Page:Irish plays and playwrights (IA irishplaysplaywr00weygrich).pdf/195

 Rh Neifin in the dews of night, the times sweet smells do be rising, and you'll see a little, shiny new moon, maybe, sinking on the hills. The dawn and evening are a little while, the winter and the summer pass quickly, and what way would you and I, Naisi, have joy forever.... It's this hour we're between the daytime and a night where there is sleep forever, and isn't it better thing to be following on to a near death than to be bending the head down, and dragging with the feet, and seeing one day a blight showing upon love where it is sweet and tender?

Naisi (his voice broken with distraction). If a near death is coming what will be my trouble losing the earth and the stars over it, and you, Deirdre, are their flame and bright crown? Come away into the safety of the woods.

Deirdre (shaking her head slowly). There are as many ways to wither love as there are stars in a night of Samhain; but there is no way to keep life, or love with it, a short space only.... It's for that there's nothing lonesome like a love is watching out the time most lovers do be sleeping.... It's for that we're setting out for Emain Macha when the tide turns on the sand.

Naisi (giving in). You're right, maybe. It should be a poor thing to see great lovers and they sleepy and old.

Deirdre (with a more tender intensity). We're seven years without roughness or growing weary; seven years so sweet and shining, the gods would be hard set to give us seven days the like of them. It's for that we're going to Emain, where there'll be a rest forever, or a place for forgetting, in great crowds and they making a stir.

Naisi (very softly). We'll go, surely, in place of keeping a watch on a love had no match and it wasting away. (They cling to each other, then Naisi looks up.)

And this is from the unfinished second act, that Synge thought would scarcely be worth preserving. I have quoted it rather than the great keen over the body of Naisi that brings the play to a close, because that must of necessity follow the old poem, and this is as Synge