something intenser than 'dears' in ordinary, and 'yours ever' a
thought more significant than the run of its like. And all this came
of your talking of 'tiring me,' 'being too envious,' &c. &c., which I
should never have heard of had the plain truth looked out of my letter
with its unmistakable eyes. _Now_, what you say of the 'bowing,' and
convention that is to be, and _tant de façons_ that are not to be,
helps me once and for ever--for have I not a right to say simply that,
for reasons I know, for other reasons I don't exactly know, but might
if I chose to think a little, and for still other reasons, which, most
likely, all the choosing and thinking in the world would not make me
know, I had rather hear from you than see anybody else. Never you
care, dear noble Carlyle, nor you, my own friend Alfred over the sea,
nor a troop of true lovers!--Are not their fates written? there! Don't
you answer this, please, but, mind it is on record, and now then, with
a lighter conscience I shall begin replying to your questions. But
then--what I have printed gives _no_ knowledge of me--it evidences
abilities of various kinds, if you will--and a dramatic sympathy with
certain modifications of passion ... _that_ I think--But I never have
begun, even, what I hope I was born to begin and end--'R.B. a
poem'--and next, if I speak (and, God knows, feel), as if what you
have read were sadly imperfect demonstrations of even mere ability, it
is from no absurd vanity, though it might seem so--these scenes and
song-scraps _are_ such mere and very escapes of my inner power, which
lives in me like the light in those crazy Mediterranean phares I have
watched at sea, wherein the light is ever revolving in a dark gallery,
bright and alive, and only after a weary interval leaps out, for a
moment, from the one narrow chink, and then goes on with the blind
wall between it and you; and, no doubt, _then_, precisely, does the
poor drudge that carries the cresset set himself most busily to trim
the wick--for don't think I want to say I have not worked hard--(this