Page:Plays in Prose and Verse (1922).djvu/60

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
44
THE HOUR-GLASS

deal of luck. Great teacher, I have brought you plenty of luck!

[He goes out shaking the bag.

wise man. Though they call him Teigue the Fool, he is not more foolish than everybody used to be, with their dreams and their preachings and their three worlds; but I have overthrown their three worlds with the seven sciences. [He touches the books with his hands.] With Philosophy that was made from the lonely star, I have taught them to forget Theology; with Architecture, I have hidden the ramparts of their cloudy heaven; with Music, the fierce planets’ daughter whose hair is always on fire, and with Grammar that is the moon’s daughter, I have shut their ears to the imaginary harpings and speech of the angels; and I have made formations of battle with Arithmetic that have put the hosts of heaven to the rout. But, Rhetoric and Dialectic, that have been born out of the light star and out of the amorous star, you have been my spearman and my catapult! Oh! my swift horsemen! Oh! my keen darting arguments, it is because of you that I have overthrown the hosts of foolishness! [An angel, in a dress the colour of embers, and carrying a blossoming apple bough in her hand and a gilded halo about her head, stands upon the threshold.] Before I came, men’s minds were stuffed with folly