"Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition" - Alexander Smith

I remember one Valentine's day a few years ago when I was still in college. Since I'm a huge slacker, I was single at the time - but rather than sitting at home staring at the walls feeling sorry for myself, I decided to stop being such a bum and bring some Valentine's joy into the lives of some of the single ladies in my ward. I went to Sam's club and bought enough chocolate to feed a small army of single women, and went door to door bestowing boxes of chocolates and reciting poetry - like some strange love child of Cupid and Santa.
And so although it's a little impossible to deliver chocolate via blog - I can continue the tradition with a couple of my favorite poems. So here's a little reason to hope for everyone else who's sitting at home alone tonight...and a little reason to thank God for those who are lucky enough to find themselves in the arms of a lover.

Sonnet CXVI

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

--William Shakespeare

And perhaps my all-time favorite poem:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

-- e. e. cummings

Have a very happy Valentine's Day!