It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less

“It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Thus speaks the poet of gentle wisdom, whose words move like the tide — soft, inevitable, and eternal. In this line, Longfellow reveals one of life’s quiet mysteries: that love, unlike thunder or lightning, does not announce its arrival. It steals upon the heart like dawn upon the sky — unseen in its first glimmer, but radiant once it fills the horizon. One rarely knows when love begins, for it is not born in a single instant, but awakens slowly, secretly, in the chambers of the soul.

In the ancient ways of thought, philosophers taught that great truths move invisibly — like the wind that stirs the leaves but cannot be seen. Love is such a truth. It begins not in the eyes that meet, but in the unseen current that flows between two spirits. A look, a word, a shared silence — none of these may seem to hold significance, and yet, when the heart looks back, it finds that somewhere along that quiet path, love had already taken root. The moment cannot be measured by the clock; it belongs to eternity.

Longfellow, a man who knew both beauty and sorrow, wrote of love not as fleeting passion but as divine recognition — the soul recognizing another as its kin. In his own life, he endured tragedy when his beloved wife, Fanny, died in a fire, leaving him scarred both in body and spirit. Yet even in his grief, he never spoke of love as something that ends. For him, it was a flame that once lit cannot be extinguished, though it may flicker beneath the winds of fate. When he says it is “less difficult to know that it has begun,” he means that the heart knows its truth even when reason does not. We do not see love arrive, but we surely feel its presence once it dwells within us.

There is an old tale of Dante Alighieri and Beatrice, whose love, pure and unspoken, inspired one of the greatest works of all time, The Divine Comedy. Dante first saw Beatrice when they were but children, yet her image haunted and uplifted him throughout his life. Did he know, in that first moment, that love had begun? Surely not. But years later, he wrote that she became “the lady of his mind,” guiding his soul toward the divine. That is the essence of Longfellow’s wisdom — that love’s beginning is subtle, but its truth is unmistakable once it takes hold.

The heart, like the earth, often blooms without our knowing. Seeds of affection fall silently — a kind word, an act of compassion, a shared dream — and before we realize it, we are standing in a garden we never meant to plant. That is why the poet calls love’s beginning “difficult to know.” It is not an event but a becoming, a transformation that reshapes the soul so gently we hardly notice until we are already changed.

And yet, though its birth is quiet, love’s presence is undeniable. It reveals itself in the trembling of the voice, the quickened breath, the ache of absence, the joy of another’s smile. One may deny it for a time, hide from it, reason against it — but the heart knows. Love declares itself not in words but in the steady insistence of care, the longing for another’s peace, the courage to forgive. When it begins, we may not know; but when it is, we cannot mistake it.

Let this be the teaching for those who seek to understand the mysteries of the heart: do not demand to know when love began, for its birth lies beyond the grasp of time. Instead, nurture it when it comes, for love is a living thing — it must be tended, protected, and allowed to grow. And when you find it within yourself, do not question it too long; let it act, let it speak, let it heal. For the wise do not ask when love began — they simply give thanks that it is.