Stanza 1.
The Definition of Love (1650-1652)
“For 'tis impossible
Hate to return with love.”
Che amar chi t'odia, ell'è impossibil cosa.
Polinice, II, 4; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 464.
Poems and Ballads (1866-89), The Triumph of Time
Context: The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.
Hours that rejoice and regret for a span,
Born with a man's breath, mortal as he;
Loves that are lost ere they come to birth,
Weeds of the wave, without fruit upon earth.
I lose what I long for, save what I can,
My love, my love, and no love for me!
"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)
Context: It spurred me to such action as I took, — but it has robbed me of sugared eloquence, it has left me chary of speech. It is necessary that I climb very high because of my love for you, and upon the heights there is silence.
1820s, Letter to Frances Wright (1825)
“Virtue's a mere name,
Or 'tis high venture that achieves high aim.”
Book I, epistle xvii, p. 138
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Epistles
Letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne (July 1851); published in Memories of Hawthorne (1897) by Rose Hawthorne Lathrop, p. 157
Context: In me divine magnanimities are spontaneous and instantaneous — catch them while you can. The world goes round, and the other side comes up. So now I can't write what I felt. But I felt pantheistic then—your heart beat in my ribs and mine in yours, and both in God's. A sense of unspeakable security is in me this moment, on account of your having understood the book. I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the Gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling — no hopelessness is in it, no despair. Content — that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination. I speak now of my profoundest sense of being, not of an incidental feeling.
Je ne puis peindre mon désespoir; nul mot de la langue humaine ne rendrait mes sentiments. J’étais enterré vif, avec la perspective de mourir dans les tortures de la faim et de la soif.
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Ch. XXVII: Lost in the bowels of the earth
From the poem I Hear an Army http://www.bartleby.com/103/128.html
IX. On Providence, Fate, and Fortune.
On the Gods and the Cosmos
