The Definition of
Love
Andrew Marvell
My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and
high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility.
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a
thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'er
have flown
But vainly flapped its tinsel
wing.
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges
drive,
And always crowds itself
betwixt.
For Fate with jealous eye does
see
Two perfect Loves; nor lets
them close:
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic power depose.
And therefore her decrees of
steel
Us as the distant Poles have
placed,
(Though Love's whole World on
us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be
embraced.
Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new convulsion
tear;
And, us to join, the World
should all
Be cramped into a planisphere.
As lines so Loves oblique may
well
Themselves in every angle
greet:
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never
meet.
Therefore the Love which is
doth bind
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the Mind,
And opposition of the Stars.