Purgatory, Yeats, p.29-35

• BOY. So you have come this path before?
• BOY. There's nobody here.
• OLD MAN. There's somebody there.
• OLD MAN. But there are some
  That do not care what's gone, what's left:
  The souls in Purgatory that come back
  To habitations and familiar spots.
• OLD MAN. Stop! Sit there upon that stone.
  That is the house where I was born.
• OLD MAN. My mother that was your grand-dam owned it,
  This scenery and this countryside,
  Kennel and stable, horse and hound--
  She had a horse at the Curragh, and there met
  My father, a groom in the training stable,
  Looked at him and married him.
  Her mother never spoke to her again,
  And she did right.
• OLD MAN. Looked at him and married him,
  And he squandered everything she had.
  She never knew the worst, because
  She died in giving birth to me,
  But now she knows it all, being dead.
  ...
  But he killed the house; to kill a house
  Where great men grew up, married, died,
  I hereby declare a capital offence.
• BOY. But what education have you given me?
• OLD MAN. I gave the education that befits
  A bastard that a pedlar got
  Upon a tinker's daughter in a ditch.
  When I had come to sixteen years old
  My father burned down the house when drunk.
• BOY. But that is my age, sixteen years old,
  At the Puck Fair.
• OLD MAN. I stuck him with a knife,
  That knife that cuts my dinner now,
  And after that I left him in the fire.
  ...
  No good trade, but good enough
  Because I am my father's son,
  Because of what I did or may do.
  Listen to the hoof-beats! Listen, listen!
• BOY. I cannot hear a sound.
• OLD MAN. Beat! Beat!
  This night is the anniversary
  Of my mother's wedding night,
  Or of the night I was begotten.
• BOY. You never gave me my right share.
• OLD MAN. And had I given it, young as you are,
  You would have spent it upon drink.
• BOY. What if I did? I had a right
  To get it and spend it as I chose.
• [They struggle for the bag. In the struggle it drops, scattering the money. The OLD MAN staggers but does not fall. They stand looking at each other. The window is lit up. A man is seen pouring whiskey into a glass.]
• BOY. What if I killed you? You killed my grand-dad,
  Because you were young and he was old.
  Now I am young and you are old.
• BOY. A dead, living, murdered man!
• OLD MAN. That beast there would know nothing, being nothing,
  If I should kill a man under the window
  He would not even turn his head.
  [He stabs the BOY.]
  My father and my son on the same jack-knife!
  That finishes--there--there--there--
  [He stabs again and again. The window grows dark.]
  ...
  I killed the lad because had he grown up
  He would have struck a woman's fancy,
  Begot, and passed pollution on.