It has always been a tough task to define love. It is a kind of expression which varies from person to person. We have already seen and studied the Platonic form of love. We have noticed that purity and divinity is associated with the Platonic version of love. Poets like Vidyapati are often known as a love poet. His concept of love is versatile and it is one of the reasons that he has been referred as a versatile genius by so many scholars. His love is not limited up to the relationship of a man with a woman. His poems on spirituality are also unique and he hardly talks about religion in spirituality. Relationship between a lover and his beloved has always been a very important section in the chapters associated with love. In this chapter I have tried to focus on almost all the important forms of love. We know that love has many faces and all the faces are dissimilar from each other. Basically there are four kinds of love and it has been affirmed by C.S.Lewis. he agrees that the four kinds of love exist in the world in the form of friendship, erotic, love of God, parents. This form of love encompasses all the kinds of problems and possibilities associated with love. There can be love between friends, children and parents, love of women for another women or men for men. Love between men and women are more classified. Above all can be love for God which is the ultimate source of happiness. It has been said earlier that it is very personal and the intensity of love changes or varies from person to person. In several forms of love which are stated above there can be several problems like the problems of possessiveness, sex, false sentimentality, pride, jealousy, or manners associated with love. When I say that even manners can be a problem in love I mean to say that mixing private life in public life or the vice-versa can create problem in day to day life affairs. To be formal during intimate moments can never be a good choice. It is also truly applicable to the public life. One of the very basic questions associated with love is related to its existence. Love is a gift or need? It can be a gift of life as well as the need of life. We cannot expect a beautiful life without love. Several scholars have agreed to a point that love can be a gift if it leads our life towards progress. This progress is again a dynamic word which is very subjective in nature. Love for divinity is certainly a gift as it always gives us an insight to purify our soul as well as the body. In Plato’s Symposium Socrates has recounted the doctrines of love. He says that these doctrines have been given to him by Diotima whom he considers as a wise woman. She affirms that love is evoked through beauty but the lover should accept it like stairs. It must travel from body to mind. Beauty is itself an idea or an image. It is not fixed but it keeps on changing. This is one of the reasons that love is never simple. Its understanding is very complex as it needs to be felt not to be understood. Beauty as an idea has the power to alienate the human soul. It seems that the human soul is in exile and there also the soul is searching for true love. The quest of true love is never fulfilled as love is a kind of idea which keeps on changing. This idea varies from person to person and it means that this world is full of unfulfilled love. This ideal beauty of the body and the mind revolves round the world and it is perceived through senses and thus it is far away from reality. It is distorted and distant and the reflections coming out of it is not permanent. Plotinus and different other Neo-Platonist have framed a new idea that all truth, goodness and beauty of the sensible world is a kind of radiation which is coming from the absolute power which we say God. Religious thinkers and scholars coming from the different sects of Christianity have affirmed that beauty and truth is God. Thus it is useful to quote the concept of a Platonic lover-
“The Platonic lover is irresistibly attracted to the bodily beauty of a beloved person, but reverses it as a sign of the spiritual beauty that it shares with all other beautiful bodies, and at the same time regards it as merely the lowest rung on a ladder that leads up from sensual desire to the pure contemplation of Heavenly Beauty in God.”1
This concept of Platonic love has been elaborated by different scholars and we can also find it in the writings of Petrarch, Dante and several other writers. It was a kind of fashion to write on the models of Platonic love during the age of renaissance. In Amoretti Spenser has written on similar themes of love and beauty which needs to be understood. Few lines of the poem are very important in this regard as Spenser writes-
“Men call you fayre, and you doe credit it….
But only that is permanent and free
From frayle corruption, that doth flesh ensew.
