Robert Browning

“ Kenyon will have spoken—and if the whole world spoke its loudest, your words would be all I should hear. Or are they trials, every such word, of my vanity and weakness,—do you think, ‘if anything can call them up, this will?’ No, I very well know your entire truth in this and the other assurances I make my life bright with,—through any darkness that can come. What you choose to assert of yourself, I feel of myself every hour. But there must be this disproportionateness in a beloved object—before I knew you, women seemed not so much better than myself,—therefore, no love for them! ”

“ Hard to believe, it was, that a university prize poet (who was not Tennyson) could write such good verses: but he wrote them of you, and that was enough inspiration for him, I suppose, as it would be for others, my own dearest. How I delight in hearing you praised!—it is such a delightful assent to the word which is in me, in the deepest of me. You know that mysterious pleasure we have, in listening to echoes!—we hear nothing new, nothing we have not said ourselves—yet we stand on the side of the hill and listen ... listen ... as if to the oracles of Delphi. ”

“ May they find such an end in circumstances of still more consequence. Dearest, your flowers are beautiful beyond their beauty of yesterday which I praised—they think themselves still in the garden; we have done them no sort of wrong. What a luring thought you leave with me in the flowers! How I look at them as a sign of you, left behind—your footstep in the ground! It has been so from the beginning. And yet sometimes you try to prove that you are not always good. You!
If you are not good, it is because you are best. ”

“ So much more I had to say—I break off suddenly, being benighted. How you write to me! how you wrote to me on Sunday and yesterday! How I wish for two hearts to love you with, and two lives to give to you, and two souls to bear the weight worthily of all you have given to me. But if one heart and one life will do, ... they are yours ... I cannot give them again.
Beloved, if your mother should be ill, we must not think of your leaving her, surely?
May God bless you, dearest beloved. ”

“ So dearest dearest, I must try to live these two days more without seeing you—and indeed it will be hard work—the very light of the sun to-morrow, let it be ever so bright a sun, will only reproach the day with what it ought to have been ... our day, instead of everybody’s day or nobody’s day, a poor, blank, dreary day. What, when the clock is at three ... oh what will keep me, I wonder, from being sullen to my aunt and sulky to my cousin? They will think me (if my ministering angel should not throw me some hallowing thought of you, best beloved!) ”

“ I seem now always to hear the sea in the wind, voice within voice! But I like a sudden wind not too loud,—a wind which you hear the rain in rather than the sea—and I like the half cloudy half sunny April weather, such as we have it here in England, with a west or south wind—I like and enjoy that; and remember vividly how I used to like to walk or wade nearly up to my waist in the wet grass or weeds, with the sun overhead, and the wind darkening or lightening the verdure all round.
But none of it was happiness, dearest dearest. Happiness does not come with the sun or the rain. ”

“ All men ought to be independent, whatever Carlyle may say. And so, too, I like being alone, myself—but I should be sorry to see the ordinary friends I have, live alone. Do you understand all this, Ba? Will you make me say it, in your mind, intelligibly? And then will you say still more of your own till the true thing is completely said? And, after all, will you kiss me?’
As I asked you yesterday ... because of a most foolish, thoughtless allusion,—which I only trust you never noticed ... do not you allude to it, not even to forgive me, dearest, dearest. ”

“ Chorley—Mr. Chorley!—how could he utter such words! Men seem imbecile sometimes—understandings have they, and understand not.
Monday Night.
Dearest, I have your last letter. Thank you out of my heart—though you are not a prophet, dear dearest—not about Mr. Kenyon at least. See how far you are from the truth-well, with that divining hazel which you wave to and fro before my eyes. Mr. Kenyon, instead of too much remembering us, has forgotten me to-day. I waited an hour with my bonnet on, and he did not come. And then came a note! He had had business—he had forgotten me—he would come to-morrow. ”

“ When a man spins evermore on his own axis, like a child’s toy I saw the other day, ... what is the use of him but to make a noise? No greater tormentor is there, than self-love, ... even to self. And no greater instance of this, than this!
Dearest beloved, to turn away from the whole world to you ... when I do, do I lose anything ... or not rather gain all? Sometimes I feel to wish that I had more to sacrifice to you, so as to prove something of what is in me—but you do not require sacrifice ... ”

“ So be happy, my own dearest ... and if it should be worth a thought that you cannot be alone, so, you may think that too. You have so deep and intense a nature, that it were impossible for you to love after the fashion of other men, weakly and imperfectly, and your love, which comes out like your genius, may glorify enough to make you happy, perhaps. Which is my dream, my calculation rather, when I am happiest now. May God bless you. Suppose I should ever read in your eyes that you were not happy with me?—can I help, do you fancy, such thoughts? Could you help being not happy? ”

