THE KING’S THRESHOLD. ON
BAILE’S STRAND. DEIRDRE.
SHADOWY WATERS :: BEING
THE SECOND VOLUME OF
THE COLLECTED WORKS IN
VERSE & PROSE OF WILLIAM
BUTLER YEATS :: IMPRINTED
AT THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD
PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON
MCMVIII

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

THE KING’S THRESHOLD. ON
BAILE’S STRAND. DEIRDRE.
SHADOWY WATERS

BEING
THE SECOND VOLUME OF
THE COLLECTED WORKS IN
VERSE & PROSE OF WILLIAM
BUTLER YEATS

IMPRINTED
AT THE SHAKESPEARE HEAD
PRESS STRATFORD-ON-AVON
MCMVIII

CONTENTS

The friends that have it I do wrong

When ever I remake a song,

Should know what issue is at stake:

It is myself that I remake.

THE KING’S THRESHOLD

To Frank Fay
BECAUSE OF HIS BEAUTIFUL SPEAKING IN
THE CHARACTER OF SEANCHAN

PERSONS IN THE PLAY

• King Guaire
• Seanchan (pronounced Shanahan)
• His Pupils
• The Mayor of Kinvara
• Two Cripples
• Brian (an old servant)
• The Lord High Chamberlain
• A Soldier
• A Monk
• Court Ladies
• Two Princesses
• Fedelm

THE KING’S THRESHOLD.

Steps before the Palace of KING GUAIRE at Gort. A table in front of steps at one side, with food on it, and a bench by table. Seanchan lying on steps. PUPILS before steps. KING on the upper step before a curtained door.

KING.

I welcome you that have the mastery

Of the two kinds of Music: the one kind

Being like a woman, the other like a man.

Both you that understand stringed instruments,

And how to mingle words and notes together

So artfully, that all the Art’s but Speech

Delighted with its own music; and you that carry

The long twisted horn, and understand

The heady notes that, being without words,

Can hurry beyond Time and Fate and Change.

For the high angels that drive the horse of Time—

The golden one by day, by night the silver—

Are not more welcome to one that loves the world

For some fair woman’s sake.

I have called you hither

To save the life of your great master, Seanchan,

For all day long it has flamed up or flickered

To the fast cooling hearth.

OLDEST PUPIL.

When did he sicken?

Is it a fever that is wasting him?

KING.

No fever or sickness. He has chosen death:

Refusing to eat or drink, that he may bring

Disgrace upon me; for there is a custom,

An old and foolish custom, that if a man

Be wronged, or think that he is wronged, and starve

Upon another’s threshold till he die,

The common people, for all time to come,

Will raise a heavy cry against that threshold,

Even though it be the King’s.

OLDEST PUPIL.

My head whirls round;

I do not know what I am to think or say.

I owe you all obedience, and yet

How can I give it, when the man I have loved

More than all others, thinks that he is wronged

So bitterly, that he will starve and die

Rather than bear it? Is there any man

Will throw his life away for a light issue?

KING.

It is but fitting that you take his side

Until you understand how light an issue

Has put us by the ears. Three days ago

I yielded to the outcry of my courtiers—

Bishops, Soldiers, and Makers of the Law—

Who long had thought it against their dignity

For a mere man of words to sit amongst them

At my own table. When the meal was spread,

I ordered Seanchan to a lower table;

And when he pleaded for the poets’ right,

Established at the establishment of the world,

I said that I was King, and that all rights

Had their original fountain in some king,

And that it was the men who ruled the world,

And not the men who sang to it, who should sit

Where there was the most honour. My courtiers—

Bishops, Soldiers, and Makers of the Law—

Shouted approval; and amid that noise

Seanchan went out, and from that hour to this,

Although there is good food and drink beside him,

Has eaten nothing.

OLDEST PUPIL.

I can breathe again.

You have taken a great burden from my mind,

For that old custom’s not worth dying for.

KING.

Persuade him to eat or drink. Till yesterday

I thought that hunger and weakness had been enough;

But finding them too trifling and too light

To hold his mouth from biting at the grave,

I called you hither, and all my hope’s in you,

And certain of his neighbours and good friends

That I have sent for. While he is lying there

Perishing, my good name in the world

Is perishing also. I cannot give way,

Because I am King. Because if I gave way,

My Nobles would call me a weakling, and it may be

The very throne be shaken.

OLDEST PUPIL.

I will persuade him.

Your words had been enough persuasion, King;

But being lost in sleep or reverie,

He cannot hear them.

KING.

Make him eat or drink.

Nor is it all because of my good name

I’d have him do it, for he is a man

That might well hit the fancy of a king,

Banished out of his country, or a woman’s,

Or any other’s that can judge a man

For what he is. But I that sit a throne,

And take my measure from the needs of the State,

Call his wild thought that overruns the measure,

Making words more than deeds, and his proud will

That would unsettle all, most mischievous,

And he himself a most mischievous man.

[He turns to go, and then returns again.

Promise a house with grass and tillage land,

An annual payment, jewels and silken ware,

Or anything but that old right of the poets.

[He goes into palace.

OLDEST PUPIL.

The King did wrong to abrogate our right;

But Seanchan, who talks of dying for it,

Talks foolishly. Look at us, Seanchan;

Waken out of your dream and look at us,

Who have ridden under the moon and all the day,

Until the moon has all but come again,

That we might be beside you.

SEANCHAN.
[Half turning round, leaning on his elbow, and
speaking as if in a dream.]

I was but now

In Almhuin, in a great high-raftered house,

With Finn and Osgar. Odours of roast flesh

Rose round me, and I saw the roasting-spits;

And then the dream was broken, and I saw

Grania dividing salmon by a stream.

