The Full Text of “The Definition of Love”
1My love is of a birth as rare
2As 'tis for object strange and high;
3It was begotten by Despair
4Upon Impossibility.
5Magnanimous Despair alone
6Could show me so divine a thing
7Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,
8But vainly flapp'd its tinsel wing.
9And yet I quickly might arrive
10Where my extended soul is fixt,
11But Fate does iron wedges drive,
12And always crowds itself betwixt.
13For Fate with jealous eye does see
14Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
15Their union would her ruin be,
16And her tyrannic pow'r depose.
17And therefore her decrees of steel
18Us as the distant poles have plac'd,
19(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)
20Not by themselves to be embrac'd;
21Unless the giddy heaven fall,
22And earth some new convulsion tear;
23And, us to join, the world should all
24Be cramp'd into a planisphere.
25As lines, so loves oblique may well
26Themselves in every angle greet;
27But ours so truly parallel,
28Though infinite, can never meet.
29Therefore the love which us doth bind,
30But Fate so enviously debars,
31Is the conjunction of the mind,
32And opposition of the stars.
The Full Text of “The Definition of Love”
1My love is of a birth as rare
2As 'tis for object strange and high;
3It was begotten by Despair
4Upon Impossibility.
5Magnanimous Despair alone
6Could show me so divine a thing
7Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,
8But vainly flapp'd its tinsel wing.
9And yet I quickly might arrive
10Where my extended soul is fixt,
11But Fate does iron wedges drive,
12And always crowds itself betwixt.
13For Fate with jealous eye does see
14Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
15Their union would her ruin be,
16And her tyrannic pow'r depose.
17And therefore her decrees of steel
18Us as the distant poles have plac'd,
19(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)
20Not by themselves to be embrac'd;
21Unless the giddy heaven fall,
22And earth some new convulsion tear;
23And, us to join, the world should all
24Be cramp'd into a planisphere.
25As lines, so loves oblique may well
26Themselves in every angle greet;
27But ours so truly parallel,
28Though infinite, can never meet.
29Therefore the love which us doth bind,
30But Fate so enviously debars,
31Is the conjunction of the mind,
32And opposition of the stars.
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“The Definition of Love” Introduction
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Andrew Marvell's "The Definition of Love" suggests that the greatest love is an impossible one. The poem's speaker and a beloved can't be together, but by going on loving each other in spite of distance and hopelessness, they achieve a love the speaker imagines in terms of mathematical perfection. Like two parallel lines, the lovers are exactly matched in their feelings—and like two parallel lines, they can never touch. "The Definition of Love" first appeared in the posthumous 1681 collection Miscellaneous Poems.
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“The Definition of Love” Summary
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My love's origins are as unusual and grand as the object of my affections is unlikely. My love's father was Despair, and its mother was Impossibility.
Only generous Despair could reveal a love so glorious to me. Hope could never have gotten me there; it would just have feebly flapped its fragile, glittery little wings.
Yet I could reach my beloved—the spot where my soul is anchored—in mere moments, if only Fate didn't keep trying to sever our connection, shoving itself between us to keep us apart.
For Fate looks jealously on two profound loves and doesn't let them come together. If two such loves could meet, they'd destroy Fate, knocking her from her cruel throne.
Thus, Fate has decreed that my beloved and I should be as permanently separate as the North and South Poles (though the love between us is so deep that it shoots right through the world, like the globe's axis). Like the poles, we will never be able to touch each other.
The only way we might ever come together is if the heavens themselves fell from their place and the earth were shaken by some vast earthquake—a cataclysm that flattened the whole world into a two-dimensional map of itself.
Less perfect loves, like curving lines of latitude, can meet and form angles. But our loves are so perfectly parallel to each other that they can reach out forever—but will never touch.
And so, the love that binds us together, but that Fate forbids, is a matter of two perfectly aligned minds opposed by the stars of destiny.
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“The Definition of Love” Themes
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The Power and Beauty of Hopeless Love
The speaker of "The Definition of Love" is grappling with a hopeless love. This person's feelings for a beloved were "begotten by Despair / Upon Impossibility," meaning despair and impossibility were this love's father and mother. Yet the fact that the speaker can beloved can never be together is precisely what makes this love particularly "rare" (that is, both unusual and rich). In this poem, then, love that persists without hope is more powerful and more perfect than consummated love could ever be.
