605. Sonnets from the Portuguese XXVIII

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806—1861)

  MY letters! all dead paper, mute and white!

  And yet they seem alive and quivering

  Against my tremulous hands which lose the string

  And let them drop down on my knee to-night.

  This said,—he wished to have me in his sight

  Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring

  To come and touch my hand… a simple thing,

  Yet I wept for it!—this,… the paper’s light…

  Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed

  As if God’s future thundered on my past.

  This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled

  With lying at my heart that beat too fast.

  And this… O Love, thy words have ill availed

  If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!