The Definition of Love
MY love is of a birth as rareAs ’tis, for object, strange and high;It was begotten by despairUpon impossibility.
Magnanimous despair aloneCould show me so divine a thing,Where feeble hope could ne’er have flownBut vainly flapped its tinsel wing.
And yet I quickly might arriveWhere my extended soul is fixed;But fate does iron wedges drive,And always crowds itself betwixt.
For fate with jealous eyes does seeTwo perfect loves, nor lets them close;Their union would her ruin be,And her tyrannic power depose.
And therefore her decrees of steelUs as the distant poles have placed(Though Love’s whole world on us doth wheel),Not by themselves to be embraced,
Unless the giddy heaven fall,And earth some new convulsion tear,And, us to join, the world should allBe cramped into a planisphere.
As lines, so loves oblique may wellThemselves 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.