𝑰 𝑳𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒅 𝒀𝒐𝒖 𝑭𝒊𝒓𝒔𝒕 🍓

Love, in all its profound beauty and unspoken depths, often carries more weight than words can express. In this video, I share Christina Rossetti’s “I Loved You First,” a tender exploration of devotion and the complexities of love (see below). Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) is renowned for her poetic mastery of emotions like longing and heartache, and in this poem, she captures the bittersweet essence of loving someone with all your heart, even when you are unsure if that love is reciprocated with the same intensity. As I reflect on this poem, I am reminded that love, whether acknowledged or not, is a gift that we offer from the heart. It is a personal reminder that even in the silence between two people, love has the power to shape and transform us. ♥️

I loved you first: but afterwards your love,
Outsoaring mine, sang such a loftier song
As drowned the friendly cooings of my dove.
Which owes the other most? My love was long,
And yours one moment seemed to wax more strong;
I loved and guessed at you, you construed me
And loved me for what might or might not be—
Nay, weights and measures do us both a wrong.
For verily love knows not “mine” or “thine”;
With separate “I” and “thou” free love has done,
For one is both and both are one in love:
Rich love knows nought of “thine that is not mine”;
Both have the strength and both the length thereof,
Both of us, of the love which makes us one.

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