“All your love on self bestow”

“All your love on self bestow” is a self-addressed maxim in which the narrator advises the reader to abandon futile pursuit and redirect affection toward the self. Its decisive significance lies in the tension between its apparently practical consolation and the speaker’s comic confidence that the self is unsurpassed in amiability.

Context and Address

The passage begins by asking who grieves over other people’s misfortunes and who is not a tiresome thief, then turns directly to the “venerated reader.” The narrator urges that reader to cease pursuing “shadows vain” and to spare themselves unavailing pain. The counsel is therefore framed not as a romantic declaration but as a conversational intervention: after dismissing the world’s unreliable sympathies, the speaker offers self-regard as a worthy object of love.

The Maxim’s Logic

The command “And all your love on self bestow” gives the passage its memorable center. Its phrasing converts withdrawal from futile desire into an affirmative action: affection is not renounced but reassigned. The surrounding lines strengthen that logic by describing the self as a “worthy object,” making self-love sound less like indulgence than a sensible response to the pain of pursuing what cannot be attained.

Irony and Effect

The maxim’s assurance depends on a comic turn. The speaker declares, “I know there’s none more amiable,” presenting personal self-knowledge as proof that the self deserves affection above all others. The boast punctures the solemnity of the advice without simply cancelling it: the reader is invited both to recognize the practical appeal of withdrawing from painful pursuit and to hear the vanity implicit in elevating oneself into love’s ideal object. Thus the passage makes consolation and irony coexist within a few closely connected lines.