| |
| IF sweethearts were sweethearts always, | |
| Whether as maid or wife, | |
| No drop would be half so pleasant | |
| In the mingled draught of life. | |
| |
| But the sweetheart has smiles and blushes | 5 |
| When the wife has frowns and sighs, | |
| And the wife’s have a wrathful glitter | |
| For the glow of the sweetheart’s eyes. | |
| |
| If lovers were lovers always, | |
| The same to sweetheart and wife, | 10 |
| Who would change for a future of Eden | |
| The joys of this checkered life? | |
| |
| But husbands grow grave and silent, | |
| And cares on the anxious brow | |
| Oft replace the sunshine that perished | 15 |
| At the words of the marriage vow. | |
| |
| Happy is he whose sweetheart | |
| Is wife and sweetheart still— | |
| Whose voice, as of old, can charm; | |
| Whose kiss, as of old, can thrill; | 20 |
| |
| Who has plucked the rose, to find ever | |
| Its beauty and fragrance increase, | |
| As the flush of passion is mellowed | |
| In love’s unmeasured peace; | |
| |
| Who sees in the step a lightness; | 25 |
| Who finds in the form a grace; | |
| Who reads an unaltered brightness | |
| In the witchery of the face, | |
| |
| Undimmed and unchanged. Ah! happy | |
| Is he crowned with such a life, | 30 |
| Who drinks the wife, pledging the sweetheart, | |
| And toasts in the sweetheart the wife. | |
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