Laurence Housman

“ Dearest, I lay my heart down on yours and cry: and having worn myself out with it and ended, I kiss your lips and bless God that I have known you.
I have not said—I never could say it—"Let the day perish wherein Love was born!" I forget nothing of you: you are clear to me,—all but one thing: why we have become as we are now, one whole, parted and sent different ways. And yet so near! On my most sleepless nights my pillow is yours: I wet your face with my tears and cry, "Sleep well."
To-night also, Beloved, sleep well! Night and morning I make you my prayer. ”

“ Dear Highness and Great Heart, I love you dearly, though you don't know it,—quite ever so much; and am going to love you ever so much more, only—please like me a little better first! You on your dear side must do something: or, before I know, I may be wringing my hands all alone on a desert island to a bare blue horizon, with nothing in it real or fabulous.
If I am to love you, nothing but happiness is to be allowed to come of it. So don't come true too fast without one little wee corresponding wish for me to find that you are! I am quite happy thinking you out slowly: it takes me all day long ”

“ I feel constantly that we are together still: I cannot explain. When I am most miserable, even so that I feel a longing to fly out of reach of the dear household voices which say shy things to keep me cheerful,—I feel that I have you in here waiting for me. Heart's heart, in my darkest, it is you who speak to me!
As I write I have my cheek pressed against yours. None of it is true: not a word, not a day that has separated us! I am yours: it is only the poor five senses part of us that spells absence. Some day, some day you will answer this letter which has to stay locked in my desk. ”

“ Oh, you, the sun in my dear heavens—if I lose you, what is left of me? Could you break so to pieces even a woman you did not love? And me you do love,—you do. Between all this denial of me, and all this silence of words that you have put your name to, I see clearly that you are still my lover.—Your writing breaks with trying not to say it: you say again and again that there is no fault in me. I swear to you, dearest, there is none, unless it be loving you: and how can you mean that? For what are you and I made for unless for each other? With all our difference people tell us we are alike. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So be quite sure that if now, even now,—for to-day of all days has seemed most dark—if now I were given my choice—to have known you or not to have known you,—Beloved, a thousand times I would claim to keep what I have, rather than have it taken away from me. I cannot forget that for a few months I was the happiest woman I ever knew: and that happiness is perhaps only by present conditions removed from me. If I have a soul, I believe good will come back to it: because I have done nothing to deserve this darkness unless by loving you: and if by loving you, I am glad that the darkness came. ”

“ Ah no, you dare not look at them: they tell too much truth! How can love-letters ever cease to be the winged things they were when they first came? I fancy mine sick to death for want of your heart to rest on; but never less loving.
If you would read them again, you would come back to me. Those little throats of happiness would be too strong for you. And so you lay them in a cruel grave of lavender,—"Lavender for forgetfulness" might be another song for Ophelia to sing.
I am weak with writing to you, I have written too long: this is twice to-day. ”

“ Make much of it! the day will come when I shall wish to obey. There are moments when I feel a wish taking hold of me stronger than I can understand, that you should command me beyond myself—to things I have not strength or courage for of my own accord. How close, dearest, when that day comes, my heart will feel itself to yours! It feels close now: but it is to your feet I am nearest, as yet. Lift me! There, there, Beloved, I kiss you with all my will. Oh, dear heart, forgive me for being no more than I am: your freehold to all eternity! ”

“ Dear heart, I am blind till I set eyes on you again! Beloved, I have nothing, nothing in me but love for you: except for that I am empty! Believe me and give me time; I will not be unworthy of the joy of holding you. I am nothing if not yours! Tell this to whoever is deceiving you.
Oh, my dearest, why did you stay away from me to write so? Come and put an end to a thing which means nothing to either of us. You love me: how can it have a meaning?
Can you not hear my heart crying?—I love nobody but you—do not know what love is without you! How can I be more yours than I am? ”

“ Ah, Beloved, have you in reality any complaint, or sorrow that I can set at rest? Or has that little, little silence made you anxious? I do come to think so, for you never flourish your words about as I do: so, believing that, I would like to write again differently; only it is truer to let what I have written stand, and make amends for it in all haste. I love you so infinitely well, how could even a year's silence give you any doubt or anxiety, so long as you knew I was not ill?
"Should one not make great concessions to great grief even when it is unreasonable?" ”

“ When I go about something definite, I can do it:—to ride, or read aloud to the old people, or sit down at meals with them is very easy; but I cannot make employment for myself—that requires too much effort of invention and will: and I have only will for one thing in life—to get through it: and no invention to the purpose. Oh, Beloved, in the grave I shall lie forever with a lock of your hair in my hand. I wonder if, beyond there, one sees anything? My eyes ache to-day from the brain, which is always at blind groping for you, and the point where I missed you. ”

“ Every day tells me I am different from the thing I wish to be—your love, the woman you approve.
I love you, I love you! Can I get no nearer to you ever for all this straining? If I love you so much, I must be moving toward what you would have me be. In our happiest days my heart had its growing pains,—growing to be as you wished it.
Dear, even the wisest make mistakes, and the tenderest may be hard without knowing: I do not think I am unworthy of you, if you knew all.
Writing to you now seems weakness: yet it seemed peace to come in here and cry to you. ”

“ They seemed to me then to be following out some quiet train of thought in the universal mind: the heavens were remembering the stars back into their places:—the Ancient of Days drawing upon the infinite treasures of memory in his great lifetime. Will not Love's old age be the same to us both—a starry place of memories?
Your dear letter is with me while I write: how shortly you are able to say everything! To-morrow you will come. What more do I want—except to-morrow itself, with more promises of the same thing?
You are at my heart, dearest: nothing in the world can be nearer to me than you! ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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! ”

“ So with the sun still a long way out of bed, I have to tuck up these sheets for you, as if the good of the day had already been sufficient unto itself and its full tale had been told. Good-night. It is so hard to take my hands off writing to you, and worry on at the same exercise in another direction. I kiss you more times than I can count: it is almost really you that I kiss now! My very dearest, my own sweetheart, whom I so worship. Good-night! "Good-afternoon" sounds too funny: is outside our vocabulary altogether. While I live, I must love you more than I know! ”

“ It is not right that you should die yet, with a mistake in your heart which a little more life might clear away.
Praying for your dear eyes to remain open, I realize suddenly how much hope still remains in me, where I thought none was left. Even your illness I take as a good omen; and the thought of you weak as a child and somewhat like one in your present state with no brain for deep thinking, comes to my heart to be cherished endlessly: there you lie, Beloved, brought home to my imagination as never since the day we parted. ”

“ I lay hands on myself, half doubting, and feel my skeleton pushing to the front: my glass shows it me. Thus we are all built up: bones are at the foundations of our happiness, and when the happiness wears thin, they show through, the true architecture of humanity.
I have to realize now that I have become the greatest possible failure in life,—a woman who has lost her "share of the world": I try to shape myself to it.
It is deadly when a woman's sex, what was once her glory, reveals itself to her as an all-containing loss. ”