On Love - Page 2

clearly estimating our own;
an imagination which should enter into and seize upon the subtle
and delicate peculiarities which we have delighted to cherish and
unfold in secret; with a frame whose nerves, like the chords of
two exquisite lyres, strung to the accompaniment of one delightful
voice, vibrate with the vibrations of our own; and of a combination
of all these in such proportion as the type within demands; this
is the invisible and unattainable point to which Love tends; and
to attain which, it urges forth the powers of man to arrest the
faintest shadow of that, without the possession of which there
is no rest nor respite to the heart over which it rules. Hence in
solitude, or in that deserted state when we are surrounded by human
beings, and yet they sympathize not with us, we love the flowers,
the grass, and the waters, and the sky. In the motion of the very
leaves of spring, in the blue air, there is then found a secret
correspondence with our heart. There is eloquence in the tongueless
wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the
reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something
within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless
rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like
the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved
singing to you alone. Sterne says that, if he were in a desert,
he would love some cypress. So soon as this want or power is dead,
man becomes the living sepulchre of himself, and what yet survives
is the mere husk of what once he was.

[written c.1815; pub. 1840]