Chapter LOVE to Loves of the Angels of L by Brewer's Readers Handbook

(To do justice to this subject would require several pages, and all that can be done here is to give a few brief hints and examples.)

Love will Find out the Way, a lyric inserted by Percy in his Reliques, series iii. bk. iii. 3.

(The Constant Maid, reset by T. B., and printed in 1661, is called Love will Find out the Way.)

(See Love Laughs at Locksmiths, in the Appendix.

Love’s Labour’s Lost. Ferdinand king of Navarre, with three lords named Biron, Dumain, and Longaville, agreed to spend three years in study, during which time no woman was to approach the court. Scarcely had they signed the compact, when the princess of France, attended by Rosaline, Maria, and Katharine, besought an interview respecting certain debts said to be due from the king of France to the king of Navarre. The four gentlemen fell in love with the four ladies: the king with the princess, Biron with Rosaline, Longaville with Maria, and Dumain with Katharine. In order to carry their suits, the four gentlemen, disguised as Muscovites, presented themselves before the ladies; but the ladies, being warned of the masquerade, disguised themselves also, so that the gentlemen in every case addressed the wrong lady. However, it was at length arranged that the suits should be deferred for twelve months and a day; and if, at the expiration of that time, they remained of the same mind, the matter should be taken into serious consideration.—Shakespeare: Love’s Labour’s Lost (1594).

Love’s White Star, the planet Venus, which is silvery white.

Till every daisy slept, and Love’s white star
Beamed thro’ the thickened cedar in the dusk.
   —Tennyson: The Gardener’s Daughter.

Loves of the Angels, the stories of three angels, in verse, by T. Moore (1822). The stories are founded on the Eastern tale of Harût and Marût, and the rabbinical fictions of the loves of Uzziel and Shamchazai.

(1) The first angel fell in love with Lea, whom he saw bathing. She returned love for love, but his love was carnal, hers heavenly. He loved the woman, she loved the angel. One day, the angel told her the spell-word which opens the gates of heaven. She pronounced it, and rose through the air into paradise, while the angel became imbruted, being no longer an angel of light, but “of the earth, earthy.”

(2) The second angel was Rubi, one of the seraphs. He fell in love with Liris, who asked him to come in all his celestial glory. He did so; and she, rushing into his arms, was burnt to death; but the kiss she gave him became a brand on his face for ever. (See Semele, who was destroyed by the effulgence of Jupiter.)

(3) The third angel was Zaraph, who loved Nama. It was Nama’s desire to love without control, and to love holily; but as she fixed her love on a creature, and not on the Creator, both she and Zaraph were doomed to live among the things that perish, till this mortal is swallowed up of immortality, when Nama and Zaraph will be admitted into the realms of everlasting love.