What is Love's Old Sweet Song in Ulysses?
“Love's Old Sweet Song” is a popular Victorian ballad by J. L. Molloy that Molly is to sing on her concert tour, organised by Boylan. She mentions it at breakfast in Episode 4, and its phrases echo through Bloom's day, especially in Sirens.
Edited by Aidan O'Leary · Last updated 30 October 2026
Where it appears
Several episodes. Bloom, listening to the music in the Ormond bar.
Love that is singing: love’s old sweet song.
What it means in plain English
Its chorus begins “Just a song at twilight”. For Bloom it is painful: the song connects Molly, Boylan and the afternoon's appointment.
In Circe Mrs Breen sighs: “The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.”
Literary context
Written in 1884 by James Lyman Molloy with words by G. Clifton Bingham.
References
- Ulysses, Episodes 4, 11 and 15
- Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated (revised edition, 1988)
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Questions readers ask
Does Molly sing it in the book?
No; she is rehearsing it for her tour.
Related terms
Là ci darem la mano
“Là ci darem la mano” (“There we will give each other our hands”) is the seduction duet from Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Molly is to sing it on tour. Bloom hums it all day and worries about the line “voglio e non vorrei”, “I want to and I wouldn't like to”.
Blazes Boylan
Hugh “Blazes” Boylan is a flashy Dublin concert manager who is organising Molly Bloom's singing tour, and who becomes her lover at 4 pm on 16 June 1904. Bloom knows the meeting is coming and spends the day trying not to think about it.
Molly Bloom
Leopold's wife, a singer, whose long unpunctuated monologue closes the book on the word 'yes.' Joyce's Penelope.