My Love is of a birth as rare <br />As 'tis for object strange and high: <br />It was begotten by despair <br />Upon Impossibility. <br /> <br />Magnanimous Despair alone. <br />Could show me so divine a thing, <br />Where feeble Hope could ne'r have flown <br />But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing. <br /> <br />And yet I quickly might arrive <br />Where my extended Soul is fixt, <br />But Fate does Iron wedges drive, <br />And alwaies crouds it self betwixt. <br /> <br />For Fate with jealous Eye does see. <br />Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close: <br />Their union would her ruine be, <br />And her Tyrannick pow'r depose. <br /> <br />And therefore her Decrees of Steel <br />Us as the distant Poles have plac'd, <br />(Though Loves whole World on us doth wheel) <br />Not by themselves to be embrac'd. <br /> <br />Unless the giddy Heaven fall, <br />And Earth some new Convulsion tear; <br />And, us to joyn, the World should all <br />Be cramp'd into a Planisphere. <br /> <br />As Lines so Loves Oblique may well <br />Themselves in every Angle greet: <br />But ours so truly Paralel, <br />Though infinite can never meet. <br /> <br />Therefore the Love which us doth bind, <br />But Fate so enviously debarrs, <br />Is the Conjunction of the Mind, <br />And Opposition of the Stars.<br /><br />Andrew Marvell<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-definition-of-love/
