To me, love is a lot of comfort. It is comforting for me to know that, at the end of the day, I have a shoulder to rest on. Someone to spill everything out to. Someone I can count on to make me smile, even if I’m exhausted. Someone to simply make me feel better when I’m down, or feeling crummy for no reason at all. Someone who will understand that I need comforting, and solace, and someone who will unselfishly provide that, without asking or needing, or expecting anything in return.

Now, this reminds me that there is a most beautiful love song, by Placido Domingo, and John Denver called ‘Perhaps Love’.

Anyone who has not heard this, has surely missed out! Look it up, and listen to it, or ask Jagadish or me for it We will be happy to share it with you. Here’s the lyrics from this most touching, soothing, revealing, simply awesome song:

Perhaps love is like a resting place, a shelter from the storm
It exists to give you comfort, it is there to keep you warm
And in those times of trouble when you are most alone
The memory of love will bring you home

Perhaps love is like a window, perhaps an open door
It invites you to come closer, it wants to show you more
And even if you lose yourself and don’t know what to do
The memory of love will see you through

Love to some is like a cloud, to some as strong as steel
For some a way of living, for some a way to feel
And some say love is holding on and some say letting go
And some say love is everything, and some say they don’t know

Perhaps love is like the ocean, full of conflict, full of pain
Like a fire when it’s cold outside, thunder when it rains
If I should live forever, and all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you

Some say love is holding on and some say letting go
Some say love is everything and some say they don’t know

Perhaps love is like the mountains, full of conflict, full of change
Like a fire when it’s cold outside, thunder when it rains
If I should live forever, and all my dreams come true
My memories of love will be of you

I cannot agree more.

Perhaps l o v e does this to you

Related posts:

1. Love in India: Salim-Anarkali
2. Music & love
3. Love in India: Shah Jahan & Mumtaz Mahal

Reading Jagadish’s post reminded me of a poem I read when I was still in high school. My favorite English teacher, Edward Butscher, taught it to us. He, by the way, is a brilliant teacher. I believe he has even published some good books. He’s so funny and slightly eccentric. Smoked a lot-so much that you could smell it a few feet away. Ugghhh-cigarette smoke and smell still never fails to disgust me and cause me to go into a coughing fit. However, he favored me greatly (that always matters) and I graded the entire class instead of him (except myself; he graded me, of course). I remember how he kept saying how he missed times when students knew how to spell!

Moving on to the poem, the subject of this blog, it was by Edmund Spenser, called ‘Ice and Fire’, and I still remember it vaguely, which is really saying a lot (Jagadish would fervently agree).

Well, I looked it up and here it is for your reading pleasure:

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
How comes it then that this her cold so great
Is not dissolved through my so hot desire,
But harder grows the more I her entreat?
Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
Is not allayed by her heart-frozen cold,
But that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
And feel my flames augmented manifold?
What more miraculous thing may be told,
That fire, which all things melts, should harden ice,
And ice, which is congeal’d with senseless cold,
Should kindle fire by wonderful device?
Such is the power of love in gentle mind,
That it can alter all the course of kind.

For everyone who anguishes in love, desperately wanting to bare their hearts, and fearing cold wrath in response, this poem will strike some chords. The ‘fire’ is the man, and the ‘ice’ is the woman, and the poet is writing about how his warmth, desire and love do not ‘melt’ the woman’s heart. Despite this, her ‘coldness’ only spurs him on even more, ‘kindling’ the fire in him.

The play with the words of ice and fire, and the images they conjure up in one’s mind is really pretty amazing! This is really a beautiful analogy describing the power of love to bind even entire opposites. I love the last couple of lines especially. Love is really, truly very powerful, and those touched by this wonderful emotion will, I am sure, agree with me.

Related posts:

1. Perhaps Love..
2. Private: A Walk to Remember – 2

I am not really a person who loves poems mostly because I don’t understand them. Recently I saw a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in a magazine and was really impressed. Even though the poem seems simple in its meaning, it seemed like there was a subliminal meaning hidden inside it. The way the poet exclaims in the end saying, “Ah, What then?” made me think a lot. Here is the poem:

What if you slept
And what if
In your sleep
You dreamed
And what if
In your dream
You went to heaven
And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower
And what if
When you awoke
You had that flower in you hand
Ah, what then?

– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Related posts:

1. Of fire and ice