Three sang of love together: one with lips
Crimson, with cheeks and bosom in a glow,
Flushed to the yellow hair and finger-tips;
And one there sang who soft and smooth as snow
Bloomed like a tinted hyacinth at a show;
And one was blue with famine after love,
Who like a harpstring snapped rare harsh and low
The burden of what those were singing of.
One shamed herself in love; one temperately
Grew gross in soulless love, a sluggish wife;
One famished died for love. Thus two of three
Took death for love and won him after strife;
One droned in sweetness like a fattened bee:
All on the threshold, yet all short of life.
It is unclear why the third “droned in sweetness”, but it could be that she lived on unhappily and, on behalf of her fellow women, took to song as a consolation for what their lives lacked. The  oxymoron  “droned in sweetness” and the “fattened bee” are unpleasant-sounding and reinforce the idea of endless but pointless activity and unhappiness. 

A Triad