Trouble In Love—Why Is There So Much of It?

"A Red, Red Rose" Shows What Love Really Is

A poem I care for very much is Robert Burns'
"A Red, Red Rose," written in 1794. In it is something every woman needs to know about love.

        A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve's like a red, red rose,
That's newly sprung in June:
O my Luve's like the melodie,
That's sweetly play'd in tune!

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear,

And the rocks melt wi' the sun;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o' life shall run.

And fare-thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel, a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

In these musical lines there is passionate feeling about a person that is both intimate and wide. Burns is saying that his love is related to other things in the world. She is fresh like a newly sprung red rose; and like a melodie that's sweetly played in tune. He is not saying, as contemporary magazines do, "my love exists to praise me, making me glorious, more important than anything else." He has large feeling for a particular person and for the world at the same time. This has within it the answer to the trouble about love, because in the poem the loved person is not seen in a separate, isolated place away from the rest of the world but as related to it—and this relation is cherished.

Many years ago, in the Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry Class, taught by Ellen Reiss, I wrote about the first line "O my Luve's like a red, red rose," and Miss Reiss spoke to me so deeply about the meaning of this poem itself, and one of the biggest questions of my life—the difference between what I showed outwardly, or how I looked, and what I really felt inside, which had made for so much trouble in love. She asked:

Do you think you want to put together appearance and depth?

I have seen that these things can go together, and this fact represents a deep hope in every woman—that how she appears visually can stand for who she really is, the depth of her thought, including when she is with a man. I am very grateful that in my marriage, It's really me who my husband is knowing—that when we speak and when we are close, I don't have to pretend and feel like a fraud. I love Aesthetic Realism for making this possible. I know from my own life that a woman can feel passionate lasting love for a man when her purpose is to know him truly as a means of liking the world. Then she can feel what Robert Burns describes in his poem,

So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:

I'm very grateful to be in the midst of this grand study!

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