The Definition of Love

I.

• My Love is of a birth as rare
• As 'tis, for object, strange and high ;
• It was begotten by Despair,
• Upon Impossibility.

II.

• Magnanimous Despair alone
• Could show me so divine a thing,
• Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
• But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

III.

• And yet I quickly might arrive
• Where my extended soul is fixed ;
• But Fate does iron wedges drive,
• And always crowds itself betwixt.

IV.

• 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.

V.

• 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,

VI.

• Unless the giddy heaven fall,
• And earth some new convulsion tear.
• And, us to join, the world should all
• Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

VII.

• As lines, so love's oblique, may well
• Themselves in every angle greet :
• But ours, so truly parallel,
• Though infinite, can never meet.

VIII.

• Therefore the love which us doth bind,
• But Fate so enviously debars,
• Is the conjunction of the mind,
• And opposition of the stars.