Reflections on Valentines Day

Earlier this week I did a post on my reflections on Valentines on the Project 44 blog. First time I was being a guest blogger those I could not understand why someone would want my pedestrian writing on their blog. I also hear I could have been hard on the ladies. For those who missed it on the Project 44 blog, click on the image to the link to Project 44 and leave your comments there (or here if you prefer).

Fire and Ice

Recently while chatting to a colleague about relationships, he mentioned that he is not in a relationship because he has not met a woman who shares in his tastes or is at his intellectual level. He went on to say that he hopes to one day meet a woman who shares in his hobbies and interests so that in future he will not get bored with or of her. This got me thinking about my own relationship and realized how different I am in some aspects to my wife. This reminded me of a poem I studied in college, Fire and Ice, by Edmund Spenser. OK, I know that interpretations are varied, and some will claim that it is about unrequited love, but the good thing with me is that at times I choose to interpret things the way I want to. My interpretation (I recall, contested bitterly by students and the teacher then) is that opposites can live together. So here is the poem, and let me know how you'd interpret it!

My love is like to ice, and I to fire:
how comes it then that this her cold so great
is not dissolv'd through my so hot desire,
but harder grows, the more I her entreat?

Or how comes it that my exceeding heat
is not delayed by her heart frozen cold,
but that I burn much more in boiling sweat,
and feel my flames augmented manifold?

What more miraculous thing may be told
that fire, which all thing melts, should harden ice:
and ice which is congealed with senseless cold,
should kindle fire by wonderful device?

Such is the pow'r of love in gentle mind
that it can alter all the course of kind.