AUGUST 413 



' Would I'd a Rose on my bosom to lie ! 



But I shrink from the piercing thorn. 

 I long, but I dare not, its point defy ; 



I long, and I gaze forlorn.' 



' Not so, O my child round the stem again 



Thy resolute fingers entwine ; 

 Forego not the joy for its sister pain. 

 Let the Rose, the sweet Rose, be thine.' 



Here is one more example of the many forms love 

 takes perhaps the noblest and the best : renunciation, no 

 matter why or wherefor, but for duty's sake. It is one of 

 Mrs. Browning's ' Sonnets from the Portuguese ' : 

 Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 

 Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore, 

 Alone upon the threshold of my door 

 Of individual life, I shall command 

 The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 

 Serenely in the sunshine as before, 

 Without the sense of that which I forbore 

 Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 

 Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine 



With pulses that beat double. What I do 

 And what I dream include thee, as the wine 



Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 

 God for myself, He hears that name of thine 

 And sees within my eyes the tears of two. 



Tennyson's two -lines everlastingly contain the true 



test: 



Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with 



might- 

 Smote the chord of Self, that trembling pass'd in music out 



of sight. 



And now, to wind up the definitions of love, I will 

 quote from two clever modern novels. Lucas Malet in 

 ' The Wages of Sin ' attempts to describe the little god, 

 who, we are told, still has something of the sea from 

 which his mother, Venus, rose : 



Love is quiet and subtle and fearless ; yet he comes 



