Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Happy Valentine's Day




Poem from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, c 1847
                  
                      LOVE
" We cannot live, except thus mutually,
  We alternate, aware or unaware,
  The reflex act of life: and when we bear
  Our virtue outward most impulsively, 
  Most full of invocation, and to be
  Most instantly compellant, certes there
  We live most life, whoever breathes most 
  air
  And counts his dying years by sun and 
  sea,
  But when a soul, by choice and conscience,
  doth
  Throw out her full force on another
  soul,
  The conscience and the concentration both
  Make mere life, Love. For life in perfect
  whole
  And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
  As Nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with 
  pole."

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