Siren—­and you ‘wait me,’ and will sing ’song for song.’  And this is my first song, my true song—­this love I bear you—­I look into my heart and then let it go forth under that name—­love.  I am more than mistrustful of many other feelings in me:  they are not earnest enough; so far, not true enough—­but this is all the flower of my life which you call forth and which lies at your feet.

Now let me say it—­what you are to remember.  That if I had the slightest doubt, or fear, I would utter it to you on the instant—­secure in the incontested stability of the main fact, even though the heights at the verge in the distance should tremble and prove vapour—­and there would be a deep consolation in your forgiveness—­indeed, yes; but I tell you, on solemn consideration, it does seem to me that—­once take away the broad and general words that admit in their nature of any freight they can be charged with,—­put aside love, and devotion, and trust—­and then I seem to have said nothing of my feeling to you—­nothing whatever.

I will not write more now on this subject.  Believe you are my blessing and infinite reward beyond possible desert in intention,—­my life has been crowned by you, as I said!

May God bless you ever—­through you I shall be blessed.  May I kiss your cheek and pray this, my own, all-beloved?

I must add a word or two of other things.  I am very well now, quite well—­am walking and about to walk.  Horne, or rather his friends, reside in the very lane Keats loved so much—­Millfield Lane.  Hunt lent me once the little copy of the first Poems dedicated to him—­and on the title-page was recorded in Hunt’s delicate characters that ’Keats met him with this, the presentation-copy, or whatever was the odious name, in M——­ Lane—­called Poets’ Lane by the gods—­Keats came running, holding it up in his hand.’  Coleridge had an affection for the place, and Shelley ‘knew’ it—­and I can testify it is green and silent, with pleasant openings on the grounds and ponds, through the old trees that line it.  But the hills here are far more open and wild and hill-like; not with the eternal clump of evergreens and thatched summer house—­to say nothing of the ‘invisible railing’ miserably visible everywhere.

You very well know what a vision it is you give me—­when you speak of standing up by the table to care for my flowers—­(which I will never be ashamed of again, by the way—­I will say for the future; ’here are my best’—­in this as in other things.) Now, do you remember, that once I bade you not surprise me out of my good behaviour by standing to meet me unawares, as visions do, some day—­but now—­omne ignotum?  No, dearest!

Ought I to say there will be two days more? till Saturday—­and if one word comes, one line—­think!  I am wholly yours—­yours, beloved!

R.B.

E.B.B. to R.B.

January 1, 1845 [1846].