SHAWN BRUIN
Be quiet, mother!

MAURTEEN BRUIN
You are much too cross!

                      MARIE BRUIN

What do I care if I have given this house,
Where I must hear all day a bitter tongue,
Into the power of faeries!

BRIDGET BRUIN
You know well
How calling the good people by that name
Or talking of them over much at all
May bring all kinds of evil on the house.

                      MARIE BRUIN

Come, faeries, take me out of this dull house! 
Let me have all the freedom I have lost;
Work when I will and idle when I will! 
Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame!

                        FATHER HART
  You cannot know the meaning of your words.

                        MARIE BRUIN
  Father, I am right weary of four tongues: 
  A tongue that is too crafty and too wise,
  A tongue that is too godly and too grave,
  A tongue that is more bitter than the tide,
  And a kind tongue too full of drowsy love,
  Of drowsy love and my captivity.

    (SHAWN BRUIN comes over to her and leads her to the
      settle.)

                        SHAWN BRUIN
  Do not blame me:  I often lie awake
  Thinking that all things trouble your bright head—­
  How beautiful it is—­such broad pale brows
  Under a cloudy blossoming of hair! 
  Sit down beside me here—­these are too old,
  And have forgotten they were ever young.

                        MARIE BRUIN
  Oh, you are the great door-post of this house,
  And I, the red nasturtium, climbing up.

    (She takes SHAWN’S hand, but looks shyly at the priest
      and lets it go.)

                        FATHER HART
  Good daughter, take his hand—­by love alone
  God binds us to Himself and to the hearth
  And shuts us from the waste beyond His peace,
  From maddening freedom and bewildering light.

                        SHAWN BRUIN
  Would that the world were mine to give it you
  With every quiet hearth and barren waste,
  The maddening freedom of its woods and tides,
  And the bewildering light upon its hills.

                        MARIE BRUIN
  Then I would take and break it in my hands
  To see you smile watching it crumble away.

                        SHAWN BRUIN
  Then I would mould a world of fire and dew
  With no one bitter, grave, or over wise,
  And nothing marred or old to do you wrong,
  And crowd the enraptured quiet of the sky
  With candles burning to your lonely face.

                        MARIE BRUIN
  Your looks are all the candles that I need.