My Lyrical Life :: :: University of Virginia Library

Can you leave the fond bosom of Home, where
Joy hath been from your earliest waking?
Can you give its endearments to come, where
Life hath many a hot heart-aching?
Have you counted the cost to stand by me,
In the battle I fight for Man?
Shall your womanly love deify me,
Who stand under the world's dark ban?
A daring high soul you will need, dear Love,
To brave the life-battle with me:
For your true heart may oftentimes bleed, dear Love,
And your sweet eyes dim tearfully.

187

Sweet! know you of gallant hearts perishing,—
The fine spirits that dumbly bow?
For a little of Fortune's cherishing,
They are breaking in agony now!
And without the sunshine that life needeth,
Alas! Sweet! for me and for you:
But little the careless world heedeth
For love like ours, tender and true!
A daring high soul you will need, dear Love,
To brave the life-battle with me:
For your true heart may oftentimes bleed, dear Love,
And your sweet eyes dim tearfully.

Well, you've sworn, I have sworn, God hath bound us,
And the world shall not tear us apart:
I have flung my love's war-cloak around us,
And you live in each pulse of my heart!
It may be our name in Earth's story
Shall endure when we are no more;
For love lives while the Stars burn in glory,
And the Flowers bud on Earth's green floor.
But a daring high soul you will need, dear Love,
To brave the life-battle with me:
For your true heart may oftentimes bleed, dear Love,
And your sweet eyes dim tearfully.