In honor of St. Valentine’s day, I would like to proceed with a little rant that’s been bugging me for quite some time. It’s just something that I would like to put into words.
Love is a plague. To fall in love is to succumb to malicious deceit. It’s never worth the effort because for each pleasure, happiness and throe of joy or passion, one is met with three-fold sorrow, pain and a multitude of tears. Every love into which I have relished has been met with nothing but regret. I regret having ever fallen in love in the first place. Every woman I have met has turned out to be a psychotic, compulsive liar. All instances of love are met immediately with persistent grief. Love is a curse and a cancer which slowly and surely tears away once soul and wits. It is something which much be avoided for even the strongest of souls are turned into dribbling idiots once the first pangs of love have been furrowed into their heart. The lines upon my face are testament to this bittersweet monster which unrelentingly casts me time and time again into the deepest trenches of misery.
Sir Philip Sidney penned one of the greatest definitions of love in his second sonnet of Astrophil & Stella. I will provide the sonnet here with my own interpretations in parentheses. I shall underline the poem itself to allow for easier reading if one so feels to do so.
Not at first sight, nor with a dribbéd shot
(Love is never random, nor does it occur at first sight)
Love gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed,
(A piercing arrow through the heart which slowly and painfully causes death as each breath is taken)
But known worth did in mine of time proceed
(It chips away at the foundations of one’s heart until it has dug it’s way through to besiege a carefully erected fortress)
Till by degrees it had full conquest got.
(Ever so slowly did it take over, until it had inevitably claimed the prize of one’s heart)
I saw and liked, I liked but lovèd not
I loved, but straight did not what Love decreed;
(Once again reiterating the slow conquering of the heart)
At length to Love’s decrees, I, forced, agreed
Yet with repining at so partial lot.
(Eventually, after much badgering, the narrator conceded to love’s siege and surrenders, but not without complaining about how unfair such a thing is)
Now even that footstep of lost liberty
Is go, and now like slave-born Muscovite,
I call it praise to suffer tyranny;
(After losing his freedom, which love so often appears to take first, he now acts as though he was born into such oppression and despite such a terrible and devestating loss, sings praise to his master)
And now employ the remnant of my wit,
To make myself believe that all is well,
(Now he uses all that is left of his mind that love so willingly ravished to construct a façade which allows him to remain happy even though he has been rent to tatters)
While with a feeling skill I paint my hell.
(He uses his art of poetry to fully illustrate his suffering)
Love is a horrible thing. Don’t allow yourself to be deceived as I so often have. For now, I am wrought with regret over letting such a silly thing control my actions as it has. If I could go back and change it all, I would.
