Samuel Butler. "Love is too great a happiness."

Samuel Butler

from

The Genuine Remains, 1759

Love is too great a happiness
For wretched mortals to possess
For, could it hold inviolate
Against these cruelties of Fate,
Which all felicities below
By rigid laws are subject to,
It would become a bliss too high
For perishing mortality,
Translate to Earth the joys above ;
For nothing goes to Heaven but love.

From:
Restoration Verse. William Kerr, Ed.
London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1930. 8.