Better to have loved and lost,
Than love not at all and pay that cost?
Believe this, do you? I pray thee tell.
Explain upon parchment with ink and quill.
How do you see this as such a great way?
By love’s toils and sufferings you wish to live out your days?
To love and lose is better than heartache none?
Explain to me this riddle, for perhaps I am dumb.
Pour out blood, sweat, even tears
for unknown time, indefinite years.
Lose arm, lose leg, but fret at all? Nay!?
Why not, I ask? Because it is worth love for a day?
Do you ever attain satiety, which leads to ennui?
Or do you believe euphoria continues all throughout loving?
And what, my inquiry is, after it reaches its end?
By death, fallout, or complacency it does not depend.
Left with ages wasted, left a shell of a man.
So much to be lost, having given the best to them.
But perhaps I have played fool, and I fail to understand.
Perhaps to gamble on love would make better this man.
So what if I lose? What if I win?
A lifelong companion, faithful til end.
Such are the stakes in romance’s roulette.
A stab in the heart, or keep Cherished eternally.
Worth the chance? Contest it, would I.
indeed it is, though part of me might die.
Worse to keep love locked away
Than to lose, having loved,
even if for but a day.