Thursday, May 12, 2011

I have loved, a worthy lover!

When love is not madness, it is not love. ~Pedro Calderon de la Barca

I recently bumped into one of my favourite poets from the 19th century (Where?? on the streets stupid) and she defined love in a way I hadn't understood before:

Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear "For life, for death!" -
Oh, fear to call it loving!

Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past -
Oh, never call it loving!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

This judicious definition took me back 4 months ago when I was so distraught over the loss of a man I had grown to call 'distant-lover'

Within me I search words to describe him by
But all I manage, is to cry

I go about my life as though he never existed
Though deep within, he never exited

I never loved another or 'felt' loved by another
so in sync as; he and I together

I will outgrow this someday, to myself I think
But no denying that I am weak

I will need the universe in its entirety at my aid
For I am and always will be afraid

To love, have, give, only to lose, hurt and pain
Unless it is him, that I fall for again


It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. With this I am content.