Love is sweet, and so are flowers
Blooming in bright summer bowers;
So are waters, clear and pure,
In some hidden fountain's store;
So is the soft southern breeze
Sighing low among the trees;
So is the bright queen of heaven,
Reigning in the quiet even:
Yet the pallid moon may breed
Madness in man's feeble seed;
And the wind's soft influence
Often breathes the pestilence;
And the waves may sullied be
As they hurry to the sea;
Flowers soon must fade away —
Love endures but for a day.

O Lord, I cannot plead my love of Thee:
I plead Thy love of me;—
The shallow conduit hails the unfathomed sea.

Love is the very heart of spring;
Flocks fall to loving on the lea
And wildfowl love upon the wing,
When spring first enters like a sea.

When spring first enters like a sea
Into the heart of everything,
Bestir yourselves religiously,
Incense before love's altar bring.

Incense before love's altar bring,
Flowers from the flowering hawthorn tree,
Flowers from the margin of the spring,
For all the flowers are sweet to see.

Love is the very heart of spring;
When spring first enters like a sea

There where the land of love,
Grown about by fragrant bushes,
Sunken in a winding valley,
Where the clear winds blow
And the shadows come and go,
And the cattle stand and low
And the sheep bells and the linnets
Sing and tinkle musically.
Between the past and the future,
Those two black infinities
Between which our brief life
Flashes a moment and goes out.

My love whose heart is tender said to me,
" A moon lacks light except her sun befriend her.
Let us keep tryst in heaven, dear Friend, " said she,
My love whose heart is tender.

From such a loftiness no words could bend her:
Yet still she spoke of " us " and spoke as " we, "
Her hope substantial, while my hope grew slender.

Now keeps she tryst beyond earth's utmost sea,
Wholly at rest, tho' storms should toss and rend her;
And still she keeps my heart and keeps its key,
My love whose heart is tender.

O ye, who are not dead and fit
Like blasted tree beside the pit
But for the axe that levels it,

Living show life of love, whereof
The force wields earth and heaven above:
Who knows not love begetteth love?

Love poises earth in space, Love rolls
Wide worlds rejoicing on their poles,
And girds them round with aureoles.

Love lights the sun, Love thro' the dark
Lights the moon's evanescent arc,
Lights up the star, lights up the spark.

O ye who taste that love is sweet,
Set waymarks for all doubtful feet

O now, although the year be done,
Now, although the love be dead,
Dead and gone;
Hear me, O loved and cherished one,
Give me still the hand that led,

If love is not worth loving, then life is not worth living,
Nor aught is worth remembering but well forgot;
For store is not worth storing and gifts are not worth giving,
If love is not;

And idly cold is death-cold, and life-heat idly hot,
And vain is any offering and vainer our receiving,
And vanity of vanities is all our lot.
Better than life's heaving heart is death's heart unheaving,
Better than the opening leaves are the leaves that rot,
For there is nothing left worth achieving or retrieving,
If love is not.

Vayne loves, avaunt! infamous is your pleasure,
Your joye deceite;
Your jewells jestes, and worthles trash your treasure,
Fooles' common baite.
Your pallace is a prison that allureth
To sweete mishapp, and rest that payne procureth.

Your garden, greif hedgd in with thornes of envye
And stakes of strife;
Your allies, errour gravelled with jelosye
And cares of life;
Your bancks, are seates enwrapt with shades of sadnes
Your arbours, breed rough fittes of raging madnes.

Your bedds, are sowen with seedes of all iniquitye

There is a woman on Michigan Boulevard keeps a parrot and goldfish and two white mice.

She used to keep a houseful of girls in kimonos and three pushbuttons on the front door.

Now she is alone with a parrot and goldfish and two white mice . . . but these are some of her thoughts:

The love of a soldier on furlough or a sailor on shore leave burns with a bonfire red and saffron.

The love of an emigrant workman whose wife is a thousand miles away burns with a blue smoke.