Love asketh but himself to please

“Love asketh but himself to please” is the opening of a Blake verse that T. H. White misremembers as he faces life without Gos. In the aftermath of the hawk’s escape, the line frames love not as care alone but as a desire that can bind another to its own delight, making the beloved’s loss of freedom the price of the lover’s comfort.

The verse in context

White’s recollection follows a failed effort to recover Gos. He had stopped himself from throwing a terrified, exhausted pigeon to the hawk, recognizing the bird as one he had tamed and befriended. Later, as he prepared to reach Gos in a tree, a farmer’s lad startled the hawk into the darkness. White’s remembered verse belongs to the remorse that follows these attempts to control what he loves.

Meaning and self-accusation

The stanza turns on a contradiction: love can present itself as attachment while taking pleasure in another’s diminished ease. White’s situation gives that accusation a concrete shape. He has trained Gos, but the jesses and swivel left on the bird may snag on a branch and kill him. White wishes him well in the wild even as he fears the consequences of his former subjection. The verse does not resolve that conflict; it gives White a language for recognizing his part in it.

A changed ideal of relationship

White imagines that, if fate returned Gos to his hands, he would treat him as a partner rather than a slave. Against that hope, the remembered lines expose the danger that affection may still serve the person who claims to give it. The phrase therefore marks both loneliness after separation and a belated recognition that keeping Gos close is not the same as acting for his good.