For love is full of showers.”
Shakspere—
“Good-night, good-night, parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good-night till it be morrow.”
“Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
Being vex’d, a sea nourished with lovers’ tears;
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.”
Petrarch’s poems, says Shelley, “are as spells which unseal the inmost enchanted fountains of the delight which is the grief of love.” In that part of the Romance of the Rose which was written by Jean de Meung, and translated by Chaucer, occur many similar phrases depicting Love as an emotional paradox: “Also a sweet hell it is, and a sorrowful paradise;” “delight right full of heaviness, and drearihood full of gladness;” “a heavy burden light to bear;” “wise madness,” “despairing hope,” etc. Mr. Ruskin, who quotes the whole passage in his Fors Clavigera, declares: “I know of no such lovely love-poem as his since Dante.”