Some day, I dream, we shall come suddenly together, and you will see,
before a word, before I have time to gather my mind back to the bodily
comfort of your presence, a face filled with thoughts of you that have
never left it, and never been bitter:--I believe never once bitter. For
even when I think, and convince myself that you have wronged yourself--and
so, me also,--even then: oh, then most of all, my heart seems to break
with tenderness, and my spirit grow more famished than ever for the want
of you! For if you have done right, wisely, then you have no longer any
need of me: but if you have done wrong, then you must need me. Oh, dear
heart, let that need overwhelm you like a sea, and bring you toward me on
its strong tide! And come when you will I shall be waiting.
LETTER LXXIV.
Dearest and Dearest: So long as you are still this to my heart I trust to
have strength to write it; though it is but a ghost of old happiness that
comes to me in the act. I have no hope now left in me: but I love you not
less, only more, if that be possible: or is it the same love with just a
weaker body to contain it all? I find that to have definitely laid off all
hope gives me a certain relief: for now that I am so hopeless it becomes
less hard not to misjudge you--not to say and think impatiently about you
things which would explain why I had to die like this.
Dearest, nothing but love shall explain anything of you to me. When I
think of your dear face, it is only love that can give it its meaning.
If love would teach me the meaning of this silence, I would accept all
the rest, and not ask for any joy in life besides. For if I had the
meaning, however dark, it would be by love speaking to me again at last;
and I should have your hand holding mine in the darkness forever.
Your face, Beloved, I can remember so well that it would be enough if I
had your hand:--the meaning, just the meaning, why I have to sit blind.
LETTER LXXV.
Dearest: There is always one possibility which I try to remember in all I
write: even where there is no hope a thing remains _possible_:--that your
eye may some day come to rest upon what I leave here. And I would have
nothing so dark as to make it seem that I were better dead than to have
come to such a pass through loving you. If I felt that, dearest, I should
not be writing my heart out to you, as I do: when I cease doing that I
shall indeed have become dead and not want you any more, I suppose. How
far I am from dying, then, now!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account