Love is Best.
26
Bind it upon your breast, my knight, 'tis but a slender burden.
Go forth and win—fear no defeat, my love will be your guerdon."
He took the ribbon from her hand, he looked deep in her eyes,
He said, "Your task is easy with so exquisite a prize,
If this can win you, I will win, and yet I tell you clearly,
Love does not ask of love a proof, won painfully and dearly,
Ambition may allure, but never can it satisfy,
And I will prove it, Love is best! and now I go—Good-bye!"
Go forth and win—fear no defeat, my love will be your guerdon."
He took the ribbon from her hand, he looked deep in her eyes,
He said, "Your task is easy with so exquisite a prize,
If this can win you, I will win, and yet I tell you clearly,
Love does not ask of love a proof, won painfully and dearly,
Ambition may allure, but never can it satisfy,
And I will prove it, Love is best! and now I go—Good-bye!"
*****
Oh, still the silent desert lies far in the unknown land,
The sunlight like a yellow pall upon its burning sand.
There is a beauty—strange, I own, in such a land as this,
That those who prize earth's every form were surely loth to miss.
A beauty not of swelling glades, and blossom-spangled swards,
A beauty not akin to that a gentler land affords.
The sunlight like a yellow pall upon its burning sand.
There is a beauty—strange, I own, in such a land as this,
That those who prize earth's every form were surely loth to miss.
A beauty not of swelling glades, and blossom-spangled swards,
A beauty not akin to that a gentler land affords.
