Monologue

Oona Monologue from The Land of Heart's Desire

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

female · contemplative · 1:00 min

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No, child, I was but thinking Why you have grown so sad. (CATHLEEN: The famine frets me.) I have lived now near ninety winters, child, And I have known three things no doctor cures— Love, loneliness, and famine; nor found refuge Other than growing old and full of sleep. See you where Oisin and young Niamh ride Wrapped in each other’s arms, and where the Fenians Follow their hounds along the fields of tapestry; How merry they lived once, yet men died then. Sit down by me, and I will chaunt the song About the Danaan nations in their raths That Aleel sang for you by the great door Before we lost him in the shadow of leaves.

About this piece

Oona reflects on her long life filled with unhealed wounds of love, loneliness, and the inevitability of aging, inviting a child to sit with her as she reminisces about lost tales and the past.

60 and up · melancholy · love · loneliness · death · isolation

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