“ Ba, when I think of it all, my whole heart becomes one gratitude to you,—I am only yours, grateful for ever. It is the only kind of thoughts in which you shall not share (there are many in which you cannot) the thoughts to my inmost self as I go over what you say and do and try to clear up to myself the precise fascination in each: you shall not know what you do ... but shall continue to do and to let me know. I love you entirely. Where can you change so that I shall not love you more and more as I grow more able and worthier? ”

“ My own beloved, when my courage seems to bend and break, I turn to you and look at you ... as men see visions! It is enough, always. Did you ever give me pain by a purpose of yours?—do you not rather keep me from all pain?—do we blame the wind that breathes gently, because a reed or a weed trembles in it? I could not feel much pain while sitting near you, I think—unless you suffered a little, ... or looked as if you did not love me. And that was not at least yesterday.
May God bless you dearest, ever dearest. ”

“ People in general would rather be Marquises than Roman artists, consulting their own wishes and inclination. I, for my part, ever since I could speak my mind and knew it, always openly and inwardly preferred the glory of those who live by their heads, to the opposite glory of those who carry other people’s arms. So much for glory. Happiness goes the same way to my fancy. There is something fascinating to me, in that Bohemian way of living ... all the conventions of society cut so close and thin, that the soul can see through ... ”

“ Kenyon’s this evening ... I shall take care not to be first comer, nor last goer. Dearest, you are wrong in your fancy about my little caring whether he knows or does not. I see altogether with your eyes ... indeed, now that you engage to remove any suspicion of unkindness or mistrust which might attach to me in his thoughts (all I ever apprehended for myself) , there is no need to consider him—at all. He can do no good nor harm. Did you ever receive such a letter? The dull morning shall excuse it—anything but the dull heart—for you fill it, however the heat may keep within, sometimes. ”

“ But what day is ours to be? Of that you say nothing, and of my poems a great deal, ‘O you inverter!’ But I am, rather, a reverter—and you shall revert, and mind the natural order of things, and tell me first of all— (in to-night’s letter, dearest?) —that it is to be on—?
Now let me kiss you here—my own Ba! Being stupid makes some difference in me—I am no poet, nor prose-writer, nor rational ‘Christian, pagan nor man’ this afternoon—but I am now—as yesterday—as the long ‘year ago’—your own, utterly your own! May God bless you! (I wondered yesterday if you had gone down-stairs—‘no’ I infer!) ”

“ Dearest, I will write to-morrow. Never are you ‘impatient,’ inconsiderate—and as for selfishness, I have been uneasy sometimes, precisely because you are so little selfish. I am not likely to mistake ... to wrench the wrong way ... any word of yours. As for mine, it was not a mere word, when I said that you should decide everything. Could I hold out for November, or October, or for September even, if you choose against? Indeed I could not. We—you will think—I am yours, and if you never repent that, I shall not—I am too entirely yours. ”

“ It is hope and help, to be able to look away from all such thoughts, to you, dearest beloved, who do not partake of the faults and feeblenesses of these lower geniuses. There is hope and help for the world in you—and if for the world, why for me indeed much more. You do not know ... ah, you do not know—how I look up to you and trust perfectly in you. You are above all these clouds—your element is otherwise—men are not your taskmasters that you should turn to them for recompense. ‘Shall I always think the same of you,’ you asked yesterday. ”

“ My dearest Ba, you say ‘let us both think’—think of this, you! Do not for God’s sake introduce an element of uncertainty and restlessness and dissatisfaction into the feeling whereon my life lies. To speak for myself, this matter is concluded, done with,—I am yours, you are mine, and not to give use to refinements upon refinements as to what is the being most of all each other’s, which might end in your loving me best while I was turned a Turk in the East, or my—you know the inquisition does all for the pure love of the victim’s soul. ”

“ And speaking the truth plainly, I, when I look back, dearest beloved, see that you have done for me everything, instead of my doing anything for you—that you have lifted me.... Can I speak? Heavens!—how I had different thoughts of you and of myself and of the world and of life, last year at this hour! The spirits who look backward over the grave, cannot feel much otherwise from my feeling as I look back. As to your thanking me, that is monstrous, it seems to me. It is the action of your own heart alone, which has appeared to do you any good. ”

