more on love

st. Augustine says something like, Amo: volo ut sis (I love you: I want you to be). I like this, it is more generous than Sappho's conception of love as so entwined with desire, making an object of the beloved, disinterested in the beloved's will except as it affects his or her gain or loss. but then, both conceptions, augustine and sappho's, assume that there is no mingling, and I think of good love as something like volo ut sis with mingling.