THE PROFOUND universal experience of love is impossible to define; it can be known only by its manifestations, both secular and divine. Whatever may be the vicissitudes of love, Tennyson may be right when he categorically states:
I hold it true, whate’er befall,
I feel it, when I sorrow most,
’Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.
The creative power of love reveals itself most eloquently in poetic form, for without poetry love is wordless, and without love poetry lacks an energy and dynamism that only love can generate. In the following selections of love poetry borrowed from the diverse cultural traditions of the world, complete poems and extracts from longer works are included. The poems selected are by recognized masters as well as lesser poets—all of whom have inspired successive generations of men and women everywhere.
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In a famous passage [translated by Sir Richard Livingstone], the Greek playwright Sophocles equates love with Aphrodite, suggesting the complex and contradictory elements of what we call love:
But in her name lie many names concealed:
for she is Death, imperishable Force.
Desire unmixed, wild Frenzy, Lamentation:
in her are summed all impulses that drive
to Violence, Energy, Tranquillity.
Deep in each living breast the Goddess sinks,
and all become her prey; the tribes that swim,
the fourfoot tribes that pace upon the earth,
harbour her; and in birds her wing is sovereign.
In beasts, in mortal men, in gods above.
What god but wrestles with her and is thrown?
If I may tell—and truth is right to tell—
she rules the heart of Zeus without a spear,
without a sword. Truly the Cyprian
shatters all purposes of men and gods.
With obvious difficulty Sophocles is trying to define the indefinable, and in this passage both the negative and the positive aspects of love are mentioned. The attitudes, the vicissitudes, and the caprices of love have led many a philosopher, thinker, and poet to come up with as many definitions as there are lovers. For love is sometimes described as ‘madness’ and ‘the wildest woe’. At other times, it is ‘the salt of life’ and ‘the sweetest joy’. Whether it is this or that or a combination of both, no one who has truly loved can deny the healing power, the creative energy, the exhilaration, the glory, the majesty, and the awe-inspiring magnificence that love engenders in the heart. Some believe that love does not last; others hold fast to their faith in the enduring power of love. In Christian terms, ‘God is love’, while the Sufi poet cried out that only God ‘knows what manner of love is mine’. What remains true, however, is that unique experience which reaches its complete fulfilment in a love that is truly sublime:
It is that love which reaches out to you even when you do not ask for it.
It is bestowed upon you even when you do not deserve it.
It renews the spirit and uplifts the heart.
It teaches humility and reveals compassion.
It was there yesterday, it is here today, and it will most certainly be there tomorrow.
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Notwithstanding the difficulties that face the editor of any selection of love poetry, the more acute problem here was to decide on the languages to be represented. In this respect, I sought the help of The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Prosody which divided love poetry into two main categories: the love poetry of the Western world and the love poetry of the Eastern world. The first category was general and did not specify any number of languages; the second, that of the Eastern world, the Encyclopedia divided into seven language groups: Ancient Egyptian, Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Indian, Japanese, and Persian.
In this collection, I have adopted this system as far as the Eastern world is concerned, but I added to the seven language groups that have been mentioned other poems from Africa and Australasia, as well as poems taken from the love poetry of the first people. I divided the Western world into eight language groups: Ancient Greek and Latin, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian.
Any selection made leaves its editor with a sense of profound dissatisfaction with his work, for it is very easy to say: ‘If this were added, it would be better, while if this were omitted, it would redeem some weakness.’ No selection whatsoever can be perfect or complete.
Perhaps the following immortal lines from Shakespeare set a universal standard for what true love could be:
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand ring bark, ’
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.