It’s Passing Sweet, When True Hearts Meet

Saturday 21st July

But it breaks the heart, when true hearts part; Anthony Trollope again, one of the greatest of Victorian writers whose style was impeccable.  Trollope wrote like a machine, mechanically rising before dawn and in the quiet hours committing a few thousand words to paper every day, a feat I would struggle with, finding even this paltry daily blog of a few hundred words some sort of chore most days.  And I think he must have done precious little re-writing; without word processors and printers it would have been a pain anyway, I prefer to believe that the words just flowed like honey from the nib of his pen.  This little couplet was probably a country saying or proverb, which he liked to sprinkle his works with, but somehow it contains more honesty and common-sense than all the hundreds of pages that surround it. (Rachel Ray 1863, if you are interested).  Because it is truly passing sweet when true hearts meet, and the thought takes me that without love we are a very sorry species of animal indeed.  For all our technological achievements, for all our wonderful buildings, the Pyramids, Stonehenge and the Shard of glass, for all our wonderful works of art, for all the music written and sung, for the strength and endeavor of all the young athletes arriving by the coach-load in London at the moment; for all of that counts for nothing if we lack love.  That sweet moment when two hearts collide, when the rush of emotion overwhelms one and you fall into the arms of one you love; ah, nothing can compare with that.  And this most written of emotion, love, has hardly ever found better expression than the words of that couplet which are just perfect – It is passing sweet, when true hearts meet.  What poet could ever begin to match this simple country proverb.