That is true beautie: that doth argue you
To be divine and borne of heavenly seed:
Derived from that fayre spirit, from whom al true
And perfect beauty did at first proceed.”2
This doctrine of love is very philosophical and religious. The modern concept of Platonic love is a drastic misconception as it means that there should not be any sexual gratification in love. The Romantic Poets like Shelley was also fascinated by the concept of platonic love. It is also correct that in modern period it has been misunderstood. Modern lover understands love but it is an irony that it cannot be understood. Modern concept of love stresses more on physicality “twice away from reality.”3 Similar to this we can say that love is not real but virtual. There are several forms of love which means that there is no any fixed physical appearance of love. It is an abstract idea which is always expressed through feelings and emotions. These emotions are perceived by the sensory organs so sensation is often associated with love and affinity. The role of the poet is to provide shape to such abstract ideas. G.Wilson Knight refers to Theseus speech in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s dream. He says that a poet’s pen should provide shape to the unknown things. His observations can be understood through the lines mentioned below-
“… the source of poetry is rooted in the otherness of mental or spiritual realities; these, however, are a nothing until mated with earthly shapes. Creation is thus born of a union between earth and heaven, the material and the spiritual.”4
Thus we can see the role of a poet is very clear but it is a very tough task. Poets are successful in giving shapes to the unknown things but these shapes are not permanent. John Donne is a kind of poet who is known best for his metaphysical conceits. In his poems we can find that the emotions like love are presented through the natural objects and different other images. In one of his poems entitled The Flea Donne has written that the flea, an insect is not merely an insect but it should be treated like a temple. It is a kind of marriage bed as it contains the blood of both the lover as well as the beloved. Here John Donne has tried to give shape to the abstract emotions like love. The Flea represents three lives as it contains blood of the three lives namely the lover, the beloved and the blood of itself. If a person is going to kill the flea he is going to commit three crimes all together. This kind of farfetched imagery of John Donne is very famous as it is unique. John Donne observes that-
“Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which though deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead.”5
The above lines clearly show that during the time of John Donne loss of maidenhood was considered as a shameful act. The union of the lover and the beloved was considered as a sinful act if it was performed before marriage. In The Flea Donne has tried to search the possibilities of the lover and the beloved to get unified. The Flea becomes a temple or the marriage bed for the poet. This poem has appealed a lot to several scholars as it brings forward some mystic ideas of John Donne. Here a lover can notice a world of infinite within the finite. This kind of ability can be noticed in the Romantic poets like William Blake. He was a kind of poet who practiced to write the song of innocence as well as experience. In his Auguries of Innocence he has written that –
“To see a world in a Grain of sand
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”6
These opening lines of the poem presents the mystic ideas of William Blake and it parallels the mysticism associated with John Donne. It is very unusual to find such connections between two poets of different age and attitude. The current topic is so interesting that different writers, poets or authors can be compared irrespective of their age and attitude. Time and era has witnessed that love is life and life is mystic in nature. So we cannot deny the association of mysticism with love. It has also been mentioned by different scholars that this kind of mysticism emphasizes man’s divinity which is innate. This is one of the greatest reasons that poets get inspired by the topics like love. Plato has also said in his Ion that poets are inspired by nature which reflects purity and divinity. Similar kind of purity and divinity can be seen in metaphysical poets. In the poems of John Donne we can find the sexual association between the lover and his beloved. The poet think that it is a way to achieve divinity. While performing the act of love the individuality of the lover and the beloved is lost and they become one. This unification of the lover and the beloved provides