Page:Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1918.djvu/430

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��ANDREW MARVELL

366 The Definition of Love

P Y Love is of a birth as rare

As 'tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could nc'r have flown But vainly flapt its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive Where my extended Soul is fixt, But Fate docs iron wedges drive, And always crowds it self betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close: Their union would her ruin be, And her Tyrannic pow'r depose.

And therefore her Decrees of Steel

Us as the distant Poles have plac'd,

(Though Love's whole World on us doth wheel)

Not by themselves to be embrac'd.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall, And Earth some new Convulsion tear; And, us to join, the World should all Be cramp'd into a Plamsfhere.

As Lines so Loves obhque may well Themselves in every Angle greet: But ours so truly Parallel, Though infinite can never meet.

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