Give All to Love

21 years ago today, I married the love of my life, my best friend, my partner in crime. As with any marriage, we’ve had times that were good and times that were more difficult, but never once have I regretted the choice we made, to marry our fortunes together.

21 years. Our marriage is now old enough to drink. I keep telling people that, and no one thinks it’s funny but me. Oh well.

Our coffee table has a glass top, and drawers inside that can display treasures. We have books in both drawers. One side is Jefferson’s Letters, and is open to a piece titled, Bastille Day. We have a fondness for Bastille Day, as we were in Paris on our honeymoon on Bastille Day in 1993. The other side is Essays, Poems, Addresses, by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book is open to this poem, Give All to Love. The book shares the drawer with a single rose from my wedding bouquet.

Give All To Love

Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good fame,
Plans, credit, and the muse;
Nothing refuse.

‘Tis a brave master,
Let it have scope,
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope;
High and more high,
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent;
But ’tis a god,
Knows its own path,
And the outlets of the sky.
‘Tis not for the mean,
It requireth courage stout,
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending;
Such ’twill reward,
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.

Leave all for love;—
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, for ever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
Vague shadow of surmise,
Flits across her bosom young
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free,
Do not thou detain a hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.

Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Tho’ her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive,
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.