Thoughts on Love

dandelion girl, originally uploaded by mincaye.

Love's Farewell

Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part,--
Nay I have done, you get no more of me;
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free;

Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again,
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.

Now at the last gasp of love's latest breath,
When his pulse failing, passion speechless lies,
When faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And innocence is closing up his eyes,

--Now if thou would'st, when all have given him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover!

(This poem, by Michael Drayton, was featured on March 31 in the Poetry Speaks calendar.)


In Act IV, Scene V of Hamlet, Laertes utters these words:

"Nature is fine in love, and where 'tis fine
It sends some precious instance of itself
After the thing it loves."

Harold Jenkins, in the Arden Shakespeare edition of the play, comments on the above excerpt;

"Human nature, when in love, is exquisitely sensitive, and being so, it sends a precious part of itself as a token to follow the object of its love."


Last Tuesday, the grass on the slope facing the Form Six block was cut. But some thirty minutes before that, Li-Shia managed to get a few shots of the dandelions she loves so much.

In this picture, my angle is that of a dandelion, or perhaps an insect. While her camera is focused on one of the many delicate, downy flowers, her attention (betrayed by her eyes) is diverted to the insect on the left side of the photo.

I think the overall effect of the picture complements Drayton and Shakespeare.