What is love?
Of Heaven ‘tis the brightest amazement,
The blackest abasement of Hell,
A struggle for breath with a spectre,
In nectar a choking to death;
‘Tis a race with Heaven’s lightning and thunder,
Then champion feats under Moyle’s water;
Tis pursuing the cuckoo, the wooing
Of Echo, the Rock’s airy daughter. ‘
It is savagery in the blood,
and pain in the bone,
and greed and despair in
the mind.
It is to be thirsty in the night
and unslaked in the day.
It is to carry a memory like a thorn in the heart.
It is to drip one’s blood as one walks.”
(Early Irish - no author attributed)
