"Love and Such": A Valentine Collection

         

Commission for Zephyrus 

Cupid and Psyche, L. Prang and Co, 1876. Boston Pub. Lib.

Run over the world with shining feet

And rhymes of light where waters meet,

Where waters laugh, where waters flash

And stones are stars; thereover dash,

Carry my cry and my call: my Song

has one note, and that note, strong.

Burn under the sky in words of gold

A meteor's tale.  To the gods unfold

Another highborn love, though late.

Nothing is chance: the rest is fate.

Brandish the headlong flame of God,

Your holy sword a lightning rod

Between two beings below the sun-

By Time-Space two, by God-Will, one.

Run over the world, to the living end:

You sought out Psyche, now seek my Friend.

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Cupid and Psyche. Antonio Canova, 1787.

 "Reader, I married him."

--Jane Eyre

 "I tore him out of my heart and being like the blood of my body, and laid him on the altar.  But not without a long and anguished struggle.  And God gave him quietly back to me when it was done, though I couldn't see how..."

 

 

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"The Old Old Story."  John William Godward, 1903.

"Indifferent, the clouds drift on above
In skies of glass, obliviously blue
And careless of the costliness of love.
Today I ache with growing pains anew."

photograph by Fry. Nov. 2012. historicgardens.wordpress.com.
 

                          "She's got blue eyes like the sea,

                    That roll back when she's laughin' at me;

                                 She rises up like the tide

                         The moment her lips meet mine." 

                       --Plain White T's "Rhythm of Love"

"The Kiss," Francesco Hayez, 1859.

 " 'I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!'
'I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love,' said Darcy.
'Of a fine stout healthy love it may.  Every thing nourishes what is strong already.  But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.'
 Darcy only smiled..." 
--Pride and Prejudice 

"Heigh ho! Sing heigh ho! unto the green holly:

Most friendship is feigning, most loving, mere folly:

Then heigh ho, the holly!

This life is most jolly."

--"Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind"

Harmony before Matrimony. James Gillray, 1805.

"You have both of you something, to be sure, but it is not a trifle that will support a family nowadays; and after all that romancers may say, there is no doing without money."
--Isabella Thorpe Northanger Abbey 

Northanger Abbey illustration. C.E. Brock, 1907.

"...Ah, my God

What might I not have made of Thy fair world,

Had I but loved the highest creature here?

It was my duty to have loved the highest:

It surely was my profit had I known:

It would have been my pleasure had I seen.

We needs must love the highest when we see it."

Idylls of the King  

"View out my window."

"And it seems like the time when after doubt

Our love came back amain;

O come forth into the storm and rout,

And be my love in the rain."

 "A Line-Storm Song," Robert Frost

photograph by David Koiter, 2009. flickr.com

"I will song you a song of our soul, O Man,

I will leaf you a brown leaf of Earth.

Since dawn began the gray drops ran

And still I my horizons scan

For him who to my old world's dearth,

Through One-Who-Is caused my rebirth."