- Dylan Thomas / Under Milk Wood

Llaregyb Hill, that mystic tumulus, the memorial of
peoples that dwelt in the region of Llaregyb before the
Celts left the Land of Summer and where the old wizards
made themselves a wife out of flowers.

SECOND VOICE

Mr Waldo, in his corner of the Sailors Arms, sings:

MR WALDO

In Pembroke City when I was young
I lived by the Castle Keep
Sixpence a week was my wages
For working for the chimbley-sweep.
Six cold pennies he
gave me Not a farthing more or less
And all the fare I could afford
Was parsnip gin and watercress.
I did not need a knife and fork
Or a bib up to my chin
To dine on a dish of watercress
And a jug of parsnip gin.
Did you ever hear a growing boy
To live so cruel cheap
On grub that has no flesh and bones
And liquor that makes you weep?
Sweep sweep chimbley sweep,
I wept through Pembroke City
Poor and barefoot in the snow
Till a kind young woman took pity.
Poor little chimbley sweep she said
Black as the ace of spades
O nobody's swept my chimbley
Since my husband went his ways
Come and sweep my chimbley
Come and sweep my chimbley
She sighed to me with a blush
Come and sweep my chimbley
Come and sweep my chimbley
Bring along your chimbley brush!

FIRST VOICE

Blind Captain Cat climbs into his bunk. Like a cat, he
sees in the dark. Through the voyages of his tears he
sails to see the dead.

CAPTAIN CAT

Dancing Williams!

FIRST DROWNED

Still dancing.

CAPTAIN CAT

Jonah Jarvis

THIRD DROWNED

Still.

FIRST DROWNED

Curly Bevan's skull.

ROSIE PROBERT

Rosie, with God. She has forgotten dying.

FIRST VOICE

The dead come out in their Sunday best.

SECOND VOICE

Listen to the night breaking.

FIRST VOICE

Organ Morgan goes to chapel to play the organ. He sees
Bach lying on a tombstone.

ORGAN MORGAN

Johann Sebastian!

CHERRY OWEN (Drunkenly)

Who?

ORGAN MORGAN

Johann Sebastian mighty Bach. Oh, Bach Bach

CHERRY OWEN

To hell with you,

FIRST VOICE

says Cherry Owen who is resting on the tombstone on his
way home.

Mr Mog Edwards and Miss Myfanwy Price happily apart from
one another at the top and the sea end of the town write
their everynight letters of love and desire. In the warm
White Book of Llaregyb you will find the little maps of
the islands of their contentment.

MYFANWY PRICE

Oh, my Mog, I am yours for ever.

FIRST VOICE

And she looks around with pleasure at her own neat
neverdull room which Mr Mog Edwards will never enter.

MOG EDWARDS

Come to my arms, Myfanwy.

FIRST VOICE

And he hugs his lovely money to his own heart.

And Mr Waldo drunk in the dusky wood hugs his lovely Polly
Garter under the eyes and rattling tongues of the
neighbours and the birds, and he does not care. He smacks
his live red lips.

But it is not his name that Polly Garter whispers as she
lies under the oak and loves him back. Six feet deep that
name sings in the cold earth.

POLLY GARTER (Sings)

But I always think as we tumble into bed
Of little Willy Wee who is dead, dead, dead.

FIRST VOICE

The thin night darkens. A breeze from the creased water
sighs the streets close under Milk waking Wood. The Wood,
whose every tree-foot's cloven in the black glad sight of
the hunters of lovers, that is a God-built garden to Mary
Ann Sailors who knows there is Heaven on earth and the
chosen people of His kind fire in Llaregyb's land, that is
the fairday farmhands' wantoning ignorant chapel of
bridesbeds, and, to the Reverend Eli Jenkins, a greenleaved
sermon on the innocence of men, the suddenly wind-shaken
wood springs awake for the second dark time this one
Spring day.