“ My Ba, what is Evil, in its unmistakable shape, but a thing to suppress at any price? I do approve of judicial punishment to death under some circumstances—I think we may, must say: ‘when it comes to that, we will keep our pact of life, stand by God and put that out of us, our world—it shall not be endured, or we shall not be endured’! Dear Ba, is Life to become a child’s game? ”

“ As it is not of the least importance to either of us, as long as we can live, whether the sixpence, we live by, came most from you or from me ... and as it will be as much mine as yours, and yours as mine when we are together ... why let us join in throwing a little dust in all the winking eyes round—oh, it is nonsense and weakness, I know—but I would rather, rather, see winking eyes than staring eyes. What has anybody to do with us? Even my own family ... why should they ever see the farthest figure of our affairs, as to mere money? ”

“ But I could not get to Mrs. Jameson’s this morning, not being quite well enough. It is nothing as illness,—I tell you the truth, dear—and even now I feel better than I did in the early morning. It was only just enough to prevent my going. And if I had gone I should not have seen you—you would not go in time—you would not perhaps even have my letter in time. The stars are against us for the moment, it seems.
Write to me, think of me, love me. You shall hear on Saturday and on Sunday, and we will settle about Monday. ”

“ Rather, I acquiesce gladly in the ignorance ... because when the words, the golden words, are brought in to me by the inferior agents, and honestly transferred by them to the real moving powers ... they, even, find the reward too much, too much, till they—till they resolve (on the other side of a sheet) to keep silence and be grateful till death help them to speak.
Well, my dear, own dearest ... the week has got to its weary end, and to-morrow I shall trust to be with you. I continue to feel better,—and this morning’s rain, in the opinion of the learned, will be succeeded by warm weather. ”

“ Tapers ordinarily burn best let alone, with all your light depending on the little flame, the darkest night but for it—why, stand off—what good can you do, so long as there is no extraordinary evil to avert, breaking down of the candlestick to prevent? But here—there will be reason as well as a delight beyond delights in always learning to close over, all but holding the flame in the hollow of one’s hand! ”

“ A miserable man, first by constitution and next by fortune—seeing only the shadow, for the sun,—the nettles in the field,—and breathing hard when he stands among garden-roses, to attain to smelling the onions over the wall. I have told him sometimes that he had a talent for anger!—‘indignatio facit orationes’ and that is his pleasure, ‘par excellence,’—to be let talk against this abuse or that abuse, this class of men or that class of men, this or that world’s misery or offence:—he will rise up in it and be eloquent and happy. ”

“ And how can it seem right to submit to so much happiness undeservedly, as the knowledge of your affection gives, you who are ‘great in everything,’ as Mr. Kenyon said the other day! Shall I tell you how I reconcile myself to the good? Thus it is. First I think that no woman in the world, let her be ever so much better than I, could quite be said to deserve you—and that therefore there may not be such harm in your taking the one who will owe you most with the fullest consciousness! ”

“ I see you. My fault is ... not that I think too much of what people will say. I see you and hear you. ‘People’ did not make me live for them. I am not theirs, but yours. I deserve that you should believe in me, beloved, because my love for you is ‘Me.’
Now tell me again to ‘decide’—and I will tell you that the words are not ‘breath,’ nor the affection ‘a show.’ Dearest beyond words, did I deserve you telling me to ‘decide’?
Let it be September then, if you do not decide otherwise—I would not lean to dangerous delays which are unnecessary—I wish we were at Pisa, rather! ”

“ This is just the way, the only way, my ever, ever dearest, you make cares for me—it is hard to dare to settle whether the pain of the lost quarters of the hour yesterday be not balanced by the gladness and gain of this letter; as it is hard saying whether to kiss your hand (mind, only the hand!) with shut eyes, be better than seeing you and only seeing: you cause me abundance of such troubles, dearest, best, divinest that you are! Oh, how can you, blessing me so, speak as you spoke yesterday—for the first time! ”

“ I will believe that he was good and even great when in communication with you—indeed all men are made, or make themselves, different in their approaches to different men—and the secret of goodness and greatness is in choosing whom you will approach, and live with, in memory or imagination, through the crowding obvious people who seem to live with you. That letter about the glory of being a painter ‘if only for the neglect’ is most touching and admirable ... ”

