Poems of Sentiment and Imagination/Love
LOVE.
I can not love the happy: those who seem
Never to have known sorrow, from whose hearts
Gushes continually the caroling
Of thoughtless pleasure; unless it be the joy—
The glad and innocent mirth of children—
Bursting in happiness from out pure hearts
Fresh from the hand of Deity. But man,
Who has seen life, beheld its miseries,
Whose thoughts have reached the compass of ripe years,
Should have within his heart a ceaseless spring
Of gentle and out-welling sympathies;
And they should course throughout his spirt's being,
As mountain rivulets traverse the earth—
Refreshing in their course each drooping flower—
Renewing beauty in each withered plant—
And helping everywhere to germinate
The seeds of virtue.
And thus would mirth be chaste, and life be joy,
And all our wild propensities be checked;
And all our eagerness for gaudy show,
That so contrasts with pale-cheeked suffering,
Would die. This would be real happiness!
And those whom purity makes sensitive
Would shrink no more, but ivy-like entwine
The tendrils of affection round strong hearts.
Love is a byword—friendship but a name—
And though we use them, rarely do we think
How strong, and deep, and thrilling is their power!
"God is love!" it is His very essence;
And yet the spirit of the Godhead man
Treats mockingly, and makes a jest of all
The gentler and the purer attributes
Of soul! O that the spirit of true love,
Untrammeled, unrestrained, might wander forth,
Breathing a balm on every bleeding heart—
Binding up wounds—forgiving injury—
And by uniting each dissevered link,
Encircle the great family of man
In one electric chain of sympathy!
Then would our earth again be Paradise,
And man, though heir to suffering, yet soothed
By gentleness and love, would be more chaste—
Like gold tried by refiners—and more fit
To win his great inheritance of love,
And life eternal!