Ode to Love

By: Emily Williams

I

Oh wildfire of love, thou fuel of life and lands
From whose unseen presence tears are driven
Like a raindrop that dries in the desert sands

You alight in hues of sunburst orange and red
Warming those you bless within your blaze
In velvet heat and romance’s golden thread

Your sacred light you scatter all abroad
Asking no questions, you give yourself away
Unrestrained, you walk where hatred trods

When light does fade and sun is cast by gloom
And frost has bitten the soft and kind away
Your eternal lantern’s glow sets all abloom

In the passion of your never-ending flame
What you embrace will never be the same

II

Oh blistering rain of love, on thou whose cloud
The airy bliss of romance’s kiss
Does reside and with softness enshroud

The drying flora of the quiet heart
Whispering for you doth take a breath
And to its sands your life you do impart

When drought and desert dry do overtake
And struggle the heart in unforgiving hate
Down falls the rain and doth a tempest make

Thy waters collide upon earth’s grassy floor
Setting forth an ocean’s swell of grace
To never cease and only swell the more

You cool the night, the day, the brightest morn
Oh, why can it not rain forevermore

III

In fields of poesies on a green, spring day
Thou art the light which warms my skin
Sending honey drenched kisses in your rays

The light which seeps through silk and glass
Awakening my slumber in the morn
With scents of milk and honey as clouds pass

A moonbeam shining ray by ray through drapes
Illuminates my mind with constellations
Reaching sleep to the patterns that love makes

A chasm of dark needs but a single torch
To turn the air to golden beams of light
A flicker though but little be so much

Though the dark is great oh love is more
The savior of the world has proved this sure

IV

Oh, love is like the earth beneath my feet
Always with me, never can I hide
For wherever I touch the ground love and I meet

Make me a tree that I may root
Within you and grow from your core
That I may stretch and for all bare love’s fruit

Love, your ground is patient, kind, and sure
Oh how I want to never wrath or boast
Planted firmly in you I’ll endure

My hope is bound in you to never falter
A solid ground in which I rest my feet
And lay my troubles at His loving altar

Prophecies may fail and tongues may cease
So love remains the greatest of all things