What Is Love?

’Tis that delightsome (full) transport we can feel
Which Painters cannot paint, nor words reveal
Nor any art, we know of, can conceal.
Canst thou describe the sun-beams to the blind?
Or make him feel a shadow with his mind?
So neither can we by description shew
This first of all Felicities below.
When happy Love pours magic o’er the soul,
And all our Thoughts in sweet delirium roll,
When Contemplation spreads its rain-bow wings
And ev’ry flutter some new rapture brings,
How sweetly then our moments glide away,
And Dreams repeat the transports of the day,
We live in Extasy, to all things kind,
For Love can teach a moral to the mind.
But are there not some other marks that prove
What is this Wonder of the soul, call’d Love?
O yes there are but of a different kind,
The dreadful horrors of a dismal mind.
Some Jealous Fury throws her poison’d dart
And rends in pieces the distracted heart.
When Love’s a Tyrant, and the soul a slave,
No hope remains to thought — but in the grave.
In that dark den it sees an End to grief,
And what was once its dread becomes relief.
What are the Iron chains the hands have wrought?
The hardest chain to break is made of Thought.
Think well of this, ye Lovers, and be kind,
Nor play with Torture on a tortur’d mind.