My gift to you...instead of chocolates.

This is Tully. Here's a poem of which I'm a fan. I'll save my commentary for the comment thread. I'd really like to see what reflections will come from Gino's readers, who are probably more experienced than I in matters of love. EDIT: Perhaps it's easier if you see my comment on the blog itself rather than having to flip to the comments. It will, then, follow the poem.

The Clod and the Pebble
by William Blake

"Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these meters meet:

"Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

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What I find surprising here is that the clod of clay that has been trodden takes up a vision of love that we would consider more romantic and less cynical than that of the pebble in the brook. When we are in our most pain, trodden by experience, we cling all the more to idealism and altruistic visions of human nature, because we are trodden while we are still soft. When we are pebbles in a brook, which I take to be relatively peaceful and safe from the hazards of the trodden land, we need no such comfort, or can find ample satisfaction in a more egoistic vision of love.

According to the pebble, Love seeks Self to please--that is, it seeks to please the self isolated from the other...the delight is there on love's account, and the beloved is sought to accompany love. I hesitate to say "merely to accompany love" because this needn't be a cynical conclusion. The pebble has distance on the pains of experience, and so can conclude that love seeks to please the Self. On account of its distance, the pebble could be wrong.

On account of its lack of distance the clay could be wrong. More likely, there is no right or wrong answer because the answer is so dependent upon whether hell is the foundation out of which heaven is built, or visa versa. Neither is hell to be wicked or villainous in the conventional sense. Hell is that which shakes up the moral order of heaven--the order of comfort. To discomfort the other, however comfortable may be that other with one, is to create hell in heaven's despite. From the brook, without having suffered the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune", we want to love more than to be loved...we want to shake the other to his or her core, and to remain as passionate as ever without being shaken oneself, is that not the ideal?

But for the clod of clay, love must hold out as a source of comfort--as giving--as selfless, giving "ease" and "creating heaven in hell's despair. Notice the prevalent is, for the clay, hell, not heaven. Heaven is that which can be made only to one already thrown into hell. The pebble in the brook is not in hell, but in heaven, where only "Hosanna" is sung until the unmitigated madness of hell is indeed our only hope. Whether our revolution upon the other is good or bad is perhaps all-too-irrelevant.

Both are right about love. Love can bring the greatest comfort to one who needs to be loved--the clay. Love can bring the greatest discomfort to one who doesn't need to be loved and the greatest pleasure to one who needs to love. To appreciate at this moment both Loves for what they are requires that we be both trodden and untrodden at once--perhaps the distant suffering of the solitary sage...but in his solitude does he not become the pebble? The sage must know more than his sagacity: He must know friendship, and only then will he know Love.

Happy Valentines Day!