Paramour

“ A MARRIAGE CHARM I set a charm upon your hurrying breath, I set a charm upon your wandering feet, You shall not leave me—not for life, nor death, Not even though you cease to love me, Sweet. A woman's love nine Angels cannot bind, Nor any rune that wind or water knows, My heart were all as well set on the wind, Or bound, to live or die, upon a rose. I set a charm upon you, foot and hand, That you and Knowledge, love, may never meet, That you may never chance to understand How strong you are, how weak your lover, Sweet. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There must be a mutual forbearance, no fierce wrestling to rule. If there is to be submission, let the wife show how meekly Omnipotent love suffereth all things. Purity, innocence, and holy beauty invest such a love with a halo of glory.
Man, mistake not then thy mate, and hereafter, bitterly repenting, exclaim at the curse of marriage. No, no, with prudent foresight, avoid the ball-room belle—seek thy twin soul among the pure-hearted, the meek, the true. Like must mate with like; the kingly eagle pairs not with the owl, nor the lion with the jackal. ”

“ And the association of this truth in loving conception, with the general honesty and truth of the character, is again conclusively shown in the feelings of the lover to his mistress; which we recognize as first reaching their height in the days of chivalry. The truth and faith of the lover, and his piety to Heaven, are the foundation, in his character, of all the joy in imagination which he can receive from the conception of his lady's—now no more mortal—beauty. ”

“ I kissed her dainty finger-tips,
I kissed her on the lily brow,
I kissed her on the false, false lips—
That burning kiss, I feel it now!
"True love gives true love of the best:
Then take," I cried, "my heart to thee!" ”

“ For such a help, my Valentine.
For me to write first to declare an odd passion,
Is an odd thing, I know, but odd things are in fashion:
I have an odd heart, pray let me have thine,
And we'll make an odd pair, my odd Valentine.
We'll be odd and merry, not needing odd weather,
And ne'er have odd tempers when we are together;
But be oddly merry, and true to our vows;
And love no odd person so well as our spouse. ”

“ But lover, if you ask of me
that I shall be your comrade, friend, and mate,
to live and work, to love and die with you,
that so together we may know the purity and height
of passion, and of joy and sorrow,
then o husband, I am yours forever
and our co-equal love will make the stars to laugh with joy
and to its circling fugue pass, hand holding hand
until we reach the very heart of God. ”

“ I will not attempt to describe my sensations when I first distinctly saw the lineaments of my lover. Creation contained nothing so lovely to my sight. To see the soul, the thinking, feeling, immortal soul, flashing with enthusiasm, or darkening with tenderness, looking forth from his eyes, and feel my own mingling with his! No one but those who have once been blind, and now see, can imagine the intensity of my emotions. ”

“ Here we find a young lady just at the most critical period of her life—when she has exchanged vows, for the first time, with her lover or husband—call him what you will—who sees before her an unknown and untried future, which, in most cases, Love tinges with its purple hues. ”

“ Never were man and wife endowed with purer ideals, with a more exalted conception of the sanctity of love. Yet there were many in the town not half so delicate, so refined, so spiritual, who would have passed my little lady like a pariah. But what cared we?
And perhaps it was the very greatness of my love for her that sometimes made me fear; so that often in the ecstasy of a moment I would catch my breath and wonder if it all could last. And when the poplars turned to gold, and up the valley stole a shuddering breath of desolation, my fear grew apace. ”

“ And she dreamed that she was a fair young bride
In a pure white dress by her husband's side.
A blush crept over her pale young face,
And her thin lips smiled with a girlish grace;
But the old storm-king made his boast aloud
That his work that night was weaving a shroud.
Love's Return.
Love has come back—ah me, the joy!—
Greater than when Love began
To wound my heart. The jocund boy!
Love has come back a gray-haired man. ”

“ This lover has strewn the roses of a month's gathering on his lady's path, only for the chance of her seeing them: as he has conquered the difficulties of the lute, only for the chance of her liking its sound; thrown his whole life into a love, which is hers to accept or reject. ”

“ To find our treasure of love greater than we had dared to dream—what rarer joy has earth? And when the poor derelict soul clung to his wife and found in her a help sufficient for his needs, his was a rapture not less profound than that of the poet-husband when he opened the sonnets in which a woman's soul had poured itself, counting the ways and measuring the depth and the height of her wifely love. ”

“ Straight as a dart, but with that look on her face, she came towards us. 'Did I hear aright?' were the words that came from her lips. 'Have you married me, a woman beneath your station as I now perceive, because you were commanded to do so? Have you not loved me? given me that which alone makes marriage a sacrament or even a possibility? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I would open my romance with the marriage of a couple united by sentiment, taste, and inclination. Can we conceive a higher felicity, than the blending of their interests and lives in such an union? The lover has the pleasure of giving his mistress the last testimony of esteem and confidence ”

“ How intoxicating indeed, how penetrating—like a most precious wine—is that love which is the sexual transformed by the magic of the will into the emotional and spiritual! And what a loss on the merest grounds of prudence and the economy of pleasure is its unbridled waste along physical channels! So nothing is so much to be dreaded between lovers as just this—the vulgarisation of love—and this is the rock upon which marriage so often splits. ”