a kind of satisfaction where body and soul becomes one. It is not less than finding the ultimate source of divinity. Different critics have charged poets like John Donne, Andrew Marvell as poets who cares only for physical pleasure. They are sensual in nature and they also not care for morality. Love is a kind of subject which is divine and pure. The fact about divinity and purity is also not fixed. Purity and divinity associated with love is subjective in nature. It means that it varies from person to person. Romans believed that love cannot be purified without sex. In our Indian society it is a taboo to write over such issues and topics. Sexuality without love means body without soul. Romans also believed that love and sex is closely associated with each other and they cannot be studied separately. As far as morality is concerned then it is also right and doing material business with any form of human emotions is always immoral. Love is the heightened form of human emotion and we can attain divinity by the power of love. John Donne and Andrew Marvell are such kind of poets who advocates for such kind of purity and divinity which needs to be understood. A layman cannot understand the metaphysical poetry of John Donne but he can feel it. This is not simply sensuality or something which can be refereed as immoral. To understand this few lines from the poem The Extasie needs to be quoted. In this poem John Donne writes about the real feelings of love. In this poem Donne has tried to say that real, spiritual or pure love can exist only by the unification of souls through body. Thus physical love is a kind of way to attain the spiritual love. A Platonic lover is criticized by Donne because he cares only for the soul and not for the body. Excluding body and loving soul cannot provide us divinity because we are far away from satisfaction. One thing can be said about Platonic lovers that they find satisfaction only in loving souls but it cannot be applicable to all the lovers because we cannot separate body from the soul. If we try to separate the body from the soul then we are not going to provide justice both to the body as well as the soul so how can we satisfied only by the soul not by the body. Metaphysical poets tried to show such kind of realities because we cannot deny that their concept of love is based on real experiences. A body cannot leave the soul before death and love is a kind of experience which provides us knowledge of both body as well as the soul. For poets like John Donne a Platonic lover cannot be a true lover because he is blind to see the reality. The sexual fusion of the body and the soul strengthens the divinity associated with love. John Donne has compared bodies with planets and soul with angels. Both of them that is to say the body and the soul are dependent on each other and thus they cannot exist without each other. If body is the vehicle then the soul becomes its driver and it is the responsibility of the soul to activate the body. The medieval concept of the ecstasy is different from the ecstasy of Donne. In the medieval period ecstasy was considered as a state of trance in which the soul is separated from the body and after separation it meets with the divine God. In Christianity the term ecstasy means Holy Communion between the soul and the almighty. In John Donne it is very interesting to find out that he has combined both philosophy and religion. The result of this combination is his concept of love. It is noteworthy to see that when he talks about body he moves very far away from the concepts of Platonic love. He advocates that lovers are brought together only through body. We can find that this poem is a kind of argument advocating ways of love and readers are about to judge this philosophy of love. It is only the readers who can understand and judge the concept of love associated with poets like John Donne. There is eroticism in the poems of Donne and Marvell mixed with divinity. There are references of bed, pillow which suggests the art of physical love associated with lover and the beloved. This sexuality is refereed by the poet as asexual because they are mating for the propagation of love. For this purpose the poet has used the image of a plant which reproduces asexually. Violets are blooming as it is the perfect time of spring in which they can bloom. The image of violet symbolizes faithful love between the lovers. The setting is pastoral which means that the love is natural. The detailed description of the poem will be a kind of bias to the metaphysical love but few lines from the poem is worthy to be quoted here-
“Where, like a pillow on a bed
A pregnant bank swell’d up to rest
The violet’s reclining head,
Sat we too, one another’s best.
