From: Love-Letters of Margaret Fuller, 1845-1846
Author:
Published: 1903 New York
DEAR FRIEND,
I do not just now find anything to write; the fact of an approaching separation presses on my mind, and makes me unable to make the best use of the hours that remain. I will therefore borrow from the past. Many little things have made me feel as it there had been a gradual and divinely moved preparation for our meeting. To-day I took out of the portfolio some leaves, written last autumn among the mountains, and found there these lines, which will impress you from their consonance, in some respects, with what you have since uttered to me. Many such things I write down. They seem dictated to me, and are not understood fully at the time. They are of the things, which are received mystically long before they are appreciated intellectually.
Perhaps you had better destroy them—not now—for you will hardly be at leisure tor them yet, but sometime when you feel ready, as they are so intimately personal.
I wish you would ask me to explain the difference, the Greeks made between the moon as Hecate and as Diana, and the allusions to the girdle of Apollo, and at the conclusion—to Tantalus; these are beautiful things in the Greek mythology, which you will appreciate.
I feel it is true what you say, that in the new and greater religion we shall rise above the need of this mythology; for all which they intimated in poetry we must realize in life, but as yet I cling to these beautiful forms as I do to the green and 1l0wery earth, and again will say, linger with me here a while.
Our friend, here, asks anxiously-whether you are gone yet? She expresses a great desire to hear you play on your guitar once more, and I am glad you left it; we will pass an hour together so. She is really quite content about us now.
I am not well. You cannot bend your mind on me now. I know it is not because you love me less, but because there are necessarily so many things, at present, to distract. But I feel it. The strength that was only given is gone. Or rather it was not given, only lent, but you would have given it, if you could, I know.
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