“ So each young man, as he cast a last complacent glance in his mirror, recalled all sorts of romantic episodes in which wealthy damsels had fallen in love at first sight with some stranger, whom they had finally married against the wishes of their relatives,—for all these worthy bachelors had but one thought in this instance, marriage, and they even carried their honesty so far as to love marriage for the sake of marriage itself, and the bride became little more than an accessory in their eyes. ”

“ Each hour I pray that I may meet
The faithful love of thine.
Ye gentle gales that waft my sighs.
Go to the youth for whom they rise,
And win him to approve my prayer,
That he will love and end my care.
Oh! would he deign on me to smile,
All my wo it would beguile;
Blest indeed the days of mine,
When passed with such a Valentine.
Sweet youth, be mine, thy charms divine
Subdue my stubborn heart;
At Hymen’s shrine, oh! call me thine,
And never, never part.
Let sordid mortals search for wealth,—
This never shall be my employ ”

“ Rightly renouncing all other affections, the Bride reposes on love alone, and returns a love reciprocal. And when she has poured her whole self out in love, what is that compared with the perennial flood of that fountain? Not equals in abundance are this loving one and Love, the soul and the Word, the Bride and Bridegroom, creature and Creator—no more than thirst equals the fount. ”

“ However close the sympathy between woman and her lover—however each thinks to have learned the other—what a world is there left un-learned, until marriage brings all those charming confidences, that holy and sweet intercourse, which leaves no separate interest, no undivided thought! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I came here to seek consolation from a dear friend, and I found love—love that has drawn me into the whirlpool of passion. We are both being driven around in its eddying circles, and who knows but that marriage is the sunken reef on which our hearts will ultimately be shipwrecked. ”

“ The answer was a kiss that sent a thrill of pleasure through every vein.
"Oh, my dear, this is nothing to what you would enjoy were you to link your fortune to mine and fly with me to France. Then we would live a life of love and pleasure such as you have just tasted. Our whole lives would be nothing but love and pleasure, morn, noon and night it would be love, all love. There should be nothing around us but love - nothing but pleasure!" ”

“ And she gazed with silent admiration at her noble husband, who loved her so devotedly, and who had not been too proud to marry a simple working girl and lift her to his own station in life. Although she did not love him in a romantic fashion, she admired his noble, manly nature more and more daily. ”

“ Love seasons and sweetens every state; love composes all controversies. In whomsoever love prevails, to them only marriage is what it should be, a pleasing combination of two persons into one home, one purse; one heart and one flesh. And this love must have two especial properties, first, It must be spiritual; secondly, matrimonial. ”

“ And, creeping through her young heart like a slow surreptitious flame—falling into place, curving with darts of ardent colour into the pattern—most recent, most intimate intuitions of what a woman's love might mean. ”

“ It had been a love-match, as the world calls it—that is to say, a marriage brought about by a schoolgirl’s impatience to break her bonds, and a woman’s first delight in hearing herself called beautiful. ”

“ You have in yourself another kind of grace, another wit, another coquetry, and above all that rejuvenescence of heart and mind which those women have never had. You have an eagerness in life, a need of expansion, a freshness of impression which are—though perhaps you may not imagine it—irresistible charms. Be yourselves throughout, and you will be for this loved spouse a novelty, a thousand times more charming in his eyes than all the bygones possible. ”

“ Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred apart by misunderstood motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate parents, by crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so forth; they could be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a similar deed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or the other, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative, or jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by discovery of some unguessed secret, by lover storming girl’s heart, by lover making long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly. ”

“ HE: Mi amor, SHE: I think he said "amor." Un favor I've heard that word before. Yo te pido. Mi amor, I'm almost sure that love Un favor Is what he's thinking of. Un besito de contestación. (Alt.: Yo te pido solamente que me envíes tu un beso del balcón.) There he goes again! Te amo, The moon is high above, vida And I'm in the mood for love, de mi vida. ”

“ How calmly before I knew love I have anatomized its mechanism, as the tyro who dissects the web-work of tissues and nerves in the dead! Lo! it lives, lives in me; and, in living, escapes from my scalpel, and mocks all my knowledge. Can love be reduced to the realm of the senses? No; what nun is more barred by her grate from the realm of the senses than my bride by her solemn affliction? Is love, then, the union of kindred, harmonious minds? No, my beloved one sits by my side, and I guess not her thoughts, and my mind is to her a sealed fountain. ”

“ Thank Heaven if in the marriage which you have hit upon you find a laughing, joyous side; if in your husband you find the loved reader of the pretty romance you have in your pocket; if, while wearing cashmere shawls and costly jewels in your ears, you find the joys of a real intimacy—that is delicious! ”

“ First travel we to seek, and then make love?
Betray, kind husband, thy spouse to our sights,
And let mine amorous soul court thy mild dove,
Who is most true and pleasing to thee then
When she is embraced and open to most men. ”

“ My partner, who had been no ways backward in sustaining my fierce lunges and had returned them with thrusts and upheavings fully as amorous as my own, feeling the heat of the burning liquid I was ejecting in her, gave way at the same time, and dissolving her very soul into a flood of sperm, opened the gates of love's reservoir, and let flow such a stream of pearly essence as never came from woman before. ”