One pain is lessened by another’s anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.

He oft finds med'cine, who his griefe imparts;
But double griefs afflict concealing harts,
As raging flames who striveth to supresse.

But double griefs afflict concealing hearts,
As raging flames who striveth to suppress.

The pair were, in truth, but the ashes of their former fires. To the hot sorrow of the previous night had succeeded heaviness; it seemed as if nothing could kindle either of them to fervour of sensation any more.

To ease another’s heartache is to forget one’s own.

Shared pain is lessened.
Shared joy is increased.

Shared joy is increased;
Shared pain is lessened.

This is joy's bonfire, then, where love's strong arts
Make of so noble individual parts
One fire of four inflaming eyes, and of two loving hearts.

And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.

aquel en quien bulle un pensamiento sobre otro pensamiento, se extravía, porque el fuego del uno ablanda al otro.»

The dove descending breaks the air
With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre-
To be redeemed from fire by fire.

Who then devised the torment? Love.
Love is the unfamiliar Name
Behind the hands that wove
The intolerable shirt of flame
Which human power cannot remove.
We only live, only suspire
Consumed by either fire or fire.

I wish to go beyond the fire that burns me.

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

One withers, another grows.