Time and the Witch Vivien

A proud enchantress gambles with Time for his hour-glass, and loses her life.

A short verse play in one scene. Vivien, a beautiful and powerful witch, admires her reflection in a fountain and claims that every spirit obeys her. She senses "some great one" approaching, but it is only a little old pedlar: Time, carrying a scythe, an hour-glass and a bag. She mocks him, refuses his wares of grey hairs and crutches, and tries to buy his hour-glass. He will not sell, so she gambles for it. She loses at dice to his double sixes, then plays chess for her life and her many plots. Time checks her again and again and mates her, and she dies. The play is a fable: no beauty, magic or cleverness can beat Time.

Line by line

1. Lines 1 to 8Vivien's vanity

   Vivien gazes into the fountain, where the golden carp swim "Gold unto gold" past her reflection, and asks who is as beautiful as she. "Ah, my beautiful, / What roseate fingers!" she tells her own image. No spirit, "Hide where he will", can disobey her.

2. Lines 9 to 16Someone approaches

   She feels a powerful magician drawing near the gateway, "Some great one". But the steps she hears are those "of a little, light old man", and she turns back to her reflection, repeating her praise of her fingers. The anticlimax is the play's first joke and first warning.

3. Lines 17 to 31The pedlar's wares

   Time enters as a pedlar. She laughs at "The wrinkled squanderer of human wealth" and asks what he sells: "Grey hairs and crutches", memories and "mellow thoughts" for the old. She refuses with "Never!", and Time's reply is chilling: "I laugh the last always."

4. Lines 32 to 46The hour-glass

   She wants his hour-glass, the measure of life, but he will not sell it. She teases him about Merlin and about his age ("Before your grandam Eve"), then proposes a gamble, pointing to her magical instruments as mere curiosities.

5. Lines 47 to 56Loaded dice

   They throw dice. She scores well, but Time throws "Double sixes!" She cries that Time "always plays / With loaded dice" and demands another chance, at chess, confident that young wits beat old ones, "as Merlin found".

6. Lines 57 to 68New stakes

   The falling sand is "snow / Upon my soul", and she lays the glass on its side, but it is set upright again. Now they play for her "triumph in my many plots". Time answers "Defeat is death", and she compares the chess pieces to her magic: first lesser sprites, now "Father Time" himself.

7. Lines 69 to 78Check and stillness

   The game turns against her. She blames chance for Time's check, then notices small sounds: "I hear the carp go splash", a bubble rising, "A bird walk on the doorstep". The stillness sharpens the tension as the end nears.

8. Lines 79 to 86Checkmate and death

   At Time's "Check once more" she pleads her "war plots, peace plots, love plots" and dreads "the bloodless land / Among the whimpering ghosts". Time says simply "Mate thus", and her last words, "Chance hath a skill!", are still an excuse.

Themes

Context

This is one of Yeats's early dramatic poems, printed in his first book, The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), and not kept in his collected poems. Vivien is the enchantress of Arthurian legend who charmed the wizard Merlin and imprisoned him, traditionally beneath an oak, which is why Time says he has "No taste" for "slumber 'neath an oak" and Vivien recalls what "Merlin found".

The scene is a moral fable in the manner of an old allegory, with Time given the pedlar's pack, scythe and glass. It shows the young Yeats trying out verse drama, with its quick exchanges and stage directions, years before his work for the Irish stage.

Form

A short dramatic scene in blank verse, unrhymed iambic pentameter, with stage directions and two speakers. Many lines are split between Vivien and Time into quick exchanges ("When were you born?" / "Before your grandam Eve"), and the chess moves shrink to single words, "Check" and "Mate thus", so the verse tightens as the game closes in.