Himmelhoch jauchzend
     Zum Tode betruebt,
     Gluecklich allein
     Ist die Seele die liebt.

AMOROUS ANTITHESES

When a Marguerite plucks the petals of a marguerite, muttering “he loves me—­he loves me not,” her heart flutters in momentary anguish with every “not,” till the next petal soothes it again.

     I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe;
     Under love’s heavy burden do I sink,

wails Romeo; and again: 

     Why then, O brawling love!  O loving hate! 
     O anything, of nothing first create! 
     O heavy lightness! serious vanity! 
     Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! 
     Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

* * * * *

     Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
     Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers’ eyes;
     Being vex’d, a sea nourish’d with lovers’ tears;
     What is it else? a madness most discreet,
     A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

In commenting on Romeo, who in his love for Rosaline indulges in emotion for emotion’s sake, and “stimulates his fancy with the sought-out phrases, the curious antitheses of the amorous dialect of the period,” Dowden writes: 

“Mrs. Jameson has noticed that in All’s Well that Ends Well (I., 180-89), Helena mockingly reproduces this style of amorous antithesis.  Helena, who lives so effectively in the world of fact, is contemptuous toward all unreality and affectation.”

Now, it is quite true that expressions like “cold fire” and “sick health” sound unreal and affected to sober minds, and it is also true that many poets have exercised their emulous ingenuity in inventing such antitheses just for the fun of the thing and because it has been the fashion to do so.  Nevertheless, with all their artificiality, they were hinting at an emotional phenomenon which actually exists.  Romantic love is in reality a state of mind in which cold and heat may and do alternate so rapidly that “cold fire” seems the only proper expression to apply to such a mixed feeling.  It is literally true that, as Bailey sang, “the sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love;” literally true that “the sweets of love are washed with tears,” as Carew wrote, or, as H.K.  White expressed it, “’Tis painful, though ’tis sweet to love.”  A man who has actually experienced the feeling of uncertain love sees nothing unreal or affected in Tennyson’s

     The cruel madness of love
     The honey of poisoned flowers,

or in Drayton’s

     ’Tis nothing to be plagued in hell
     But thus in heaven tormented,

or in Dryden’s

     I feed a flame within, which so torments me
     That it both pains my heart, and yet enchants me: 
     ’Tis such a pleasing smart, and I so love it,
     That I had rather die than once remove it,