would be true or false in the eyes of others. All that concerns you seems
to go on a different plane where evidence has no meaning or existence:
where nobody exists or means anything, but only we two alone, engaged in
bringing about for ourselves the still greater solitude of two into one.
Oh, Beloved, what a company that will be! Take me in your arms, fasten me
to your heart, breathe on me. Deny me either breath or the light of day: I
am yours equally, to live or die at your word. I shut my eyes to feel your
kisses falling on me like rain, or still more like sunshine, yet most of
all like kisses, my own dearest and best beloved!
Oh, we two! how wonderful we seem! And to think that there have been
lovers like us since the world began: and the world not able to tell us
one little word of it: not well, so as to be believed or only along
with sadness where Fate has broken up the heavens which lay over some
pair of lovers. Oenone's cry, "Ah me, my mountain shepherd," tells us
of the joy when it has vanished, and most of all I get it in that song
of wife and husband which ends:
"Not a word for you,
Not a lock or kiss,
Good-by.
We, one, must part in two;
Verily death is this:
I must die."
It was a woman wrote that: and we get love there! Is it only when joy is
past that we can give it its full expression? Even now, Beloved, I break
down in trying to say how I love you. I cannot put all my joy into my
words, nor all my love into my lips, nor all my life into your arms,
whatever way I try. Something remains that I cannot express. Believe,
dearest, that the half has not yet been spoken, neither of my love for
you, nor of my trust in you, nor of a wish that seems sad, but comes in a
very tumult of happiness the wish to die so that some unknown good may
come to you out of me.
Not till you die, dearest, shall I die truly! I love you now too much for
your heart not to carry me to its grave, though I should die now, and you
live to be a hundred. I pray you may! I cannot choose a day for you to
die. I am too grateful to life which has given me to you to say if I
were dying "Come with me, dearest!" Though, how the words tempt me as I
write them! Come with me, dearest: yes, come! Ah, but you kiss me more, I
think, when we say good-by than when meeting; so you will kiss me most of
all when I have to die: a thing in death to look forward to! And, till
then, life, life, till I am out of my depth in happiness and drown in
your arms!
Beloved, that I can write so to you, think what it means; what you have
made me come through in the way of love, that this, which I could not have
dreamed before, comes from me with the thought of you! You told me to be
still to let you "worship": I was to write back acceptance of all your
dear words. Are you never to be at my feet, you ask. Indeed, dearest, I do
not know how, for I cannot move from where I am! Do you feel where my
thoughts kiss you? You would be vexed with me if I wrote it down, so I do
not. And after all, some day, under a bright star of Providence, I may
have gifts for you after my own mind which will allow me to grow proud.
Only now all the giving comes from you. It is I who am enriched by your
love, beyond knowledge of my former self. Are you changed, dearest, by
anything I have done?
My heart goes to you like a tree in the wind, and all these thoughts are
loose leaves that fly after you when I have to remain behind. Dear lover,
what short visits yours seem! and the Mother-Aunt tells me they are most
unconscionably long. You will not pay any attention to that , please:
forever let the heavens fall rather than that a hint to such foul effect
should grow operative through me!
This brings you me so far as it can: such little words off so great a
body of "liking" shall I call it? My paper stops me: it is my last sheet:
I should have to go down to the library to get more else I think I could
not cease writing.
More love than I can name. Ever, dearest, your own.
Continued below...
