I watched a movie last night that was about the love between two people. A young woman named Fanny Brawne and a young poet named John Keats. It was a beautiful, touching movie, that made me cry... And it got me thinking... Why do we not talk or write like we used to do? Why are sonnets and poems not a part of "courting" anymore? What happened to just going for long walks with the one you love while actually conversing with them? Why can we not profess our feelings in those honey sweet words that we used to?
I started going back over poems that I had read before and some that I had never read. I stumbled upon one that Phil had sent to me a while ago. He sent it to me because I kept begging him to write me a poem and he said he didn't have time, but would satisfy me with one he had found online that he liked until he could write one (which he never did). The verse is actually very beautiful and fits so perfectly these days:
Longing
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
Come, as thou cam'st a thousand times,
A messenger from radiant climes,
And smile on thy new world, and be
As kind to others as to me!
Or, as thou never cam'st in sooth,
Come now, and let me dream it truth,
And part my hair, and kiss my brow,
And say, My love why sufferest thou?
Come to me in my dreams, and then
By day I shall be well again!
For so the night will more than pay
The hopeless longing of the day.
~ Matthew Arnold
How that poem touches my heart. Tears always come to my eyes when I read the third stanza. How I wish that my love was here to do that for me right now. How I would tell him that I no longer suffer because he is by my side once more. But until then, I will keep praying that he will visit my dreams every night and chase away the suffering I feel every day.
As I was looking through other poetry, I came across a poem that struck a cord in me. It truly got me thinking if I have or not:
Are You Loving Enough?
Are you loving enough? There is some one dear,
Some one you hold as the dearest of all
In the holiest shrine of your heart.
Are you making it known? Is the truth of it clear
To the one you love? If death's quick call
Should suddenly tear you apart,
Leaving no time for a long farewell,
Would you feel you had nothing to tell ---
Nothing you wished you had said before
The closing of that dark door?
Are you loving enough? The swift years fly ---
Oh, faster and faster the hurry away,
And each one carries its dead.
The good deed left for the by and by,
The word to be uttered another day,
May never be done or said.
Let the love word sound in the listening ear,
Nor wait to speak it above a bier.
Oh the time for telling your love is brief,
But long, long, long is the time for grief.
Are you loving enough?
That poem makes me cry as I think of what might happen. Have I said everything that I long to say to Phil? Does he know how I feel truly? How can I put into words the depths of my love for him? How do I convey my pride? That he is my hero? The perfect man for me? My other half? My one and only? My favorite? ...How?
So confused, I started reading the letters that John Keats had written to his love Fanny Brawne. To say the least, I was truly inspired by them and so deeply touched and wishful that someone would write me love letters like that.
"Your Letter gave me more delight, than any thing in the world but yourself could do; indeed I am almost astonished that any absent one should have that luxurious power over my senses which I feel. Even when I am not thinking of you I receive your influence and a tenderer nature steeling upon me. All my thoughts, my unhappiest days and nights have I find not at all cured me of my love of Beauty, but made it so intense that I am miserable that you are not with me: or rather breathe in that dull sort of patience that cannot be called Life. " (Letter, 18 July 1819)
"Do understand me, my love, in this. I have so much of you in my heart that I must turn Mentor when I see a chance of harm befalling you. I would never see any thing but Pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps." (Letter, 18 July 1819)
"I kiss'd your Writing over in the hope you had indulg'd me by leaving a trace of honey " (Letter, 18 July 1819)
"Forgive me if I wander a little this evening, for I have been all day employed in a very abstract Poem and I am in deep love with you - two things which must excuse me. I have, believe me, not been an age in letting you take possession of me; the very first week I knew you I wrote myself your vassal" (Letter, 25 July 1819)
"My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you — I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again — my Life seems to stop there — I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving — I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. [...] I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion — I have shudder'd at it — I shudder no more — I could be martyr'd for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you." (Letter, 13 October 1819).
"My sweet creature when I look back upon the pains and torments I have suffered for you from the day I left you to go to the Isle of Wight; the ecstasies in which I have passed some days and the miseries in their turn, I wonder the more at the Beauty which has kept up the spell so fervently" (Letter, February 1820)
"You fear, sometimes, I do not love you so much as you wish? My dear Girl I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The more I have known you the more have I lov'd. In every way - even my jealousies have been agonies of Love, in the hottest fit I ever had I would have died for you. I have vex'd you too much. But for Love! Can I help it? You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass'd my window home yesterday, I was fill'd with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time." (Letter, March 1820)
And then I read one of John Keats more famous works:
Bright Star
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors —
No — yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
The poem talks of how he longs to live forever aloft, watching the world from above like a star. But towards the end he realizes that he would want to be no place else then laying in the arms of the woman he loves. So beautiful.
But all of these works got me to thinking - We never send love letters anymore. Our days now are spent on the Internet sending emails or facebook messages back and forth. Or just speaking our love over phone calls. Which, don't get me wrong, is a wonderful thing to be able to do, especially while Phil is away in AF. But I am becoming ever more jealous of the old days and wars and the lack of technology for communication. Only in the sense that I wish I would have the motivation to write love letters or even the knowledge how! And how I long to receive one from Phil. I bet all my friends would love to receive a love letter from their significant other. Wouldn't you reader?
With that said, I am going to try and sit down and write a love letter to the one that I hold dearest in my heart. I may fail miserably or I may succeed with amazing success, only time shall tell since it will take about 3 weeks to get to him, heh. All I know is that I will take tips from John Keats and Shakespeare as far as what to say, I will spray perfume upon the pages, and I shall kiss the most tender words that I write so that Phil might kiss those same words and feel my lips upon his.
I encourage all my fellow hopeless romantics to join me in trying to write a love letter to your significant other. Look to poetry or to famous authors for inspiration and follow your own heart while you write it. You will know what to say.
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