Pent up love will explode in your heart

Love is in your heart ... let it fly ...

What we all have in abundance, is love stashed away somewhere in the deep chasms of our inner being and it will on the least provocation open its eyes and rear its beautiful head, making itself ready to explode into something beautiful, long before we realise it.

No, this statement is not from a science fiction film, a western thriller, a Hollywood soapie or a new fashion.

 

It is from a paradise lost which we need to regain. It brews all the time; waiting for the right moment and the right person, and it comes as a sudden realization in our minds that things have changed for ever, bringing tears or joy, or tears of joy, or only tears. It is a flame which burns, wanting to devour us, breaking our hearts or waiting to bloom.

I need to quote from a few texts to support my totally unfounded view, and I start from my favourite book: The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.

When love beckons to you, follow him,

Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfold you yield to him,

Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

And when he speaks to you believe in

him,

Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he

crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto

himself.

He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.

He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;

And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,

Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,

Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

And then I will quote, of course, from the beautiful love poems of the incredible Ella Wheeler Wilcox - From the Grave: (if you love poems of passion and love, skip all the poets and only read hers. They are furlongs and fortnights better than any of the rest)

When the first sere leaves of the year were falling,

I heard, with a heart that was strangely thrilled,

Out of the grave of a dead Past calling,

A voice I fancied forever stilled.

All through winter, and spring, and summer,

Silence hung over that grave like a pall;

But, borne on the breath of the last sad comer,

I listen again to the old-time call.

It is only a love of a bygone season,

A senseless folly that mocked at me,

A reckless passion that lacked all reason;

So I killed it, and hid it where none could see.

I smothered it first to stop its crying,

Then stabbed it through with a good sharp blade;

And cold and pallid I saw it lying,

And deep--ah! deep was the grave I made.

But now I know that there is no killing

A thing like Love, for it laughs at Death.

There is no hushing, there is no stilling

That which is part of your life and breath.

You may bury it deep, and leave behind you

The land, the people that knew your slain;

It will push the sods from its grave, and find you

On wastes of water or desert plain.

You may hear but tongues of a foreign people,

You may list to sounds that are strange and new;

But, clear as a silver bell in a steeple,

That voice from the grave shall call to you.

You may rouse your pride, you may use your reason,

And seem for a space to slay Love so;

But, all in its own good time and season,

It will rise and follow wherever you go.

You shall sit sometimes, when the leaves are falling,

Alone with your heart, as I sit to-day,

And hear that voice from your dead Past calling

Out of the graves that you hid away.

Just to add insult to injury  I quote from another of her poems:  Ad Finum:

On the white throat of the useless passion  That scorched my soul with its burning breath,

I clutched my fingers in murderous fashion,  And gathered them close in a grip of death;

For why should I fan, or feed with fuel,  

A love that showed me but blank despair?

So my hold was firm, and my grasp was cruel--  

I meant to strangle it then and there!

I thought it was dead.  But with no warning,

It rose from its grave last night, and came

And stood by my bed till the early morning,  And over and over it spoke your name.

Its throat was red where my hands had held it,  

It burned my brow with its scorching breath;

And I said, the moment my eyes beheld it,  

"A love like this can know no death."

For just one kiss that your lips have given

In the lost and beautiful past to me,

I would gladly barter my hopes of Heaven  And all the bliss of Eternity.

For never a joy are the angels keeping  

To lay at my feet in Paradise,

Like that of into your strong arms creeping,  And looking into your love-lit eyes.

I know, in the way that sins are reckoned,

This thought is a sin of the deepest dye;

But I know, too, if an angel beckoned,  Standing close by the Throne on High,

And you, adown by the gates infernal,  

Should open your loving arms and smile,

I would turn my back on things supernal,  

To lie on your breast a little while.

To know for an hour you were mine completely--

 Mine in body and soul, my own--

I would bear unending tortures sweetly,  

With not a murmur and not a moan.

A lighter sin or a lesser error  

Might change through hope or fear divine;

But there is no fear, and hell has no terror  

To change or alter a love like mine.