What Is Love? Thomas Paine Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BG UK
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Taylor Institution Library St Giles' Oxford OX1 3NA UK info@eighteenthcenturypoetry.org https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Cleary, Scott M., ed. Claeys, Gregory, gen. ed. Thomas Paine Collected Writings. Vol. II. Part 2: Poetry. Princeton Princeton UP 2026 pp. []-[]. 5 Volumes.

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What Is Love ?

As I do not attempt to rival your witty description of Love I will try if I can match it in sentiment , and that I may start with a fair chance I begin with your own question 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 .
T.P.