I’ve thought, if those dumb, heathen gods could breathe,
       As shapeless, strengthless, wooden things they stand,
     And feel the holy incense round them wreathe,
       And see before them offerings of the land;
     And know that unto them is worship paid
       From pure hearts, kneeling on the verdant sod,
     Looking to helplessness, for light and aid
       Because by fate they know no higher god: 
     How their dull hearts must ache with constant pain,
       And sense of shame, and fear to be flung down
     When all their weakness must one day be plain,
       And fire avenge the undeserved crown. 
     And reading my love’s letter, sad and sweet, I sigh,
       Knowing that such a helpless, wooden god am I.

“The comparison of love to fire holds good in one respect,” says Henry Home, “that the fiercer it burns the sooner it is extinguished.”  “Love me little love me long” says Marlowe.  “The plainest man, that can convince a woman,” says Colton, “that he is really in love with her, has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce there is a silence in it that suspends the foot; and the folded arms and the dejected head are the images it reflects.”  “Love is but another name for that inscrutable presence by which the soul is connected with humanity,” says Simms.  “The beings who appear cold,” says Madame Swetchine, “adore where they dare to love.”  “Man, while he loves, is never quite depraved,” says Charles Lamb.  “It is possible,” says Terence, referring to the unquestionable temporary insanity of the passion, “that a man can be so changed by love that one could not recognize him to be the same person.”  “Solid love, whose root is virtue, can no more die, than virtue itself,” says Erasmus, who was probably talking about a requited affection.

THE CASE OF THE POET PETRARCH,

who loved another man’s wife all his life, simply because he fell in love with her before she married the other fellow, does not strike me as exactly the proper thing, or exactly the manly thing.  I like better the Sensible Shepherd of George Wither, who sang jauntily: 

     Be she fairer than the day,
     Or the flowery meads in May,

     If she be not so to me,
     What care I how fair she be?

Kill off your love if it be not returned, as though it were a condemned felon.  The execution is a painful scene, but the effect on your manhood is good.  “True love were very unlovely,” says Sir Philip Sidney, “if it were half so deadly as lovers term it!” “There are few people,” says Rochefoucauld, “who are not ashamed of their loves when the fit is over.”  “In love we are all fools alike,” says Gay.  “We that are true lovers” says Shakspeare, “run into strange capers; but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature in love mortal in folly.”  “O love,” cries LaFontaine, “when thou gettest dominion over us,