THE LETTER
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hat does one gain by living? What by dyingIs lost worth having? What the daily thingsLived through together make them worth the whileFor their sakes or for life's? Where's the denyingOf souls through separation? There's your smile!And your hands' touch! And the long day that bringsHalf uttered nothings of delight! But thenNow that I see you not, and shall againTouch you no more--memory can possessYour soul's essential self, and none the lessYou live with me. I therefore write to youThis letter just as if you were awayUpon a journey, or a holiday;And so I'll put down everything that's newIn this secluded village, since you left. ...Now let me think! Well, then, as I remember,After ten days the lilacs burst in bloom.We had spring all at once--the long DecemberGave way to sunshine. Then we swept your room,And laid your things away. And then one morningI saw the mother robin giving warningTo little bills stuck just above the rimOf that nest which you watched while being built,Near where she sat, upon a leafless limb,With folded wings against an April rain.On June the tenth Edward and Julia married,I did not go for fear of an old pain.I was out on the porch as they drove by,Coming from church. I think I never scannedA girl's face with such sunny smiles upon itShowing beneath the roses on her bonnet--I went into the house to have a cry.A few days later Kimbrough lost his wife.Between housework and hoeing in the gardenI read Sir Thomas More and Goethe's life.My heart was numb and still I had to hardenAll memory or die. And just the sameAs when you sat beside the window, passedLarson, the cobbler, hollow-chested, lamed.He did not die till late November came.Things did not come as Doctor Jones forecast,'Twas June when Mary Morgan had her child.Her husband was in Monmouth at the time.She had no milk, the baby is not well.The Baptist Church has got a fine new bell.And after harvest Joseph Clifford tiledHis bottom land. Then Judy Heaton's crimeHas shocked the village, for the monster killedGlendora Wilson's father at his door--A daughter's name was why the blood was spilled.I could go on, but wherefore tell you more?The world of men has gone its olden wayWith war in Europe and the same routineOf life among us that you knew when here.This gossip is not idle, since I sayBy means of it what I would tell you, dear:I have been near you, dear, for I have beenNot with you through these things, but in despiteOf living them without you, therefore nearIn spirit and in memory with you. * * * * * Do you remember that delightful InnAt Chester and the Roman wall, and howWe walked from Avon clear to Kenilworth?And afterward when you and I came downTo London, I forsook the murky town,And left you to quaint ways and crowded places,While I went on to Putney just to seeOld Swinburne and to look into his face'sChangeable lights and shadows and to seize onA finer thing than any verse he wrote?(Oh beautiful illusions of our youth!)He did not see me gladly. Talked of treasonTo England's greatness. What was Camden like?Did old Walt Whitman smoke or did he drink?And Longfellow was sweet, but couldn't think.His mood was crusty. Lowell made him laugh!Meantime Watts-Dunton came and broke in halfMy visit, so I left. The thing was this:None of this talk was Swinburne any moreThan some child of his loins would take his hair,Eyes, skin, from him in some pangenesis,--His flesh was nothing but a poor affair,A channel for the eternal stream--his fleshGave nothing closer, mind you, than his book,But rather blurred it; even his eyes' lookConfused "Madonna Mia" from its freshAnd liquid meaning. So I knew at lastHis real immortal self is in his verse. * * * * * Since you have gone I've thought of this so much.I cannot lose you in this universe--I first must lose myself. The essential touchOf soul possession lies not in the walkOf daily life on earth, nor in the talkOf daily things, nor in the sight of eyesLooking in other eyes, nor daily breadBroken together, nor the hour of loveWhen flesh surrenders depths of things divineBeyond all vision, as they were the dreamOf other planets, but without these evenIn death and separation, there is heaven:By just that unison and its memoryWhich brought our lips together. To be freeFrom accidents of being, to be freeingThe soul from trammels on essential being,Is to possess the loved one. I have strayedInto the only heaven God has made:That's where we know each other as we are,In the bright ether of some quiet star,Communing as two memories with each other.
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