LOVE.
Reading edition
Love is but a great desire— Coarse, refined, or low, or higher; Love is like the leaping fire, Warmth and light, or scorchings dire. Love gives blindness, insight plain, Worth or weakness, loss or gain, Sweetest pleasure, saddest pain, Thrilling heart, or bursting brain. Love is pureness, love is lust, Brutal rape, or restful trust; Grants full freedom, or says “Must,” Lifts aloft, or drags in dust. Love is what the nations need, Love has made the nations bleed; Love of all things holds the seed,— Love the flower, love the weed. There is then a lower love Nobler souls will rise above; To the passion that is higher, Wiser souls will aye aspire.
