The love of man for woman and woman for man,
It is not often love....
When the married couple kiss do they drink the music of each
other’s souls,
Are they moved to unspeakable reverence and adoration,
Would they renounce the world for the good of the beloved?
No, kisses are become to them a routine and a duty:
They find each other’s bodies at midnight as they find breakfast
in the morning:
And they fill the idle hours with games, shows, rides and liquor,
All to escape from one another....
I have thoughts of a love that might be:
Of a love that is the tender caress of forehead and cheeks with
barely lingering hands:
Of a love that opens the skies at midnight for silent flight,
Flight far, with wings, in one another’s arms....
These lovers shall mean as much to each other as they mean to
themselves:
Their tenderness shall melt down irritations:
Their passion shall surcharge tasks with meaning....
Not alone shall the man find God in himself,
But in the beloved shall he find him, and in the sight of the
beloved shall he adore him....
--_Songs for the New Age._
That still remains the ideal. To the couple who have found such meaning
in each other, sexuality, as Havelock Ellis shows, becomes the art of
love, and the union is one of joy and mystery, revealing the greatness
of life.
The ideal of that sexuality remains also as Havelock Ellis states
it. As I have said several times, he divides the sexual act into the
forepleasure and the act itself. The forepleasure is a summarizing of
many of those things looked upon as infantile and perverse, but which,
as part of the art of love, become means of endearment and arousal, and
lead finally to the complete consummation.
It is well, even for those who have difficulty in the matter, to keep
this ideal before them as something finally capable of attainment.
For, while the various items of the forepleasure may become ends in
themselves, and this unavoidably because of the lack of development or
the person’s type, it should not be forgotten that things undeveloped
should finally be developed, so that marriage may become more complete
and love deeper.