An Ode to Love in honor of Valentines Day

This year I was at a loss of what to do or what to post about for Valentines Day. Do I focus on love and romance, do I write up and focus on the historical aspects of the legend of St. Valentine and or the mythology surrounding cupid, Daphne and Apollo, arrows, etc. when I was perusing my bookshelves and I came across a small cornblue colored, illustrated book, 'Love' by Shirley Pickles. I bought this way back in the 1990s at Shakespeare Bookstore in the bargain section. I hadn't leafed through it in ages but I remember the beautiful paintings matched with equally beautiful poetry and even sections of novels such as, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and of course Shakespeare thrown in for good measure! Every page smells of the scent of Elizabethan roses. I pulled the book out of its cover sleeve, opened it up and smelled the paper. Ah, that familiar aroma still everpresent and lingering; as I flipped through the pages, I saw my handwriting, my twenty-something self had written her name, 'Kimberly Eve!'
Here posted for your pleasure are the book pages, only the ones I chose which are favorites of mine. Take a look won't you and of course to each and every one of you, I hope February 14, 2013, brings you all the love, laughter and joy all season long!

~ Happy Valentines Day ~

This is the page explaining how every page is scented as an Elizabeth Rose

Tennyson's poem Summer Nights and Sleeping Beauty painted by Edward Frederick Brewtnall. 

 

The Hireling Shepherd by William Holman-Hunt, 1851 on the left and the poem is The Passionate Shepherd to His Love by Christopher Marlowe

 

Francesca and Paolo From Canto V from Inferno, Dante Alighieri and the painting The Ghosts of Paolo and Francesca Appear to Dante and Virgil by Ary Scheffer.

 The Explanation from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with a Georgian era painting. I don't know who painted it.

 

The Rose Did Caper by Emily Dickinson and a painting I don't know who painted. 

Love by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John William Waterhouse

Bouguereau's painting The First Kiss above Laura and Lizzie Asleep by Christina Rossetti

 Frank Bernard Dicksee - La Belle Dam Sans Merci with We'll Go No More A roving by Lord Byron

Cathy and Heathcliff from Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights with Gustave Klimt's painting Love

Modern Love by John Keats with Love by Fragonard

The Poor Teacher by Richard Redgrave is the painting and the text is A Solemn Passion from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre

Shakespeare Sonnet with painting I don't know

How Do I Love Thee (Portugese Sonnet) by Elizabeth Barrett Browning with a beautiful painting I don'tknow

Endymion by G.F. Watts with Divine Love Canto XXXIII Paradiso by Dante Alighieri

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