William Butler Yeats, Vol. 3 (of 8) / The Countess Cathleen. The Land of Heart's Desire. The Unicorn from the Stars

Chapter 30: Second Musician.

Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

A trio of lyrical dramas blends mythic atmosphere, music, and symbolic action to examine encounters between ordinary households and supernatural visitors. One play stages desperate choices amid hunger and otherworldly temptation; another portrays the seductive promise of an enchanted life offered to a young couple; the third presents collaborative mythic tableaux that fuse folkloric motifs and poetic stagecraft. Throughout, ritual, song, and evocative imagery take precedence over realistic explanation, and themes of sacrifice, desire, mortality, and the tension between earthly duties and transcendent longing recur across compact, mood-driven scenes.

DEIRDRE. MUSICIANS’ SONG.—I.

DEIRDRE.
MUSICIANS’ SONG.—I.

Florence Farr.

First Musician.

“Why is it,” Queen Edain said,

“If I do but climb the stair

To the tower overhead

When the winds are calling there,

Or the gannets calling out,

In waste places of the sky,

There is so much to think about,

That I cry, that I cry?”

Second Musician.

But her goodman answered her:

“Love would be a thing of naught

Had not all his limbs a stir

Born out of immoderate thought.

Were he any thing by half,

Were his measure running dry,

Lovers, if they may not laugh,

Have to cry, have to cry.”

The Three Musicians together.

But is Edain worth a song

Now the hunt begins anew?

Praise the beautiful and strong;

Praise the redness of the yew;

Praise the blossoming apple-stem.

But our silence had been wise.

What is all our praise to them

That have one another’s eyes?