| Never give all the heart
by William Butler Yeats
Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that’s lovely is
But a brief, dreamy, kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.
“Never give all the heart” by William Butler Yeats. Public Domain. (buy now) Today is Valentine's Day we celebrate a love story: One of the most famous literary couples met in July of 1918, when a young lieutenant stationed in Alabama went to a dance at the Montgomery Country Club. There he met a Southern belle named Zelda Sayre. She had gray eyes and reddish-gold hair; she was spirited and independent, from a good family. And she liked the lieutenant, who was small, blond, and handsome, and whose name was Scott Fitzgerald. They fell in love. But Zelda didn't want to commit to Scott. She had plenty of other suitors, and Scott had no money and no prospects. So Scott went back to his parents' house in St. Paul, Minnesota, determined to get a book published and win Zelda over. And he did. In September of 1919 the editor Maxwell Perkins convinced Scribner's to accept This Side of Paradise. When Fitzgerald found out, he proposed to Zelda and she accepted. For the next few months they wrote letters, anticipating their wedding in April of 1920, just eight days after the publication of This Side of Paradise. Eighty-nine years ago, in February of 1920, Zelda wrote to Scott: Darling Heart, our fairy tale is almost ended, and we're going to marry and live happily ever afterward just like the princess in her tower who worried you so much — and made me so very cross by her constant recurrence — I'm so sorry for all the times I've been mean and hateful — for all the miserable minutes I've caused you when we could have been so happy. You deserve so much — so very much — I think our life together will be like these last four days — and I do want to marry you — even if you do think I "dread" it — I wish you hadn't said that — I'm not afraid of anything. To be afraid a person has either to be a coward or very great and big. I am neither. Besides, I know you can take much better care of me than I can, and I'll always be very, very happy with you — except sometimes when we engage in our weekly debates — and even then I rather enjoy myself. They had a quiet wedding in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. Besides Scott and Zelda the only people there were Zelda's three sisters and their husbands and a friend of Scott's from Princeton. It was a short service, and Scott and Zelda left for the Biltmore Hotel. In marriage they were happy but also drove each other crazy. They were both jealous people and would do outrageous things to get each other's attention. And they both drank heavily. Zelda began to suffer nervous breakdowns and was in and out of hospitals and Scott was an alcoholic. But they stayed together until Scott's death in 1940. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald died in 1947, in North Carolina, when the hospital she was staying at caught fire. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.® | 