WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
501
our murderers to discompose us. For after all even if they blow up the floor with gunpowder they are merely the mob. I will even put my railing into rhyme.
Upon the round blue eye I rail,
Damnation on the milk-white horn.
A telling sound, a sound to linger in the ear—hale, tale, bale, gale—my God, I am even too sober to find a rhyme—(he drinks and then picks up a lute) a tune that even my murderers may remember my last words and croon them to their grandchildren. (For the next few speeches Septimus is busy making his tune.)
FIRST PLAYER: The players of this town are jealous. Have we not been chosen before them all, because we are the most famous players in the world? It is they who have stirred up the mob.
THIRD PLAYER: When we played at Kzanadu, my performance was so incomparable that the men who pulled the strings of the puppet-show left all the puppets lying on their backs and came to have a look at me.
FOURTH PLAYER: Listen to him! His performance indeed! I ask you all to speak the truth. If you are honest men you will say that it was my performance that drew the town. Why, Kubla Khan himself gave me the name of the "Talking Nightingale."
FIFTH PLAYER: My God, listen to him! Is it not always the comedian who draws the people? Am I dreaming, and was it not I who was called six times before the curtain? Answer me that.
SIXTH PLAYER (at window): There is somebody making a speech. I cannot see who it is.
SECOND PLAYER: Depend upon it, he is telling them to put burning wisps upon dung-forks and put them into the rafters. That is what they did in the old play of the Burning of Troy. Depend upon it, they will burn the whole house.
FIFTH PLAYER (coming from window): I will stay here no longer. (Exit.)
OTHER PLAYERS: Nor I, nor I.
FIRST PLAYER: Must we go dressed like this?
SECOND PLAYER: There is no time to change, and besides should the hill be surrounded, we can gather in some cleft of the rocks where we can be seen only from a distance. They will suppose we are a drove of cattle or a flock of birds.
(All go out except Septimus, Decima, and Nona. Nona is making a bundle of Noah's hat and cloak and other properties. Decima is watching Septimus.
SEPTIMUS (while the players are going out): Leave me to die alone? I do not blame you. There is courage in red wine, in white wine, in beer, even in thin beer sold by a blear-eyed pot-boy in a bankrupt tavern, but there is none in the human heart. Oh, I will journey to a cavern in Africa and sing into the ear of the unicorn epithalamiums until, unable to endure any longer his desirous heart, he becomes the new Adam.
NNA: I'll pile these upon your back. I shall carry the rest myself and so we shall save all. (She begins tying a great bundle of properties on Septimus' back.)
