Soft maid, should I forsake you,
Abandoning your fecund bosom to loneliness,
May many be the days that I see no mendicants,
To whom I may do kindly deeds . (Kur. 137) |
While the pleasure of love is intense, there arises Polycrates' fear. Polycrates was a king to whom everything seemed to go so well that he lived in dread lest some evil might befall him. To lovers too in their idyllic lives, the possibility of separation is a constant submerged source of fear; that their love might have an abrupt end, that separation might come, that death might them part. Believers in the other life have a pledge that they will be united once again in the next life (Kur. 49). If because of reluctance of parents or of brothers and sisters the hero is unable to marry the maid of his love, he will still have hope that this undying love will outlive death and maintain its constancy even through the next life: Fear not, my soul.
If now I obtain her not, all is not lost;
My love for her, whose black and curly tresses waft a scent
Like the breeze from valiant Ori's3 forest groves,
Will like today know no break or loss,
But through the Hereafter endure. (Kur. 89) |
Love's Analysis The analysis of love in these poems and of its nature is made evident in short phrases and expressions and laconic similes. It would not do to expatiate on a theme which is to be understood and not described. Love is described as a sickness, as a longing, as a bond, as a fire, as a fever. During this sickness, the moon, which is supposed to be cold and to exhale coolness, seems to emanate a heat that tortures the beloved. 'How do I love him?' asks one poet, and in lines which remind one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet replies: Wider than the earth,
Higher than the heavens,
And deeper than the ocean depths
Is my love for that region's lor
Where the kurinci of the dark-hued branch
Flowers on his hillsides making larger honey hives. (Kur. 3) |
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3 A warrior chief of great renown. |