From Venus With Love
Valentine’s Day summons up memories for me of the time Steed and I spent with the BVS (British Venusian Society) a while back.
It also calls to mind some of the great poetry of the ages.
I always thought Matthew Arnold had the best all round take on love in that exquisite last stanza of Dover Beach. We imagine the lovers are happily at some cute Victorian B&B near the English Channel, when the speaker (choose your gender) starts to hear the waves bring “the eternal note of sadness in.â€Â
After more depressing thoughts, the speaker turns and utters the timeless supplication:
Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
really isn’t. In fact, the world
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain.
It’s just you and me, babe.
Arnold had an earlier poem, not as masterful and therefore not as well remembered, called The Buried Life. It has a similar, beautiful theme about the presence of a love being the only defense against the numbness and anxiety of life.
He spends the first two thirds of the poem expressing doubt that even those in love can communicate fully:
Alas! is even love too weak
To unlock the heart, and let it speak?
Are even lovers powerless to reveal
To one another what indeed they feel?
He worries that as a man he grapples with the “The unregarded river of our life†and the numbing “nameless feelings that course through our breast.â€Â
All this angst, all this uncertainty, changes when there is love. With love everything makes sense. The speaker knows himself, and he finally knows and understands the world he is in.
Onlyâ€â€-but this is rare–
When a belovèd hand is laid in ours,
When, jaded with the rush and glare
Of the interminable hours,
Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear,
And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know.
A man becomes aware of his life’s flow,
. . .
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea where it goes.
And would you believe that Niles Crane paraphrased this poem to a tee just last night on the syndicated Frasier episode where he propses to Daphne. He tells Roz that everything in his life finally makes sense and everything is clear because Daphne loves him.
If you listen closely, 21st century television has much more in common with 19th century poetry than you might think.
- Bringing Life to Poetry - Magnets & Bananas, Oh My!
- You Mean, That's Poetry? Version #2
- More Poetry To Love Like Water Loves Hurricanes
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