To-day (Feb. 25th) is my birthday, dearest Friend--a day my children always make very bright & happy to me: and on it they make me promise to "do nothing but what I like all day." So I shall spend it with you--partly in finishing this letter, partly reading in the book that is so dear to me--for that is indeed my soul coming into the presence of your soul--filled by it with strength & warmth & joy. In discouraged moods, when oppressed with the consciousness of my own limitations, failures, lack of many beautiful gifts, I say to myself, "What sort of a bird with unfledged wings are you that would mate with an eagle? Can your eyes look the sun in the face like his? Can you sustain your long, lifelong flights upward? Can you rest in dizzy rocks overhanging dark, tempestuous abysses? Is your heart like his, a great glowing sun of Love?" Then I answer, "Give me Time." I can bide my time--a long, long growing & unfolding time. That he draws me with such power, that my soul has found the meaning of itself in him--the object of all its deep, deathless aspirations in comradeship with him, means, if life is not a mockery clean ended by death, that the germs are in me, that through cleaving & loving & ever striving up & on I shall grow like him--like but different--the correlative--what his soul needs & desires; and if when I reach America he is not so drawn towards me,--if seeing how often I disappoint myself, needs must that he too is disappointed, still I can hold bravely, lovingly on to this inextinguishable faith & hope--with the added joy of his presence, sometimes winning from him more & more a dear friendship, yielding him some joy & comfort--for he too turns with hope, with yearning, towards me--bids me be "satisfied & at peace!" So I am, so I will be, my darling. Surely, surely, sooner or later I shall justify that hope, satisfy that yearning. This is what I say to myself & to you this 46th birthday. Have I said it over & over again? That is because it is the undercurrent of my whole life. The _Tribune_ with Proctor's "Lecture on the Sun" (& a great deal besides that interests me) came safe. A masterly lecture. And two days ago came the Philadelphia paper with Prof. Morton's speech--deeply interesting. And as I read these things, the feeling that they have come from, & been read by, you turns them into Poems for me. Good-bye, my dearest Friend. ANNE GILCHRIST. W. Rossetti's marriage is to be the end of next month. Had a pleasant chat with Mr. Conway, who took supper with us a week or two ago. LETTER XX ANNE GILCHRIST TO WALT WHITMAN _March 9th, 1874._