QUINQUAGESIMA.
34 lines✦
ove is alone the worthy law of love:All other laws have presupposed a taint:Love is the law from kindled saint to saint,From lamb to lamb, from dove to answering dove.Love is the motive of all things that moveHarmonious by free will without constraint:Love learns and teaches: love shall man acquaintWith all he lacks, which all his lack is love.Because Love is the fountain, I discernThe stream as love: for what but love should flowFrom fountain Love? not bitter from the sweet!I ignorant, have I laid claim to know?Oh, teach me, Love, such knowledge as is meetFor one to know who is fain to love and learn. Piteous my rhyme isWhat while I muse of love and pain,Of love misspent, of love in vain,Of love that is not loved again:And is this all then?As long as time is,Love loveth. Time is but a span,The dalliance space of dying man:And is this all immortals can?The gain were small then. Love loves for ever,And finds a sort of joy in pain,And gives with nought to take again,And loves too well to end in vain:Is the gain small then?Love laughs at “never,”Outlives our life, exceeds the spanAppointed to mere mortal man:All which love is and does and canIs all in all then.
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