Ventures Into Verse / Being various ballads, ballades, rondeaux, triolets, songs, quatrains, odes and roundels, all rescued from the potters' field of old files and here given decent burial - H. L. Mencken

The thorn lives but to shield the rose;

Coquetry may but shelter love!

(This consolation Hope bestows).

The thorn lives but to shield the rose;

Though blood from many a thorn wound flows

I'll pluck the rose that blows above—

The thorn lives but to shield the rose,

Coquetry may but shelter love!