From: Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846
Author:
Published: 1903 New York
You come not, dear friend. The day was full of golden sunlight, and kind words and deeds as well, for the thought of you stood at the end, but you come not. My head has ached ever since you were here, and needed you to take away its pain-but you come not.
You said once, I was too sensitive and that such little disappointments would affect me. It is indeed the absence of the light, but would never affect me any other way, where I am sure of love as I am of yours; but that absence is sad.
The shadows and damps of evening settle down upon me as they do upon the earth, for where is the torch that was to cheer the in-door retirement!
You come not—and now I realize, that soon will be the time, when evening will come always, but you will come no more.
We shall meet in soul, but the living eye of love, that is in itself almost a soul, that will beam no more.
O Heaven, O God, or by whatsoever name I may appeal; surely, surely—O All-causing, Thou must be the All-sustaining, All-fulfilling too. I, from Thee sprung, do not feel force to bear so much as one of these deep impulses in vain! Nor is it enough that the heavenly magic of its touch throws open all the treasure-chambers of the universe, if these enchanted doors must close again.
My little rose-tree casts its shadow on the paper. They bade me cut it down to make it blossom, and so have I done, though with a reluctant hand. So is it on this earth. But not so will it always be. The soul protests against it, and sometime, somewhere claims its own in full.
Wilt thou search out such mysteries in the solitude of the cave? Wilt thou prepare for men an image fair and grand enough of hope? Give that to men at large, but to me send some little talisman, that may be worn next the secret heart. And let it have a diamond point, that may pierce when any throb swells too far to keep time with the divine frame of things. We would not, however, stifle one natural note, only tune all sweet.
My head aches still and I must lean it on the paper as I write, so the writing goes all amiss. Ah! I really needed you to-night and you could not come—yet you are not away from me; are you? I long to hear whether the most wearisome part of your winding up is not now over. May morning, after thinking it was unfit to send the flowers, I changed my mind, for it seemed perhaps they might not be uncongenial in the evening after the fret and dust of the day were over. —Farewell.
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