A Beautiful June Bride

Lillian Elizabeth Salter Greene
June 4, 1919

A Wedding In Nirvana
(The Story of My Grandmother's Wedding)

WITH A TOAST TO THE BRIDE

They met, they looked, they sighed, they loved;

Straight each the other chose.
(Why wait till slow-paced years have proved

What each by instinct knows?)

Whate'er mistake we mortals make,

Sure, none is made above.
Give prudence to the prudes; there is

No substitute for love.

Howe'er the worldly-wise may mate,

Apart from soul or sense,
And as undying passion rate

Their tepid preference,
Love is the wing that 's sure to bring

Back to the ark the dove.
What all their wisdom? Ah, it is

No substitute for love.

And those who by ambition blind

Would with a title wed,
That, when they are not sore maligned,

They may be envied,
Heaven sends them pride wherewith to hide

The loss they know not of— To find—too late, alas! —there is

No substitute for love.

Then here 's success to youth and maid

Who hold in hopeful hands And weave together, unafraid,

Life's old mysterious strands.
" Love is enough"—that is the stuff

Fortune is fashioned of.
To face the fickle world, there 's naught

To substitute for love.

Robert Underwood Johnson - 1908

Sources:

Johnson, Robert Underwood. Poems. New York : The Century Company, 1908.

Photographs:

Wedding - Lillian Salter Greene - Front. 1908. Photograph. Holmes, Burton. Privately held by the footnoteMaven, Preston, Washington. 2009.

Wedding - Lillian Salter Greene - Side. 1908. Photograph. Holmes, Burton. Privately held by the footnoteMaven, Preston, Washington. 2009.