Though the speaker never explains precisely why this love is hopeless, it's clear that there's no getting around it: Fate herself (personified as a "jealous" tyrant queen) stymies the would-be couple at every turn, driving "iron wedges" between them. The pair, then, is left to love each other without hope, as permanently and definitionally separate from each other as the earth's two "distant poles."
But it's precisely this distance that makes their love profound. In the conceit of the lovers as poles, their love becomes the axis of a "whole world of love": crossing the otherwise unbridgeable gap between them, love becomes the imaginary central line around which the world spins. That can only happen because they can't be together. Similarly, the speaker suggests, their loves for each other are so perfect they're like a pair of parallel lines: identical in every particular, and for that very reason unable to touch.
In this vision, impossible love is purest and most powerful because it persists in spite of a lack of love's natural reward: togetherness. On the one hand, that's an idealistic, romantic view, suggesting that the most perfect loves transcend reward, or are their own reward. On the other, it might simply be realistic, or even a little cynical, implying that a love that can't be acted on is always going to be more "perfect" than a love lived out by two flawed human beings. Either way, this poem's visions of geometrical perfection describe a love only made more profound and more lovely by its impossibility. A "definition" of love—in the sense of "limit" or "boundary"—also becomes its "definition," the conditions that define what love is in its purest form.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Definition of Love”
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Lines 1-4
My love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high;
It was begotten by Despair
Upon Impossibility."The Definition of Love" begins with a "rare" birth—that is, a birth that's both unusual and glorious. The speaker's love (meaning not an actual beloved, but an emotion) was born from the conjunction of two unlikely parents: its father is "Despair," and its mother is "Impossibility."
In other words, this love was doomed from the start. From the very moment of its birth to those strange personified parents, this was a love that could never be realized; it was the kind of impossible love that might drive one to despair.
But this impossibility, the speaker will go on to say, is exactly what makes this love so powerful. The certainty that the speaker can never be with a beloved proves that love's intensity—and sharpens it. Despair doesn't kill the speaker's love, but creates it.
The speaker will reveal the "Definition of Love" in more than one sense, then. The poem will define love here as one defines any word: by showing what it is and what it means. But it will also explore its definition in the sense of its limitation, the boundaries that define it. This paradoxical brain-twister of a poem will find love in the place where the infinite meets the impossible.
Despite its complex ideas, "The Definition of Love" uses a deceptively simple form. Its eight quatrains (or four-line stanzas) are rhymed ABAB and written in iambic tetrameter (lines of four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "My love | is of | a birth | as rare"). This shape, straightforward as a folk song's, will frame a lofty, cerebral vision of impossible love.
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Lines 5-8
Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing
Where feeble Hope could ne'er have flown,
But vainly flapp'd its tinsel wing. -
Lines 9-12
And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended soul is fixt,
But Fate does iron wedges drive,
And always crowds itself betwixt. -
Lines 13-16
For Fate with jealous eye does see
Two perfect loves, nor lets them close;
Their union would her ruin be,
And her tyrannic pow'r depose. -
Lines 17-20
And therefore her decrees of steel
Us as the distant poles have plac'd,
(Though love's whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac'd; -
Lines 21-24
Unless the giddy heaven fall,
And earth some new convulsion tear;
And, us to join, the world should all
Be cramp'd into a planisphere. -
Lines 25-28
As lines, so loves oblique may well
Themselves in every angle greet;
But ours so truly parallel,
Though infinite, can never meet. -
Lines 29-32
Therefore the love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debars,
Is the conjunction of the mind,
And opposition of the stars.
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“The Definition of Love” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Conceit
This poem's speaker captures impossible love in the cerebral conceit (an elaborate extended metaphor) of "love's whole world" as a globe.
On this globe, the speaker and beloved are doomed to be opposite poles. In this metaphor, the pair can by definition never meet—at least, not unless some huge cataclysm shakes the heavens and the earth and collapses the world into a flat "planisphere," a map upon which the poles might be artificially made to touch.
But it's precisely because the lovers are as distant as the poles that their love can become the axis around which "love's whole world" spins: their love shoots right through the globe between them. This unlikely image uses the language of geography and cartography to depict relationship and connection across an otherwise unbridgeable distance. The poles, here, are linked because they can't be together; their opposition is also what unites them.
Developing the globe conceit further, the speaker and beloved from the poles to the lines of latitude. Like these imaginary lines—which run around the earth in perfectly parallel belts—the lovers' feelings for each other are matched, identical, and "infinite." The problem with parallel lines, of course, is that they "can never meet." This mathematical vision of love suggests that impossibility creates perfection, and perfection creates impossibility:
- On the one hand, this conceit romantically suggests that the most perfect love is one that can never be fulfilled. The fact that the pair go on loving each other in spite of their love's impossibility just goes to show how deep and pure their feelings are.
