Loveliness

“ I cannot tell why exactly, save that she had beauty that had turned to loveliness, and many men had looked through the door of heaven in her eyes—some haunting mystery there of beauty and bestowal—the blending perhaps of the love of man and God in the same woman-heart, passion lifted remotely above the common rules of life, transcending every man-made institution. ”

“ But some happy property of nature—whether the rare mould of her features or the gift of the spirit that informed them—had held her loveliness intact, preserving the clear lines of youth after its bloom was gone, and making her seem like a lover's memory of herself. ”

“ He is a portion of the loveliness
Which once he made more lovely. ”

“ Like natural lutes, from whispering green leaves;
The low peculiar murmur of the pines:
From pictured saints, that look their native heaven—
Statues whose grace is a familiar thing;
The ruin'd shrine of mournful loveliness;
The stately church, awfully beautiful;
Their climate, and their language, whose least word
Is melody—these overfill the heart
Till, fountain-like, the lips o'erflow with song,
And music is to them an element. ”

“ The hope of immortality!—that hope,
Whose altar is the grave, whose sacrifice
Is life—bright, beautiful, and breathing life.
He stands amid the revellers with a joy,
A scarcely conscious joy, in their delight;
In it he has no part,—he stands alone;
But the deep music haunts his dreaming ear,—
But the fair forms flit o'er his dreaming eye,—
And exquisite illusions fill his soul
With loveliness to pour in future song. ”

“ As the trees thinned away, and his feet sank deeper in the looser sand, and the sea broke blue out of the infinite, talking quietly to itself of its own solemn swell into being out of the infinite thought unseen, Malcolm felt as if the world with its loveliness and splendour were sinking behind him, and the cool entrancing sweetness of the eternal dreamland of the soul, where the dreams are more real than any sights of the world, were opening wide before his entering feet. ”

“ Lovely to the homesick heart of Park seemed the dark maids of Sego, as they sung their low and simple song of welcome beside his bed, and sought to comfort the white stranger who had 'no mother to bring him milk, and no wife to grind him corn.' Oh, talk as we may of beauty as a thing to be chiselled from marble, or wrought out on canvas!... what is it but an intellectual abstraction, after all? The heart feels a beauty of another kind. Looking through the outward environment, it discovers a deeper and more real loveliness. ”

“ Say me, doth aught ail thee? Let me know what ill hath betided thee, for, unlike thy custom, thou speakest not when I bespeak thee." Thereupon Aladdin (who used to think that all women resembled his mother and who, albeit he had heard of the charms of Badr al-Budur, daughter of the Sultan, yet knew not what "beauty" and "loveliness" might signify) turned to his parent and exclaimed, "Let me be!" However, she persisted in praying him to come forward and eat, so he did her bidding, but hardly touched food. ”

“ With soul to thine attun'd. Then Nature all
Wears to the lover's eye a look of love; 935
And all the tumult of a guilty world,
Tost by ungenerous passions, sinks away.
The tender heart is animated peace;
And as it pours its copious treasures forth,
In varied converse, softening every theme, 940
You, frequent-pausing, turn, and from her eyes,
Where meekened sense, and amiable grace,
And lively sweetness dwell, enraptur'd, drink
That nameless spirit of etherial joy,
Unutterable happiness! which love, 945
Alone bellows, and on a favour'd few. ”

“ Scatter them back to the ivory gate and be alone and rule the night.
Surely all worlds are nothing to Love, for Love to flash thro’ the night and come;
Hither and thither he flies at will, with thee he dwelleth—there is his home.
Come, O Love, with a voice, a message; haste, O Love, on thy wings of light.
Love, I am calling thee, Love, I am calling; dost thou not hear my crying, sweet?
Does not the live air throb with the pain of my beating heart, till thy heart beat?—
Surely momently thou wilt be here, surely, O sweet Love, momently.{23} ”

