Unrequited love

“ And though I be not worthy that you should look on me or accept me for your lover, at least suffer me to live, as hitherto, in the happy consciousness that my heart has chosen so perfect and so worthy an object for its love, wherefrom I can have no other satisfaction than the knowledge that my love is deep and perfect, seeing that I must be content to love without hope of return. And if, now knowing this great love of mine, you should not be pleased to favour me more than heretofore, at least do not deprive me of life, which for me consists wholly in the delight of seeing you as usual. ”

“ And life to me had till then been so utterly without love!—had passed in such hard labours, without a holyday of romance—all the fountains of the unknown passion sealed till the spell struck the rock, and every wave, every drop sparkled fresh to a single star. ”

“ She sang, “O look on me, and look on Love:
We three are here together, and above—
What heaven may there be?
None for thine heart without this spell of mine,
Yea, this my beauty, yea, these limbs that shine
And make thy senses shudder; and for me,
No heaven without thee!
“O, all the passion in me on this day
Rises into one song to sweep away
The breakers of Love’s bond;
For is it not a pleasant bond indeed,
And made of all the flowers in life’s mead?
And is not Love a master fair and fond? ”

“ He watched her, erect and impassioned, weakly conscious of the dominion she had established over every craving and every impulse.
"Ah, no, no!" she exclaimed indignantly. "It's nothing so commonplace I want! There's only one love possible to me—a great transcending passion, which would be so far above all earthly things that a year—a month—would compensate for a whole life of loneliness! Don't you see, it's love, an immense love, such as only comes once in a million times, that I'm seeking?" ”

“ Why do you make me love you so? Why must your image intrude itself into every plan, and all be done as you would approve, if, after all, you are to marry another? You would not wonder at the effect of what you have told me, if you knew how the hope that you would forgive me and yet be mine, has been my only comfort a long, dreary time. ”

“ Such love may be blindness, but where are love's eyes?
Such love may be folly, love seldom is wise.
Such love may be madness, was love ever sane?
Such love must be sorrow, for all love is pain.
Love goes where it must go, and in its own season.
Love cannot be banished by will or by reason.
Love gave back your freedom, it keeps me its slave.
I shall walk in its fetters, unloved, to my grave. ”

“ All this and more I bore to prove My love, and wilt thou yet mistrust My love?" "Lord, I am fain to think Thou lovest me, For Thou art all in all and I am Thine; And lo! Thy love is better than new wine, And I am sick of love in loving Thee. But dost Thou love me? speak and save, For jealousy is cruel as the grave." "Nay, if thy love is not an empty breath My love is as thine own--deep answers deep. Peace, peace: I give to my beloved sleep, Not death but sleep, for love is strong as death: Take patience; sweet thy sleep shall be, Yea, thou shalt wake in Paradise with Me." ”

“ He took a swift look up and down the empty, lifeless street, laid out straight and stiff in the cold, faint glimmer of the dawn, and then his lips sought hers in deep, deep acknowledgment of the joy, and of the sorrow, to which all love is born—one of those moments stolen in its beautifulness from the life to come.
But his voice was tense again, as he set her down within her own doorway, and he looked at her with stern eyes of jealous care, from which she hid the woman’s smile of love at dear love’s unreason. ”

“ And more bitter than pride stung, or vanity pierced, or ambition shattered, was the sense that love her as he had, love her as he would, consume his very heart for her sake as he might, he would never—plead, beseech, swear, or prove it as he should—make her believe that one pulse of love beat in him. ”

“ Is it because I foresee in you the source of endless, incessant pleasure, or because I find in your soul those precious qualities which make a man forever love the one woman? I do not know the cause, but this I know—that my love for you is boundless. I know I can no longer live without you. Yes, life would be unbearable unless you are ever with me. ”

“ No lover, longing for his loves, complaineth of desire, But with a doubled stress of woe my heart is overborne.
Of passion I complain to one who hath no ruth on me. How soul and body by desire are, one from other, torn!”
Then her eyes brimmed over with tears, and she wrote these verses also:
“Love-longing, the day of our parting, my body with mourning smote, And severance from my eyelids hath made sleep far remote. ”

“ What could make her happier than the knowledge that she must surrender her will to his from the day of her wedding until the day of her death? She embraced her circumscribed lot with a passion which glorified its limitations. The single gift which the ages permitted her was the only one she desired. Her soul craved no adventure beyond the permissible adventure of being sought in marriage. Love was all that she asked of a universe that was overflowing with manifold aspects of life. ”

“ He had offered this girl the cold husks of his friendship, insulting her youth, her womanhood, her beauty—for he saw her now with the eyes of a lover. To a man such as he was, sensitive, restrained, love came as a blinding revelation. ”

“ The complete bliss, the enchantment of such moments, is certainly the most exquisite thing I have experienced. First the timid blushes, then the growing boldness and the fresh impression of first sensations—all this and more, mingled with the contentment of entire possession. One gives oneself up entirely; all barriers are broken down by love—participation in one tender secret has already united the lovers' souls, which seek each other and mingle together in a common existence. ”

“ He yearned for her sympathy, for her love, for that sense of peace which had come upon him as he sat by her side. The tide of love, which not once in a million years is at the full in two human hearts at once, rushed over him, sweeping away pride, reason, selfishness, ambition,--all, all routed and o'erset by that warm, delicious flood of emotion. ”

“ At the sight of a pretty face, you bent like a reed under an immense infatuation which you think is love. It is the tragedy of your life and mine, Beloved, that we, whom God made one for another, must go our separate ways, you with your infatuation, I with my love. ”

