Shakespeare on Love

In high school I had an English lit teacher who loved Shakespeare. We studied this sonnet—possibly Shakespeare’s best known—and it has been one of my favorites ever since.

Sonnet 116

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.

~ William Shakespeare

In a nutshell, he’s saying true lasts forever. Except he says it so much better!

I also love Shakespeare’s romantic comedies, especially Twelfth Night. Have you seen the 1996 film version, with Ben Kingsley as Feste? I’ve always loved the young-woman-posing-a-man plot and it’s so well done in this play. Which is why it’s so timeless. Another great version was the teen film, She’s the Man (2006). The two together make a great double feature!

Until next time,
Lee

How Do I Love Thee?

This just might be the most familiar love poem of all time.

How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

A writing teacher once told me that with poetry, you have to make every word count. The opening lines of this poem have become the lexicon of love and romance, and it's hard to imagine anyone having not heard them. They also serve as an excellent example of what that teacher told her students.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning led what many might consider a romantic life—courted by a fellow poet, living in Italy, working as a prolific and highly respected writer. What we believe about her life may be true or it may simply be a romantic ideal that's been created over time. Either way, that romance is captured in the timelessness of her work.

xoxo
Lee

My Love's Like a Red, Red Rose

I’ve read several versions of this poem by Robert Burns and have no idea which is the original, but I’m not sure it matters. It was written more than two hundred years ago and, as love poems go, I think it’s a classic.

A Red, Red Rose

O, my love's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June.
O, my love's like a melody
That's sweetly play'd in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry.

Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi' the sun:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare thee well, my only love!
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my love,
Tho' it ware ten thousand mile.

~ Robert Burns

And I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run.

Don't you love that line? Writers always search for a fresh new way to say something like “until the end of time.” Burns achieved it with "the sands o' life."

He even looks like a romantic poet, don’t you think?

XOXO,
Lee