~This is a participating post of Let's Blog Off, a biweekly event in which numerous bloggers write on a directed topic (see the table at end of post for links to others' musings).
~This week's prompt: "What is love?"
Love.
There have been endless poems written on love: the thrill and joy, the pain and bitter loss, the long-lasting and the short-lived, the romantic and familial, the pursuit and the rejection. How can there be so many approaches and praises and disillusions surrounding one little 4-letter word?
Simply considering this answers Hartley Coleridge's question for us:
Is love a fancy or a feeling?
No. Neither. For fancies and feelings fade.
Oh no! It is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken
Shakespeare had it right. He understood why love has so captivated the human heart, the poet's soul for centuries on end. "...It is an ever fixed mark..." Because it is not fleeting or movable, because it is set upon us as a permanent sore, love is free to eat away at us as an insatiable cancer roams through one's chest. This constant pecking and gnawing is what drags the poet's pen across the paper in unceasing wonder. Love possesses the heart, the hand, the head - the entire body - and refuses to yield to eviction. It takes up permanent residence; the person it imposes itself upon, the helpless host.
Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove
Love will not be swayed. It may appear to dissipate or obscure, but it is only our vision that waivers. Love buries itself deep in the recesses of our frames, hiding in the sinews and marrow of our bones. We cannot escape it or outrun it because it seeps into us until it is one with our being.
And it is incurable.
Some people don't want to get better.
Poems featured in this post are:
Sonnet 7 by Hartley Coleridge
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Sonnet 7 by Hartley Coleridge
Sonnet 116 by William Shakespeare
Thanks for stopping by today. To read what others have to say on this lofty subject, check the table below (updates automatically as new posts are added).
Love is incurable, true enough, but it is also a delicate flower that requires a lot of nurturing if it is to continue to grow. The mistake young lovers make is in taking each other for granted. You have to work on it every day, but if you do….WOW!
ReplyDeleteHow beautiful your words are... "it seeps into us until it is one with our being.," and Joe your wisdom is a gift to be shared!
ReplyDeleteShakespeare's sonnet is one of my favorites (brought it with me to Paris as I'm working on my series of sonnets). Great exploration (as always) Chamois. I so look forward to reading your posts when #LetsBlogOff comes around. So much fun seeing what other writers do when we're all given the same subject to explore. A big hello from Paris, one of the most romantic cities in the world! Hope you are well!
ReplyDeleteAll the different ways it is stretched and pulled. an incurable cancer... I like that ... the hint that it is a Congenital disease -- some carriers and others with more advanced symptoms, and I could go on . . . you're one hell of a writer. and this opens up a whole new way of looking at it. great take!
ReplyDeleteThank you all for reading!
ReplyDeleteJoe - Great advice - will keep it in mind!
Grace - Thank you. I find that once I get a few sentences in, the words just roll out on their own. I loved your post, by the way!
Saxon - As always, you flatter me more than I deserve. I'm doing well - busy with classes. I hope Paris is amazing!
JB - When I started this post, I had no intention of going in the diseased direction, but it gives a whole new understanding of "lovesick" doesn't it?
My favorite line? "Love will not be swayed. It may appear to dissipate or obscure, but it is only our vision that waivers." A lot of heartache could be spared if we could always remember this...
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part? The photo of you and your lover... This could be an Anthropologie catalog cover. Love it, love the dress, love the love...:)
Denese - Thanks for reading! And that photo is from my honeymoon..I though it especially fitting for the topic :)
ReplyDelete