I love you
therefore I am
in the present.
I write, beloved,
and retrieve the past.

I love Thy Word, O God:
Its pages brightly shine,
A beacon light along the road
That leads to truth divine.

I love Thy Word, O God:
For comfort freely given;
For inner peace that keeps my soul,
And gives me thoughts of heaven.

I love Thy Word, O God:
For songs of purest joy,
That fill this pilgrim heart of mine,
And lips of praise employ.

I love Thy Word, O God:
That tells me of Thy Son;
Of His redemption on the cross
For needy sinners won.

I love Thy Word, O God:
It ne'er shall pass away,

I love thee when thy swelling buds appear,
And one by one their tender leaves unfold,
As if they knew that warmer suns were near
Nor longer sought to hide from winter's cold;
And when with darker growth thy leaves are seen
To veil from view the early robin's nest,
I love to lie beneath thy waving skreen
With limbs by summer's heat and toil opprest;
And when the autumn winds have stript thee bare,
And round thee lies the smooth untrodden snow,
When nought is thine that made thee once so fair,
I love to watch thy shadowy form below,

I love thee, Mary, and thou lovest me—
Our mutual flame is like th' affinity
That doth exist between two simple bodies:
I am Potassium to thine Oxygen.
'Tis little that the holy marriage vow
Shall shortly make us one. That unity
Is, after all, but metaphysical.
Oh, would that I, my Mary, were an acid,
A living acid; thou an alkali
Endow'd with human sense, that, brought together,
We both might coalesce into one salt,
One homogeneous crystal. Oh, that thou
Wert Carbon, and myself were Hydrogen;
We would unite to form olefiant gas,

I love Octopussy, his arms are so long;
There's nothing in nature so sweet as his song.
'Tis true I'd not touch him — no, not for a farm!
If I keep at a distance he'll do me no harm.

I love my prairies, they are mine
From zenith to horizon line,
Clipping a world of sky and sod
Like the bended arm and wrist of God.

I love their grasses. The skies
Are larger, and my restless eyes
Fasten on more of earth and air
Than seashore furnishes anywhere.

I love the hazel thickets; and the breeze,
The never resting prairie winds. The trees
That stand like spear points high
Against the dark blue sky

Are wonderful to me. I love the gold
Of newly shaven stubble, rolled

1. I love my Jesus quite alone. The bride the bride-groom of my
2. The magnet needle erring goes. When from when from the pole dis-
spirit: No others shall my heart, no none. Through love through
tracted. And take before quite no repose. Till he, till
loving more inherit. No man can do at once for two. For
he has her attracted. And since my heart with thy love dart Is
one's for one's will and for t'others: Therefore I'll leave all others.
touched is touched by its flaming ether. Therefore, they haste together.

CCIX

I love, loved, and so doth she
And yet in love we suffer still.
The cause is strange, as seemeth me,
To love so well and want our will.

O deadly yea! O grievous smart!
Worse than refuse, unhappy gain!
In love whoever played this part
To love so well and live in pain?

Was ever hearts so well agreed
Since love was love, as I do trow,
That in their love so ill did speed
To love so well and live in woe?

This mourn we both and hath done long
With woeful plaint and careful voice.
Alas, it is a grievous wrong

Twilight down the west
Wanders once again;
With a gentler guest
Singing in her train.

Hearkens every breast,
Every heart and brain:
Peace, oh, peace is best!
Runs the sweet refrain.

So the world is blest,
Joy is not nor pain;
Love itself learns rest
Of the summer rain.

" I love, I love, and whom love ye? "
" I love a flowre of fresh beaute."
" I love another as well as ye."
" Than shall be proved here, anon,
If we three can agre in on."

" I love a flowre of swete odour. "
" Magerome gentil, or lavendour?
Columbine, goldes of swete flavour?"
" Nay! nay! let be:
Is non of them
That liketh me."

" There is a flowre whereso he be,
And shall not yet be named for me."
" Primeros, violet or fresh daisy?"
" He pass them all
In his degree,
That best liketh me."