No More Learning

Shake all your cockscombs, children; these are lovers.

[_FERGUS goes out. _

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's 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 anything by half,
Were his measure running dry.
Lovers, if they may not laugh,
Have to cry, have to cry. '

[_DEIRDRE, NAISI, and FERGUS have been seen for a
moment through the windows, but now they have entered.
NAISI lays down shield and spear and helmet, as if
weary. He goes to the door opposite to the door he
entered by. He looks out on to the road that leads to
CONCHUBAR'S house. If he is anxious, he would not have
FERGUS or DEIRDRE notice it. Presently he comes from
the door, and goes to the table where the chessboard
is. _

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?

FERGUS.

You are welcome, lady.

DEIRDRE.

Conchubar has not come.
Were the peace honest, he'd have come himself
To prove it so.

FERGUS.

Being no more in love,
He stays in his own house, arranging where
The curlew and the plover go, and where
The speckled heath-cock in a golden dish.

DEIRDRE.

But there's no messenger.

FERGUS.

He'll come himself
When all's in readiness and night closed in;
But till that hour, these birds out of the waste
Shall put his heart and mind into the music.
There's many a day that I have almost wept
To think that one so delicately made
Might never know the sweet and natural life
Of women born to that magnificence,
Quiet and music, courtesy and peace.

DEIRDRE.