Meaning of “But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?”

Little Women, Chapter 24, “Gossip,” Project Gutenberg #514. The narrator says Meg has grown prettier than ever because “love is a great beautifier” while describing the three years before her wedding. This is literary narrator commentary about Meg’s happiness and maturation, not an empirical claim that affection produces a guaranteed physical effect.

“She Walks in Beauty,” first stanza, in Hebrew Melodies.

“To My Dear and Loving Husband,” posthumously published in the 1678 second edition of Several Poems; represented by Representative Poetry Online. The poem is a Puritan-era personal love lyric with explicitly religious closing language.

Twelfth Night, Act I, Scene 1, Orsino; 1922 Yale Shakespeare edition edited by George Henry Nettleton, printed page 1 / Wikisource scan leaf 13. “If music be the food of love, play on” opens Orsino’s attempt to use excess music to surfeit and extinguish his appetite for love. It remains fictional dramatic speech shaped by Orsino’s self-dramatizing desire, not Shakespeare speaking autobiographically or a modern psychological claim about music and emotion.

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2; Romeo continues the dawn imagery after seeing Juliet.

Sonnet 43 from Sonnets from the Portuguese; the poem proceeds by describing multiple dimensions of love.