“Whilst I by pow’rful love, so much refin’d,
That my absent soul the same is,
Careless to miss
A glance or kiss,
Can with these elements of lust and sense
Freely dispense,
And court the mind.”
In the examples thus far given, the character of the passion as shared by lover and beloved has been merely described. There was an attempt made in some of this poetry to define love as if it were a something to be analyzed—a product, as it were, of psychological elaboration. Vaughan has indicated the two traits in the love lyrist of the seventeenth century, when he gives the following title to a lyric,—“To Amoret, of the Difference ’Twixt Him and Other Lovers, and What True Love Is.” In defining “What True Love Is,” the poets show that it cannot be desire, but is rather an essence pure in itself, and in one instance it is described as something unknowable either to sense or to mind.
Donne has left a letter in verse “To the Countess of Huntingdon,” in which he carefully explains how love cannot be desire. Sighing and moaning may be love, but it is love made in a weak way; love should never cast one down, but should elevate.
“I cannot feel the tempest of a frown;