The Definition of Love - Andrew Marvell

Marvell goes all metaphysical on us in this poem, employing several abstract and complex metaphors.  He and his beloved are, for instance, like two parallel lines, or like the two poles on the globe.  Fate will not allow them to meet, because their loves are too perfect.  (Their coming together would quite literally destroy the world, it seems.)  Metaphysical poetry may be extremely hard to understand, but it has the virtue of being creative and often fresh in its very oddity.  After all, metaphors from the sciences -- geography, math, alchemy, etc. -- are not exactly the most obvious choices when it comes to describing love and romance.  Just read slowly.  ;)

The Definition of Love

My Love is of a birth as rare
    As 'tis, for object, strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair,
    Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
    Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble hope could ne'er have flown,
    But vainly flapped its tinsel wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
    Where my extended soul is fixed;
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
    And always crowds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous eye does see
    Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
    And her tyrannic power depose.

And therefore her decrees of steel
    Us as the distant poles have placed,
(Though Love's whole world on us doth wheel),
    Not by themselves to be embraced,

Unless the giddy heaven fall,
    And earth some new convulsion tear.
And, us to join, the world should all
    Be cramp'd into a planisphere.

As lines, so love's oblique, may well
    Themselves in every angle greet:
But ours, so truly parallel,
    Though infinite, can never meet.

Therefore the love which us doth bind,
    But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
    And opposition of the stars.