True love in this differs from gold and clay,
That to divide is not to take away.
Love is like understanding that grows bright
Gazing on many truths.... Narrow
The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates,
The life that wears, the spirit that creates
One object and one form, and builds thereby
A sepulchre for its eternity!"
The difficulties in reducing this charming theory of love to practice
are well exemplified in Shelley's own life. He ran away with his first
wife not because she inspired any uncontrollable passion, but because
she declared she was a victim of domestic oppression and threw herself
upon him for protection. Nevertheless, when he discovered that his
best friend was making love to her, in spite of his free-love
principles, he was very seriously annoyed. When he presently abandoned
her, feeling a spiritual affinity in another direction, she drowned
herself in the Serpentine: and his second wife needed all her natural
sweetness and all her inherited philosophy to reconcile her to the
waves of Platonic enthusiasm for other ladies which periodically swept
the too sensitive heart of her husband. Free love would not, then,
secure freedom from complications; it would not remove the present
occasion for jealousy, reproaches, tragedies, and the dragging of a
lengthening chain.
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