I'm glad you're glad, Amos!

Actually, I was thinking of a version of "Waly, Waly" ("The water is wide") with the lines:

Love is gentle, and love is kind --
just like a jewel when first it's new.
But love grows old, and waxes cold,
and fades away, like morning dew.

Now, the romance may fade (thank goodness -- that whole thing is exhausting!). But if her love really is someone she'd trust enough to share rowing duties, I don't think the love will fade quite so quickly... but so many people think love and romance are the same thing.

The bit about the strength of songs comes from an outrageous statement I read in a book about how music affects the brain, that complex music is only 3,000 years old.  (Maybe the first tangible <i>evidence</i> of complex music is only that old, but early hominids might have been singing nine part rounds since they climbed down from the trees -- a song doesn't leave any tangible evidence behind for archeologists to find millennia later)
Anyway, it occurred to me that the equating of imortance or strength with lasting evidence was akin to equating romance with love -- all surface judgements.

Anyway, I'm fading fast....