“ Yet they are not so concealed that the lover may not discover them, and to the lover nature reveals herself like a shy maiden who is slowly drawn to one who adores her at a distance, and who is first acknowledged by a lifting of the veil, a long-remembered glance, a glimmering smile, and at last comes speech and the mingling of life with life. So the lover of Earth obtains his reward, and little by little the veil is lifted of an inexhaustible beauty and majesty. ”

“ How this new affection seems to spread a soft, fresh green over the soul. Does not the whole heart blossom thick with plants of hope, sparkling with perpetual dew-drops? What a loss, had we passed through the world, without tasting this purest, most exquisite fount of love. ”

“ Then, too, the delicate attentions of the devoted lover, his happiness even in the shadow of a smile from her, the lofty pedestal upon which to his imagination she stands, a queen and peerless; or the confiding love of the heroine of the story; blushingly confessing to herself that there is one heart on earth which is all her own, and in which none but herself can ever rule or reign. ”

“ As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast,
And knows and names and greets its godlike guest—
Thus doth Love speak.
How does Love speak?
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek—
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendor;
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace
In all fair things to one beloved face;
In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble ”

“ Whenever he indulged the idea of her affection, he felt like one uplifted above the world—its base sorrows and still baser joys;—earth had for him but one sound of comfort—it was the name of her he loved! ”

“ The embrace of this lovely fair is supremely joyous, even as the family life of the householder who eateth his portion only after distributing charity.
1108. Joyous to the loving pair is the embrace that alloweth not even the air to come between.
1109. The pettish frown, the softening of the heart, and the new embrace, these are the sweets that lovers enjoy.
1110. Even as a man feeleth his ignorance the more keenly the more wise he groweth, even so do I love her the more ardently, the more I enjoy her company. ”

“ Say doth love live within thy hidden heart
(Love born of dream but nurtured wakingly)
Ev'n as that Once when thy soul's eyes did see
Love's visible self, and worshipt? Or hast thou
Fall'n from thy faith in Her and Love ere now,
And is thy passion as a robe outworn?
Nay, love forbid! Yet wherefore art thou lorn
Of hope and peace if Love be still thine own? ”

“ You cannot speak, breathe, act, or think, without adding to the admiration I feel for your charm both of body and mind. There is in you a rare combination of the ideal, the practical, and the bewitching which satisfies alike judgment, a husband's pride, desire, and hope, and which extends the boundaries of love beyond those of life itself. Oh! my loved one, may the genius of love remain faithful to me, and the future be full of those delights by means of which you have glorified all that surrounds me! ”

“ But when we seek within we find love with its thousand voices and wayward moods, its shy graces and seemly reticences, love which has its throne and robe of state as well as the garment of the beggar maid, love which is before time was, which knew the world when the stars took up their courses, presented to us in gushing outpourings, the appropriate language of a woman's heart to the boor she delights to honour. ”

“ Folding her rapidly in my arms, pressing my mouth on her lips, reading in her beautiful eyes neither a proud indignation nor the cold compliance which might have been the result of a fear of losing me, I gave way entirely to the sweet inclination of love, and swimming already in a sea of delights I felt my enjoyment increased a hundredfold when I saw, on the countenance of the beloved creature who shared it, the expression of happiness, of love, of modesty, and of sensibility, which enhances the charm of the greatest triumph. ”

“ "To be beloved is all I need,
And whom I love, I love indeed." ”

“ In the true lover this unspoken and unconscious longing is perhaps less a desire to set out upon a fresh journey, than a longing to experience again the exquisite joy of the return; to re-live the magic charm of the approach to the spot in which the loved one is living her life, into the sacred separateness of which the lover breaks, and, like the Prince by his kiss, to stir her to fresh activity. ”

“ If for a moment she looked back her life appeared to her as a fruitless quest for something—who knows what?—for beauty, for happiness, for an absolute and harmonious intimacy, for everlasting fulfilment in a love that is the answer to all questions. ”

“ His close watch of the blameless girl's whole life confirmed the warm and romantic wishes of his soul, which her beauty inspired—that beauty as fully confirming the vision of his love-dream when far and long away. ”

