THE DEFINITION OF LOVE
by: Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
- Y love is
of a birth as rare
- As 'tis for object strange and high;
- It was begotten by Despair
- Upon Impossibility.
-
- Magnanimous Despair alone
- Could show me so divine a thing
- Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,
- But vainly flapp'd its tinsel wing.
-
- And yet I quickly might arrive
- Where my extended soul is fixt,
- But Fate does iron wedges drive,
- And always crowds itself betwixt.
-
- For Fate with jealous eye does see
- Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
- Their union would her ruin be,
- And her tyrannic pow'r depose.
-
- And therefore her decrees of steel
- Us as the distant poles have plac'd,
- (Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)
- Not by themselves to be embrac'd;
-
- Unless the giddy heaven fall,
- And earth some new convulsion tear;
- And, us to join, the world should all
- Be cramp'd into a planisphere.
-
- As lines, so loves oblique may well
- Themselves in every angle greet;
- But ours so truly parallel,
- Though infinite, can never meet.
-
- Therefore the love which us doth bind,
- But Fate so enviously debars,
- Is the conjunction of the mind,
- And opposition of the stars.
"The Definition of Love"
is reprinted from Miscellaneous Poems. Andrew Marvell.
London: Printed for Robert Boulter at the Turks-Head in Cornhill,
1681. |
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POEMS BY ANDREW MARVELL |
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