Gifts count for nothing; will alone is great;

All things give way before it, soon or late.

Oh! I know this truth, if I know no other,

That passionate Love is Pain's own mother.

I tell you the women who make fervent wives

And sweet tender mothers, had Fate been less fair,

Are the women who might have abandoned their lives

To the madness that springs from and ends in despair.

As the fire on the hearth which sheds brightness around,

Neglected, may level the walls to the ground.

Love is the centre and circumference;

The cause and aim of all things--'tis the key

To joy and sorrow, and the recompense

For all the ills that have been, or may be.

Time is the best avenger.

Love is a spy who is plotting treason,

In league with that warm, red rebel, the Heart.

We waste half our strength in a useless regretting;

We sit by old tombs in the dark too long.

Life is a garden forever in flower.

All hope is prayer; who calls it hope no more,

Sends prayer footsore forth over weary wastes,

While he who calls it prayer, gives wings to hope.

Suspect suspicion, and doubt only doubt.

Life is a Shylock; always it demands

The fullest userer's interest for each pleasure.

Gifts are not freely scattered by its hands;

We make returns for every borrowed treasure.

Love is as bitter as the dregs of sin,

As sweet as clover-honey in its cell;

Love is the password whereboy souls get in

To Heaven--the gate that leads, sometimes, to Hell.

I like the roar of cities. In the mart,

Where busy toilers strive for place and gain,

I seem to read humanity's great heart,

And share its hopes, its pleasures, and its pain.

I hold it true that thoughts are things

Endowed with bodies, breath, and wings,

And that we send them forth to fill

The world with good results--or ill.

Love lights more fires than hate extinguishes.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone,

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But it has trouble enough of its own.

How does Love speak?

In the faint flush upon the telltale cheek,

And in the pallor that succeeds it; by

The quivering lid of an averted eye--

The smile that proves the parent to a sigh

Thus doth Love speak.

Love is the crown that glorifies; the curse

That brands and burdens; it is life and death.

It is the great law of the universe;

And nothing can exist without its breath.

All love that has not friendship for its base,

Is like a mansion built upon the sand.

Though brave its walls as any in the land,

And its tall turrets lift their heads in grace;

Though skilful and accomplished artists trace

Most beautiful designs on every hand,

And gleaming statues in dim niches stand,

And fountains play in some flow'r-hidden place:

Yet, when from the frowning east a sudden gust

Of adverst fate is blown, or sad rains fall

Day in, day out, against its yielding wall,

Lo! the fair structure crumbles to the dust.

Love, to endure life's sorrow and earth's woe,

Needs friendship's solid masonwork below.

Night was the goddess of satisfaction.

Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief,

Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul

From height to height, from star to shining star,

Shall climb and claim blest immortality.

Unless our souls had root in soil divine

We could not bear earth's overwhelming strife.

The fiercest pain that racks this heart of mine,

Convinces me of everlasting life.

Ah! when in the immortal ranks enlisted,

I sometimes wonder if we shall not find

That not by deeds, but by what we've resisted,

Our places are assigned.

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