Meditations X.21

The earth is in love with showers and the majestic sky is in love.³² And the Universe is in love with making whatever has to be. To the Universe I say: Together with thee I will be in love. Is it not a way we have of speaking, to say, This or that loves to be so?

• 32.Euripides, Fragment 890. After σεμνός Euripides has οὐρανὸς πληρούμενος Ὄμβρου πεσεῖν εἰς γαῖαν Ἀφροδίτης ὕπο. Compare Aeschylus’s Danaids, Fragment 41, imitated by Shelley in his Love’s Philosophy.

  The Greek of Euripides, in translation: “the majestic sky, filled with rain, loves to fall upon the earth, by the power of Aphrodite.” Aeschylus’s Danaids is a lost play; Shelley’s “Love’s Philosophy” opens, “The fountains mingle with the river / And the rivers with the ocean.”