Page:Yeats Responsibilities 1916.djvu/157

Wise Man

What message could you bring to one like me?

Angel (turning the hour-glass}

That you will die when the last grain of sand
Has fallen through this glass.

Wise Man

I have a wife.

Children and pupils that I cannot leave:
Why must I die, my time is far away?

Angel

You have to die because no soul has passed
The heavenly threshold since you have opened school,
But grass grows there, and rust upon the hinge;