The Hour-Glass (verse)

By W B Yeats

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was an instrumental figure in the "Irish Literary Revival" of the 20th Century that redefined Irish writing. His father's love of reading aloud exposed him early on to William Shakespeare, the Romantic poets and the pre-Raphaelites, and developed an interest in Irish myths and folklore. Yeats was a complex man, who struggled between beliefs in the strange and supernatural, and scorn for modern science. He was intrigued by the idea of mysticism, yet had little regard for Christianity. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, and received honorary degrees from Queen's University (Belfast), Trinity College (Dublin), and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His Morality play, "The Hour Glass", appeared on stage as early as 1902, and underwent many revisions by its final version in 1922. The story presents a Fool, a Wise Man and an Angel who sort through questions of faith, doubt and the Wise Man's unrelenting rationalism. In this edition we have Yeats' verse version of the play.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781596744332

W B Yeats

William Butler Yeats was born in 1865 in County Dublin. With his much-loved early poems such as 'The Stolen Child', and 'He Remembers Forgotten Beauty', he defined the Celtic Twilight mood of the late-Victorian period and led the Irish Literary Renaissance. Yet his style evolved constantly, and he is acknowledged as a major figure in literary modernism and twentieth-century European letters. T. S. Eliot described him as 'one of those few whose history is the history of their own time, who are part of the consciousness of an age which cannot be understood without them'. W. B. Yeats died in 1939.

Book preview

THE HOUR-GLASS

(VERSE)

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

A Digireads.com Book

Digireads.com Publishing

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-4164-7

Ebook ISBN 13: 978-1-59674-433-2

This edition copyright © 2011

Please visit www.digireads.com

CONTENTS

PERSONS IN THE PLAY

THE HOUR-GLASS

PERSONS IN THE PLAY

WISE MAN.

BRIDGET, his wife.

TEIGUE, a fool.

ANGEL.

Children and Pupils.

THE HOUR-GLASS

The stage is brought out into the orchestra so as to leave a wide space in front of the stage curtain. Pupils come in and stand before the stage curtain, which is still closed. One pupil carries a book.

FIRST PUPIL. He said we might choose the subject for the lesson.

SECOND PUPIL. There is none of us wise enough to do that.

THIRD PUPIL. It would need a great deal of wisdom to know what it is we want to know.

FOURTH PUPIL. I will question him.

FIFTH PUPIL. You?

FOURTH PUPIL. Last night I dreamt that someone came and told me to question him. I was to say to him, 'You were wrong to say there is no God and no soul—maybe, if there is not much of either, there is yet some tatters, some tag on the wind—so to speak—some rag upon a bush, some bob-tail of a god.' I will argue with him,—nonsense though it be—according to my dream, and you will see how well I can argue, and what thoughts I have.

FIRST PUPIL. I'd as soon listen to dried peas in a bladder, as listen to your thoughts.

[Teigue the Fool comes in.]

FOOL. Give me a penny.

SECOND PUPIL. Let us choose a subject by chance. Here is his big book. Let us turn over the pages slowly. Let one of us put down his finger without looking. The passage his