Poems of love

of
CHICAGO M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY 427-429 Dearborn Street
Copyright 1905. M. A. DONOHUE & COMPANY
The danger of war, with its havoc of life, The danger of ocean, when storms are rife, The danger of jungles, where wild beasts hide, The danger that lies in the mountain slide,-- Why, what are they but all mere child's play, Or the idle sport of a summer day, Beside These battles that stir and vex The world forever, of sex with sex?
The warrior returns from the captured fort, The mariner sails to a peaceful port; The wild beast quails 'neath the strong man's eye, The avalanche passes the traveler by-- But who can rescue from passion's pyre The hearts that were offered to feed its fire? Ah! he who emerges from that fierce flame Is scarred with sorrow or blackened with shame.
Battle and billow, and beast of prey, They only threaten the mortal clay; The soul unfettered can take to wing; But the danger of love is another thing. Once under the tyrant Passion's control, He crushes body, and heart, and soul. An hour of rapture, an age of despair, Ah! these are the trophies of love's warfare.
And yet forever, since time began, Has man dared woman and woman lured man To that sweet danger that lurks and lies In the bloodless battle of eyes with eyes; That reckless danger, as vast as sweet, Whose bitter ending is joy's defeat. Ah! thus forever, while time shall last, On passion's altar must hearts be cast!
A little leaf just in the forest's edge, All summer long, had listened to the wooing Of amorous birds that flew across the hedge, Singing their blithe sweet songs for her undoing. So many were the flattering things they told her, The parent tree seemed quite too small to hold her.
At last one lonesome day she saw them fly Across the fields behind the coquette summer, They passed her with a laughing light good-by, When from the north, there strode a strange new comer; Bold was his mien, as he gazed on her, crying, How comes it, then, that Thou art left here sighing!