- My letters! all dead paper, mute and white!
- And yet they seem alive and quivering
- Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
- And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
- This said,—he wished to have me in his sight
- Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
- To come and touch my hand . . . a simple thing,
- Yet I wept for it!—this, . . . the paper’s light . . .
- Said, Dear I love thee; and I sank and quailed
- As if God’s future thundered on my past.
- This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
- With lying at my heart that beat too fast.
- And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed
- If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!