The truth is that there is only one
terminal dignity -- love.
And the story of a love is not important --
what is important is that one is capable of love.
It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of
eternity.
~Helen Hayes~
Love means the body, the soul,
the life, the entire being.
We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood,
we breathe love as we breathe air,
we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts.
Nothing more exists for us.
~Guy De Maupassant~
Alas, I thought I knew so much
Of love, and yet I know so little!
For I cannot stop myself loving her
From whom I shall never have joy.
My whole heart, and all of me from myself
She has taken, and her own self,
and all the world,
For when she took herself from me,
she left me nothing
But desire and a yearning heart.
~Bernard de Ventadour~
Do not sing for a bird or a flower,
Nor for snow nor for ice,
Nor even for cold or warmth,
Nor for the return of the green to the meadows;
Nor for any other pleasure
Do I sing, nor have I ever sung,
But for my lady for whom I long,
For she is the fairest in the world.
~Geoffrey Chaucer~
Through their kisses and caresses they experienced a joy
and wonder the equal of which has
never been known or heard of,
But I shall be silent...for the rarest and most
delectable pleasures are
those which are hinted at,
but never told.
~Chre'tien de Troyes, Lancelot~
I have never had power over myself,
Nor was I mine from that moment
When she let me look into her eyes,
Into a mirror that much pleases me
Mirror,
since I mirrored myself in you,
I have been slain by sighs from the depths,
And thus I was lost, just as
The fair Narcissus lost himself in the pool.
~Bernard deVentadour~
And if my homage she'd receive,
My wooing and my service true--
The sleepless nights I have been through,
The grief I bear from morn till eve,
Could never take me from her sight;
I'd be a slave unto delight,
All burdens I would gladly bear
And for my heart's grief I'd not care.
~Guiraut de Bornelh~
I have never had power over myself,
Nor was I mine from that moment
When she let me look into her eyes,
Into a mirror that much pleases me
Mirror,
since I mirrored myself in you,
I have been slain by sighs from the depths,
And thus I was lost, just as
The fair Narcissus lost himself in the pool.
~Bernard deVentadour~
Love has taken away my practices
and flled me with poetry.
I tried to keep quietly repeating,
No strength but yours, [ital]
but I couldn't.
I had to clap and sing.
I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,
but who can stand in this strong wind
and remember those things?
A mountain keeps an echo
deep inside itself.
That's how I hold your voice.
I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,
and quickly reduced to smoke.
~Rumi~
In the early morning hour,
just before dawn,
lover and beloved wake
and take a drink of water.
She asks,
"Do you love me or yourself more?
Really, tell the absolute truth."
He says, "There's nothing left of me.
I'm like a ruby held up to the sunrise,
Is it still a stone, or a world made of redness?
It has no resistance
to sunlight.".
~Rumi~
The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that
was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.
I want to hold you close like a lute,
so we can cry out with loving.
~Rumi~
Let me take you,
daughter of the fields,
to the lovers' vineyard.
The wine we press will quench the fires of longing.
You need not fear, my love,
for never have the stars on high
told what they know.
Night's thick mists swirl in these vineyards;
they will veil our secrets.
~Kahlil Gibran~
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shal outlive this powerful rhyme;
but you shall shine more bright in these contents
Than unswept stone, besmeared with sluttish time.
When wasteful war shall statues overturn,
And broils root out the work of masonry,
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn
The living record of your memory.
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity
Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room
Even if the eyes of all posterity
That wear this world out to the ending doom.
So, till the judgment that yourself arise,
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes.
~William Shakespeare: Sonnet 55~
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love the with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, - I love thee with
breadth, smiles, tears, of all my life! - and
If God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
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LOVE
