_I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine: he feedeth among the lilies. Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners!_
So the woman sang. Then the man, less abstract than the woman, sang in his turn.
_How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O Prince's daughter: the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet which wanted not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins!..._
John glanced at the headline to this song. "It's a queer thing to call that 'a further description of the church's graces'," he said to himself, and then his eye searched through the verses of the song until he reached the line,
_How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!_...
"I daresay," he murmured to himself. "I daresay! But there's a terrible lot of misery in it, too!"
_Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death: jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it_....
"That's true," he said. "That's very true! I love her just the same, for all she's treated me so bad! _Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it._ Oh, I wish to my God I could forget things as easy as Willie Logan forgets them!"
He closed the Bible and put it down on the floor beside him, and sat with his hands clutching hold of his ankles. He would have to go away from Ballyards. He would not be able to rest contentedly near Belfast where Maggie lived ... with her peeler! He must go away from home, and the further away he went, the better it would be. Then he might forget about her. Perhaps, after all, it was not true that "_many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it_." Poets had a terrible habit of exaggerating things, and perhaps he would forget his love for Maggie in some distant place!...
There was a copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ perched on top of a pile of books. "That was the cause of all my trouble," he said, pushing it so that it fell off the pile on to the floor at his feet. He picked it up and opened it, and as he did so, his eyes rested on Mercutio's speech, _If love be rough with you, be rough with love_.