Love delights to struggle with difficulties and thrives the most hardily on the scantiest soil.

Washington Irving, Tales of The Alhambra

Love is such an enormous and ever-mutating force that it is impossible to truly comprehend. That incomprehension has kept poets in business for millennia. What could be a greater challenge for one who works with words than to use them to describe the indescribable?

When words fail us, metaphor needs to suffice. Love is a puzzle, a journey, a garden, a flame, a melody, a magnet, a beacon, a fortress, a mirror, a hawk with velvet claws. Love is a lock and a key, a disease and a cure, a seed and a flower.

Love is also an inspiration – a muse to artists in every medium. The picture at the top of this post is a Valentine that my father kept from his schoolboy days in the 1930s until his death in 1999.

There are too many songs about love to count. This one was written and sung by one of music’s greatest voices: Sam Cooke.

Cupid, draw back your bow
And let your arrow go
Straight to my lover's heart for me, for me
Cupid, please hear my cry
And let your arrow fly
Straight to my lover's heart for me
Now I don't mean to bother you but I'm in distress
There's danger of me losing all of my happiness
For I love a girl who doesn't know I exist
And this you can fix, so
Cupid, draw back your bow
And let your arrow go
Straight to my lover's heart for me
Nobody but me
Cupid, please hear my cry
And let your arrow fly
Straight to my lover's heart for me
Now, Cupid if your arrow make a love storm for me
I promise I will love her until eternity
I know between the two of us, her heart we can steal
Help me if you will, so
Cupid, draw back your bow
And let your arrow go
Straight to my lover's heart for me
Nobody but me
Cupid, please hear my cry
And let your arrow fly
Straight to my lover's heart for me
Now, Cupid, don't you hear me
Calling you? I need ya
Cupid, help me, I need you
Cupid, don't fail me