Words To Get You In The Mood For Love
With Valentine’s Day coming up, stir your heart with wholesome words of love. Whether you’ll be celebrating your love for your partner, friends, family or pets this Wednesday, we’ve got books to have you swooning. Read on to discover amorous sonnets, poems and quotes that explore all things love.
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Aquatic love?
Musings on the relationship between love and the ocean.
‘A symbol of the subconscious mind, the sea has always ebbed and flowed. While filled with fear, danger and death, it also stirs unspoken longings for secret lovers, unbridled lust, and yearnings for another life in the bejewelled palaces of the sea. As people stare off into the curved horizon, disappearing as a watery pathway to the unknown, they dream of far-off shores and distant lands. The sea always offered an answer to the dreary lives of many who felt their lives on the land offered little more than tilling the soil.’
From The Treasury of Folklore: Seas & Rivers by Dee Dee Chainey and Willow Winsham | £12.99
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Victorian friendships
A writing from Oscar Wilde in July 1893 of friends who wanted him to accompany them to Paris.
‘…they say one wears flannels and straw hats and dines in the Bois, but, of course, I have no money, as usual, and can’t go. Besides I want to see you. It is really absurd. I can’t live without you. You are so dear, so wonderful. I think of you all day long, and miss your grace, your boyish beauty, the bright sword play of your wit, the delicate fancy of your genius, so surprising always in its sudden swallow-flights towards north and south, towards sun or moon – and, above all, you yourself…London is a desert without your dainty feet, and all the buttonholes have turned to weeds: Nettles and hemlock are ‘the only wear’. Write me a line, and take all my love – now and for ever… ‘
From The Illustrated letters of Oscar Wilde by Juliet Gardiner | £16.99
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And Victorian Valentine’s
Extract from Sonnet for the 14th of February
No popular respect will I omit
To do thee honor on this happy day,
When every loyal lover tasks his wit
His simple truth in studious rhymes to pay,
And to his mistress dear his hopes convey.
Rather thou knowest I would still outrun
All calendars with Love’s,—whose date alway
Thy bright eyes govern better than the Sun,—
For with thy favor was my life begun;
And still I reckon on from smiles to smiles,
And not by summers, for I thrive on none
But those thy cheerful countenance complies:
Oh! if it be to choose and call thee mine,
Love, thou art every day my Valentine.
Thomas Hood (1799–1845)
From A Poem to Read Aloud Every Day of The Year by Liz Ison| £25.00
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Love in a Cold Climate
Extract from Sonnet
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art –
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors –
No – yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever – or else swoon to death.
John Keats (1775–1821)
From A Nature Poem for Every Winter Evening by Jane McMorland Hunter | £14.99
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The way to the heart is through the stomach…
Extract fromToast by Nigel Slater.
‘It is impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you. People’s failings, even major ones such as when they make you wear short trousers to school, fall into insignificance as your teeth break through the rough, toasted crust and sink into the doughy cushion of white bread underneath. Once the warm, salty butter hits your tongue, you are smitten. Putty in their hands.’
From Bedside Companion for Food Lovers by Jane McMorland Hunter | £22.95
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The season for self-love
Extract from from Lisa Azarmi’s Becoming Oral-Borla.
Love is all there is. It is why you are here, to
love and be loved. But first, feel what it is to
love yourself. Self-love starts with being kind
and treating yourself with respect. To love
yourself completely; that’s the hardest part.
Every moment you doubt yourself is wasted,
don’t throw away a single second, for now, is all
you have. Think upon this, look deep into your
heart and start by unconditionally loving you.
From An Apothecary of Art by Ravenous Butterflies | £18.99
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We hope these snippets of love have got you in the Valentine’s Day spirit. All titles are available via our website along with all good bookstores.
