Venus, when her son was lost,_x000D_ _x000D_ Cried him up and down the coast,_x000D_ _x000D_ In hamlets, palaces, and parks,_x000D_ _x000D_ And told the truant by his marks,-_x000D_ _x000D_ Golden curls, and quiver, and bow.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the deep emotional bond between a mother and her child, showcasing the lengths a mother will go to find her loved one.
In this quote, Ralph Waldo Emerson captures the essence of maternal love and the desperation that comes with losing a child. The imagery of Venus, the goddess of love, searching for her son along various landscapes highlights the universal nature of a mother’s love, illustrating both the pain of loss and the hope of reunion. The details of the child's golden curls and attributes emphasize the personal connection and unique identity that makes the search all the more poignant.
In practice
In a speech at a parenting seminar to emphasize the importance of maternal love and commitment.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
Looking at them now, thought Jim, you'd never believe they weren't in love with each other, and not with a hopeless, doomed obsession like poor Isabel Meredith. This was what love ought to be like: playful and passionate and teasing, and dangerous, too, with sharp intelligence in it.
For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
Love and nonattachment are the basis of true generosity.
I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself.
Later, her first intense, serious love affair, yes then she'd lost something more tangible, if undefinable: her heart? her independence? her control of, definition of, self? That first true loss, the furious bafflement of it. And never again quite so assured, confident.
Love is beauty, consciousness is trust. One of the deepest feminine pleasures is when a man stands full, present, and unreactive in the midst of his woman's emotional storms. When he stays present with her, and loves her through the layers of wildness and closure, then she feels his trustability, and she can relax.
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