Our hands were firmly cemented.”7
Close reading of the poem can make us understand the deeper meaning of the context. To some readers the metaphysical aspect of love is mystical in nature. According to Caroline Spurgeon
“ mysticism is, in truth, a temper rather than a doctrine, an atmosphere rather than a system of philosophy.”8
This mysticism or atmosphere is related to all the poets who write on the subjects like love. While talking about the metaphysical concept of love it will be unfair if we exclude the poems of Andrew Marvell. To His Coy Mistress is a fantastic love poem. Here a nameless lover addresses his beloved who is also nameless. The lover stresses over a fact that he has not much time to love. He is mortal and thus a subject to decay so he persuades his beloved that they should not waste the time and start loving each other. This poem is based on the theory of carpe Diem which means grab the day. Time is not going to spare any one. Either it is an insect or an animal, king or slaves, man or woman, everyone who is born is a subject to death. The lover has not much time left. He wants to love his beloved as the time of death is approaching. The lover warns the beloved that nobody can escape death as it is a universal truth. If she is going to refuse him then all the sexual desires will burn into ashes. Desires must be fulfilled and satisfied. There is nothing wrong in loving each other. Finally the lover presents an argument that nothing is going to change if they are going to love each other. The sun is not going to change its place and if they are going to love each other then the time is also not going to stop but they can make the time pursue them. Some scholars have said that this lover is confused regarding sex. He tries to persuade his beloved by giving different logics and says-
“…But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity,…”9
Thus we can see that there is a thematic similarity between John Donne and Andrew Marvell. Both of them are best known for their philosophical love concepts. They are remembered as metaphysical poets. The form of love which Vidyapati talks about is different from these poets. Vidyapati is also a love poet and he has also written poems on sexuality. His ideas are platonic but he also talks about the beauty associated with the body. His poems are in fact more sensual then John Donne or Andrew Marvell. If we talk about love for spirituality then we can say that he is far ahead then Milton in terms of spirituality. His sensuality as well as spirituality proves that he was very far ahead of his contemporary poets. Coming generations are blessed to have such a kind of inspirational source in form of a love poet. His poems have been translated in various different languages. The poems of Vidyapati are often quoted and they are the most amazing poems of sensuality. Few lines from the translated version of his songs can be useful quoting here-
“Day by day her milk-breasts drew splendor.
Wider her hips grew, her middle more slender,
Love has enlarged her childlike gaze.
Yea, all grace of childhood and childhood’s ways
Fall from their thrones and take sweet flight.
Her breasts before were plums of light,
Golden oranges next and then
As bodiless love made bloom with pain…”10
The above quoted lines are taken from a love song and here Vidyapati has tried to throw some light over the love affair of a beloved. The physical beauty of the lady is far more expressive than any other poets. There are few scholars who have refereed Vidyapati as an obscene poet. If the poems of Vidyapati are obscene it means that we are biased for Platonic concept of love. There is nothing wrong in writing poems of love dedicated to a lover or a beloved. This kind of love is more realistic and expressive. These lines are melodious also and it can also be sung. In The Wisdom of Poetry Ezra Pound has tried to give a suitable definition of poetry. This definition is actually applicable to the functions of the poetry and is inspired by Dante where he says “melody which most doth draw…the soul into itself.” 11It means that after reading a true poem a reader is drowned into the words of the poet. This effect can be seen while reading the poems of all the sensual poets. Discussing only poems related to man and woman love affairs will be unfair as it is a very complex topic. The present chapter entitled Forms of Love encompasses all the explored and unexplored forms of love which exist in the society. It is a very tough but interesting task. We have seen the Platonic love, themes of Petrarchan sonnets and several other poems related to courtly love culture and among all those poems love remains at the centre. Apart from these love concepts we can also find poems dealing with love for the almighty. We cannot deny the existence of God but it is also right that nobody on this earth has seen God. It has been rightly said that God can be felt but it cannot be seen physically. In a normal love relationship it happens that when a lover loves his beloved he watches her physically but if someone cannot see his beloved is it possible for him to love her? For loving someone physical presence matters a lot but love for God can be an answer for this question. A devotee loves God more than his life but he is unable to see the almighty. His love is so real and so true that he presents