Even at the end of the Song, there is no ‘And so they lived happily ever after’. According to Fisch, at the end of the poem, ‘We have the urgency, the sense of a compelling need, as of a task still to be fulfilled, a race still to be run’ (1988: 103). Jill Munro suggests that the effect of this literary device is ‘to assure us that the song will never end. The lovers will evermore be engaged in love’s game of hide and seek’ (1995: 89). But is this a positive feature—a game—or the inevitable frustration