FEMININEREFLECTIONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 182, 22 October 1927, Page 20 (Supplement)

FEMININEREFLECTIONS

Is Love Worth While?

“I Love Very Lightly Now in Self Defence”

“I OVE is enough, though the world be a-waning.” So -wrote L William Morris nearly eighty years ago. Those were the days of sentiment, and the days, too, of leisure, before the great god Hustle had made slaves of us, when a man, it seemed, had the time to live for his love, and the energy left to die for it; when he even had time, too, to make poetry about it.

TT is unlikely that our generation will -*• leave behind it a record of any great love story, such as in the past made history, of any great lovers such as Anthony, and Dante, and Heloise, and Helen of Troy, and the Brownings. From all appearances romantic love is going out of fashion, that passion has been “under-proofed,” like whisky, and sentiment concentrated into tabloid form to suit our present hurried

habit of living. Man has lost the fire that prompted him to make wars and tourneys, to face death and disaster to prove his love. He proves it now—and it is by no means an ignoble or unheroic way—by catching a most depressing train, twice daily, t.o and from his garden suburb, and putting by his hard-earned pennies for a life insurance policy. PRESENT-DAY MATERIALISM The enforced materialism of pres-ent-day life has knocked most of the glamour out of love, inevitably, and, I think, perhaps desirably. For certainly love, the love that is “a trouble to the mind, a tempest everlasting,” plays the very deuce, not only with one’s own life, but very often also with the lives of other unoffending, defenceless people. We live nowadays in too crowded a community to be able to indulge any very great emotion without hurting others. To some few people love is a genuine inspiration, a genuine spur; to most alas! it has merely the ephemeral exhiliration of a heady wine. If one studies the lives of great men, one notices that they were rarely great lovers in the real sense. They felt the love-urge, of course, sometimes very strongly and very often, and they gratified it, but they did not let it interfere with their real lives. To the man or woman who has work to do in the world love may be a comfort, a consolation, or even a pastime, but unless he or she takes heed the whole admirable edifice may be swept away by the tidal madness of an overwhelming love. THE PROBLEM OF VALUES. All this may sound very prosaic, very material, but the great problem of life is the problem of values. If love runs smoothly, under happy, worthy circumstances, hurting no one, and, if it lasts, it is indubitably the most wonderful, the most complete happiness in the world, and a beacon in dark places, worth, if needs be, the sacrifice of ambition, convenience and all things material. But how rarely it fulfils all these conditions, and how often, out of the wreck, nothing is left but some shattered Jives and a handful of lost illusions. For always, it would seem, .there is something that gets in the way of loving, of giving oneself to love, something that breaks some commandment, written or unwritten. Those of us Who think, who have a strong sense of responsibility, are very often afraid of love. Love, when it gets us in its grip, is such a mightily relentless force, and we do not feel ourselves strong enough, or big enough, to cope with it. To encourage it is like creating a Frankenstein that in time may develop volition of its own, and annihilate us, its creators. Love, too, has so many obligations that we may know we have not the right or the power to fulfil. If it takes us unawares, we do our best; at any rate, not to let it hurt others, but we do not seek it, we do not desire it. I speak, of course, of we ordinary mortals, weak, harassed creatures, who are not free, who are hampered already by ties and obligation, and by the imperfections of our own natures; not of the rare, untrammelled person without responsibilities, whose life is his own to make or break. A POET’S PHILOSOPHY A certain poetess, who, in her day, rumour has it, loved much, in later life summed up her own philosophy: “ . . . And I, this little while ere I go hence, Love very lightly now. in selfdefence!” I cannot help sympathising with her, who had suffered much, who had learnt the charm of the little loves, the pretty, graceful things that hurt no one, oneself or others, the loves that laugh, that add beauty and poetry to the rather dull prose of life. Few of us are great in ourselves, and the greatness of love may take from us more than it gives us. We are not made most of us, to live on dizzy heights; we find more lasting happiness in the pleasant valleys. And yet, though we may find love not worth our while, we shall probably continue to theorise with about the same result as the poetess I have referred to, who certainly did not live up to her rhymed theories since she eventually killed herself for love's sweet sake! For whether or not worth while, the world without love would be a very dull place.

HUNTLY LIBRARY CHANGE OF QUARTERS Acting on the contractor’s advice, the books and documents belonging to the library were not shifted to the Huntly Town Hall when that building was first opened, owing to the moist plaster, but next month will probably find the library installed in its new and permanent home. It may, however, be necessary to cull a number of volumes, because many are fit for the scrap heap.