wishing to say anything at all, but just to be! I feel that I am living
now only because you love me: and that my life will have run out, like
this penful of ink, when that use in me is past. Not yet, Beloved, oh, not
yet! Nothing is finished that we have to do and be:--hardly begun! I will
not call even this "midsummer," however much it seems so: it is still only
spring.

Every day your love binds me more deeply than I knew the day before: so
that no day is the same now, but each one a little happier than the last.
My own, you are my very own! And yet, true as that is, it is not so true
as that I am _your_ own. It is less absolute, I mean; and must be so,
because I cannot very well _take_ possession of anything when I am given
over heart and soul out of my own possession: there isn't enough identity
left in me, I am yours so much, so much! All this is useless to say, yet
what can I say else, if I have to begin saying anything?

Could I truly be your "star and goddess," as you call me, Beloved, I
would do you the service of Thetis at least (who did it for a greater
than herself)--

"Bid Heaven and Earth combine their charms,
And round you early, round you late,
Briareus fold his hundred arms
To guard you from your single fate."

But I haven't got power over an eight-armed octopus even: so am merely a
very helpless loving nonentity which merges itself most happily in you,
and begs to be lifted to no pedestal at all, at all.

If you love me in a manner that is at all possible, you will see that