Where There is Nothing / Being Volume I of Plays for an Irish Theatre

by W. B. Yeats

Third Friar. I was there one time, and the whole place was full of crutches that had been thrown away by people that were cured. There was a silver crutch there some rich man from America had sent as an offering after getting his cure. Speak to him, Brother Colman. He seems to be in some sort of a dream. Ask if he is going to speak to us now.

Colman. We are all here, Brother Paul.

Paul Ruttledge. Have you all been through your meditations? [They all gather round him.

Bartley. We have all tried; we have done our best; but it is hard to keep our mind on the one thing for long.

Paul Ruttledge. "He ascended into heaven." Have you meditated upon that? Did you reject all earthly images that came into your mind till the light began to gather?

Third Friar. I could not fix my mind well. When I put out one thought others came rushing in.

Colman. When I was meditating, the inside of my head suddenly became all on fire.

Aloysius. While I was meditating I felt a spout of fire going up between my shoulders.

Paul Ruttledge. That is the way it begins. You are ready now to hear the truth. Now I can give you the message that has come to me. Stand here at either side of the altar. Brother Colman, come beside me here. Lay down your palm branches before this altar; you have brought them as a sign that the walls are beginning to be broken up, that we are going back to the joy of the green earth. [Goes up to the candles and speaks.] Et calix meus inebrians quam praeclarus est. For a long time after their making men and women wandered here and there, half blind from the drunkenness of Eternity; they had not yet forgotten that the green Earth was the Love of God, and that all Life was the Will of God, and so they wept and laughed and hated according to the impulse of their hearts. [He takes up the green boughs and presses them to his breast.] They gathered the green Earth to their breasts and their lips, as I gather these boughs to mine, in what they believed would be an eternal kiss. [He remains a little while silent.

Second Friar. I see a light about his head.