That looks on tempests and is never shaken

If you were around for my Christmas blogging, you already know that I believe in holidays.  Yes, yes, they are - all of them! - blown out of all proportion by commercial greed.  And with the bombardment of commercials, candy, and plastic junk in drug stores, they become the measure by which your life is lonelier or emptier than you wish it was, much the same way that supermodels become the measure by which your body is flawed.  But at the core of any holiday is a motif of the human psyche worth celebrating.

And so, in the spirit of celebrating the epic riff of romantic love, I have decided to share some of my favorite words about love with you over the course of this week leading up to Valentine's Day.  My hope is that revisiting these favorites will inspire me to finish some piece of writing (poem? lyrics? prose essay?) on love to share with you on Sunday.

Introduction, check.  So without further ado...


I thought I'd start strong with Shakespeare.  I know.  You've probably heard this sonnet at 200 weddings.  But that's because it doesn't get much better than this.  If I wanted to tell you all the things I love about this poem, it would take 50 pages and if I sat still long enough to write that I'd start thinking about why I didn't pursue a PhD in English.   So I'll just hint at a couple of them and leave the rest to you.

One is that the rhythm of this poem is perfection.  Perfection.  If you read it aloud and just let it wash over you, you can enjoy it on a toe-in-the-water level, the way I enjoy Mozart playing in a fancy restaurant.  On the other hand, if you dive into it and graph it all out like you learned in Intro to Brit Lit, you will find that the structure of this poem reinforces its meaning perfectly.  It is strictly brilliant.

Another is the image of light that reaches through the darkness - a theme I've been stuck on for awhile now.  I am obsessed lately with the idea and image of love as light.  And a steady light that shines through storm and darkness to guide lost ships?  That's right up my alley.

I used to feel lectured by descriptions of love that say what it is not.  But now...I think descriptions like this just don't click until you experience and learn to recognize them in your life.  Then it becomes clear how hard the speaker is working just to describe this...this force.  And how important it is to do so.  Because you don't want to overlook it.  You do not want to miss that mark.


Sonnet 116
by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments.  Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove;
O no!  It is an ever fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.