at
were not of our people; sung in the evening. I heard it as I loitered
home from the meadows beyond the marshes. There is no ease in the song,
and yet ...

MOOMOOMON: Hum it to us.

ZOON: They sang it together, the two that were not of our people.

[_He hums a song. They all lift up their heads from their listlessness._

MELIFLOR (_wonderingly_): That is a song that is new.

ZOON: Yes, it is new to me.

MELIFLOR: It is like an old song.

ZOON: Yes, perhaps it is old.

MELIFLOR: What is the song?

ZOON: It tells of love.

THE PRINCES: Ah-h!

[_They seem to wake as though young and strong out of sleep. There is a
great commotion among them. The sentries outside are utterly unmoved._
OOMUZ, _without sharing any of the excitement of the Princes, now nods
his head solemnly as he had once shaken it._

MOOMOOMON: Love! It must have been that that I felt that day in the
twilight as I came back round the peak of Zing-gee Mountain.

XIMENUNG: You felt it, Moomoomon? Tell us.

MOOMOOMON: All the air seemed gold, seemed gold of a sudden. Through it
I saw fair fields, glittering green far down, glimpsed between clumps of
the heather. The gold was all about them, yet they shone with their own
fair colours. Ah, how can I tell you all I saw? My feet seemed scarce to
touch the slope of the mountain; I too seemed one with the golden air in
which all things were shining.

XIMENUNG: And this was Love?

MOOMOOMON: I know not. It was some strange new thing. It was strange and
new like this song.

MELIFLOR: Perhaps, it was some other strange new thing.

MOOMOOMON: Perhaps. I know not.

ZOON: No. It was Love.

MOOMOOMON: And then that evening in the golden light I knew the purpose
of Earth and why all things are.

XIMENUNG: What is the purpose, Moomoomon?

MOOMOOMON: I know not. I was content. I troubled not to remember.

ZOON: It was love.

XIMENUNG: Let us love.

OTHERS: Aye.

HUZ: Aye, that is best of all.

MELIFLOR: No, Princes. The best is idleness. Out of the idle hours all
good things come.

HUZ: I will love. That is best.

MELIFLOR: It is like all things, the gift of the idle hours. The workers
never love. Their fancies are fastened to the work they do, and do not
roam towards love.

ALL: Love! Let us love.

MELIFLOR: We will love in idleness and praise the idle hours.

XIMENUNG: Whom will you love, lord of the shimmering fields?

MELIFLOR: I have but to show myself loitering by lanes in