himself to the almighty. Apart from this concept we have also seen the concept of Platonic love. It says that the presence of body hardly matters. Soul must be unified for platonic love but nobody has seen soul yet there is love for the soul. Similarly we have not seen God but we cannot deny the existence of God. John Milton has written Paradise Lost which is a kind of epic. It is said that Milton has tried to justify the action of God to the mankind. Milton loves writing spiritual poems. Love for God is not new and there are so many devotees who claim that they love God. Vidyapati has also written numerous poems addressing to the almighty. Love for God is also a form of love where we can see a very strong devotion. Poets like William Blake has said that Milton was supporting the devil’s party then a question arises that if he was supporting the devil’s party then how can he love the almighty? Blake has expressed this opinion about Milton because in Paradise Lost the character of Satan is heroically written. Satan possessed several grand qualities which proves that he is the hero which Milton has promoted. Shelley has also supported Blake and affirms that Satan is unmatchable in terms of heroic qualities. It is also correct that to oppose God the character of Satan must be strong. This can be one of the reasons that Milton has given heroic qualities to Satan. Actually Satan represents all the human beings who keep on fighting for their individuality and existence. Milton was a religious man and he followed the dictates of his religion minutely. He was a kind of person who tried to evaluate humanity in terms of religion. It is needless to doubt Milton’s love for God. The devotional songs written by Vidyapati also prove that a true devotee can see God. There are some special eyes through which a devotee can see the almighty. His love for God is unique as it is a kind of trust which is impossible to break. Moving ahead of Spiritual love we can find that among the poets of Elizabethan age William Shakespeare talks about male bonding. There can be a healthy relationship between a man and a woman but relationship between a man to the other man is very unusual. Shakespeare is in love with his friend and he says that in public they should not accept that they are lovers but in private they share a good time with each other. In public the poet refuses each other’s love because they are very much respected in the society. We can say that society plays a very crucial role in establishing a relationship between a lover and his beloved. We cannot deny that marriage is a kind of social contract which is signed by a husband as well as his wife. Love is a term which is very private in nature yet society acts as a check point to validate the love affair. This kind of validation or approval is directly linked with morality. It is also a fact that morality is not fixed and it is very tough to define it because it keeps on changing. For a lover it has been considered as immoral to love a girl who is already married to some another person. It is also equally applicable to a lady and if she is married she cannot long for a lover other than her husband. Thus society acts as a check point to manage a civilized colony. The term colony is negative as it hints to the practice of imperialism where we can find that a colony is treated like a slave. Thus there is master slave relationship but in a healthy relationship we cannot someone to be master or someone to be a slave. We have already seen that during courtly love tradition there was a kind of master slave relationship between a lover and his beloved. The lover blindly followed his beloved as if the beloved was his guiding star. Such kind of love can be seen in the poems like Astrophil and Stella written by Philip Sidney. It is an English sonnet sequence which has one hundred and eight sonnets. The word Stella is Latin which means star and in the poem Astrophil is a star lover. The beloved is acting like a star and she is respected a lot by the lover. Scholars have also agreed to a fact that this poem is autobiographical in nature. Sidney is Astrophil himself whereas Stella is his beloved Penelope Devereux. Both Sidney and Penelope were betrothed when Penelope was a child. The marriage was broken because of some reasons and later she was married to another man whose name was Lord Rich. This marriage was also not a perfect marriage and Penelope lived a very unhappy life after her marriage. The poet discovers her marriage to Lord Rich in thirty first to thirty third sonnets. Astrophil is in a condition where he cannot cease his love for Stella. She is already married to some other person yet Astrophil is not ready to accept it. It is a very painful condition where a lover understands he has lost his beloved but he cannot live without her. The felling can be understood in the songs and poems of Virah- Vedna written by Vidyapati where the beloved says that she cannot live without her lover. It is a kind of pain coming out of the separation between a lover and his beloved. In vidyapati we can find such emotions of Vipralambha Srngara in a very deeper way. Radha is feeling alone and impatient because she is not in a state to wait for her lover but here Astrophil cannot take it for granted that Stella has been married to some other man. Astrophil is going through