With Valentine’s Day upon us, I came upon the following poem penned by the English playwright, Robert Browning while browsing among my library in search of this week’s Inspiration. I knew that I wanted “love” to be the underlying message, but I also wanted it to be reflected amidst the times that surround us. Interestingly, Browning’s century old ode seemed eerily appropriate.
The poem itself is based on a contrast between the past and the present—between a great city that once stood and a pile of rubble that now stands in its place. Kings and wars have come and gone with all that remains being love.
It reminds us all of the enduring quality of love. It, alone, outlasts material objects and natural or man-made maladies. In good times and bad, Love endures.
Love Among the Ruins
By: Robert Browning
Now, –the country does not even boast a tree,
As you see,
To distinguish slopes of verdure, certain rills
From the hills
Intersect and give a name to, (else they run
Into one)
Where the domed and daring palace shot its spires
Up like fires
O’er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall
Bounding all,
Made of marble, men might march on nor be prest,
Twelve abreast.
And such plenty and perfection, see, of grass
Never was!
Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o’erspreads
And embeds
Every vestige of the city, guessed alone,
Stock or stone—
Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold.
Now, — the single little turret that remains
On the plains,
By the caper overrooted, by the gourd
Overscored,
While the patching houseleek’s head of blossom winks
Through the chinks—
Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time
Sprang sublime,
And burning ring all round, the chariots traced
As they raced,
And the monarch and his minions and his dames
Viewed the games.
And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve
Smiles to leave
To their folding, all our many tinkling fleece
In such peace,
And the slopes and rills in undistinquished gray
Melt away—
That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Wats me there
In the turret, whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless,
Till I come.
But he looked upon the city, every side,
Far and wide,
All the mountains topped with temples, all the glades
Colonnades,
All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts, —and then.
All the men!
When do I come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.
In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold, of course.
Oh, heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth’s returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest.
Love is best!
Deep waters cannot quench love, nor floods sweep it away. Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love, he would be roundly mocked. –Song of Songs 8:7
Have an AWE-full Valentine’s Weekend!
William “Bill” Bacque