So I find every pleasant spot In which we two were wont to meet, The field, the chamber, and the street, For all is dark where thou art not
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep longing and sorrow in the absence of a loved one.
In this quote, Tennyson conveys the profound impact of love and loss. He reflects on the happy memories shared in various places with a loved one, yet he emphasizes the darkness and emptiness he feels in their absence, highlighting how love transforms even the simplest locations into meaningful spaces. The imagery evokes both nostalgia and heartache, illustrating the inseparable bond between love and place.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a memorial service to honor the memory of a loved one.
Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.
How many a father have I seen, A sober man, among his boys, Whose youth was full of foolish noise.
O Love! what hours were thine and mine, In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine!
Earth is dry to the centre,_x000D_ But spring, a new comer,_x000D_ A spring rich and strange,_x000D_ Shall make the winds blow_x000D_ Round and round,_x000D_ Thro' and thro',_x000D_ Here and there,_x000D_ Till the air_x000D_ And the ground_x000D_ Shall be fill'd with life anew.
O love, O fire! once he drew With one long kiss my whole soul through My lips, as sunlight drinketh dew.
But thy strong Hours indignant work’d their wills, And beat me down and marr’d and wasted me, And tho’ they could not end me, left me maim’d To dwell in presence of immortal youth, Immortal age beside immortal youth, And all I was, in ashes. - Tithonus
Farewell sweet earth and northern sky, for ever blest, since here did lie and here with lissom limbs did run beneath the Moon, beneath the Sun, Lúthien Tinúviel more fair than Mortal tongue can tell. Though all to ruin fell the world and were dissolved and backward hurled; unmade into the old abyss, yet were its making good, for this - the dusk, the dawn, the earth, the sea - that Lúthien for a time should be.
If cynicism and love lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, do we not sometimes fall in love in order to escape the debilitating cynicism to which we are prone? Is there not in every coup de foudre a certain willful exaggeration of the qualities of the beloved, an exaggeration which distracts us from our habitual pessimism and focuses our energies on someone in whom we can believe in a way we have never believed in ourselves?
Love is a force.... It is not a result; it is a cause. It is not a product; it produces.
There is no living with thee, nor without thee.
God's heart calls to our hearts, inviting us to come out of ourselves, to forsake our human certainties, to trust in him and, by following his example, to make ourselves a gift of unbounded love.
To love is to be transformed into what we love. To love God is therefore to be transformed into God.
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