- On the other, there's a hint here that never getting to consummate one's love might also keep it perfect. More "oblique," slanted, imperfect loves might create an "angle," the speaker suggests—that is, they might touch, the lovers might come together. But they're also not so beautifully matched. The implication might be that the only perfect love is one that never gets lived out; any real-life relationship eventually destroys fantasies of perfection.
The poem's images of "conjunction" and "opposition" paint a picture of impossible love as a problem of inarguable geometry: these are just the facts. As parallel lines can never touch, as a pole is defined by being exactly opposite another pole, so these two lovers are forever aligned and forever separate.
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Personification
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Pun
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Alliteration
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"The Definition of Love" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Rare
- Magnanimous
- Its tinsel wing
- Fixt
- Betwixt
- Close
- Giddy
- Convulsion
- Planisphere
- Oblique
- Debars
- Conjunction
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"Rare" here might mean both "unusual" and "lofty" or "fine."
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Definition of Love”
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Form
"The Definition of Love" uses a neat, straightforward form. Written in eight quatrains (or four-line stanzas) with a steady iambic rhythm and a simple ABAB rhyme scheme, the poem in some ways looks and sounds as tidy as a folk song.
This deceptively simple form contains some elaborate, cerebral ideas about what the "definition of love" might be. The speaker's heady conceit of "two perfect loves" as mirrored parallel lines or opposite poles, unable to touch each other precisely because they're perfectly matched and perfectly aligned, expresses heartbreak with mathematical elegance.
However, perhaps the poem's straightforward shape also chimes with the speaker's "Despair," based on the certainty that this couple can never be together. That fact seems to the speaker as simple and clear as a neatly rhymed quatrain.
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Meter
"The Definition of Love" is written in iambic tetrameter. That means that each line uses four iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "My love." Here's how that sounds in lines 1-2:
My love | is of | a birth | as rare
As 'tis | for ob- | ject strange | and high;For the most part, this meter ticks along steadily. But in a couple of places, Marvell introduces variations. When Fate gets between the lovers in lines 17-20, for instance, the meter scrambles and tumbles:
And there- | fore her | decrees | of steel
Us as | the dis- | tant poles | have plac'd,
(Though love's | whole world | on us | doth wheel)
Not by | themselves | to be | embrac'd;Lines 18 and 20 here both begin with a trochee—the opposite foot of an iamb, with a DUM-da rhythm. Pulling that strong stress forward makes those lines seem to stumble, as if tripping over the impediments Fate has put between the lovers. Line 19's powerful spondee (a foot with a DUM-DUM rhythm) on "whole world," meanwhile, strikes through the middle of the line just as the poem describes the speaker's "extended soul" striking through the center of the earth.
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Rhyme Scheme
"The Definition of Love" uses a steady, neat ABAB rhyme scheme. While that pattern holds true all the way through, some of the rhymes are slant—like the surprising chime between tear (in the sense of "rip," not the sense of "eye-water") and planisphere in the sixth stanza. (Note, though, that some rhymes that sound slant to a modern reader, like high and Impossibility, might well have been perfect in Marvell's 17th-century English accent.)
Like the poem's steady meter, these mostly straightforward rhymes form a striking contrast with elevated thoughts. This poem explains hopeless love through elaborate mathematical metaphor, but does so in an unostentatious form. Perhaps that reflects how simple the speaker feels this predicament to be: the speaker is deeply in love yet can never be with their beloved, and those are just the plain, terrible facts.
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“The Definition of Love” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a resigned, despairing lover. From the very first, the speaker knew their love was born of "Despair" and "Impossibility": even when first falling in love, the speaker knew that they'd never get to be with the object of their affections.
The speaker finds consolation in the fact that this impossible love is also a perfect love. The couple's feelings for each other are as perfectly matched, as mathematically true, as two parallel lines. The thing about parallel lines is, they can never intersect: impossibility is part and parcel of this love's perfection.
That conceit might make the speaker come across as terribly romantic, or as rather cynical:
- On the one hand, this is someone with a vision of themselves and their beloved as equal and stalwart. Their love is in no way diminished by the fact that they can't ever be together; in fact, their love's impossibility reveals and enhances its perfection and strength.
