By Richard K. Munro

(16) Puccini – La Bohème – Musetta’s Waltz – YouTube

My old battalion commander who shall remain nameless at this time once said to me “Why have one girl when you can have them all!”

I answered humbly I rather have one good one than 100 bad ones.

Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger,
You may see a stranger across a crowded room,
And somehow you know, you know even then,
That somehow you’ll see here again and again.

Some enchanted evening, someone may be laughing,
You may hear her laughing across a crowded room,
And night after night, as strange as it seems,
The sound of her laughter will sing in your dreams.
Who can explain it, who can tell you why?
Fools give you reasons, wise men never try.
-RICHARD RODGERS SOUTH PACIFIC

Is love at first sight possible? Do people really meet and in moments later know they have met someone special? Yes, I believe it. There is a lot of evidence for it! LOVE is very powerful. I believe it happens all the time when we least expect it. John Joseph Powell in the SECRET OF STAYING IN LOVE wrote:
“Do you believe in true love? Do you believe in love at first sight? Do you believe in love lasting forever? I think that these love stories will renew or reinforce your faith in love… They are the most famous love stories in history and literature, they are immortal. “It is an absolute human certainty that no one can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being.” Yes, no one can know true happiness unless they know the love of a husband and wife or of a child. I know when i first saw my grandchildren it was love at first sight! But I am going to write mostly of romantic love today.

The German author Herman Hesse described love at first sight in his charming novel GERTRUDE: “I already thought on that first evening of our meeting how glorious it would be to spend one’s whole life regarded by those beautiful, candid eyes, and how it would then be impossible ever to think or do ill.”

Victor Hugo believed in it when Gringoire saw the beautiful gypsy ESMERALDA in the THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE-DAME: “If he had had all Peru in his pocket, he would certainly have given it to this dancer; but Gringoire had not Peru in his pocket; and besides, America was not yet discovered. (p. 66)

This is the actress MAUREEN O’ HARA (1939) as Esmeralda in the film HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME. Who with eyes and heart in breast could not fall in love with such a smile?

Shakespeare believed in love at first sight and described it beautifully:

“Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear,
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessèd my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? Forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”

The Finnish author Mila Waltari believed in love at first sight. By the way he was a favorite author of Cari Munro’s Spanish father Carlos Perez (Juanita Perez told me and had his book in Spanish translation). I never met him of course but talked to his father Don Benigno in 1973 and 1976 and I own a book that belonged to Carlos called the LAST OF THE MOHICANS in Spanish.
Waltari wrote:
“Today I saw you and spoke to you for the first time.
It was like an earthquake; everything in me was overturned, the graves of my heart were opened and my own nature was strange to me.
I am forty, and I believed I had reached the autumn of life.
I had wandered far, known much and lived many lives.
The Lord had spoken to me, manifesting Himself in many ways; to me angels had revealed themselves and I had not believed them. But when I saw you I was compelled to believe, because of the miracle that happened to me.”

Arthur Conan Doyle believed in love at first sight:
    “From the first day I met her, she was the only woman to me. Every day of that voyage I loved her more, and many a time since have I kneeled down in the darkness of the night watch and kissed the deck of that ship because I knew her dear feet had trod it. She was never engaged to me. She treated me as fairly as ever a woman treated a man. I have no complaint to make. It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man.” (From the Return of Sherlock Holmes).

Here is love at first sight that is unrequited. It happens sometimes. The person is married. The circumstances are too difficult the age difference is too big. I met a beautiful woman who was very fond of me but she was a youthful 42 and I was 19. We parted as friends. And I thought I had no one in the world to love so I wrote (true) to my Spanish friend Cari whom I had not seen in two years but with whom I carried on a regular correspondence from 1973 until 1982!

Of course, the idea is romantic. Wonderfully romantic but then I have always been a romantic. Italian operas are romantic. Scottish and Irish songs are romantic and are full of stories of the FORCE OF DESTINY. Today I think we are living in a more hedonistic and less romantic age and dating is very difficult. It almost seems too good to be true that an instant attraction and electric feeling could change our lives forever. And the old saying is very true: “Better to have loved and lost then never have loved at all.” So if you feel that strong attraction you should act on it. Robert Burns sang of one of the most beautfiul girls he had ever seen:

    This Mary Morison – I first heard it sung in concert and later on recordings by Kenneth McKellar.

This is love at first sight:

O Mary, at thy window be !
It is the wish’d, the trysted oor.
Those smiles and glances let me see,
That mak the miser’s treasure poor,
Sae blithely wad I bide the stoure,
A weary slave frae sun tae sun,
Could I the rich reward secure –
The lovely Mary Morison.

Yestreen, when to the trembling string
The dance gaed thro, the lichted ha’,
Tae thee my fancy took its wing,
I sat, but neither heard nor saw:
Tho’ this was fair, and that was braw,
And yon the toast o’ a’ the toon,
I sigh’d and said amang them a’ –
‘They are na Mary Morison!’

O Mary canst thou wreck his peace
Wha for thy sake wad gladly dee?
Or canst thou break that hert o’ his
Whase only faut is loving thee?
If love for love thou wilt na gie,
At least be pity to me shown:
A thought ungentle canna be
The thought o’ Mary Morison.

She was the TOAST OF THE TOWN and immortalized by the poem. I have been to her gravestone. In Mauchline, Scotland not far from the tavern where Burns wrote the poem in her honor.

Poor wee lassie! She died of a fever and no one could save her and that was the end of sweet Mary Morrison! Not even 21 and never married! Sad she had many gifts but health and strength of body were not hers. .But I think she must have felt the thrill of being loved and admired as least for a while and perhaps was waiting for her majority to say yes. The story of Mary Morrison tells us that no one is master of the line of his or her life.

When you find love TAKE IT! Don’t delay! You may never have another chance.

Poosie Nancy’s one of Robert Burns’s pubs. I have been there and had dinner and a few drinks afterward. I recited his poems and as the evening wore on we walked to the graveyard to see the stone of MARY MORRISON: