HOW WONDERFUL IS LOVE, a poem

HOW wonderful is love!
More wonderful, I wis,
Than cherry-blossoms are when spring's first kiss
Warms the chill breast of earth,
And gives new birth
To beauty! High above
All miracles—the miracle of love,
Which by its own glad and triumphant power
Brings life to flower.
Oh, love is wonderful!
     More wonderful than is the dew-fed rose
     Whose petals half unclose,
          In welcome of the light,
When first the Dawn comes robed in vesture cool
          Of fragrant, shimmering white!—
More wonderful and strange
Than moonrise, which doth change
Dulness to glory—
Yea, with a touch transforms the mountains hoary,
          And fills the darkling rills with living silver bright!

Not music when it wings
From the far azure where the skylark sings
     Is wonderful as love!—
Not music when it wells
From the enchanted fairy-haunted dells
Where, shrined mid thorn and vine—
     An ecstasy apart,
     Drawn from the life-blood of a breaking heart—
     The nightingale pours forth forever
     The rapture and the pain that naught can sever,
Of love which mortal is, yet knows itself divine!

"How Wonderful is Love" by Florence Earle Coates. Published in Harper's Monthly Magazine (June 1910), The Unconquered Air (1912) and Poems (1916) Volume I.