pers you get to
hear of a lyric of mine called 'De Profundis,'[95] you are to understand
that it was written by me nearly twenty years ago, _before I knew
Robert_; you will observe it is in my 'early manner,' as they say of
painters. It is a personal poem, of course, but was written even so, in
comparatively a state of retrospect, catching a grief in the rebound a
little. (You know I never _can_ speak or cry, so it isn't likely I
should write verses.) The poem (written, however, when I was very low)
lay unprinted all those years, till it turned up at Florence just when
poor Mrs. Howard's bereavement and Mr. Beecher's funeral sermon in the
'Independent' suggested the thought of it--on which, by an impulse, I
enclosed it to the editor, who wanted more verses from me. Now you see
it comes out just when people will suppose the motive to be an actual
occasion connected with myself. Don't let anyone think so, dear Isa. In
the first place, there would be great _exaggeration_; and in the
second, it's not my way to grind up my green griefs to make bread of.
But that poem exaggerates nothing--represents a condition from which the
writer had already partly emerged, after the greatest suffering; the
only time in which I have known what absolute _despair_ is.

Don't notice this when you write.

Write. Take the love of us three. Yes, I love you, dearest Isa, and
shall for ever.

BA.

* * * * *

_To Mrs. Martin_

126 Via Felice, Rome:
Friday, [about December 1860].

I have not had courage to write, my dearest friend, but you will not
have been severe on me. I have suffered very much--from suspense as well
as from certainty. If I could open my heart to you it would please me
that your sympathy should see all; but I can't write, and I couldn't
speak of that. It is well for those who in their griefs _can_ speak and
write. I never could.

But to you after all it is not needful. You understand and have
understood.

My husband has been very good to me, and saved me all he could, so that
I have had solitude and quiet, and time to get into the ruts of the
world again where one has to wheel on till the road ends. In this
respect it has been an advantage being at Rome rather than Florence. Now
I can read, and have seen a few faces. One must live; and the only way
is to look away from oneself into the larger and higher circle of life
in which the merely personal grief or joy forgets itself.

For th