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Love in Worldlynesse.
The gentle heart, the truthful love,
Have flemed this earth and fled to Heaven—
The noblest spirits earliest prove
Not Here below, but There above,
Is Hope no shadow—Bliss no sweven!
There was a time, old Poets say,
When the crazed world was in its nonage,
That they who loved were loved alwaye,
With faith transparent as the day,
But this, meseems, was fiction's coinage.
We cannot mate here as we ought,
With laws opposed to simple feeling;
Professions are, like lutestring, bought,
And worldly ties soon breed distraught,
To end in cold congealing!
Forms we have worshipped oft become,
If haply they affect our passion,
Though faultless, icy cold and dumb,
Because we are not rich, like some,
Or proud—Such is this strange world's fashion!
