Lovers’ Quarrels

An Old Maxim Refuted

They never loved as thou and I,
Who preach’d the laughing moral,
That aught which deepens love can lie
In true love’s lightest quarrel.

They never knew, in times of fear,
The safety of affection,
Nor sought, when angry fate drew near,
Love’s altar for protection.

They never knew how kindness grows
A vigil and a care,
Nor watch’d beside the heart’s repose
In silence and in prayer;

For weaker love be storms enough
To frighten back desire;
We have no need of gales so rough
To fan our steadier fire.

’Twere sweet to kiss thy tears away,
If tears those eyes must know;
But sweeter still to hear thee say,
“Thou never badst them flow.”

The wrongful word will rankling live
When wrong itself has ceased,
And love, that all things may forgive,
Can ne’er forget the least.

If pain can not from life depart,
There’s pain enough around us;
The rose we wear upon the heart
Should have no thorn to wound us.

And hollow sounds the wildest vow,
If memory wake, the while,
The bitter taunt—the darken’d brow,
The stinging of a smile.

There is no anguish like the hour,
Whatever else befall us,
When one the heart has raised to power
Exerts it but to gall us.

Yet if—this calm too blest to last—
Some cloud, at times, must be,
I’m not so proud but I would cast
The fault alone on me.

So deeply blent with thy dear thought,
All faith in human kindness,
Methinks if thou couldst change in aught,
The only bliss were blindness.

But no—if rapture may not last,
It ne’er shall bring regret,
Nor leave one look in all the past
’Twere mercy to forget.

Repentance often finds, too late,
To wound us is to harden;
And love is on the verge of hate,
Each time it stoops for pardon.