The Definition of Love 

My love is of a birth as rare 

As it is for object strange and high

It was begotten by despair 

Upon Impossibility.

 

Magnanimous Despair alone 

Could show me a divine a  thing, 

Where feeble hope could ne'r have flown

But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing. 

 

And yet I quickly might arrive

Where my extended Soul is fixt,

But Fate does Iron wedges drive,

And alwaies crouds itself betwixt.

 

For fate with jealous Eye do see

Two perfect Loves: nor lets them close

Their union would her ruine be,

And her Tyrannick power depose.

 

And therefore her decrees of Steel 

Us as the distant poles have placed

Not by themselves to be embraced.

 

Unless the giddy Heaven fall, 

And earth some new convulsion tear

And, us to joyn, the world should all

Be cramped into the Planisphere

 

As line of love oblique may well

Themselves in every Angle greet

But ours so truely Paralel,

Though infinite can never meet.

 

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,

But Fate so enviously debarrs 

Is the conjunction of mind,

And Opposition of the Stars