I’ve been thinking about unrequited love, and it’s depressin’ the hell out of me. I think I need some poetry on the subject. I’m sure y’all cultured folk could suggest something good.
I had a girl.
Her name was Stacy.
We were close as we could be.
- I was in love, & I was crazy -
I carved our initials in a tree.
I thought that soon we’d have our nuptials,
but Stacy soon grew tired of me.
Now we’re no longer a couple.
She left me here, in ex-Stacy.
You’d think that the relatively recent romantic poets such a Keats would do well on unrequited love, but when Keats set to writing on the effect unrequited love was having on him, it turned out that he was only feeling the symptoms of the onset of a case of the clap. So to give unrequited love the treatment it deserves, let’s look back further into the medieval romance tradition, where courtly love was idealized as being aristocratic, ritualisic, secret, adulterous, literary, and of course unrequited.
Andreas Capellanus put out a nice set of instructions on courtly love, which by its nature had to go unrequited. I leave to you to decide how tongue in cheek he was:
1.Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
2.He who is not jealous cannot love.
3.No one can be bound by a double love.
4.It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
5.That which a lover takes against his will of his beloved has no relish.
6.Boys do not love until they arrive at the age of maturity.
7.When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
8.No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
9.No one can love unless he is impelled by the persuasion of love.
10.Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.
11.It is not proper to love any woman whom one should be ashamed to seek to marry.
12.A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.
13.When made public love rarely endures.
14.The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
15.Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
16.When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
17.A new love puts to flight an old one.
18.Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
19.If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
20.A man in love is always apprehensive.
21.Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
22.Jealousy, and therefore love, are increased when one suspects his beloved.
23.He whom the thought of love vexes, eats and sleeps very little.
24.Every act of a lover ends with in the thought of his beloved.
25.A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
26.Love can deny nothing to love.
27.A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
28.A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.
29.A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
30.A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
31.Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.
But if it is verse you are after, some good old fashioned suffering from unrequited courtly love can be found in Geoffrey Chaucer:
*But I, my lyf and deeth, to yew obeye,
And with right buxom herte, hooly I preye,
As your moste plesure, so doth by me;
Wel lever is me liken yew and deye
Than for to anythyng or thynk or seye
That yew myghte offende in any tyme.
And therfor, swete, rewe on my peynes smerte,
And of your grace, graunteth me some drope;
For elles may me laste no blis ne hope,
Ne dwelle within my trouble careful herte. *
From A.E. Housman:
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard a wise man say,
“Give crowns and pounds and guineas
But not your heart away;
Give pearls away and rubies
But keep your fancy free.”
But I was one-and-twenty,
No use to talk to me.
When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.