She Walks in Beauty_ A Woman's Journey Through Poems - Caroline Kennedy [3]
FALLING IN LOVE
THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS TO FALL IN LOVE—and so many people to fall in love with. When I was young, I went to a convent school, read historical romances, and dreamed of the day a modern Scarlet Pimpernel would sweep me off my feet, but really, I was only in love with my pony. As a result, in high school, I was way behind the girls who had already figured out the basics of human-to-human love and despaired of ever having a boyfriend. One of the reassuring things my mother said to me was that if you love someone, that person will love you back. Although there is not much evidence to support that theory, I decided to believe it, and eventually, like all mothers, she turned out to be right.
Now, as I watch my children fall in love, it brings back the memories of excitement, uncertainty, adventure, and the joy of belonging to someone. Falling in love means you aren’t a child anymore and, as Rumi writes in “Come to the Orchard in Spring,” nothing else matters. In these poems, John Keats captures the essence of desire, Percy Bysshe Shelley expresses the delights of kissing, and Christopher Marlowe rules out anything but love at first sight.
Throughout the ages, one of poetry’s challenges has been to express mystical experiences in language. Falling in love is a series of moments in which the ordinary becomes extraordinary. Those moments are not continuous, but the sense of union with another person is just about the best thing there is. Perhaps that is why Dorothy Parker celebrates our need to do it over and over again.
A Very Valentine
GERTRUDE STEIN
Very fine is my valentine.
Very fine and very mine.
Very mine is my valentine very mine and very fine.
Very fine is my valentine and mine, very fine very mine and
mine is my valentine.
Song
JOHN KEATS
O blush not so! O blush not so!
Or I shall think you knowing;
And if you smile the blushing while,
Then maidenheads are going.
There’s a blush for won’t, and a blush for shan’t,
And a blush for having done it:
There’s a blush for thought, and a blush for naught,
And a blush for just begun it.
O sigh not so! O sigh not so!
For it sounds of Eve’s sweet pippin;
By those loosened lips you have tasted the pips
And fought in an amorous nipping.
Will you play once more at nice-cut-core,
For it only will last our youth out?
And we have the prime of the kissing time,
We have not one sweet tooth out.
There’s a sigh for yes, and a sigh for no,
And a sigh for I can’t bear it!
O what can be done, shall we stay or run?
O, cut the sweet apple and share it!
I Do Not Love Thee
THE HONORABLE CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON
I do not love thee!—no! I do not love thee!
And yet when thou art absent I am sad;
And envy even the bright blue sky above thee,
Whose quiet stars may see thee and be glad.
I do not love thee!—yet, I know not why,
Whate’er thou dost seems still well done, to me:
And often in my solitude I sigh
That those I do love are not more like thee!
I do not love thee!—yet, when thou art gone,
I hate the sound (though those who speak be dear)
Which breaks the lingering echo of the tone
Thy voice of music leaves upon my ear.
I do not love thee!—yet thy speaking eyes,
With their deep, bright and most expressive blue,
Between me and the midnight heaven arise,
Oftener than any eyes I ever knew.
I know I do not love thee! yet, alas!
Others will scarcely trust my candid heart;
And oft I catch them smiling as they pass,
Because they see me gazing where thou art.
From Hero and Leander
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is over-ruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin
We wish that one should lose, the other win;
And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect.
The reason no man knows; let it suffice,
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate,