Failing a sustained
return it welcomes a temporary coincidence. Failing a return it finds
support in accepted sacrifices. But it seeks a full return, and the
fulness of life has come only to those who, loving, have met the lover.
I am trying to be as explicit as possible in thus writing about Love.
But the substance in which one works here is emotion that evades
definition, poetic flashes and figures of speech are truer than prosaic
statements. Body and the most sublimated ecstasy pass into one another,
exchange themselves and elude every net of words we cast.
I have put out two ideas of unification and self-devotion, extremes upon
a scale one from another; one of these ideas is that devotion to the
Purpose in things I have called Salvation; the other that devotion to
some other most fitting and satisfying individual which is passionate
love, the former extensive as the universe, the latter the intensest
thing in life. These, it seems to me, are the boundary and the living
capital of the empire of life we rule.
All empires need a comprehending boundary, but many have not one capital
but many chief cities, and all have cities and towns and villages beyond
the capital.
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