Can anyone read this?

[gardener]

Can anyone read the words at the start of the first line? Before "are all mixed"?

[SRD]

Pleasure pain weal and cove

[Frodo]

My guess is the same although not sure about cove. I don't know where this was written but if you take into account possible mis spelling Wheal is Cornish for work/toil as well as for a mine.

[gardener]

Thanks. I thought the 3rd word might be real, but can't make anything sensible out of the 4th. It was written by a young man in 1871 and he used few commas and was fond of phrases from school Latin and the music halls so it could be a catch phrase that is outdated.

[SRD]

Looking atthe general meaning of the piece I suspect they're antonyms and if the Cornish link is there, referring to a place of toil (weal) and a place of shelter (cove)

[Northern Lass]

That would make sense then of the sentiment
pleasure pain
work and Home
being mixed up in such a life.

[gardener]

Finally dawned on me that one word was "woe"!

So here it is, a phrase that I had not seen before

"In weal and woe", meaning in prosperity and adversity

http://www.finedictionary.com/In%20weal ... 20woe.html

5/10 to SRD and huge gratitude to all. I'm transcribing an unpublished travel diary and it would be so annoying to have a blank bit!

[SRD]

Woe does make sense, but the shape of 'w' elsewhere in the piece doesn't conform to the first letter(s) of the word.