Poem by Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

Love

We cannot live, except thus mutually
We alternate, aware or unaware,
The reflex act of life: and when we bear
Our virtue onward most impulsively,
Most full of invocation, and to be
Most instantly compellant, certes, there
We live most life, whoever breathes most air
And counts his dying years by sun and sea.
But when a soul, by choice and conscience, doth
Throw out her full force on another soul,
The conscience and the concentration both make
mere life, Love. For Life in perfect whole
And aim consummated, is Love in sooth,
As nature's magnet-heat rounds pole with pole. 

1. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 20. Belovëd, my Belovëd, when I think
2. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 11. And therefore if to love can be desert
3. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 12. Indeed this very love which is my boast
4. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 30. I see thine image through my tears to-night
5. Sonnets from the Portuguese. 35. If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange

Albert Pike Love ("I am the soul of the Universe")

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