From: Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846
Author:
Published: 1903 New York
I will not this time wait till the dark night before I open my thoughts to the loved soul who has brought me so much sunlight.
Thou hast brought me so much and I would gladly make return. But I know you ask nothing of your moon except a pure reflection in a serene sky.
When I listen to your many perplexities, I long for the privilege of “sage counsel in cumber” but it comes not. Yet I have,—have I not?—power to soothe for the moment by listening, understanding, loving; and you have force and honour and aspiration to find your way out of them all—in time.
You have force and take with you the sense that I am thus deeply in your debt. The sense that has always been mine, that I should not be restless, sad, or weary with one who combined force with tenderness and delicacy, has become certainty. This is much; it is an assurance, also a promise. Yes, there is one who understands, and when we are separated and I can no longer tell the impulse or the want of the moment, still I will not forget that there has been one.
But I feel that you begin to go, that you are much taken from me already by your plagues and your preparations.
I have been very ill; last night the pain in my neck became so violent, that I could not lie still and passed a night suffering and sleepless. There were in the house no remedies and none to apply them. I went crying into town this morning, my nerves all ajar and the pain worse than ever; it was a sort of tic douloureux.—I brought out a very strong remedy and since applying it, have been asleep. Now, waking almost free from pain, earth seems almost as good as heaven. Still, it hurts me to lean down my head and write. I must look rather out of the window on the soft shadowy landscape, which stills me. Put me in mind then, when we meet, to say two or three little things I had meant to write, and Lebewohl!
How dull reads this letter, burn it—“take heart from out the breast” read that. Let me say in reply to your last, that you had better leave my letters. You will not find it of any use to take them with you. They have been like manna, possible to use for food in their day, but they are not immortal like their source. Let them perish! Let me burn them. Keep my image in the soul without such aids and it will be more livingly true and avail you more.
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