“It is two o’clock in the morning, and so far I have not been able to sleep. I have lain awake with torturing thoughts; and then the baby wakened up, and I had to put him to sleep again—any indisposition of mine always affects him. I am sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed, writing with a candle; and hoping to get myself sufficiently exhausted, so that I shall no longer lie awake.
“Go and find your vision over my corpse, and may God bless you!... I wrote that hours ago, and I tried to mean it. I try to tell myself that I will take the child and go away, and crush my own hopes and yearnings, and give my life to him. But no—I cannot, I cannot! It is perfectly futile for me to think of that—I crave for life, and I cannot give up. There is that in me that will never yield, that will take no refusal. Sometimes I see myself as a woman of seventy, still seeking my life. Do you not realize that? I feel that I shall never grow old!
“How strange a thing it is, Thyrsis, that you and I, who might do so much with so little chance, should have no chance at all. I read of other poets and their wives—at least they managed to have a hut on some hillside, and they did not absolutely starve.
“I am tired now; perhaps I can sleep. But I will tell you something, Thyrsis—does it sound so very foolish? Not only will I never grow old, but I will never give up your love! Yes, some day you will find out how to seek your vision in spite of the fact that I am your wife!”
Section 8. Another day, there would be moods of peace, and even of merriment; it was always like putting one’s hand into a grab-bag, to open a new letter from Corydon. In after years he would read them, and strange were the memories they brought!
“My Thyrsis,” she wrote: “I have been reading a story of Heine in Zangwill’s “Dreamers of the Ghetto”. I did not know about Heine. He loved and married a sweet little woman of the people—Mathilde—who didn’t appreciate his writings. I am not only going to love you, but I am going to appreciate your writings! Some day I am going to be educated—and won’t it be fine when I am educated?
“I keep very busy, but I have not so much time as I had last summer. I live almost all my life in hope—the present is nothing. I think I get more strength by gazing at my baby than in any other way. I wonder if I can ever infuse into him my inspiration and my desire. It is wonderfully exciting to me to think of what a free soul could do, if it possessed my spirit and my dreams. Ah, even you don’t know! I smile to myself when I think how surprised you might some day be! Oh, my baby, my baby, surely you will not fail me—little soul that is to be. This is what I say to him, and then I squeeze him in ecstasy, and he coughs up his milk. Dear funny little thing, that is so pleased with a red, white and blue rattle. At present he is grinning at it ecstatically—and he is truly most horribly cunning. His favorite expression is ‘Ah-boo, ah-boo’; and is not that just too bright? Everybody tries to spoil him—even a twelve-year-old boy here wanted to kiss him. And wonder of wonders, he has two teeth appearing in his lower gums! Poor me—he bites hard enough as he is.”
And then again:
“My Beloved: I am sitting with my candle once more. It is too hot for a lamp. I have been reading ‘Paradise Lost’, and truly I am astonished that it is so beautiful. Also I have been reading a book about Unitarianism, and I did not know that such things had been written. But I think it is hardly worth while to call one’s self a Unitarian. I was thinking that I will go back and read the Bible through. I would not mind, if I knew I did not have to believe it.
“Also; this week, I read ‘Paul and Virginia’. Oh, do not write anything to me about our meeting, until you are sure it can be! It breaks my heart.