Is it worth the learning,
This love they praise?
Pale lovers yearning
For happy days,
For happy days and happier nights,
For waking dreams of dear delights?
Is it worth the learning?

My heart is burning,
It scorches me;
Is it worth the learning?
What this may be?
Why do I walk alone all day?
" She is in love, " the maidens say.
Is love worth learning?

Was it worth the learning?
He kissed my hand.
Is love worth learning?
I understand,
Though love may come and love may go,

" WHEN the ways with May-flower whiten,
And before the lilac blooms,
When the songs and feathers brighten
In the forest's bridal rooms;
Though your beauty should forsake you,
And your love itself decay,
I will come, my own, to take you,
If I have to fight my way. "

So her heart at peace reposes
Till the winter-time shall go;
But the lilac and the roses,
And the fruit came, and the snow;
And the years came, and age took her;
All her beauty did decay;
For her lover false forsook her;
But her love shall last for aye.

" LOVE , your love — speak low —
Now, give it now to me,
Your pride? Let it go, let it go.
Your wealth? Let it sink in the sea.
Women like you should be poor;
Gold upon beauty is vain:
Love, O lady, be sure
Is loveless without some pain.
Let the triumph of love be seen;
Come poor to me, poor, my queen. "

The lady rose at length,
And looked to earth and sky;
She laughed in her loving strength,
And flung her bracelets by;
She scattered her wealth abroad,
She donned a homespun gown,
And said, as she took the road:

NOT every one who crieth, Lord ,
Or hear, or pray, or preach thy word,
Wilt thou in God-like accents own,
Or hail, as partners of thy throne.

What! if this sect, or that, I join,
Believe my party most divine;
Vain will my warmest notions prove,
If absent from my heart, thy love.

What! if with Calvin I agree,
Or to Arminian doctrines flee,
I still remain a child of sin,
If love does not preside within.

Let bigots for the shell contend,
In idle controversies spend
Their precious time, whom zealous fire

Rue and roses, is it so,
Where roses blossom, must rue grow,
And shade the roses, as they blow?

The roses spread their lovely sheen
Upon the swelling meadow's green,
And light the fields, with joy serene.

But in their midst there stands the rue,
With saddened mien and ashen hue,
And reaches up into the blue.

Rue and roses, must it be,
May not the roses blossom free,
And joy in sunshine perfectly?

Ah, no, for joy is one with pain —
They both must follow in love's train,
And where one comes, they both remain.

Since short the busy scene of life will prove,
Let us, my Hoyland, learn to live and love;
To love with passions pure as morning light,
Whose saffron beams, unsullied by the night,
With rosy mantles do the heavens streak,
Faint imitators of my Hoyland's cheek.
The joys of nature in her ruin'd state
Have little pleasure, though the pains are great:
Virtue and Love when sacred bands unite,
'Tis then that nature leads to true delight.
Oft as I wander through the myrtle grove,
Bearing the beauteous burden of my love,

Play it slowly, sing it lowly,
Old, familiar tune!
Once it ran in dance and dimple,
Like a brook in June;
Now it sobs along the measures
With a sound of tears;
Dear old voices echo through it,
Vanished with the years.

Ripple, ripple, goes the love-song,
Till in slowing time
Early sweetness grows completeness,
Floods its every rhyme.
Who together learn the music
Life and death unfold,
Know that love is but beginning
Until love is old.

Play it slowly, — it is holy
As an evening hymn;

The poise of your small head, how proud it seems;
How sad your great dark eyes; and your mouth's bow
Has such a petulant disdainful pout,
As though it wearied of the ebb and flow
Of life within the soul where shapes of dreams
In endless long processions come and go,
And all the tumult of the world without.
Slowly about us the grave dusk is shed,
Behind us as we stand the frost-stung fire
Flames up and fills the room with dancing light,
Speech is not, but in silence I aspire
To praise you in a song unsung, unsaid,

O Prophet souls of all the years,
Bend o'er us from above;
Your far-off vision, toils and tears
Now to fulfilment move!

From tropic clime and zones of frost
They come, of every name, —
This, this our day of Pentecost,
The Spirit's tongue of flame!

The ancient barriers disappear:
Down bow the mountains high;
The sea-divided shores draw near
In world-wide unity.

One Life together we confess,
One all-indwelling Word,
One holy Call to righteousness
Within the silence heard:

Your delicate fingers on the keyboard make
The riotous notes beat swift as driving rain
With thunder in its pauses, and constrain
The spirit of music's inmost heart to awake.
Once more, once more, bid rise and swoon and ache
This song of Schumann's filled with tremulous pain,
Rapture and peace and joy that soars again
In fierce delight of love for love's own sake!

How vain, in sight of yours, seems this my art!
For could I play, or paint you, I could deem
My art not wholly worthless of its theme: