! ! Love's Grammar Book

I love you. That's it, really. all there is to say. sums it up. in a nutshell. the long and the short of it. the be-all and the end-all. I know what I mean; you know what I mean. more or less. we know what I mean. most of the time. But though love's sometimes best defined by silence it may be good to say a few good words since you, and love, have taught me love's grammar-book: I love 'love'. though love as noun is difficult to define. I love love as an adjective: love's.. just lovely, isn't it? But most of all I love love as verb. and this I know: this my love's active voice: I love. (you) . I loved you. How well I remember. I have loved you. I'm so grateful for that. I shall love you. That I promise. and when all is done, I'll be proud to remember that I shall have loved you; and that we shall have loved. And in love's passive voice, I'm so blessed that I am loved; rejoice in the hope that I shall be loved and promise that you shall be loved. I'll always be blessed that I have been loved. and that I can say you shall have been loved (forever) . Then there are love's moods as they're called in grammar: the indicative - I love you; do you love me? the exciting imperative mood: 'Love me, do - I promise I'll be true...' or better, 'Love me! Now! '; the subjunctive mood which is rather subtler in other languages: 'Don't leave me, please'; 'May we love each other till we die...'; 'If only you were to love me as much as I love you..' And then, those other parts of speech that few of us get around to sorting out but all lurking there under 'amo' in the Latin grammar-book of love: The perfect infinitive: 'It is better - to have loved - and lost - than not -to have loved -at all'; that great feeling called future infinitive: to be about to love; and that dizzy future infinitive passive: to be about to be loved; the gerund: 'Oh the loving and the kissing and the kissing and the loving...'; that cautious supine: 'in order to love...'; the passive imperative - the parents' wish (with qualifications) : 'let her be loved'... and that loaded gerundive: 'fit to be loved'... All of which, I hope, leaves you in that state curiously undefined by grammar - a sort of active gerundive: 'fit to love' - to love love's grammar-book in full for love conquers all, it's said, even a hatred of grammar.