If, when I come to my finish, I get any truer glimpse of your mind, and am sure of what you would wish, I will leave word that these shall be sent to you. If not, I must suppose knowledge is still delayed, not that it will not reach you.
Sometimes I try still not to wish to die. For my poor body's sake I wish Well to have its last chance of coming to pass. It is the unhappy unfulfilled clay of life, I think, which robbed of its share of things set ghosts to walk: mists which rise out of a ground that has not worked out its fruitfulness, to take the shape of old desires. If I leave a ghost, it will take your shape, not mine, dearest: for it will be "as trees walking" that the "lovers of trees" will come back to earth. Browning did not know that. Someone else, not Browning, has worded it for us: a lover of trees far away sends his soul back to the country that has lost him, and there "the traveler, marveling why, halts on the bridge to hearken how soft the poplars sigh," not knowing that it is the lover himself who sighs in the trees all night. That is how the ghosts of real love come back into the world. The ghosts of love and the ghosts of hatred must be quite different: these bring fear, and those none. Come to me, dearest, in the blackest night, and I will not be afraid.
How strange that when one has suffered most, it is the poets (those who are supposed to sing) who best express things for us. Yet singing is the thing I feel least like. If ever a heart once woke up to find itself full of tune, it was mine; now you have drawn all the song out of it, emptied it dry: and I go to the poets to read epitaphs. I think it is their cruelty that appeals to me:—they can sing of grief! O hard hearts!
Sitting here thinking of you, my ears have suddenly become wide open to the night-sounds outside. A night-jar is making its beautiful burr in the stillness, and there are things going away and away, telling me the whereabouts of life like points on a map made for the ear. You, too, are somewhere outside, making no sound: and listening for you I heard these. It seemed as if my brain had all at once opened and caught a new sense. Are you there? This is one of those things which drop to us with no present meaning: yet I know I am not to forget it as long as I live.
Good-night! At your head, at your feet, is there any room for me to-night, Beloved?
LETTER LXVIII.
Dearest: The thought keeps troubling me how to give myself to you most, if you should ever come back for me when I am no longer here. These poor letters are all that I can leave: will they tell you enough of my heart?
Oh, into that, wish any wish that you like, and it is there already! My heart, dearest, only moves in the wish to be what you desire.