High quality explanation is needed here

Think of love as a gift.
If you ask someone for a gift and they get it for you that means they hold you high esteem. however a gift given without asking for itmeans so much more. It means the person has invested some thought and time into the selection of your gift.

Thanks.

But grammatically speaking, the sentence is mind-bending.
For example: given unsought

Looks it does hold water in modern English.

given = giving?

unsought, a noun?

No, unsought is an adverb in this case, it modifies given.

Give, given--present and past paticiple

Seek, sought--present and past participle

There is no "unseek" verb that i know of, but unsought means that which is found or otherwise received without being looked for. This is very common, unremarkable English.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

Getting loved when you ask for it is nice, but giving love away freely is even better.

Thank you all.

So "Love sought is good, but given unsought is better" is "Love that I am seeking is good, but the love I give those who don't seek for it is better?"

No, that's a miseading. It means "Love that I seek is good, but love I get which i did not seek is better."

Or perhaps "unexpected love is better."

Yes, simplicity is the soul of elegance, and that's a very economical way of saying it.

Oristar will have to decide what interpretation to accept.

To me it speaks of getting love and giving love.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

Love that is sought by someone is good, [active voice] but love that is given [passive voice] to someone without that someone seeking love, is better.

Love sought is good, but given unsought is better.

There are no agents here. Love is an abstract thing that is given and received, but no one is stated as giving or receiving the love.

'Love sought is good'.
'Sought' is a past participle, an adjective, qualifying the abstract noun 'love'. This could mean either 'the love you receive but which you did not seek is good' or 'the love you give which the receiver did not seek is good'; grammatically there is nothing to distinguish the two.

'but given unsought is better'.
This is elliptical, in full 'but love given unsought is better'. Here 'given' is a past participle qualifying 'love', and 'unsought' is an adverb qualifying 'given'.
Again, this could mean either ' but the love you receive which you did not seek is better' or 'but the love you give which the receiver did not seek is better', and grammatically there is nothing to distinguish the two.

The ambiguity here is that past participles may be passive or active.
In ' a wounded bird' the past participle 'wounded' is passive, i.e. the bird was the object of the wounding.
In 'a fallen man' the past participle 'fallen' is active, the man fell himself.
In the sentence 'Love sought is good, but given unsought is better' both the past participles 'sought' and 'given' may be interpreted as either active or passive, both interpretations being equally valid. This ambiguity is part of what makes the sentence so beautiful: all those types of love are good, but all these types of love are better.

Perhaps you also feel that it is strange because of the word order?
'Love sought is good' is usually written or spoken as 'sought love is good', but the inverted order is perfectly acceptable too, only perhaps less common. Similarly 'but given unsought is better' is usually said or written in full as ' but given love which is unsought is better' or 'but love you give unsought is better' or 'love you are given unsought is better' or something else. Decide for yourself if you like the elliptical and ambiguous sentence. The shortening makes it more elegant and epigrammatic, more 'punchy' if you will. And, well, we can all see the ambiguity is beautiful.

Thank you Quincy.

Wonder if Shakespeare knew his works would be so analyzed.

Thank you very much.

And thank you all.