Bless you, my ever-dearest.
Your R.
R.B. to E.B.B.
Sunday Morning.
[Post-mark, February 9, 1846.]
My dearest—there are no words,—nor will be to-morrow, nor even in the Island—I know that! But I do love you.
My arms have been round you for many minutes since the last word—
I am quite well now—my other note will have told you when the change began—I think I took too violent a shower bath, with a notion of getting better in as little time as possible,—and the stimulus turned mere feverishness to headache. However, it was no sooner gone, in a degree, than a worse plague came. I sate thinking of you—but I knew my note would arrive at about four o'clock or a little later—and I thought the visit for the quarter of an hour would as effectually prevent to-morrow's meeting as if the whole two hours' blessing had been laid to heart—to-morrow I shall see you, Ba—my sweetest. But there are cold winds blowing to-day—how do you bear them, my Ba? 'Care' you, pray, pray, care for all I care about—and be well, if God shall please, and bless me as no man ever was blessed! Now I kiss you, and will begin a new thinking of you—and end, and begin, going round and round in my circle of discovery,—My lotos-blossom! because they loved the lotos, were lotos-lovers,—λωτου τ' ερωτες, as Euripides writes in the Τρωαδες.
Your own
P.S. See those lines in the Athenæum on Pulci with Hunt's translation—all wrong—'che non si sente,' being—'that one does not hear him' i.e. the ordinarily noisy fellow—and the rest, male, pessime! Sic verte, meo periculo, mî ocelle!
Where's Luigi Pulci, that one don't the man see?
He just now yonder in the copse has 'gone it' (n'andò)
Because across his mind there came a fancy;
He'll wish to fancify, perhaps, a sonnet!