And when my own Mark Antony
Against young Caesar strove,
And Rome's whole world was set in arms,
The cause was,—all for love.
Cupid "the little greatest god."
They sin who tell us Love can die:
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
In Heaven Ambition cannot dwell,
Nor Avarice in the vaults of Hell.
Together linkt with adamantine chains.
Spenser—Hymn in Honour of Love. Phrase used by Drummond—Flowers of Sion. Belvont, in Harleian Miscellany. IV. 559. Phineas Fletcher—Purple Island. Ch. XII. 64. (1633) Manilius. Bk. I. 921. Marini—Sospeito d'Herode. Sts. 14 and Crashaw's trans. Shelley—Revolt of Islam. III. 19.
To be wise and eke to love.
Is granted scarce to gods above.
Love is the emblem of eternity: it confounds all notion of time: effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.
Where we really love, we often dread more than we desire the solemn moment that exchanges hope for certainty.
L'amour est l'histoire de la vie des femmes; c'est un episode dans celle des hommes.
Love is the history of a woman's life; it is an episode in man's.
Sweetheart, when you walk my way,
Be it dark or be it day;
Dreary winter, fairy May,
I shall know and greet you.
For each day of grief or grace
Brings you nearer my embrace;
Love hath fashioned your dear face,
I shall know you when I meet you.
To love her was a liberal education.
I who all the Winter through,
Cherished other loves than you
And kept hands with hoary policy in marriagebed and pew;
Now I know the false and true,
For the earnest sun looks through,
And my old love comes to meet me in the dawning and the dew.
And my heart springs up anew,
Bright and confident and true,
And the old love comes to meet me, in the dawning and the dew.
Just like Love is yonder rose,
Heavenly fragrance round it throws,
Yet tears its dewy leaves disclose, '
And in the midst of briars it blows
Just like Love.
Why so pale and wan, fond lover,
Prithee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee, why so pale?
Love in its essence is spiritual fire.
In all I wish^how happy should I be,
Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee?
So weak thou art that fools thy power despise;
And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise.
Love, as is told by the seers of old,
Comes as a butterfly tipped with gold,
Flutters and flies in sunlit skies,
Weaving round hearts that were one time cold.
If love were what the rose is,
And I were like the leaf,
Our lives would grow together
In sad or singing weather.
Love, O great god Love, what have I done,
That thou shouldst hunger so after my death?
My heart is harmless as my life's first day:
Seek out some false fair woman, and plague her
Till her tears even as my tears fill her bed.
Love laid his sleepless head
On a thorny rose bed:
And his eyes with tears were red,
And pale his lips as the dead.
{{Hoyt quote
| num = 21
| text =
that have love and no more
Give you but love of you, sweet;
He that hath more, let him give;
He that hath wings, let him soar;
Mine is the heart at your feet
Here, that must love you to live.
| author = Swinburne | work = The Oblation | topic = Love | page = 481
