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.
FORGAEL.
It’s not a dream,
But the reality that makes our passion
As a lamp shadow—no—no lamp, the sun.
What the world’s million lips are thirsting for,
Must be substantial somewhere.
AIBRIC.
I have heard the Druids
Mutter such things as they awake from trance.
It may be that the ever-living know it—
No mortal can.
FORGAEL.
Yes; if they give us help.
AIBRIC.
They are besotting you as they besot
The crazy herdsman that will tell his fellows
That he has been all night upon the hills,
Riding to hurley, or in the battle-host
With the ever-living.
FORGAEL.
What if he speak the truth,
And for a dozen hours have been a part
Of that more powerful life?
AIBRIC.
His wife knows better.
Has she not seen him lying like a log,
Or fumbling in a dream about the house?
And if she hear him mutter of wild riders,
She knows that it was but the cart-horse coughing
That set him to the fancy.
FORGAEL.
All would be well
Could we but give us wholly to the dreams,
And get into their world that to the sense
Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly
Among substantial things; for it is dreams
That lift us to the flowing, changing world
That the heart longs for. What is love itself,
Even though it be the lightest of light love,
But dreams that hurry from beyond the world
To make low laughter more than meat and drink,
Though it but set us sighing? Fellow-wanderer,
Could we but mix ourselves into a dream,
Not in its image on the mirror!
AIBRIC.
While
We’re in the body that’s impossible.
FORGAEL.
And yet I cannot think they’re leading me
To death; for they that promised to me love
As those that can outlive the moon have known it,
Had the world’s total life gathered up, it seemed,
Into their shining limbs—I’ve had great teachers.
Aengus and Edain ran up out of the wave—
You’d never doubt that it was life they promised
Had you looked on them face to face as I did,
With so red lips, and running on such feet,
And having such wide-open, shining eyes.
