Monologue

Martin Monologue from The Land of Heart's Desire

From The Land of Heart's Desire by W.B. Yeats

male · contemplative · 1:25 min

It was no dream, it was real. Do you not smell the broken fruit—the grapes? the room is full of the smell. (FATHER JOHN: Tell me what you have seen, where you have been?) There were horses—white horses rushing by, with white shining riders—there was a horse without a rider, and someone caught me up and put me upon him and we rode away, with the wind, like the wind— (FATHER JOHN: That is a common imagining. I know many poor persons have seen that.) We went on, on, on. We came to a sweet-smelling garden with a gate to it, and there were wheatfields in full ear around, and there were vineyards like I saw in France, and the grapes in bunches. I thought it to be one of the townlands of heaven. Then I saw the horses we were on had changed to unicorns, and they began trampling the grapes and breaking them. I tried to stop them but I could not.

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