- On the other, the poem's mathematical metaphor might suggest that perfect love and impossible love are one and the same. Lesser loves, the speaker says, are those which aren't perfectly parallel; imperfect matching allows lines to meet, creating an "angle" where they intersect. The implication might be that consummated love always falls away from a fantasy of perfection, sooner or later.
Either way (or both ways!), this lover has the labyrinthine brain of a Metaphysical poet.
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“The Definition of Love” Setting
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While there's no clear setting in "The Definition of Love," the speaker's metaphors present the reader with images of stars and planets: emotion on a cosmic scale. Doomed never to be with a beloved, the speaker pictures the two of them as opposite poles of "love's whole world": the love between them forms this globe's axis, but only because those poles can never meet.
Such images suggest that the poem's literal setting, in some sense, doesn't even matter to the speaker, who feels this predicament as one of planetary vastness. Wherever the speaker goes, they;ll still be that lonely pole, forever bound to and separate from their beloved.
The poem's form, however, places this story in a specific moment of literary history. With its conceits of the lovers as poles and parallel lines, this cerebral poem clearly belongs to the early 17th century and the world of the Metaphysical poets, writers who often built poems of deep feeling on a scaffold of complex and witty thought.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Definition of Love”
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Literary Context
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a famously elusive writer. In his political commitments and his poetry alike, he never stuck to one tradition or another: he's not quite a Cavalier poet and not quite a Metaphysical poet, though his work shows the marks and influences of both of those traditions.
For instance, Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" is the gold standard of carpe diem poems (that is, poems in which a speaker tries to convince a lady to sleep with him, a theme for which the royalist Cavalier poets were famous). But if Marvell was a Cavalier, he wasn't a committed one. He was quick to turn his back on the cause when the Puritanical government of Oliver Cromwell rose to power—and then to cheerfully become a monarchist again when King Charles II returned from exile and resumed his throne.
"The Definition of Love," meanwhile, shows Marvell at his most Metaphysical. The Metaphysical poets never called themselves by that name: the later writer Samuel Johnson coined the term, using it to describe a set of 17th-century English writers who wrote witty, passionate, intricate poetry about love and God. Johnson didn't mean the term flatteringly, but it stuck, and is now used to describe luminaries including John Donne, George Herbert, and Thomas Traherne. Along the lines of these contemporaries, Marvell here explores matters of the heart through cerebral conceits.
Like many of Marvell's poems, "The Definition of Love" appeared posthumously in 1681, when a woman who claimed to be Marvell's wife (but was probably his hard-up housekeeper) published an assortment of his manuscripts in the hopes of collecting some royalties. If she hadn't, some of the world's finest and most famous poems might have been lost.
Historical Context
Andrew Marvell lived through one of the most dramatic episodes in English history: the English Civil War. In this earthshaking conflict, the Roundheads, led by Oliver Cromwell, rose up against the Cavaliers, forces loyal to King Charles I and to the monarchy in general. Cromwell's Roundheads argued for increased Parliamentary power as a curb on kingly tyranny.
This clash came to a dramatic climax in 1649 when Cromwell's triumphant forces tried, convicted, and beheaded Charles I for treason. This execution was a huge shock to a country whose recent monarchs had proclaimed the "divine right of kings," the idea that kings and queens were appointed by God.
Cromwell's stand against such ideas would start to look ironic when he began to exercise dictatorial control in his role as "Lord Protector." His power and popularity soon waned, and after he died, England invited Charles I's exiled son Charles II back to the throne, ushering in an era of luxury, elegance, and wit.
Marvell navigated these dangerous years by swearing his allegiance to whichever side happened to be dominant at the moment—a tricky strategy that he pulled off through brilliance, usefulness, and fast talking. If he held deeper political convictions than his actions suggest, they're hard to trace in his poetry. Though the tone and subject matter of his work often make him sound a lot like a Cavalier poet, he also wrote poems in praise of Cromwell and was close friends with the anti-monarchical John Milton, whom he rescued from prison after Charles II resumed the throne.
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More “The Definition of Love” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Learn more about Marvell's life and work via the Poetry Foundation.
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Portraits of Marvell — See some portraits of Marvell as a young man via London's National Portrait Gallery.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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Marvell's Legacy — Read a review of a recent Marvell biography that discusses his literary afterlife.
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Miscellaneous Poems — Take a look at images from a first edition of Marvell's Miscellaneous Poems—the posthumous poetry a woman who claimed to be his wife (but was likely his housekeeper) salvaged from his papers.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Andrew Marvell
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