Love

( Originally Published 1922 )

LOVE is for the loving. There is but one well in the world that grows ever the richer and sweeter and more plenteous by giving.

That well is the human heart and its living waters are those of love.

Yet herein is the wonder of it, that the man who thinks he hath need of it but seldom shall not at his desire get more than a scanty draught, and the sweet water shall turn bitter in his mouth.

Ye have heard it said, to him that hath shall be given : this is the meaning thereof.

Spend yourself in loving that you may be often athirst for the life-giving water. But count not to drink unto refreshing unless you come weary and blessed from the service of love. Then, ah then, the sweetness of the draught ! . . .

WE are constantly seeking our own in darkness and in light, awake or a dream; reaching out our longing arms toward the Infinite; sending forth our filaments of thought; summoning the One who shall know and feel, with a passion of desire; praying for that rare response which crowns the chief expectancy of life. Not always do our arms fall empty; not always do our thoughts return to mock our vain quest; not always are our prayers unanswered and our hearts left void and cold.

I hold this to be of the true divinity of life, this kinship of the spirit which will leave no man or woman at rest, but ever insists upon working out its exigent yet benign destiny; forming those sweet and consoling relations which are our best joy here and may be our eternal satisfaction.

For the expectancy of love and sympathy—that is to say, understanding—is one that never dies in the human heart. I may be sad, or dull, or cold, or out of touch with reality; I may persuade myself that there is no longer any pith in my mystery; that the years have left me bankrupt in the essential stuff of life; that there is no remaining use for me under the sun. But let my heart be apprised, in the faintest whisper, of the advent or imminence of a new friend, and lo! the world is fresh-made, the heavens constellated with hope and joy and wonder as on the first day.

Life is truly measured only by such love or expectancy; when that fails it is the same story for king and beggar.

Love is the summoner, love is the seeker, love the expectancy, and love the fulfilment. Blessed be Love !

I SPOKE some harsh words to my dear love, thinking myself in the right and forgetting the Law of Kindness. Then as I was turning away in anger, the sight of her pale face, with its mute reproach, smote me to the heart. I took her in my arms and we wept the most precious tears together. O divine moment, in that sacred hush, with her heart beating against mine, I seemed to be conscious of angels listening.

THOSE who are not in spiritual accord and understanding with us—that is to say, who do not truly love us—are as if they were not present in our lives, save for the unhappiness of an enforced relation with them. Twenty years' breathing the same air, living in the same house, even going through the physical forms of the closest union, will not change the condition. At the end of that long period we are, by the Law of Spirit, as hopelessly separate, as mutually repellent as ever.

LOVE is akin to hate—how trite that is and how true ! I sometimes wonder is either quality to be found unmixed with the other? Can we have love without hate or hate without love? The only glimpse of hatred I have ever had that quite appalled me was from one who loved me very much. Ah, happy they who neither love nor hate!

IN love we must bleed and the wounds we receive are very cruel. Still it seems we can never have enough of them, for love has power to heal the wounds which it inflicts—and so we go on loving and bleeding to the end.

THERE is one thing of which I have never had my fill and for which my soul hungers always—love! And always I am promising my-self that one day I shall be satisfied.

WHEN I was younger there was nothing for me but a woman between the heavens and the earth. Now I perceive there are a few other things. Yet am I not old, as age is counted.

THE only man who has a right to despair of the world is he who neither loves nor is loved.

THERE is but one thing more interesting than a woman's love—her hate.

I HATE the woman who is not a mystery to herself as well as to me.

LOVE is a combat and friendship a duel. Strife is the law of existence.

LOVE is the primum mobile—the great motive which produces the miracles of genius and all that we recognize as the work of higher powers. Happy the artist whom it blesses and fructifies to the end!

I SHOULD never be weary of learning of women. I have long since tired learning of men.

Look back now over the long way and see if it be not love that has led you so far!

LOVE is the one dream that does not forsake us as we descend into the Valley, but is potent to bring joy or misery to the last.

To find the One who could love and feel and understand—this is the dream of many who yet remain faithful to their bonds.

WHAT is more terrible than the face of one who once loved and now hates you, seen in a dream!

How great the artist who should know woman to the soul, without giving up his freedom to her!