A blessing it is that in love we remember the sweet rather than the

bitter.  For

Love was ever bitter-sweet (2).

(1) “Amanitum irae amoris integratis est.”

·        Terrence, Andria, III, 23.

 

(2)      But I supposed innumerable people have said this before.  No matter.

 

* * *

 

The heart of a lover is like that bottom of a well: all the beauties of the starry heavens are revealed in it; but when it sheds the light of its countenance upon it, all else is obliterated.

 

* * *

 

Was any lover ever loved enough? Or

Did any ever hear of a tired lover? Nevertheless often

“Drink to me only with thine eyes”, says the youthful lover; but when the seance is over he goes out and orders beef-steak and bottled beer.

 

* * *

 

What it really craves, the lover’s heart is impotent to express.  Yet, it is ever attempting.

A lover is full of wishes as an egg is full of meat.  But

What it really wishes no lover seems able to say.  As a matter of fact,

The endless task which the lover is ever attempting is a search for a formula for the summation of an infinite series of which love is the variable.—Few lovers seem to understand this.

 

* * *

 

To kindle aspiration in her lover, a woman herself need not be aspiring.

For,

Whatever the talents of a man, they are stimulated by contact with woman.

Since

An elevating influence seems to radiate from women: we have but to come

into the light of their countenances for our own faces to shine as the

sun.  Indeed,

Physicists may talk as they like, but lovers know a more subtle and a more potent force than any yet revealed to them.  It has not yet been named; but for the present it might be called “psychicity”. (3)

(3)      Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes speaks of “celebricity”. See “Over the Tea

Cup”