Poems (Edwards)/The Love of the Heart
THE LOVE OF THE HEART.
O! prize them not lightly; the tendrils that startInto beauty and life from the soil of the heart,Like sunbeams they sparkle and gleam on our way,Like beautiful blossoms around us they stray,With their joy-giving odour. O! a love that is ours,Is brighter than sunbeams and sweeter than flowers
The love of the heart! 'Tis a beautiful thing,'Tis a fountain where pleasures unceasingly spring,It lights up our darkness, it brightens our way,It sheds on our prospects a heavenly ray,It lessens our sorrow, and makes all that we see,Beam brightly as sunlight that falls on the sea.
The friends that we love with the heart's glowing trust,They fade not, they fall not in darkness and dust,The grave for a season may hide them from view,And forgetfulness grow where affection once grew;But the morning of life in eternity breaks,And the sleeper once more to affection awakes.
Then prize it not lightly, the love that has stole,Like a heaven-touched dream round the home of the soul,Love brightens our pathway, it scatters life's gloom,It sheds o'er our spirits its fragrance and bloom,It softens life's sadness and calms all its strife,It fades not, it droops not, it dies not with life;'Tis an amaranth flower to mortality given,It blossoms on earth, but it ripens in Heaven.