TRUE love is but a humble, low-born thing,
And hath its food served up in earthen ware;
It is a thing to walk with, hand in hand,
Through the every-dayness of this work-day world,
Baring its tender feet to every roughness,
Yet letting not one heart-beat go astray
From Beauty's law of plainness and content;
A simple, fire-side thing, whose quiet smile
Can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home;
Which, when our autumn cometh, as it must,
And life in the chill wind shivers bare and leafless,
Shall still be blest with Indian-summer youth
In bleak November, and, with thankful heart.
Smile on its ample stores of garnered fruit,
As full of sunshine to our aged eyes
As when it nursed the blossoms of our spring.
Such is true love, which steals into the heart
With feet as silent as the lightsome dawn
That kisses smooth the rough brows of the dark,
And hath its will through blissful gentleness,-
Not like a rocket, which, with savage glare,
Whirrs suddenly up, then bursts, and leaves the night
Painfully quivering on the dazed eyes;
A love that gives and takes, that seeth faults,
Not with flaw-seeking eyes like needle points,
But, loving kindly, ever looks them down
With the o'ercoming faith of meek forgiveness;
A love that shall be new and fresh each hour,
As is the golden mystery of sunset,
Or the sweet coming of the evening star,
Alike, and yet most unlike, every day,
And seeming ever best and fairest now;
A love that doth not kneel for what it seeks,
But faces Truth and Beauty as their peer,
Showing its worthiness of noble thoughts
By a clear sense of inward nobleness;
A love that in its object findeth not
All grace and beauty, and enough to sate
Its thirst of blessing, but, in all of good
Found there, it sees but heaven-granted types
Of good and beauty in the soul of man;
And traces, in the simplest heart that beats,
A family-likeness to its chosen one,
That claims of it the rights of brotherhood.
For love is blind but with the fleshly eye,
That so its inner sight may be more clear;
And outward shows of beauty only so
Are needful at the first, as is a hand
To guide and to uphold an infant's steps:
Great spirits need them not: their earnest look
Pierces the body's mask of thin disguise,
And beauty ever is to them revealed,
Behind the unshapeliest, meanest lump of clay,
With arms outstretched and eager face ablaze,
Yearning to be but understood and loved.
THERE is a fragrant blossom, that maketh glad the garden of the heart;
Its root lieth deep; it is delicate, yet lasting, as the lilac crocus of autumn;
Loveliness and thought are the dews that water it morn and even ;
Memory and absence cherish it, as the balmy breathings of the south.
Its sun is the brightness of affection, and it bloometh in the border of Hope.
Its companions are gentle flowers, and the briar withereth by its side.
I saw it budding in beauty; I felt the magic of its smile;
The violet rejoiced beneath it, the rose stooped down and kissed it;
And I thought some cherub had planted there a truant flower of Eden,
As a bird bringeth foreign seeds, that they may flourish in a kindly soil.
I saw, and asked not its name. I knew no language was so wealthy,
Though every heart of every clime findeth its echo within.
Love,-what a volume in a word, an ocean in a tear,
A seventh heaven in a glance, a whirlwind in a sigh,
The lightning in a touch, a millennium in a moment,
What concentrated joy, or woe, in blest or blighted Love!
For it is that native poetry springing up indigenous to Mind,
The heart's own-country music thrilling all its chords,
The story without an end that angels throng to hear,
The words, the king of words, carved on Jehovah's heart!
Go, call thou snake-eyed malice mercy, call envy honest praise,
Count selfish craft for wisdom, and coward treachery for prudence;
Do homage for blaspheming unbelief as to bold and free philosophy,
And estimate the recklessness of licence as the right attribute of liberty,-
But with the world, thou friend and scholar, stain not this pure name,
Nor suffer the majesty of Love to be likened to the meanness of desire;
For Love is no more such, than seraphs' hymns are discord;
And such is no more Love, than Etna's breath is summer.
Love is a sweet idolatry, enslaving all the soul,
A mighty spiritual force, warring with the dulness of matter,
An angel-mind breathed into a mortal, though fallen, yet how beautiful!
All the devotion of the heart in all its depth and grandeur.
Behold that pale geranium, pent within the cottage-window,
How yearningly it stretcheth to the light its sickly long-stalked leaves;
How it straineth upward to the sun, coveting his sweet influence ;
How real a living sacrifice to the god of all its worship!
Such is the soul that loveth, and so the rose-tree of affection
Bendeth its every leaf to look on those dear eyes:
Its every gushing petal basketh in their light;
And all its gladness, all its life, is hanging on their love.
If the love of the heart is blighted, it buddeth not again :
If that pleasant song is forgotten, it is to be learnt no more;
Yet often will thought look back, and weep over early affection;
And the dim notes of that pleasant song will be heard as a reproachful spirit,
Moaning in Eolian strains over the desert of the heart,
Where the hot siroccos of the world have wither'd its own oasis.
M. F. Tupper.
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