a kind of agony and he still wishes that in any corner of her heart Stella could love him. Around the Sixtieth sonnet Stella begins to generate some love and affection for Astrophil and it is at this point the lover starts feeling satisfied. The love story starts moving ahead and now the interaction between the two seems real. He is no more an admirer of her physical beauty but now his love for Stella is turning to be Platonic. The affair becomes very problematic for both the lover and the beloved because she is married to another man whom the society has approved. Stella is in a condition where she cannot accept the love of Astrophil physically and thus from both the sides the love becomes Platonic in nature. The bodies are not united but the two souls recognize each other as wife and husband and here the society is also helpless. Love cannot be controlled by any institution but it can be understood and felt only by a lover and his beloved. Astrophil feels satisfied with this kind of bonding but later his physical desire for her begins to grow. He faila in limiting his love for Stella and now he wants her physically. He feels restless and all the time he is busy thinking about her. There is a kind of conflict between his mind and the body. His mind thinks that he can please his beloved by suppressing his own physical needs but his body is unable to accept such doctrines. There are eleven songs in Astrophil and Stella and in the second song the lover kisses her while she is not responding because she is sleeping. This kind of kiss is not less then physical violence because she was ready for it. Stella feels very unhappy and annoyed because of this action of Astrophil, but the lover is still not ready to suppress his desire. This first kiss breaks the trust of Stella and she is prompted to reject him. It is admitted by her that she loves him but she also agrees that their meeting has become problematic so they should not see each other. The relationship becomes very complicated and both of them are separated. Even after the separation they feel love for each other. In sonnet number ninety three the lover feels guilty and starts thinking that he has broken the trust of his beloved. This guilt gives us a hint that this lover is unhappy with himself and this love affair is going to end soon. Finally he is dismissed by Stella as a lover and Astrophil feels alienated yet he finds happiness in thinking that Stella is happy. In today’s society we cannot see easily such a kind of relationship between a lover and a beloved. Such kind of relationship is rarely found and the poet has given feelings to his words and the readers are moved a lot after reading such a kind of beautiful poem. The poem Loving in truth, and fain in verse is a beautiful poem from the volume Astrophil and Stella. Few lines from the poem can suggest us the feelings of the lover-
“ Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,-
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;”12
The above lines clearly show the intelligence of the poet. He wants his beloved to obtain some grace. It is a very common thing for a beloved to extract pleasure from the pain of her lover. To love someone dearly is a painful act and the lover feels satisfied in that pain. Such kind of beautiful poetry is a kind of inspiration for all the love poets. Such a kind of lovely writing can also be seen in Vidyapati. In the poems of Virah –Vedna we have already seen the frustration of the beloved who is separated from her lover. It projects the intensity of love which can be felt only by a true lover. Apart from this separation of love we can also see another kind of love where a lover assumes that her beloved is virtually standing in front of him. Such kind of love can be seen in the poems of W.B.Yeats. Among his poems the most valuable to me is Among School Children. This poem was written when Yeats visited a convent school in Ireland in 1926. In the poem the poet is moved to remember his early love, Maud Gonne. As the poet enters the school he is received by a nun and he is taken into different classrooms. The children are amazed to look the poet who is now a Sixty year old man. When the poet looks at the children then he suddenly starts remembering Maud Gonne, his beloved. He thinks that Maud Gonne too would have been a student like these children. He remembers a particular day when she had complained him about the trivial incidents of school life. The poet had listened to her calmly and he has also expressed his sympathy to her. The poem becomes very special because places become very important when we are reminded about a happy past. This too happens with the poet who has gone to inspect the school but in spite of inspecting the school he is reminded about his beloved. His love for Maud Gonne is so deeply rooted that he forgets his present role that he has come here to inspect the school. It proves that memory plays a very important role in our life as we may become happy or sad by remembering something associated with our past life. A girl is standing before the poet and the poet is visualizing Maud Gonne as a child. He is comparing the beauty and virtue of Maud Gonne with the girl who is standing before the poet. This sense of comparison can provide him satisfaction by thinking that in present life he is busy in thinking about his