Featured Poem: Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight by Christopher Marlowe

This week's Featured Poem returns to the theme of love and fate with Christopher Marlowe's Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight?

Born in 1564, Christopher Marlowe was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. A contemporary of William Shakespeare's, Marlowe's work was more widely celebrated at the time and greatly influenced the former.

Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight discusses the influence of fate on our life choices, a regular theme in Shakespeare's writings.

Who Ever Loved That Loved Not at First Sight?

It lies not in our power to love or hate,
For will in us is overruled by fate.
When two are stripped, long ere the course begin,
We wish that one should love, the other win;

And one especially do we affect
Of two gold ingots, like in each respect:
The reason no man knows; let it suffice
What we behold is censured by our eyes.
Where both deliberate, the love is slight:
Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?

Christopher Marlowe