a Marguerite plucks the petals of a marguerite, muttering "he
loves me--he loves me not," her heart flutters in momentary anguish
with every "not," till the next petal soothes it again.

I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe;
Under love's heavy burden do I sink,

wails Romeo; and again:

Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O anything, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

* * * * *

Love is a smoke raised with the fume of sighs;
Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears;
What is it else? a madness most discreet,
A choking gall and a preserving sweet.

In commenting on Romeo, who in his love for Rosaline indulges in
emotion for emotion's sake, and "stimulates his fancy with the
sought-out phrases, the curious antitheses of the amorous dialect of
the period," Dowden writes:

"Mrs. Jameson has noticed that in _All's Well that Ends
Well_ (I., 180-89), Helena mockingly reproduces this style
of amorous antithesis. Helena, who lives so effectively in
the world of fact, is contemptuous toward all unreality and
affectation."

Now, it is quite true that expressions like "cold fire" and "sick
health" sound unreal and affected to sober minds, and it is also true
that many poets have exercised their emulous ingenuity in inventing
such antitheses just for the fun of the thing and because it has been
the fashion to do so. Nevertheless, with all their artificiality, they
were hinting at an emotional phenomenon which actually exists.
Romantic love is in reality a state of mind in which cold and heat may
and do alternate so rapidly that "cold fire" seems the only proper
expression to apply to such a mixed feeling. It is literally true
that, as Bailey sang, "the sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love;"
literally true that "the sweets of love are washed with tears," as
Carew wrote, or, as H.K. White expressed it, "'Tis painful, though
'tis sweet to love." A man who has actually experienced the feeling of
uncertain love sees nothing unreal or affected in Tennyson's

The cruel madness of love
The honey of poisoned flowers,

or in Drayton's

'Tis nothing to be plagued in hell
But thus in heaven tormented,

or in Dry