What poets say about love
part 7
Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.
Dryden—Tyrannic Love. Act IV. Sc. 1. 101
Two souls in one, two hearts into one heart.
Du Bartas—Divine Weekes and Workes. First Week. Pt. I. Sixth day. L. 1,057. 102
I’m sitting on the stile. Mary,
Where we sat side by side.
Lady Dufferin—Lament of the Irish Emigrant. 103
Oh, tell me whence Love cometh!
Love comes uncall’d, unsent.
Oh, tell me where Love goeth!
That was not Love that went.
Burden of a Woman. Found in J. W. Ebsworth’s Roxburghe Ballads. 104
The solid, solid universe
Is pervious to Love;
With bandaged eyes he never errs,
Around, below, above.
His blinding light
He flingeth white
On God’s and Satan’s brood,
And reconciles
By mystic wiles
The evil and the good.
Emerson—Cupido. 105
But is it what we love, or how we love,
That makes true good?
George Eliot—The Spanish Gypsy. Bk. I. 106
’Tis what I love determines how I love.
George Eliot—The Spanish Gypsy. Bk. I. 107
Women know no perfect love:
Loving the strong, they can forsake the strong;
Man clings because the being whom he loves
Is weak and needs him.
George Eliot—The Spanish Gypsy. Bk. III. 108
A ruddy drop of manly blood
The surging sea outweighs;
The world uncertain comes and goes,
The lover rooted stays.
Emerson—Essays. First Series. Epigraph to Friendship. 109
Love, which is the essence of God, is not for levity, but for the total worth of man.
Emerson—Essays. Of Friendship. 110
All mankind love a lover.
Emerson—Essays. Of Love. 111
Venus, when her son was lost,
Cried him up and down the coast,
In hamlets, palaces, and parks,
And told the truant by his marks,—
Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
Emerson—Initial, Demoniac, and Celestial Love. St. 1. 112
Mais on revient toujours
A ses premières amours.
But one always returns to one’s first loves.
Quoted by Etienne in Joconde. Act III. 1. Same idea in Pliny—Natural History. X. 63. 113
Venus, thy eternal sway
All the race of men obey.
Euripides—Iphigenia in Aulis. 114
He is not a lover who does not love for ever.
Euripides—Troades. 1,051. 115
Wedded love is founded on esteem.
Elijah Fenton—Mariamne. 116
Love is the tyrant of the heart; it darkens
Reason, confounds discretion; deaf to Counsel
It runs a headlong course to desperate madness.
John Ford—The Lover’s Melancholy. Act III. Sc. 3. L. 105. 117
If you would be loved, love and be lovable.
Benj. Franklin—Poor Richard. (1755). 118
Love, then, hath every bliss in store;
’Tis friendship, and ’tis something more.
Each other every wish they give;
Not to know love is not to live.
Gay—Plutus, Cupid and Time. L. 135. 119
I saw and loved.
Gibbon—Autobiographic Memoirs. P. 48. 120
Other Links:
Sweeney among the Nightingales
Written in Very Early Youth
WRITTEN WHILE SAILING IN A BOAT AT EVENING
