'Tis Sweet to Think

Melody - "Thady, You Gander"

Thomas Moore, from Irish Melodies, vol. 3

'Tis sweet to think that, where'er we rove,
We are sure to find something blissful and dear,
And that, when we're far from the lips that we love,
We've but to make love to the lips we are near.*
The heart, like a tendril, accustom'd to cling,
Let it grow where it will, cannot flourish alone,
But will lean to the nearest and loveliest thing
It can twine with itself, and make closely its own.
Then oh! what pleasure, where'er we rove,
To be sure to find something, still, that is dear,
And to know, when far from the lips we love,
We've but to make love to the lips we are near.

2. 'Twere a shame, when flowers around us rise,
To make light of the rest, if the rose isn't there,
And the world's so rich in resplendent eyes,
'Twere a pity to limit one's love to a pair.
Love's wing and the peacock's are nearly alike,
They are both of them bright, but the're changeable too,
And wherever a new beam of beauty can strike,
It will tincture Love's plume with a different hue.
Then oh! what pleasure, where'er we rove,
To be sure to find something, still, that is dear,
And to know, when far from the lips we love,
We've but to make love to the lips we are near.

* I believe it is Marmontel who says "Quand an n'a pas ce que l'on alme, il faut oimer ce que l on a." - There are so many matter-of-fact people, who take such jeux d'esprit as this defence of inconstancy to be the actual and genuine sentiments of him who writes them, that they courted one, in self-defence, to be as matter-of-fact as themselves, and to remind them, that Democritus was not the worse physiologist for having playfully contended that snow was black: nor Erasmus in any degree the less wise, for having written an engenious encomium of folly. - from Irish Melodies.

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