Next comes an exquisite gem--
ON LOVE.
_BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY_.
What is Love? Ask him who lives what is life; ask him who adores what
is God.
I know not the internal constitution of other men, nor even of thine
whom I now address. I see that in some external attributes they
resemble me, but when, misled by that appearance, I have thought to
appeal to something in common, and unburden my inmost soul to them, I
have found my language misunderstood, like one in a distant and savage
land. The more opportunities they have afforded me for experience, the
wider has appeared the interval between us, and to a greater distance
have the points of sympathy been withdrawn. With a spirit ill-fitted
to sustain such proof, trembling and feeble through its tenderness,
I have every where sought, and have found only repulse and
disappointment.
_Thou_ demandest what is Love. It is that powerful attraction towards
all we conceive, or fear, or hope, beyond ourselves, when we find
within our own thoughts the chasm of an insufficient void, and seek
to awaken in all things that are, a community with what we experience
within ourselves. If we reason we would be understood; if we imagine,
we would that the airy children of our brain were born anew within
another's; if we feel, we would that another's nerves should vibrate
to our own, that the beams of their eyes should kindle at once, and
mix and melt into our own; that lips of motionless ice should not
reply to lips quivering and burning with the heart's best blood:--this
is Love.
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