Alter et Idem

O lovers, ye that poorly love, and ye
That think ye love beyond sobriety.
Twine me a wreath, if but for only this, —
I'll prove the roses in the poet's kiss.
Not metaphors alone are lips and roses,
Whate'er the gallant or the churl supposes :
Ask what compounds them both, and science tells
Of marvellous results in crucibles, —
Of common elements, — say two in five, —
By which their touch is soft, their bloom's alive ;
So that the lip and leaf do really, both.
Hold a shrewd cut of the same velvet cloth.
The maxim holds, where'er the compounds fall, —
In birds, in brooks, in wall-flowers, and the wall :
The beauty shares them with her very shawl.

'Tis true, the same things go to harden rocks ;
There's iron in the shade of Julia's locks ;
And when we kiss Jacintha's tears away,
A briny pity melts in what we say :
But read these common properties aright,
And shame in love is quench'd, and wise delight.
The very coarsest clay, the meanest shard
That hides the beetle in the public yard.
Shares with the stars, and all that rolls them on,
Much more the face we love to look upon ;
And be the drops compounded as they may,
That bring sweet sorrows from sweet eyes away,
Where's the mean soul shall honour not the tears
Shed lor a lover's hopes, a mother's fears ?
Rise, truth and love, and vindicate my rhyme !
The crabbed Scot, that once upon a time
Asked what a poem prov'd, and just had wit
To prove himself a fool, by asking it,
E'en he had blood, as Burns or Wallace had,
Or as the lip that makes a painter mad.