_R.B. to E.B.B._

Saturday Night, March 1 [1845].

Dear Miss Barrett,--I seem to find of a sudden--surely I knew
before--anyhow, I _do_ find now, that with the octaves on octaves of
quite new golden strings you enlarged the compass of my life's harp
with, there is added, too, such a tragic chord, that which you
touched, so gently, in the beginning of your letter I got this
morning, 'just escaping' &c. But if my truest heart's wishes avail, as
they have hitherto done, you shall laugh at East winds yet, as I do!
See now, this sad feeling is so strange to me, that I must write it
out, _must_, and you might give me great, the greatest pleasure for
years and yet find me as passive as a stone used to wine libations,
and as ready in expressing my sense of them, but when I am pained, I
find the old theory of the uselessness of communicating the
circumstances of it, singularly untenable. I have been 'spoiled' in
this world--to such an extent, indeed, that I often _reason_ out--make
clear to myself--that I might very properly, so far as myself am
concerned, take any step that would peril the whole of my future
happiness--because the past is gained, secure, and on record; and,
though not another of the old days should dawn on me, I shall not have
lost my life, no! Out of all which you are--please--to make a sort of
sense, if you can, so as to express that I have been deeply struck to
find a new real unmistakable sorrow along with these as real but not
so new joys you have given me. How strangely this connects itself in
my mind with another subject in your note! I looked at that
translation for a minute, not longer, years ago, knowing nothing about
it or you, and I _only_ looked to see what rendering a passage had