Love in the Spring

The most magical time of each year is fast approaching as the days grow longer and the sun becomes brighter. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth, to some good angel leave the rest; For Time will teach thee soon the truth, there are no birds in last year’s nest!”

In some European countries lovers place locks in strategic places with their names engraved on them – and throw away the key.

At Aphrodite we have designed a Love in the Spring event that begins in early February and is designed to celebrate the imminent coming of new life and love all around us. Knowing that love takes form in all things beautiful and heightens our senses, we have curated a collection of beauty designed by creative spirits who manifest beauty in their work. They are artists, artisans, jewellers and fashion designers expressing the coming of spring with vibrant colours, shapes and forms and objects d’art that symbolize your love on occasions such as Valentine’s Day.

Saint Valentine himself dates back to 270 A.D. when he defied the Roman Empire by providing sacraments such as marriage which at the time was outlawed. In the high Middle Ages during the time of Geoffrey Chaucer St. Valentines Day became associated with romantic love.

While we celebrate romantic love we also recognize the famous words of the Russian mystic Anne-Sophie Swetchine, born in 1782 who declared that “To love deeply in one direction makes us more loving in all others.”

To show our love we are planning some special events to bring early signs of spring to our community of friends and those not yet friends.

After all Aphrodite is the Goddess of Love!

“There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved. It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.”
Charles Langbridge Morgan

Tuesday, February 12 at 7:00 p.m.

Love in the Spring Art Exhibition Opening

Our art  gallery  features new works by visual artists in the theme of Love in the Spring. It’s a wonderful show – not to be missed!

“Love’s gentle spring doth always fresh remain.”
  William Shakespeare

Starting Monday, February 4

Valentines Day Gifts – Out of the Ordinary

We  will introduce a selection of gifts: handmade chocolate truffles, lusciously coloured jewellery, lacy lingerie, silk scarves and embellishments and handmade greeting cards. This selection has been carefully curated to delight your senses and present beautiful gifts that cannot be found elsewhere. Our packaging will be sublime. Men are very welcome to find that special gift!

FAMOUS POEMS OF LOVE

To complement our event is a selection from some of the great poets of our time; contemporary and classical.

“sweet spring is your
time is my time is our                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there’s nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love”

E. E. Cummings

Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors–
No–yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever–or else swoon to death

John Keats

Love Is

Love is…
Love is feeling cold in the back of vans
Love is a fanclub with only two fans
Love is walking holding paintstained hands
Love is.
Love is fish and chips on winter nights
Love is blankets full of strange delights
Love is when you don’t put out the light
Love is
Love is the presents in Christmas shops
Love is when you’re feeling Top of the Pops
Love is what happens when the music stops
Love is
Love is white panties lying all forlorn
Love is pink nightdresses still slightly warm
Love is when you have to leave at dawn
Love is
Love is you and love is me
Love is prison and love is free
Love’s what’s there when you are away from me
Love is…                                          

Adrian Henri

How Do I Love Thee

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 everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

BIOGRAPHIES OF POETS REFERENCED ABOVE

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow : (1807 – 1882)

Known for his poetry for the masses American poet Longfellow became the most popular poet of his time. His lyric poems often presented stories of mythology and legend and were known for their musicality.

William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

An English poet and playwright considered to be the greatest writer in the English language. He is known internationally with his writings translated into every major language and his plays are performed worldwide more often than any other playwright.

Charles Langbridge Morgan (1894 –1958)

He was born in England to Welsh parentage and became a well known playwright and novelist who describes his main themes as “Art. Love and Death”

Anne Sophie Swetchine (1782 – 1857)  

Anne Sophie Swetchine  was a Russion mystic, born in Moscow and famous for her salon in Paris that was considered remarkable for its high courtesy and intellectuality. She was known for her “fervent and enlightened Catholicism” that took the form of a rational and intellectualized form of faith and made her a great influence on the French Catholic community.

Edward Estlin Cummings (1894 – 1962)

Edward Estlin Cummings was popularly known as E. E. Cummings, with the abbreviated form of his name often written by others in lowercase letters as e.e. cummings was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright In his work, Cummings experimented radically with form, punctuation, spelling and syntax, abandoning traditional techniques and structures to create a new, highly idiosyncratic means of poetic expression. He attained great popularity, especially among young readers, for the simplicity of his language, his playful mode and his attention to subjects such as war and sex.

John Keats (1795 – 1821)

John Keats was an English romantic poet. In his 26 short years Keats left a legacy that has made him the most beloved of all English poets. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature.

Adrian Henri (1932 – 2000)

Adrian Henri was a British poet and painter best remembered as the founder of poetry-rock group the Liverpool Scene.  Along with his fellow Liverpool poets, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, he brought poetry to a new generation in their 1967 anthology, ‘The Mersey Sound’.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 –1861)

Browning had the advantage of a  good education, not given to most Victorian women in England. She blossomed as a poet and found love with fellow writer, Robert Browning. The opening lines to this romantic love poem are often quoted; ‘how do I love thee, let me count the ways’ She became on of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era.