There is no blessedness in life
Apart from blessed Love;
This sanctifies the dreary strife
Which all who live must prove;
It lifts the burden from the soul,
And puts the staff into the hand;
The gloomy clouds behind us roll,
And all before is dawn and fairy-land.

And this we felt when side by side
Beneath those garden trees
We sat, when Spring was in her pride
Of blossoms, birds and bees.
A richer life we needed not,
A time less bright we did not fear,
Than hallowed then that blessed spot,
And made the past and future disappear.

What do the roses say, love, my love,
Glad as the morning and fair as the South?
Bend to me fondly the rose-red leaves
Of your rose-red mouth!

What do the roses say, sweet, my sweet,
Light as the zephyrs and bright as the dawn?
Summer is beckoning, youth is fleet,
Let love love on!

What do the roses say, dear, my dear,
Pale and dewy and blood-red all?
Stay me with kisses, the night is anear,
And the rose leaves fall!

What do the roses say, heart, my heart,
Proud, impatient, and tossed with doubt?

I Own I love; 'tis no uncomely fire
That kindles in my breast intense desire:
I hate myself that yet I love no more;
And yet I more than love; for I adore.
'Tis not just features, sparkling eyes, or air,
That makes the object I admire so fair:
'Tis one exploded for deformity
By others, has ten thousand charms for me.
'Tis not the lilly damask'd with the rose,
That does these bonds upon my soul impose:
Whom others in the vilest terms deride,
I lovelier think than all the world beside.
Myriads of hearts, should they to love conspire,

The red rose whispers of passion,
And the white rose breathes of love;
O, the red rose ia a falcon,
And the white rose is a dove.
But I send you a cream-white rosebud,
With a flush on its petal tips;

For the love that is purest and sweetest
Has a kiss of desire on the lips.

When you are young and all the world is new,
When you are old and it is home to you,
And all through life, in pleasure, hope and pain,
Laughing in sunlight, resting under rain,
Taking all weathers at their welcome worth,
To love and love and love this lovely earth!

Dear Anna, when I think of thee,
My anxious bosom throbs with care—
Ah! would that fate had left thee free,
Or nature form'd thee not so fair!

Thy tender breast should only know
Love's sweetest joys without its smart;
Nor e'er be doom'd to feel the woe
That rankles in my aching heart.

Do tears, in silence, dim thine eye,
And trickle down thy dimpled cheek?
I, too in secret, heave the sigh,
And hide the pang I dare not speak!

Yet of one joy we're both possess'd,
Which surely we may always share—
The picture in each other's breast,

I hear the engine pounding
in triumph down the track—
trains that take away the ones you love
and then they bring them back!

trains take away the ones you love
to worlds both strange and new
and then, with care and courtesy,
they bring them back to you.

The engine halts and sniffs and snorts,
it breathes forth smoke and fire,
then snatches crowded strangers on—
and leaves what you desire.

Not through the rose-hung honeyed ways
Of kisses soft and songs and lays
Thou followest me,—
But by far lonely foam-filled bays
Of sorrow's sea.

Through self-denial and the extreme
Repression of love's fiery dream
Thou followest on:
Far heights before us rise and gleam,—
We climb alone.

Not ours the daily chequered life,
Chequered but sweet, of man and wife,
But ours the strange
Wild ways of lonely constant strife
That knows no change.

Not ours to meet save in the bliss
Of sacrifice, the pale-lipped kiss
From cross to cross:

I loathe that I did love,
In youth that I thought sweet;
As time requires, for my behove,
Methinks they are not meet.

My lusts they do me leave,
My fancies all be fled,
And tract of time begins to weave
Grey hairs upon my head.

For age with stealing steps
Hath clawed me with his crutch,
And lusty life away she leaps,
As there had been none such.

My Muse doth not delight
Me as she did before;

My hand and pen are not in plight,
As they have been of yore.

For reason me denies
This youthly idle rhyme;

Lad 's love and lavender,
Rosemary and rue,
I picked them in a posy
And I offered them to you.

It was only lad's love
But surely it was true,
Only wild gray lavender,
But fragrant as it grew.

I plucked the sprig of rosemary
For memory of you,
And was it to complete the tale
I tied it up with rue?

Lad's love and lavender
Rosemary and rue,
I picked them in a posy
And I offered it to you.