beloved. We are taken into surprise that suddenly the poet recalls Maud Gonne as an old lady. She is very old and weak even her cheeks are hollow. It seems to the poet that the old Maud Gonne has become so old that he has forgotten his own age. Suddenly he gains his consciousness and is reminded about the fact that he too is not a young man. He has also become older and weak. Once he was a very good looking guy but it is a fact that time and age spares none. Apart from all these forms of love the most interesting and appealing love is love for nature. Romantic poets like Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Byron were all nature poets. They were free minded and they also wrote poems which directly appeals to our senses. Poems like Tintern Abbey are one of the most beautiful poems written by William Wordsworth. In this poem Wordsworth says that once he had visited this place with his sister and now he has revisited this place. He is alone but remembers about the past. The poet writes –
“Of past existence- wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love- oh! With far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!”13
Wordsworth declares in the opening lines of this poem that this is his revisit to this place and he has revisited this place after five years. This place has become very special to him because memory of his sister is associated with this place. He mentions the object in his poem which he is seeing again but this time he is feeling lonely. Romantic poets like Keats and Shelley were also very inspirational and they have written very good poems. It is very noteworthy to find that Shelley and Keats were not much recognized during their whole life span. They were highly criticized by the neo-classical critics. It has been pointed out that-
“Shelley is depicting the fate of the romantic poet in the world of Eldon, Castlereagh and the quarterly review, as Milton that of the young Puritan poet in the world of laud and Strafford.”14
This statement has been made about Shelley because his style of writing was bitter at several times. His concept of love was very unique and it is rarely found in modern poets. He was shocked in believing that the death of Keats was not natural and it was fastened by the comments in the Quarterly review on Endymion. Graham Hough said that-
“Shelley ends with a Platonic or neoplatonic or Brahmanistic assertion that eternity alone is real, that the phenomenal world is an illusion, is Maya, a veil that hides us from the one true light.”15
Shelley loved Keats so much that he was greatly moved by his death. He believed that after death Keats became a part of universe and this kind of death can be seen as cosmic death. These all forms of love is a clear example of male bonding between two different poets. His poem Adonais is considered as a pastoral elegy which was written for John Keats in 1821. The opening lines of the poem says-
“I weep for Adonais- he is dead!
Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a
Head!”16
Although we can see that Shelley mourns for the loss of such a beautiful poet but Adonais has some optimistic tones. It has been called as the most personal poem. In the poems of Vidyapati we can also see the elements of male bonding which is very admirable. The poet loves Madhav as a person and feels inseparable with him. Scholars have argued that this kind of male bonding is not a true bonding because Madhav is God and the relationship established is between a devotee and his God. Love has many dimensions which has not been explored yet. It is the love which controls the worldly affairs. Even the cosmic affairs are controlled through some invisible force which is beyond our perception. We cannot give logics in the elements of love. Forms of love are numerous but all of them cannot be expressed because love is nothing but God itself.
NOTES AND REFERENCES
- Abrams,M.H, A Handbook of Literary Terms, Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009,New Delhi. p 226
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45190/amoretti-lxxix-men-call-you-fair
- Prasad,B, An Introduction To English Criticism, Macmillan India Ltd, New Delhi, 2007.p 2
- G.Wilson Knight, The Wheel of Fire: Essays in Interpretation of Shakespeare’s Sombre Tragedies, 1930, Oxford University Press, London.p8
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46467/the-flea
- Williams Oscar, Master Poems of the English Language, 1967, Washington Square Press, New York.p.370
- Grierson,J.C, Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century, 1921,Clarendon Press, Oxford.p17
- Spurgeon ,Caroline, Mysticism in English Literature, 1913, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge.p.2
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44688/to-his-coy-mistress
- Aurobindo Sri, Songs of Vidyapati, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publishers, Pondicherry,1956.p.5
- Eliot,T.S, Literary Essays of Ezra pound, Faber&Faber Press, London,1954.p.25
- https://www.poetryfoundation.org/…/astrophil-and-stella-1-loving-in-truth-and-fain-in…
- https://www.theguardian.com/…/william-wordsworth-lines-composed-a-few-miles-abo.
- Graham Hough, The Romantic Poets,B.I.Publications, New Delhi, 1980.p.146
- Ibid.p.47
- https://www.poemhunter.com › Poems › Adonais
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