No More Learning

AIBRIC.

I have called you master
Too many years to lift a hand against you.

FORGAEL.

Maybe it is but natural to doubt me.
You've never known, I'd lay a wager on it,
A melancholy that a cup of wine,
A lucky battle, or a woman's kiss
Could not amend.

AIBRIC.

I have good spirits enough.
I've nothing to complain of but heartburn,
And that is cured by a boiled liquorice root.

FORGAEL.

If you will give me all your mind awhile--
All, all, the very bottom of the bowl--
I'll show you that I am made differently,
That nothing can amend it but these waters,
Where I am rid of life--the events of the world--
What do you call it? --that old promise-breaker,
The cozening fortune-teller that comes whispering,
'You will have all you have wished for when you have earned
Land for your children or money in a pot. '
And when we have it we are no happier,
Because of that old draught under the door,
Or creaky shoes. And at the end of all
We have been no better off than Seaghan the fool,
That never did a hand's turn. Aibric! Aibric!
We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living
Breathe on the burnished mirror of the world,
And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh,
And find their laughter sweeter to the taste
For that brief sighing.

AIBRIC.

If you had loved some woman--

FORGAEL.

You say that also? You have heard the voices,
For that is what they say--all, all the shadows--
Aengus and Edain, those passionate wanderers,
And all the others; but it must be love
As they have known it. Now the secret's out;
For it is love that I am seeking for,
But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind
That is not in the world.

AIBRIC.

And yet the world
Has beautiful women to please every man.

FORGAEL.

But he that gets their love after the fashion
Loves in brief longing and deceiving hope
And bodily tenderness, and finds that even
The bed of love, that in the imagination
Had seemed to be the giver of all peace,
Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting,
And as soon finished.

AIBRIC.

All that ever loved
Have loved that way--there is no other way.

FORGAEL.

Yet never have two lovers kissed but they
Believed there was some other near at hand,
And almost wept because they could not find it.

AIBRIC.

When they have twenty years; in middle life
They take a kiss for what a kiss is worth,
And let the dream go by.