“ Open your heart and take us in,
Love—love and me. ”

“ This is the second half of the activity of upper or self-less or spiritual love. There is a tremendous great joy in exploring and discovering the beloved. For what is the beloved? She is that which I myself am not. ”

“ Item: To lovers, I devise their imaginary world, with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red roses by the wall, the bloom of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else by which they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love. ”

“ With assumed harshness the lady asks her lover: "Who are you, and what do you want?" He answers with ardent confidence: "Thy love I do adore, The stars live in the harmony of love, and why should not we, too, love each other?" Then the proud beauty gives herself away: she takes her flower-wreath from her hair and throws it down to her lover, promising to be his forever. ”

“ If the first recognition of the existence of thy love be delirious ecstacy, by what name shall I nominate that joy which issues from the consummation of thy heart's desire, when thy love is perfected by a union with one that loves thee better than he loves himself? ”

“ No speech between lovers could outdo the converse between them. God calls the Soul, sweet dove, dear heart, my queen; and with like phrase the quivering Soul responds upward, as it were, to the great countenance glowing above it. Throughout, there is passion and impatient yearning—or satisfaction. ”

“ You could gaze right into her soul, and see
The passions that sported there.
Why did we part? God knows!
It may be that she and I
Love still with as true and tender a love
As we swore in the days gone by. ”

“ Should serve the strivings of a widening age, And fashion wisdom from the social fret. Deep did Time’s lances go; thou pluck’st them forth, And on my sullen woundings laid the balm Of thy life’s sweetness. Oh, let my love be worth The keeping. My head beneath thy palm, Once more I lift Love’s chalice to thine eyes: Not till thou blessest me will I arise. ”

“ Up then she rose and took his hand
And never a moment did they stand.
“Come, love,” she cried, “the ways I know,
How thick soe’er the thickets grow.
O love, I love thee! O thine heart!
How mighty and how kind thou art!” ”

“ The lovers delight in endearments, in avowals of love, in comparisons of their regards. When alone, they solace themselves with the remembered image of the other. Does that other see the same star, the same melting cloud, read the same book, feel the same emotion, that now delight me? ”

“ Ah! well-a-day! would there were in human hearts as much of genuine love! No sham-tenderness, nor aristocratic, cold-blooded, repelling fondness, is there in her embracing, stronger than a human heart’s beating is that which proclaims the life that is in her! ”

“ His words are aye so tender, my heart is aye so glad,
For he kens the way sae nicely to row me in his plaid,
For he’s &c.
To such a faithful lover, oh who would not comply!
True love gives purer pleasure than aught beneath the sky.
If love be in your bosom my heart can ne’er be sad. ”

“ No sooner has a fair face made its impress on the heart than hopes and fears spring up in alternation. Every action, every word, every look is noted and examined with a jealous scrutiny; and the heart of the lover, changing like the chameleon, takes its hues from the latest sentiment that may have dropped from the loved one’s lips. ”

“ Her face so pure and fair Sheds light in the shady places, And the spell of her girlish graces Holds charmed the happy air. A breath of purity For ever before her flies, And ill things cease to be In the glance of her honest eyes. Around her pathway flutter, Where her dear feet wander free In youth's pure majesty, The wings of the vague desires; But the thought that love would utter In reverence expires. ”

“ I could adore the man I loved. Will all the triumphs of the world and the sense of the good I do to others console me during the years to come for the sunshine of love to which every woman has a claim? ”

“ Each time of life has its own kind of love." ”

“ Frankness and candour were among the virtues of my beloved: she listened to protestations of affection, and, rising above the little arts of her sex, avowed a reciprocal attachment. The measure of my bliss seemed now to be full: the purity of my passion was such, that the thoughts of the grosser animal desires never once occurred; and happy in loving, and in being beloved, we passed our time in all the innocent blandishments which truly virtuous Love inspires, without our imagination roaming even for an instant into the wilds of sensuality. ”