OLDEST PUPIL.

Hunger has made you dream of roasting flesh;

And though I all but weep to think of it,

The hunger of the crane, that starves himself

At the full moon because he is afraid

Of his own shadow and the glittering water,

Seems to me little more fantastical

Than this of yours.

SEANCHAN.

Why, that’s the very truth.

It is as though the moon changed everything—

Myself and all that I can hear and see;

For when the heavy body has grown weak,

There’s nothing that can tether the wild mind

That, being moonstruck and fantastical,

Goes where it fancies. I had even thought

I knew your voice and face, but now the words

Are so unlikely that I needs must ask

Who is it that bids me put my hunger by.

OLDEST PUPIL.

I am your oldest pupil, Seanchan;

The one that has been with you many years—

So many, that you said at Candlemas

That I had almost done with school, and knew

All but all that poets understand.

SEANCHAN.

My oldest pupil? No, that cannot be,

For it is some one of the courtly crowds

That have been round about me from sunrise,

And I am tricked by dreams; but I’ll refute them.

At Candlemas I bid that pupil tell me

Why poetry is honoured, wishing to know

If he had any weighty argument

For distant countries and strange, churlish kings.

What did he answer?

OLDEST PUPIL.

I said the poets hung

Images of the life that was in Eden

About the child-bed of the world, that it,

Looking upon those images, might bear

Triumphant children. But why must I stand here,

Repeating an old lesson, while you starve?

SEANCHAN.

Tell on, for I begin to know the voice.

What evil thing will come upon the world

If the Arts perish?

OLDEST PUPIL.

If the Arts should perish,

The world that lacked them would be like a woman,

That looking on the cloven lips of a hare,

Brings forth a hare-lipped child.

SEANCHAN.

But that’s not all:

For when I asked you how a man should guard

Those images, you had an answer also,

If you’re the man that you have claimed to be,

Comparing them to venerable things

God gave to men before he gave them wheat.

OLDEST PUPIL.

I answered—and the word was half your own—

That he should guard them as the Men of Dea

Guard their four treasures, as the Grail King guards

His holy cup, or the pale, righteous horse

The jewel that is underneath his horn,

Pouring out life for it as one pours out

Sweet heady wine.... But now I understand;

You would refute me out of my own mouth;

And yet a place at table, near the King,

Is nothing of great moment, Seanchan.

How does so light a thing touch poetry?

[Seanchan is now sitting up. He still looks dreamily in front of him.

SEANCHAN.

At Candlemas you called this poetry

One of the fragile, mighty things of God,

That die at an insult.

OLDEST PUPIL.
[To other PUPILS.]

Give me some true answer,

For on that day we spoke about the Court,

And said that all that was insulted there

The world insulted, for the Courtly life,

Being the first comely child of the world,

Is the world’s model. How shall I answer him?

Can you not give me some true argument?

I will not tempt him with a lying one.

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

O, tell him that the lovers of his music

Have need of him.

SEANCHAN.

But I am labouring

For some that shall be born in the nick o’ time,

And find sweet nurture, that they may have voices,

Even in anger, like the strings of harps;

And how could they be born to majesty

If I had never made the golden cradle?

YOUNGEST PUPIL.
[Throwing himself at SEANCHAN’S feet.]

Why did you take me from my father’s fields?

If you would leave me now, what shall I love?

Where shall I go? What shall I set my hand to?

And why have you put music in my ears,

If you would send me to the clattering houses?

I will throw down the trumpet and the harp,

For how could I sing verses or make music

With none to praise me, and a broken heart?

SEANCHAN.

What was it that the poets promised you,

If it was not their sorrow? Do not speak.

Have I not opened school on these bare steps,

And are not you the youngest of my scholars?

And I would have all know that when all falls

In ruin, poetry calls out in joy,

Being the scattering hand, the bursting pod,

The victim’s joy among the holy flame,

God’s laughter at the shattering of the world.

And now that joy laughs out, and weeps and burns

On these bare steps.

YOUNGEST PUPIL.

O master, do not die!

OLDEST PUPIL.

Trouble him with no useless argument.

Be silent! There is nothing we can do

Except find out the King and kneel to him,

And beg our ancient right.

For here are some

To say whatever we could say and more,

And fare as badly. Come, boy, that is no use.

[Raises YOUNGEST PUPIL.

If it seem well that we beseech the King,

Lay down your harps and trumpets on the stones

In silence, and come with me silently.

Come with slow footfalls, and bow all your heads,

For a bowed head becomes a mourner best.

[They lay harps and trumpets down one by one, and then go out very solemnly and slowly, following one another. Enter MAYOR, TWO CRIPPLES, and BRIAN, an old servant. The mayor, who has been heard, before he came upon the stage, muttering ‘Chief Poet,’ ‘Ireland,’ etc., crosses in front of SEANCHAN to the other side of the steps. BRIAN takes food out of basket. The CRIPPLES are watching the basket. The MAYOR has an Ogham stick in his hand.

MAYOR.
[As he crosses.]

‘Chief Poet,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Townsman,’ ‘Grazing land,’

Those are the words I have to keep in mind—

‘Chief Poet,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Townsman,’ ‘Grazing land.’

I have the words. They are all upon the Ogham.

‘Chief Poet,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Townsman,’ ‘Grazing land.’

But what’s their order?

[He keeps muttering over his speech during what follows.

FIRST CRIPPLE.

The King were rightly served

If Seanchan drove his good luck away.

What’s there about a king, that’s in the world

From birth to burial like another man,

That he should change old customs, that were in it

As long as ever the world has been a world?

SECOND CRIPPLE.