AUGUST 423 



Here is one more example of the many forms love 

 takes — perhaps the noblest and the best: renunciation, 

 no matter why or wherefor, but for duty's sake. It is 

 one of Mrs. Browning's ' Sonnets from the Portuguese' : 



Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand 



Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore, 



Alone upon the threshold of my door 

 Of individual life, I shall command 

 The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand 



Serenely in the sunshine as before, 



Without the sense of that which I forbore — 

 Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land 

 Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine 



With pulses that beat double. What I do 

 And what I dream include thee, as the wine 



Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue 

 God for myself, He hears that name of thine 



And sees within my eyes the tears of two. 



Tennyson's two lines everlastingly contain the true 

 test : 



Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with 



might — 

 Smote the chord of Self, that — trembling — pass'd in music out 



of sight. 



And now, to wind up the definitions of love, I will 

 quote from two clever modern novels. Lucas Malet, in 

 ' The Wages of Sin,' attempts to describe the little god, 

 who, we are told, still has something of the sea from 

 which his mother, Venus, rose : 



' Love is quiet and subtle and fearless ; yet he comes 

 softly and silently, stealing up without observation ; 

 and at first we laugh at his pretty face, which is the face 

 of a merry earthly child — but his hands, when we take 

 them, grasp like hands of iron, and his strength is the 

 strength of a giant, and his heart is as the heart of a 

 tyrant. And he gives us to drink of a cup in which 



