“At last--at last--at last! Life of my life, the day is come that is not
day without you, and now it will always be day for us two--day without
end and sun for ever! And yet, I have seen you always in my night, just
as I see you now. As I hold your dear hands, I have held them--day by
day and year by year--and I have smoothed that black hair of yours that
I love, and kissed those dark eyes of yours many and many a thousand
times. It has been so long, love, so very long! But I knew it would come
some day. I knew I should find you, for you have been always with me,
dear--always and everywhere. The world is all full of you, for I have
wandered through it all and taken you with me and made every place yours
with the thought of you, and the love of you and the worship of you. For
me, there is not an ocean nor a sea nor a river, nor rock nor island
nor broad continent of earth, that has not known Beatrice and loved
her name. Heart of my heart, soul of my soul--the nights and the
days without you, the lands and the oceans where you were not, the
endlessness of this little world that hid you somewhere, the littleness
of the whole universe without you--how can you ever know what it has
been to me? And so it is gone at last--gone as a dream of sickness in
the morning of health; gone as the blackness of storm-clouds in the
sweep of the clear west wind; gone as the shadow of evil before the face
of an angel of light! And I know it all. I see it all in your eyes.
You knew I was true, and you knew I sought you, and would find you at
last--and you have waited--and there has been no other, not the thought
of another, not the passing image of another between us. For I know
there has not been that and I should have known it anywhere in all these
years, the chill of it would have found me, the sharpness of it would
have been in my heart--no matter where, no matter how far--yet say it,
say it once--say that you have loved me, too--”
“God knows how I have loved you--how I love you now!” Unorna said in a
low, unsteady voice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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