Sharon, I realized something about myself while I was thinking about this:

I like to write rebuttals to "common knowledge" -- to make the song (or essay, or story) a bit like a dialogue.

Voice one: A song is insubsantial -- when it's over, there's no sign it was ever there.

Voice two: No, it's not -- a song can be the overthrow of a king, if enough people sing it.

V1: Love is fleeting, you can't trust it. When times get hard, your lover will leave you, just like the rose that falls in winter

V2: No, true love is stronger than hard times: It's the deepest root of the rose, that winds around the mountain stone, far below the winter's frost.

V2: Every song that ever existed that seems so ethereal now had to begin with a real flesh and bone person.

V2: And the love I feel began with you, my beloved. Let us go to the mountain, and build ourselves a shelter. Let us tend a rose garden, and sing to each other to keep away hard times.

Besides, the song (the real one, not the metaphorical one ;-)) isn't written yet -- these are just possible metaphors that have been vying for my attention (like a class of third graders: "ooh! Pick me! Pick me!"). I won't pick all of them, but I may pick two and combine them (as in that last verse)

It hit me this afternoon that I need to make the statement and rebuttal explicit, with the hook: "Wise men have told me all my life: _____ ... But I know: _____"