But, Love

 PAD Challenge day 25: Two-for-two Tues.
Write a love poem.
Write an anti-love poem.


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The Want of it cries in streets
And tears the night apart
The mind for all its airs competes
With matters of the heart

The heart cannot pretend
Its need a groaning wail
Where everything is nothing, friend,
Without it; touch a grail

...of everlasting thirst
Its cup a thoroughfare
Of  hopeless hunger, reason cursed
With uttermost despair

For self cannot please self
Nor its own lover be
Ah Love; Thy force within us swells
In holy mystery

And Love will never fail
Proved once by nail-pierced hands
Yet he who simply takes and takes
Will never understand

The wonder of it all
Perplexes how we live
For love's first-fruit is not in what
We keep, but what we give

...and even givings' price
Will never be enough
If the motive for sacrifice
Is anything, but Love

Then what is Love and who
Can its full wonder know?
Ah, love is God and God is love
And by His grace we go

Janet~

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35