“ I should have said—‘we will postpone it, if you will marry me now ... merely as to the form ... but so as to enable me, if difficulties should thicken, to be by your bed-side at least.’ You see, what you want ‘to relieve’ me of, is just what my life should be thrice paid down for and cheaply. How could you ever be so truly mine as so? Even the poor service does not ‘part us’ before ‘death’——‘till sickness do us part!’
But there will be no sickness and all happiness, I trust in God! Dear, dear Ba, I love you wholly and for ever—true as I kiss your rose, and will keep it for ever. ”

“ Yet I am conscious of wishing you to take the other crown besides—and after having made your own creatures speak in clear human voices, to speak yourself out of that personality which God made, and with the voice which He tuned into such power and sweetness of speech. I do not think that, with all that music in you, only your own personality should be dumb, nor that having thought so much and deeply on life and its ends, you should not teach what you have learnt, in the directest and most impressive way, the mask thrown off however moist with the breath. ”

“ The weather is hot as ever: Ba, remember how I believe in you—is the indisposition ‘nothing to signify’? And remember the confidence I make you of every slightest headache or what looks like it—tell me frankly as Ba should, and will if she loves me! I am very well ... and my mother much better. I observe while I write, the clouds gather propitiously for coolness if not rain—may all be as is best for you—‘and for me?’ Then kiss me, really, through the distance, and love me, my sweetest Ba! ”

“ Enough now, my dearest, dearest, own Ba! You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another. I am all gratitude—and all pride (under the proper feeling which ascribes pride to the right source) all pride that my life has been so crowned by you.
God bless you prays your very own R.
I will write to-morrow of course. Take every care of my life which is in that dearest little hand; try and be composed, my beloved. ”

“ May God bless you, ever and ever dearest! Beseech for me the indulgence of your father and mother, and ask your sister to love me. I feel so as if I had slipped down over the wall into somebody’s garden—I feel ashamed. To be grateful and affectionate to them all, while I live, is all that I can do, and it is too much a matter of course to need to be promised. Promise it however for your very own Ba whom you made so happy with the dear letter last night. ”

“ All you write about Art is most true. Carlyle has turned and forged, reforged on his anvil that fact ‘that no age ever appeared heroic to itself’ ... and so, worthy of reproduction in Art by itself ... I thought after Carlyle’s endeavours nobody could be ignorant of that,—nobody who was obliged to seek the proof of it out of his own experience. The cant is, that ‘an age of transition’ is the melancholy thing to contemplate and delineate—whereas the worst things of all to look back on are times of comparative standing still, rounded in their important completeness. ”

“ At the same time, being strong is different; and sometimes for a day or two together, when I do not feel the strongest, it is right to be quiet and not to walk up and down stairs. So as I ‘love Ba,’ (quite enough, I assure you!) I am quiet. There’s the only meaning of not going out every day! But the health is perfectly unaffected, I do assure you,—so keep yourself from every vexing thought of me, so far at least. Are you getting frightened for me, my beloved? ”

“ I have not had the heart to look at the newspapers, but hear that Sir Robert Peel has provided liberally for the present necessities of the poor Haydons. And do you know, the more I think the more I am inclined to conclude that the money-distress was merely an additional irritation, and that the despair leading to the revolt against life, had its root in disappointed ambition. The world did not recognize his genius, and he punished the world by withdrawing the light. If he had not that thought in him, I am wrong. ”

“ How I can look and sleep as well as I do, is a miracle exactly like the rest—or would be, if the love were not the deepest and strongest thing of all, and did not hold and possess me overcomingly. I feel myself to be yours notwithstanding every other influence, and being yours, cannot but be happy by you. Ah—let people talk as they please of the happiness of early youth! Mrs. Jameson did, the other day, when she wished kindly to take her young niece with her to the Continent, that she might enjoy what in a few years she could not so much enjoy. ”

“ Our to-morrow!—How they have spoilt it for us! In revenge, I shall love you to-morrow twice as much, looking at my dead flowers. Twice as much!! ‘Ba, never talk extravagances.’ Twice as much is a giant fifty feet high. It is foolish to be fabulous.
Being better this evening (almost as if I were sure to see you in the morning) I went out to drive with Arabel and Flush, about six o’clock,—and we were not at home until eight, after having seen a mirage (as it appeared) of green fields and trees. ”

“ I want to be a Poet—to read books which make wise in their various ways, to see just so much of nature and the ways of men as seems necessary—and having done this already in some degree, I can easily and cheerfully afford to go without any or all of it for the future, if called upon,—and so live on, and ‘use up,’ my past acquisitions such as they are. I will go to Pisa and learn,—or stay here and learn in another way—putting, as I always have done, my whole pride, if that is the proper name, in the being able to work with the least possible materials. ”