Orrick Johns

From “Country Rhymes”

LOVE is a proud and gentle thing, a better thing to own

Than all of the wide impossible stars over the heavens blown,

And the little gifts her hand gives are careless given or taken,

And though the whole great world break, the heart of her is not shaken …

Love is a viol in the wind, a viol never stilled,

And mine of all is the surest that ever God has willed;

I shall speak to her though she goes before me into the grave,

And though I drown in the sea, herself shall come upon a wave;

And the things that love gives after shall be as they were before,

For life is only a small house and love is an open door.