Re: ‘Tis better to have loved..’
Both.
Let me explain. That Tennyson dude didn’t know what he was talking about. He presumed that you only love once, and that one time you either keep or or lose it. Culturally we are made to think that romantic love ( which is what he is talking about here ) is the best kind of love and it happens only once in a life. Laila+Majnu, Heer+Ranjha, Romeo+Juliet, Sohni+Mahiwal etc. Reality is, you might fall in love more than once. Madonna+Beatty, Madonna+Penn, Madonna+Richie, Demi+Willis, Demi+Kutchner, Cruise+Kidman, Cruise+Scientology. Sometimes you lose it and sometimes you keep it. So the answer is, both. But like Humpherdinck crooned, “The last one will last forever…”