The Definition of Love

The Definition of Love

by Andrew Marvell

 

My Love is of a birth as rare

 

As 'tis for object strange and high:

 

It was begotten by Despair

 

Upon Impossibility.

 

 

 

Magnanimous Despair alone

 

Could show me so divine a thing,

 

Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown

 

But vainly flapped its Tinsel wing.

 

 

 

And yet I quickly might arrive

 

Where my extended soul is fixt,

 

But Fate does iron wedges drive,

 

And always crowds itself betwixt.

 

 

 

For Fate with jealous eye does see

 

Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close:

 

Their union would her ruin be,

 

And her tyrannic power depose.

 

 

 

And therefore her decrees of steel

 

Us 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 all

 

Be cramped into a planisphere.

 

 

 

As lines so Loves oblique may well

 

Themselves 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.

 

Done