Happy Valentine's Day!

Etsy's CoffeeStencil

In that book which is my memory,

On the first page that is the chapter when

I first met you, appear the words,

"Here begins a new life."

La Vita Nuova - Dante Alighieri  

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

 

Sonnet XVII - Pablo Neruda

 

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.

Sing and dance together and be joyous.

But let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone

though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together;

For the pillars of the temple stand apart.

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love.

The Prophet - Kahil Gibran

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Cloths of Heaven - William Butler Yeats

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being in love which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

 

Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis de Bernières

Photos:  We Heart It

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