“ They "give her time"; for her soul must slip Where the world has set the grooving; She will lie to none with her fair red lip: But love seeks truer loving. She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb, As her thoughts were beyond recalling; With a glance for one, and a glance for some, From her eyelids rising and falling; Speaks common words with a blushful air, Hears bold words, unreproving; But her silence says—what she never will swear— And love seeks better loving. ”

“ After behaving to you as I did, can you love me still?”
“I love you far better than ever,” he answered, his voice becoming hoarse with emotion. “I have been striving to forget you ever since that cruel time; and not until to-night did I know how utterly futile has been the strife. You will let me love you! ”

“ As soon as it ceases, as soon as the sight of the beloved one no longer causes the blood to rush from the heart to the face, real love, ardent and young, has disappeared; a weak and chilly affection has come in its place; indifference and forgetfulness are not far off. ”

“ She demands that the lover's devotion shall continue after marriage; that every look shall be tender and every word adoring. Failing this, she knows that love is dead. She is inevitably disappointed in marriage, because she is no longer his fear, intoxication, and pain, but rather his comrade and friend. The vibrant strings, struck from silence and dreams to a sounding chord, are trembling still—whispering lingering music to him who has forgotten the harp. ”

“ With me it is absolutely a matter of the heart. I am marrying him because, as nearly as I can see, he is the one human being who has ever loved me in this world, and because I cannot live life without love. ”

“ Yet, so weak is woman’s heart that she shrined his image still in its deepest depths, and could not bid memory down—memory of the brief, blissful time of love when the world seemed to hold nothing for either save the other, when they had tried to thrust aside, with the passionate obstinacy of youth, every obstacle to their happiness. ”

“ How much does so and so love me? Does he love me as he loves some one else?" The love which we need is that which forgets itself altogether, and seeks only the occasion to pour itself out at the feet of the loved one. ”

“ I had now arrived at that age when an ambitious man, satisfied with his progress in the world without, begins to feel in the cravings of unsatisfied affection the void of a solitary hearth. I resolved to marry, and looked out for a wife. I had never hitherto admitted into my life the passion of love. In fact, I had regarded that passion, even in my earlier youth, with a certain superb contempt,—as a malady engendered by an effeminate idleness, and fostered by a sickly imagination. ”

“ I feel the blindness which has crept upon them—those poor women [Pg 217] —as you have sown the air with the dust of the passion which you call love. Oh, you never knew what love meant, my lord. I doubt if when you lay in your mother’s arms you turned to her with love. You never did one kindly act for love; no generous thought was ever born in you by love. ”

“ Will you, indeed, share all my troubles and sorrows, nor deem them, when the first full joy of love is past, unworthy of your attention—your cares, too great to admit of such trifles, claiming your consideration? If you will, and also let me share all your joys and griefs in perfect sympathy and love, then—then my dream of happiness will be fulfilled; but if, in years to come," she continued, with suppressed emotion, "you should change, and a harshness or indifference take the place of sympathy and love, Oh I would wish to die before that day!" ”

“ She, whose whole nature yearned to be at his side, was flying from him who, she knew, wished her to remain for him, with him. What was all the world to one without love? How could it be that anything in the world could come between hearts that loved? ”

“ Mad as you make me with your love-thrusts, for at one moment I am hot and dry with desire, the next wet with passion, bathed in love, I could live with you all my life without having you, if you wished it, or if it would do you good. ”

“ He could not love with that blind, unreasoning, uncalculating love—that love which knows only heaven and hell, not earth. That perfect love, which casteth out distrust, was not the love of his world.
And thus it was that he walked to his rooms, thinking by what means he could bind that girl to him, so that she should be bound beyond the possibility of chance, or craft, or worldliness coming between them. ”

“ This inaccessible woman, approaching middle age, more loving to me and more remote than ever, consciously rejecting me as a lover and accepting me warmly as a child, her complete and impersonal loveliness, is the one perfect experience of my life, the experience that permeates and affects all others, that has subtly intertwined itself in my love for children and nature, for work and for the destiny of my fellow-men. ”

“ I have no right to startle or intimidate your sweet soul into any relation that might hereafter curb or dissatisfy you; if you can love me freely, with no back-lookings to any younger lover left behind, know that naught you could bestow, can ever equal the world of love and feeling which I long to lavish upon you from my heart of hearts. ”

“ No, we never sicken with love twice. Cupid spends no second arrow on the same heart. Love’s handmaids are our life-long friends. Respect, and admiration, and affection, our doors may always be left open for, but their great celestial master, in his royal progress, pays but one visit and departs. We like, we cherish, we are very, very fond of—­but we never love again. A man’s heart is a firework that once in its time flashes heavenward. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They say, I know, that to be in love is not pure happiness; that in the mood of the unconfessed, unaccepted lover there is an element of poignant doubt and pain. Should I at once confess myself and taste of the perfection of bliss? ”

“ Flashed forth from eye to eye:
"I love, but must my love suppress"—
"O cruel destiny."
"Ah! had we only met before.
When we to love were free!"
"Wretched we must be evermore,
None so forlorn as we!"
"Our secret love our eyes alone,
And not our lips may tell." ”

“ Am I not truly unfortunate to be born to love, love, without indulging the hope of possessing the object of my affections? This distracting reflection overpowers me to such a degree, that I should die, were I not persuaded that you love me. ”

“ And can it be possible that the hour can ever arrive when the former votaries of a mutual passion so exquisite and engrossing can meet each other with indifference, almost with unconsciousness, and recall with an effort their vanished scenes of felicity, that quick yet profound sympathy, that ready yet boundless confidence, all that charming abandonment of self, and that vigilant and prescient fondness that anticipates all our wants and all our wishes? It makes the heart ache but to picture such vicissitudes to the imagination. They are images full of distress, and misery, and gloom. ”