Miscellaneous poems | ||
32
The Definition of Love.
I
My Love is of a birth as rareAs 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility.
II
Magnanimous Despair alone.Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'r have flown
But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing.
III
And yet I quickly might arriveWhere my extended Soul is fixt,
But Fate does Iron wedges drive,
And alwaies crouds it self betwixt.
IV
For Fate with jealous Eye does seeTwo perfect Loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruine be,
And her Tyrannick pow'r depose.
V
And therefore her Decrees of SteelUs as the distant Poles have plac'd,
(Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac'd.
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VI
Unless the giddy Heaven fall,And Earth some new Convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp'd into a Planisphere.
VII
As Lines so Loves oblique may wellThemselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly Paralel,
Though infinite can never meet.
VIII
Therefore the Love which us doth bind,But Fate so enviously debarrs,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.
Miscellaneous poems | ||