On Love

I tend to resort to poetry when I'm feeling melancholy (usually for no particular reason), but today I am suffering writer's block and must be content to read the words instead. Perhaps this poem's most memorable recitation was from the film Sense and Sensibility, where Marianne quotes it to her sister: "Is love a fancy or a feeling...or a Ferras?" ;)

Is love a fancy, or a feeling? No.
It is immortal as immaculate Truth,
'Tis not a blossom shed as soon as youth,
Drops from the stem of life--for it will grow,
In barren regions, where no waters flow,
Nor rays of promise cheats the pensive gloom.
A darkling fire, faint hovering o'er a tomb,
That but itself and darkness nought doth show,
It is my love's being yet it cannot die,
Nor will it change, though all be changed beside;
Though fairest beauty be no longer fair,
Though vows be false, and faith itself deny,
Though sharp enjoyment be a suicide,
And hope a spectre in a ruin bare.

~ Sonnet VII, Hartley Coleridge