That I should love a bright particular star

Shakespeare has a special line in obsessive, consumptive love; love that feels more like death than life. Even where the love itself is unhealthy, unworthy, or foreshortened by circumstance, his descriptions of that morbid state are magnificent. This is Helena, from All's well that ends well, confessing her love for Bertram. No matter that Bertram is a total jerk who spurns her repeatedly until he is tricked into accepting her. The poetry is beautiful, and in immortalising the feeling, it effaces Bertram's peculiar flaws; it survives his unworthiness.

I am undone: there is no living, none,

If Bertram be away. ’Twere all one

That I should love a bright particular star

And think to wed it, he is so above me:

In his bright radiance and collateral light

Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.

The ambition in my love thus plagues itself:

The hind that would be mated by the lion

Must die for love. ’Twas pretty, though plague,

To see him every hour; to sit and draw

His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls,

In our heart’s table; heart too capable

Of every line and trick of his sweet favour:

But now he’s gone, and my idolatrous fancy

Must sanctify his reliques.

Belittled Women

Further to my thoughts about books and babies and keeping house, I came across this sortie from an unlikely source: Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women. This is from the less well-known Rose in Bloom, published in 1876. Unlike her better-known counterpart, Jo March, Rose proves you don't have to be a tomboy to seek something other and better than a pretty domesticity. 

“Phebe and I believe that it is as much a right and a duty for women to do something with their lives as for men, and we are not going to be satisfied with such frivolous parts as you give us," cried Rose with kindling eyes. "I mean what I say, and you cannot laugh me down. Would you be contented to be told to enjoy yourself for a little while, then marry and do nothing more till you die?" she added, turning to Archie. 

"Of course not, that is only a part of a man's life," he answered decidedly. 

"A very precious and lovely part, but not all," continued Rose. "Neither should it be for a woman, for we've got minds and souls as well as hearts; ambition and talents as well as beauty and accomplishments; and we want to live and learn as well as love and be loved. I'm sick of being told that is all a woman is fit for! I won't have anything to do with love till I prove that I am something besides a housekeeper and baby-tender!" 

Attagirl, Rose! 

In the springing of the year

Since today's a proper spring day, and I'm sitting in our garden where there are bees in the rosemary and in the apple blossom, here's Robert Frost's “A prayer in Spring.” It seems strange to have to ask for pleasure in a beautiful spring day, but it's true we often need reminding to take pleasure when it's offered, to find happiness in what's given, and to keep ourselves here.

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfil.

So many kinds of yes

So much for Spring. After a warm weekend, it's wild and cold and the rain's hardly stopped since yesterday. Despite, or to spite, the weather, here's a glorious spring poem by e e cummings. Viva sweet love indeed.

“sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love”

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there’s nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

“sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love”

Mary, Martha, Lazarus

Since writing the last, I've felt some remorse for sounding ungrateful, and I've wondered about the other side of the story. After all, many men have missed out on their babies and children because of the model that sent them out to work, and the same men might have missed their other callings (writing, for one) because work was importunate. Whatever's to blame, we still haven't figured out how to arrange work and family equitably, but this seems to me part of a larger problem about the nature of work itself. Our industries and appetites still reflect the nineteenth century, to the detriment of family as well as community, environment, creativity, spirituality and much else that makes up human flourishing. We need to find a way to keep house and put food on our tables without sacrificing time for love and reflection. We need to value soul-making, inside and outside the home.

Meanwhile, I'm far from ungrateful. I'm enjoying the slower life, the season of keeping quietly at home, the time and space to think about these things, and to cherish them.