"I Love You Because"

louth | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Friday February 04, 2005 15:46 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 042 93 71310

Valentine's Day is No Joke

Perhaps Valentine's day should be elevated to a status at least equal to Christmas and Easter? Surrounded by delicious spring weater (and sore and bickering politicians) perhaps we should turn our thoughts to love. How better to express love than in a sonnet?

Sean Crudden

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixëd mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

William Shakespeare 1564 - 1616


How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and, if God chose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 - 1861


Shakespeare’s love is relaxed, distant, unobtrusive and truly brave. It is not necessarily man-woman love. It could just as easily be man-man, woman-woman, parent-child. It could even be ruler-subject love. Shakespeare was in my book a loving man although he spared none of humanity’s foibles in his writing. That is why Shakespeare is the Englishman most congenial to the Irish. There is no need to grieve over Shakespeare - as James Joyce seemed to do in "Ulysses." Shakespeare conquered mountains on behalf of the human race which will never need to be conquered again as long as his texts survive.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s famous poem is more like the love of the punk generation. It is compelled and driven. Sadness underlies the writing. Words like "lose" "lost" "tears" accumulate towards the end of the sonnet. The sole object of Elizabeth’s affection - Robert Browning - lived in the period 1812 - 1889. I wonder does Elizabeth still love him?

I often wondered too why such a well-balanced human being as Shakespeare lived only for 52 years. It appears to me that love is no elixir. But Shakespeare was blessed with the maturity of a man three times his departing age. And, indeed, there is no need for Shakespeare to live again.