What's the merit in love-play,
In the tumult of the limbs
That dies out before 'tis day,
Heart on heart or mouth on mouth
All that
mingling
of our breath,
When love-longing is but drouth
For the things that follow death?
Yeats
First Musician.
"Why is it," Queen Edain said,
"If I do but climb the stair
To the tower overhead
When the winds are calling there,
Or the gannets calling out,
In waste places of the sky,
There is so much to think about,
That I cry, that I cry?"
Second Musician.
But her goodman answered her:
"Love would be a thing of naught
Had not all his limbs a stir
Born out of immoderate thought.
Were he any thing by half,
Were his measure running dry,
Lovers, if they may not laugh,
Have to cry, have to cry."
The Three Musicians together.
But is Edain worth a song
Now the hunt begins anew?
Praise the beautiful and strong;
Praise the redness of the yew;
Praise the blossoming apple-stem.
But our silence had been wise.
What is all our praise to them
That have one another's eyes?
DEIRDRE.
_MUSICIANS' SONG._--II.
FLORENCE FARR.
Love is an immoderate thing
And can never be content
Till it dip an ageing wing,
Where some laughing element
Leaps and Time's old lanthorn dims.
What's the merit in love-play,
In the tumult of the limbs
That dies out before 'tis day,
Heart on heart or mouth on mouth
All that
mingling
of our breath,
When love-longing is but drouth
For the things that follow death?
_MUSICIANS' SONG._--III.
FLORENCE FARR.
First Musician.
They are gone, they are gone
The proud may lie by the proud.
