It is said the tradition of Valentine’s Day began because this was the date birds began to choose their mates. An early reference in print to Valentine’s Day is found in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Parliament of Fowls” in 1831: For this was Saint Valentine’s day, when every bird of every kind comes to this place to choose his mate.

Here are some random thoughts that touch me offered on this special day to honor those who loved before us and those who love now.

Over ten years ago at an estate auction in Arkansas I bought a beautiful old Valentine along with its envelope in a frame. The two cents in stamps are postmarked February 14, 1896 or exactly one hundred and sixteen years ago from today.

While the sender and the recipient are almost certainly no longer here, the loving and kind gesture of the sender lives on. Through the sentiment of the card and the care I and others have taken of it, the wish is here today for me to share. The outside of the card is at the start of this blog and on the inside is found:

Not sunlight in its prime,
Not moonlight’s gentle ray’s
Is half so fair as love
which brightens
day by day.

Here are three favorite quotes about love from the movies that bring the warmth of love to my heart when I read them:

My heart, it’s like my chest can barely contain it, like it doesn’t belong to me anymore, it belongs to you. If you wanted it, I’d wish for nothing in exchange, no gifts, no goods, no demonstrations of devotion – nothing but knowing you love me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine. “Stardust”

I feel like you are the reward for everything I did right in my life. “Then She Found Me”

What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for, and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same – only love.” “Don Juan DeMarco”

One of the most famous love stories of the last two hundred years is that of poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning.  The opening line Elizabeth wrote for Robert in the forty-third “Sonnet to the Portuguese” is widely known and the “Sonnets…” is one of my absolute favorite works of poetry:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old grief’s, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,–I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!–and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

A few lines from the thirty-eighth sonnet:
First time he kissed me, he but only kissed
The fingers of this hand wherewith I write;
And ever since, it grew more clean and white,
With sanctifying sweetness, did precede
The third upon my lips was folded down
In perfect, purple state; since when, indeed,
I have been proud and said, “My love, my own.”

And from the thirty-ninth:
I think of thee!–my thoughts do twine and bud
About thee, as wild vines, about a tree,
Put out broad leaves, and soon there’s naught to see
Except the straggling green which hides the wood.

For the hapless romantic spirit of my soul and the joy in my heart, I am very grateful this Saint Valentine’s Day for life, for love and the insight to appreciate both.

The rose is red, the violet’s blue,
The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,
And Fortune said it should be you.
From 1792 English nursery Rhyme book
“Gammer Gurton’s Garland” by Joseph Ritson