on the
bridge to hearken how soft the poplars sigh," not knowing that it is the
lover himself who sighs in the trees all night. That is how the ghosts
of real love come back into the world. The ghosts of love and the ghosts
of hatred must be quite different: these bring fear, and those none.
Come to me, dearest, in the blackest night, and I will not be afraid.

How strange that when one has suffered most, it is the poets (those who
are supposed to _sing_) who best express things for us. Yet singing is the
thing I feel least like. If ever a heart once woke up to find itself full
of tune, it was mine; now you have drawn all the song out of it, emptied
it dry: and I go to the poets to read epitaphs. I think it is their
cruelty that appeals to me:--they can sing of grief! O hard hearts!

Sitting here thinking of you, my ears have suddenly become wide open to
the night-sounds outside. A night-jar is making its beautiful burr in
the stillness, and there are things going away and away, telling me the
whereabouts of life like points on a map made for the ear. You, too, are
_somewhere_ outside, making no sound: and listening for you I heard
these. It seemed as if my brain had all at once opened and caught a new
sense. Are you there? This is one of those things which drop to us with
no present meaning: yet I know I am not to forget it as long as I live.

Good-night! At your head, at your feet, is there any room for me to-night,
Beloved?

LETTER LXVIII.

Dearest: The thought keeps troubling me how to give myself to you most, if
you should ever come back for me when I am no longer here. These poor
letters are all that I can leave: will they tell you enough of my heart?

Oh, into that, wish any wish that you like, and it is there already! My
heart, dearest, only moves in the wish to be what you desire.

Yet I am conscious that I cannot give, unless you shall choose to take:
and though I write myself down each day your willing slave, I cry my
wares in a market where there is no bidder to hear me.

Dearest, though my whole life is yours, it is little you know of it.
My wish would be to have every year of my life blessed by your
consciousness of it. Barely a year of me is all that you have, truly, to
remember: though I think five summers at least came to flower, and
withered in that one.

I wish you knew my whole life: I cannot tell it: it was too full of
infinitely small things. Yet what I can remember I would like to