Letter LXVII

Do you forgive me for coming into your life, Beloved? I do not know in
what way I can have hurt you, but I know that I have. Perhaps without
knowing it we exchange salves for the wounds we have given and received?
Dearest, I trust those I send reach you: I send them, wishing till I grow
weak. My arms strain and become tired trying to be wings to carry them to
you: and I am glad of that weariness--it seems to be some virtue that has
gone out of me. If all my body could go out in the effort, I think I
should get a glimpse of your face, and the meaning of everything then at
last.

I have brought in a wild rose to lay here in love's cenotaph, among all
my thoughts of you. It comes from a graveyard full of "little deaths." I
remember once sending you a flower from the same place when love was
still fortunate with us. I must have been reckless in my happiness to do
that!

Beloved, if I could speak or write out all my thoughts, till I had
emptied myself of them, I feel that I should rest. But there is no
emptying the brain by thinking. Things thought come to be thought
again over and over, and more and fresh come in their train: children
and grandchildren, generations of them, sprung from the old stock. I
have many thoughts now, born of my love for you, that never came when we
were together,--grandchildren of our days of courtship. Some of them are
set down here, but others escape and will never see your face!