Consider how few are the great lovers known in western literature:....
Troilus and Cressida, Antony and Cleopatra, Tristan and Isolde (she says, in the 2007 film, "I want to know that there's more to this life, and I can't know that if they kill you." [she Kisses Tristan] ---oh, how I know how that feels! Then there's Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who eloped with Robert Browning, to have a happy life in exile, and even bore her lover a strong son, that former bed-ridden poetess! And she wrote, in the midst of her joy, in her collection of poems, this ageless love paeon:....
XLIII. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
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Then there's Heloise and Abelard, whose love was not truly consummated....the Greeks knew true love could last forever....
in their great legend of Philemon and Baucis, who wished to die together, the gods made sure they were were simultaneously transformed into linden trees, overlooking the lake where their evil townsfolk were immersed and turned into fish for their inhospitable actions....
And then there was our love. As endless and lovely, to the end of time, as all the legends were, as all the real-life true lovers' stories were...so was it between Lee and me....and it always will.......
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"Leaves of Love" (1st p, above) composed 1980 by
Judyth Vary Baker, arrangement by Elaine MacLean
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I'll be posting poems here, too.
Judyth Vary Baker
