Letter IX

To the sun of love the clouds that cover absence must look like white
flowers in the green fields of earth, or like doves hovering: and he
reaches down and strokes them with his warm beams, making all their
feathers like gold.

Some clouds let the gold come through; mine, now.--That cloud I saw
away to the right is coming this way toward me. I can see the shadow of
it now, moving along a far-off strip of road: and I wonder if it is
your cloud, with you under it coming to see me again!

When you come, why am I any happier than when I know you are coming? It
is the same thing in love. I have you now all in my mind's eye; I have
you by heart; have I my arms a bit more round you then than now?

How it puzzles me that, when love is perfect, there should be
disappearances and reappearances: and faces now and then showing a
change!--You, actually, the last time you came, looking a day older than
the day before! What was it? Had old age blown you a kiss, or given you a
wrinkle in the art of dying? Or had you turned over some new leaf, and
found it withered on the other side?

I could not see how it was: I heard you coming--it was spring! The door
opened:--oh, it was autumnal! One day had fallen away like a leaf out of
my forest, and I had not been there to see it go!