Let me count my gold now—and rub off any speck that stays the full shining. First—that thought ... I told you; I pray you, pray you, sweet—never that again—or what leads never so remotely or indirectly to it! On your own fancied ground, the fulfilment would be of necessity fraught with every woe that can fall in this life. I am yours for ever—if you are not here, with me—what then? Say, you take all of yourself away but just enough to live on; then, that defeats every kind purpose ... as if you cut away all the ground from my feet but so much as serves for bare standing room ... why still, I stand there—and is it the better that I have no broader space, when off that you cannot force me? I have your memory, the knowledge of you, the idea of you printed into my heart and brain,—on that, I can live my life—but it is for you, the dear, utterly generous creature I know you, to give me more and more beyond mere life—to extend life and deepen it—as you do, and will do. Oh, how I love you when I think of the entire truthfulness of your generosity to me—how, meaning and willing to give, you gave nobly! Do you think I have not seen in this world how women who do love will manage to confer that gift on occasion? And shall I allow myself to fancy how much alloy such pure gold as your love would have rendered endurable? Yet it came, virgin ore, to complete my fortune! And what but this makes me confident and happy? Can I take a lesson by your fancies, and begin frightening myself with saying ... 'But if she saw all the world—the worthier, better men there ... those who would' &c. &c. No, I think of the great, dear gift that it was; how I 'won' nothing (the hateful word, and French thought)—did nothing by my own arts or cleverness in the matter ... so what pretence have the more artful or more clever for:—but I cannot write out this folly—I am yours for ever, with the utmost sense of gratitude—to say I would give you my life joyfully is little.... I would, I hope, do that for two or three other people—but I am not conscious of any imaginable point in which I would not implicitly devote my whole self to you—be disposed of by you as for the best. There! It is not to be spoken of—let me live it into proof, beloved!
And for 'disappointment and a burden' ... now—let us get quite away from ourselves, and not see one of the filaments, but only the cords of love with the world's horny eye. Have we such jarring tastes, then? Does your inordinate attachment to gay life interfere with my deep passion for society? 'Have they common sympathy in each other's pursuits?'—always asks Mrs. Tomkins! Well, here was I when you knew me, fixed in my way of life, meaning with God's help to write what may be written and so die at peace with myself so far. Can you help me or no? Do you not help me so much that, if you saw the more likely peril for poor human nature, you would say, 'He will be jealous of all the help coming from me,—none from him to me!'—And that would be a consequence of the help, all-too-great for hope of return, with any one less possessed than I with the exquisiteness of being transcended and the blest one.
But—'here comes the Selah and the voice is hushed'—I will speak of other things. When we are together one day—the days I believe in—I mean to set about that reconsidering 'Sordello'—it has always been rather on my mind—but yesterday I was reading the 'Purgatorio' and the first speech of the group of which Sordello makes one struck me with a new significance, as well describing the man and his purpose and fate in my own poem—see; one of the burthened, contorted souls tells Virgil and Dante—
Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
E peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora:
Quivi—lume del ciel ne fece accorti
Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
Che del disio di se veder n'accora.[23]
Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
E peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora:
Quivi—lume del ciel ne fece accorti
Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
Che del disio di se veder n'accora.[23]
Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
E peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora:
Quivi—lume del ciel ne fece accorti
Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
Che del disio di se veder n'accora.[23]
Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
E peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora:
Quivi—lume del ciel ne fece accorti
Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
Che del disio di se veder n'accora.[23]
Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
E peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora:
Quivi—lume del ciel ne fece accorti
Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
Che del disio di se veder n'accora.[23]
Noi fummo già tutti per forza morti,
E peccatori infin' all' ultim' ora:
Quivi—lume del ciel ne fece accorti
Si chè, pentendo e perdonando, fora
Di vita uscimmo a Dio pacificati
Che del disio di se veder n'accora.[23]
Which is just my Sordello's story ... could I 'do' it off hand, I wonder—