Figures of Several Centuries

by Arthur Symons

All other things to their destruction draw,

Only our love hath no decay;

This no to-morrow hath, no yesterday;

Running, it never runs from us away,

But truly keeps his first, last, everlasting day.

This lover loves with his whole nature, and so collectedly because reason, in him, is not in conflict with passion, but passion's ally. His senses speak with unparalleled directness, as in those elegies which must remain the model in English of masculine sensual sobriety. He distinguishes the true end of such loving in a forcible, characteristically prosaic image:

Whoever loves, if he do not propose

The right true end of love, he's one that goes

To sea for nothing but to make him sick.