(Ancient Text by , translated by Shelton) and The Night We Met (Contemporary Song by Lord Huron)
We have often talked about love in the context of pain, touching on how it can bring unpleasant experiences to people in love. One of these not so great experiences is longing, and with longing comes detachment. Sharing some common ground on this is an excerpt in Shelton’s “Marriage” chapter and music artist Lord Huron in the song called “The Night We Met.” A section of an inscription found in Rome reads, “I therefore beg, most sacred Manes, that you look after the loved one I have entrusted to you, and that you be well disposed and very kind to him in the hours of the night, so that I may see him, and so that he, too, may wish to persuade fate to allow me to come to him softly, and soon. ” The wife of this deceased man surely had much respect for him, enough to feel saddened by his passing. She wishes to be with him again. Similar in Lord Hurons song, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you, Oh take me back to the night we met.” Lord Huron’s longing in the song is clear to the listener. Two partners have gone their own ways and now one of them clearly wants the love they once had, not having it, thus, gives him pain. The type of love that arises in both pieces is a healthy love, at least it’s portrayed that way, and both lovers wish to experience it again at some point. The pain comes only after they’ve had this experience, when the love is absent, therefore sparking the longing and detachment that follows soon after.
Despite their similarities with painful love, time seems to differentiate the two. There is a clear longing for love that has already been experienced in Lord Huron’s song when the guy wishes to go back to the night he and his lover met, a love in the past. The wives inscription points to a longing for love she wishes to continue, even if it means that it will have to be in the after life, love in the future. It’s also worth noting the lover in pain in one is a male and a female in the other.
Shelton, Ch.III, Marriage
Page 48, Excerpt 68 – “Love for a husband” CIL 6.18817