Love?—I will tell thee what it is to love! It is to build with human thoughts a shrine, Where Hope sits brooding like a beauteous dove; Where Time seems young, and Life a thing divine. All tastes, all pleasures, all desires combine To consecrate this sanctuary of bliss. Above, the stars in shroudless beauty shine; Around, the streams their flowery margins kiss; And if there's heaven on earth, that heaven is surely this! 2. Yes, this is Love, the stedfast and the true, The immortal glory which hath never set; The best, the brightest boon the heart e'er knew: Of all life's sweets the very sweetest yet! Oh! who but can recall the eve they met To breathe, in some green walk, their first young vow, While summer flowers with moonlight dews were wet, And winds sigh'd soft around the mountain's brow, And all was rapture then which is but memory now! The dream of life indeed can last with none of us,— As if the thing beloved were all a Saint, And every place she entered were a shrine:[5] but it must be our own fault, when it has past away, if the realities disappoint us: they are not “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,” unless we ourselves render them so. The preservation of the species is not the sole end for which love was implanted in the human heart; that end the Almighty might as easily have effected by other means: not so the developement of our moral nature, which is its higher purpose. The comic poet asserts that _Verum illud verbum est vulgo quod dici solet, Omnes sibi esse melius malle, quam alteri:_[6] but this is not true in love. The lover never says _Heus proximus sum egomet mihi;_[6] He knows and understands the falsehood of the Greek adage, φιλεῖ δ᾽ ἑαυτοῦ πλεῖον οὐδείς οὐδένα. and not lovers alone, but husbands and wives, and parents feel that there are others who are dearer to them than themselves. Little do they know of human nature who speak of marriage as doubling our pleasures and dividing our griefs: it doubles, or more than doubles both. [Footnote 5: GONDIBERT.] [Footnote 6: TERENCE.] CHAPTER LXXIX. AN EARLY BEREAVEMENT. TRUE LOVE ITS OWN COMFORTER. A LONELY FATHER AND AN ONLY CHILD. Read ye that run the aweful truth, With which I charge my page; A worm is in the bud of youth, And at the root of age. COWPER. Leonard was not more than eight and twenty when he obtained a living, a few miles from Doncaster. He took his bride with him to the vicarage. The house was as humble as the benefice, which was worth less than £50. a year; but it was soon made the neatest cottage in the country round, and upon a happier dwelling the sun never shone. A few acres of good glebe were attached to it; and the garden was large enough to afford healthful and pleasurable employment to its owners. The course of true love never ran more smoothly; but its course was short.