Annotations

Love: Meaning platonic love rather than romantic or sexual. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines platonic love as "love conceived by Plato as ascending from passion for the individual to contemplation of the universal and ideal" as well as "a close relationship between two persons in which sexual desire is nonexistent or has been suppressed or sublimated" (Merriam-Webster, 2010). The reflections of critic John Butler reflect this definition: "modern feminist critics have extolled Orinda because of her praise of female Platonic friendship and the interest aroused in scholars by female coteries in the seventeenth century, although some denigrate her because she did not encourage her relationships to go beyond the intellectual level" (Butler, 2007).

FRIENDSHIP'S MYSTERYS:
TO MY DEAREST LUCASIA

Come, my Lucasia, since we see
    That miracles men's faith do move,
By wonder and by prodigy
    To the dull, angry world let's prove
    There's a religion in our Love.            5

For though we were design'd t'agree,
    That fate no liberty destroys,
But our election is as free
    As Angells, who with greedy choice
    Are yet determin'd to their Joys.         10

Our hearts are doubled by their loss,
    Here mixture is addition grown;
We both diffuse and both engross:
    And we, whose minds are so much one,
    Never, yet ever, are alone.

We court our own captivity,
    Then Thrones more great and innocent:
`Twere banishment to be set free,
    Since we weare fetters whose intent
    Not bondage is, but Ornament.           20

Divided Joys are tedious found,
    And griefs united easyer grow:
We are our selves but by rebound,
    And all our titles shuffled so,
    Both Princes, and both subjects too.

Our hearts are mutuall victims lay'd,
    While they (such power in friendship ly's)
Are Altars, Priests, and off'rings made,
And each heart which thus kindly dy's,
Grows deathless by the sacrifise.            30