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 word, 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 to blaspheming unbelief as to bold and free philosophy, And estimate the recklessness of license 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 influences, 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 blushing 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 Æolian strains over the desert of the heart, Where the hot siroccos of the world have withered its one oasis. [Illustration] OF MARRIAGE.